- Pie for Everyone
- Review: Matty Matheson’s Home Style Cookery
If you could smell my apartment right now, you’d smell brown butter and sugar and very little else as I have been baking a honey and brown butter pecan pie. Yes, I know. It sounds decadent and I’ll be eating salad all week. Yesterday, I made a lemon meringue pie with a poppyseed crust and a poppyseed Italian meringue. Following that, I baked a wild blueberry pie in my old cast iron pie pan.
So why all the pie?
I am a member of the Abrams Dinner Party and have access to the Abrams Books Fall and Spring Food & Drink catalogs. One of the books I’ve been given is PIE FOR EVERYONE by Petra “Petee” Paredez of Petee’s Pies in New York and the best way for me to review a cookbook is to cook through it. This week I chose three pies from it to try out and was impressed by the easy to follow recipes, clear directions, and the quality of the end product. Too often I have been excited and bought a cookbook only to be overwhelmed with hard-to-find ingredient lists, confusing directions, or disappointing results. I end up frustrated and change the recipes with fixes or substitutions of my own. Not so here.
Paradez’ recipes are easy to follow, most ingredients you either have in your pantry or can easily get, while the results are delicious. I fell in love with her consistently good pie dough. As any baker of pies knows, sometimes it can be tricky to get a perfectly flaky crust. I went for her butter pie crust dough because I always go for butter doughs. While it is more delicate, you can’t beat that buttery taste. I also have a vegetarian granddaughter, who would be seriously displeased if there were lard in the pie dough. Paradez’ butter crust is perfection – tender, crumbly, flaky, tasty, and yet, easy to roll out and manipulate. I also made her seeded version – the poppyseed, which instantly became a favorite. Paradez also includes clear instructions and photographic step-by-steps for making the various doughs as well as storing and freezing your pie dough.
I began with the most dramatic (in my opinion) pie in the book – the Lemon Meringue with Poppyseed Meringue (p. 128). For such a dramatically beautiful pie, it is surprisingly easy to make. Paradez’ lemon filling was easy and quick. I was surprised at the Italian meringue and thought it might be too sweet, but no, it paired perfectly with the tart lemon of the filling and the creamy, almost marshmallow-like texture was sublime. The poppyseeds, folded in at the end, give it texture and a dramatic finish. Paradez cautions to be careful with your broiler while toasting the meringue and yet, I barely avoided burning mine because I was distracted by the book. Caution: don’t read the book whilst toasting your meringue. It’s too easy to get lost in the stunning photos, compelling stories, and oh so tempting recipes.
When PDE5 is inhibited, the body spontaneously increases the level of nitric oxide, which helps blood vessels to expand unica-web.com (on line cialis) and circulation to be in the order.I decided to bake the Wild Blueberry pie next (p. 88), as blueberry pie is a favorite of my grandson, Aiden. I used my old cast iron pie tin. I love using a cast iron pie plate for fruit pies as it crisps up the crusts nicely and there is less danger of the dreaded soggy bottom. Again, the recipe was simple, easy to follow, and the results were delicious.
This morning, I had intended to make a custard pie, but at the last moment changed my mind and settled on the pecan because of the brown butter. The first time I had brown butter it was on gnocchi with sage made for me by my Venetian chef partner and I immediately fell in the nutty, buttery taste of it. It’s the dish I ask him to make for me most. I was intrigued by how the browned butter would enhance the flavor of the pecans and so went for it. I had a chilled bit of the poppyseed dough from the day before and used that as my crust. After being chilled overnight in plastic wrap, all it took was 20 minutes of sitting on my kitchen table to make it soft enough to roll. Again, the recipe was easy to follow and the results were deliciously decadent. As stated above, I’ll be nibbling on lettuce all week. The flavor of this pie is intensely pecan, buttery, and not sickening sweet like some pecan pies can be. I am impressed and can see this book being the go-to book in this home for pie baking. You’ll find the decadent Brown Butter-Honey Pecan Pie on Page 190.
Next week we are expecting a heatwave here in L.A. so I won’t be doing much baking, but soon I am going to try her savory pies, quiches, custard pies, chess pies, and the Nesselrode pies (a thing I’d never heard of) in the upcoming weeks leading into the holidays. It’s a good thing my family likes pie because I have Pie for Everyone.
*This post is sponsored by ABRAMS Books, as part of the Abrams Dinner Party.
