tomato pie
Aug. 22nd, 2014 01:35 amI was reading Laurie Colwin's More Home Cooking the other day, and there was an essay on Biscuits, which I flipped to in order to be smug, as since Bettina's Emergency Biscuits entered my life I have been the sort of person who is very smug about producing really good biscuits at the drop of a hat.
It turns out that Colwin's biscuits are Bettina's, which made me even smugger. And she mentioned-- I had not tried this, as there seemed no reason it would work-- that those biscuits make a perfectly good pie crust, and gave a recipe for tomato pie.
I am unreasonably frightened of shortcrust. I know it to be unreasonable. I know it to be unreasonable because I am less intimidated by the concept of making puff pastry. I would literally rather line my pie tin with puff or rough puff than make a shortcrust, and this is ridiculous, but it is also because in my entire life I have only met one or two shortcrusts I enjoyed eating, and believe me I was not involved in making any of them. Most shortcrust tastes to me like cardboard garnished in sand. So I leaped at the thought of a biscuit pie crust, and tonight![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay and I made tomato pie for dinner, and it was great.
Tomato Pie (Laurie Colwin)
Thoroughly grease a nine-inch pie tin. Preheat the oven to 400 F. You want it entirely preheated when the pie goes in, already completely hot.
Make a full recipe of biscuit dough, from the link above. When it has come together into a ball, knead it for about five minutes to make it strong enough to roll out, and then roll it into two nine-inch pie crusts. Although Ruth informs me that we have a rolling pin, I haven't the foggiest where it could have gotten to, so I just patted out the crust and it worked fine.
Slice 2 lbs. plum tomatoes thinly, but not stressfully thinly. Colwin does not say to seed them, but I think it is a good idea. She also says you can use drained canned whole tomatoes if you haven't got fresh, which I think would produce an entirely different but still tasty pie.
Tear into pieces a lot of some fresh herb. I used basil. I do mean a lot. I doubled the amount I thought seemed reasonable and in the final pie it wasn't enough. Probably if you fill a packed cup with coarsely torn herbs that would do. Herbs that would work include any kind of basil, fresh oregano, chives if you like them, tarragon, and maybe dill.
Arrange the tomato slices in layers on your bottom crust, and top with the herbs.
Sprinkle over this a cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese.
Thin one-third of a cup of mayonnaise with two tablespoons of lemon juice, and drizzle it on top. No, that is not too much mayonnaise. Really. I promise. No, I do not usually put mayonnaise all over everything.
Sprinkle an additional third of a cup of shredded cheese on top of the mayo layer, and put on the top crust. Make sure to make a lot of steam vents.
Bake at 400 F for twenty-five minutes. It is extremely important that you serve it hot, while the cheese is still all melty. Makes a hearty dinner for three, with leftovers; Colwin insists, and having had it I agree with her, that you must must must reheat the leftovers when you eat them to get the cheese back to the right state.
Now, if you know anything about pie, you are looking askance at the quantities of liquid that go into this one, especially since, this first time making it, we did not seed the tomatoes. By the time this went into the oven, I had put the pie tin on a baking sheet because I was convinced that it could not possibly fail to overflow all over everything and then bake itself onto the inside of the oven in an extremely permanent way.
Nope. And the bottom crust baked. It would have been a strong enough bottom crust to be actively load-bearing if we had seeded the tomatoes. I was astonished. The filling was not that runny at all. The tomatoes were at a phase of cooking it is actually difficult to achieve via saute, where they were definitely cooked through but had not yet started to shrink, and they were like that uniformly. Score one for Colwin.
Oh, and if you're anything like me, you're looking at this and going SALT??? GARLIC??? and wanting to futz, and I say to you, DON'T DO IT. A little black pepper, maybe, but there is plenty of salt from the cheese, and this may be the only tomato dish I have ever had which I believe would be destroyed by garlic.
I will keep making pies with the biscuit. If I put a couple of tablespoons of sugar into it for a dessert pie, I can inch it closer to shortcrust, and maybe get over my annoying fear that way.
It turns out that Colwin's biscuits are Bettina's, which made me even smugger. And she mentioned-- I had not tried this, as there seemed no reason it would work-- that those biscuits make a perfectly good pie crust, and gave a recipe for tomato pie.
I am unreasonably frightened of shortcrust. I know it to be unreasonable. I know it to be unreasonable because I am less intimidated by the concept of making puff pastry. I would literally rather line my pie tin with puff or rough puff than make a shortcrust, and this is ridiculous, but it is also because in my entire life I have only met one or two shortcrusts I enjoyed eating, and believe me I was not involved in making any of them. Most shortcrust tastes to me like cardboard garnished in sand. So I leaped at the thought of a biscuit pie crust, and tonight
sovay and I made tomato pie for dinner, and it was great.Tomato Pie (Laurie Colwin)
Thoroughly grease a nine-inch pie tin. Preheat the oven to 400 F. You want it entirely preheated when the pie goes in, already completely hot.
Make a full recipe of biscuit dough, from the link above. When it has come together into a ball, knead it for about five minutes to make it strong enough to roll out, and then roll it into two nine-inch pie crusts. Although Ruth informs me that we have a rolling pin, I haven't the foggiest where it could have gotten to, so I just patted out the crust and it worked fine.
Slice 2 lbs. plum tomatoes thinly, but not stressfully thinly. Colwin does not say to seed them, but I think it is a good idea. She also says you can use drained canned whole tomatoes if you haven't got fresh, which I think would produce an entirely different but still tasty pie.
Tear into pieces a lot of some fresh herb. I used basil. I do mean a lot. I doubled the amount I thought seemed reasonable and in the final pie it wasn't enough. Probably if you fill a packed cup with coarsely torn herbs that would do. Herbs that would work include any kind of basil, fresh oregano, chives if you like them, tarragon, and maybe dill.
Arrange the tomato slices in layers on your bottom crust, and top with the herbs.
Sprinkle over this a cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese.
Thin one-third of a cup of mayonnaise with two tablespoons of lemon juice, and drizzle it on top. No, that is not too much mayonnaise. Really. I promise. No, I do not usually put mayonnaise all over everything.
Sprinkle an additional third of a cup of shredded cheese on top of the mayo layer, and put on the top crust. Make sure to make a lot of steam vents.
Bake at 400 F for twenty-five minutes. It is extremely important that you serve it hot, while the cheese is still all melty. Makes a hearty dinner for three, with leftovers; Colwin insists, and having had it I agree with her, that you must must must reheat the leftovers when you eat them to get the cheese back to the right state.
Now, if you know anything about pie, you are looking askance at the quantities of liquid that go into this one, especially since, this first time making it, we did not seed the tomatoes. By the time this went into the oven, I had put the pie tin on a baking sheet because I was convinced that it could not possibly fail to overflow all over everything and then bake itself onto the inside of the oven in an extremely permanent way.
Nope. And the bottom crust baked. It would have been a strong enough bottom crust to be actively load-bearing if we had seeded the tomatoes. I was astonished. The filling was not that runny at all. The tomatoes were at a phase of cooking it is actually difficult to achieve via saute, where they were definitely cooked through but had not yet started to shrink, and they were like that uniformly. Score one for Colwin.
Oh, and if you're anything like me, you're looking at this and going SALT??? GARLIC??? and wanting to futz, and I say to you, DON'T DO IT. A little black pepper, maybe, but there is plenty of salt from the cheese, and this may be the only tomato dish I have ever had which I believe would be destroyed by garlic.
I will keep making pies with the biscuit. If I put a couple of tablespoons of sugar into it for a dessert pie, I can inch it closer to shortcrust, and maybe get over my annoying fear that way.
