Zucchini and ricotta pesto tart

Store-bought pie crust: Discuss.

That’s usually enough to set people off on both sides of a divide nearly as deep as the current political climate. I’m not as hard-core. I’m certainly a believer in the superiority of a home-made crust, providing you can make a passable one. And I’m prepared to enter into the discussion of the merits of lard vs. shortening vs. butter or some combination thereof. (My answer: Yes, and it depends. I use Mother’s recipe (lard) for some pie crusts, Mary A.’s (shortening) for others, Julia Child’s (butter and shortening) for quiches, and so on.)

There's the possibly apocryphal story about the time when the minister got fed up with people talking loudly in the pews before the service started, and instructed the organist to abruptly stop playing mid-hymn to make a point. Into the sudden quiet came this emphatic phrase uttered in the penetrating voice of the hearing-impaired: “I make mine with lard!” Amen, sister.

But I’m not a purist. I think it would be awesome if I was one of those people who always had home-made pie crust rounds in their freezer, but I’m not there yet. So I’m willing to look at a recipe that calls for a purchased crust without blinking if it means a quick weekend lunch in a lot less time.

Now mind you, this recipe also calls for purchased pesto, but with vats of the stuff I put up last fall in the freezer, I draw the line there. I used a pesto I made with pineapple sage, walnuts and walnut oil in this one. And yes, that’s like cheating too.

 

Zucchini and ricotta tart

Adapted from Rachael Ray Every Day, April 2017

Ingredients

1 unbaked pie crust

4 ounces ricotta or Quark

2 to 3 tablespoons pesto

½ a zucchini, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons sliced oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes

2 tablespoons pine nuts

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out pie crust into a large circle. Place on parchment paper on a large baking sheet.

Combine ricotta with pesto to reach desired spreadable consistency. Spread over pie crust, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Arrange zucchini slices over the top. Top with sun-dried tomatoes and sprinkle with pine nuts. Fold in border over the tart, crimping edges as you go.

Bake for 30 minutes until deep golden. Don’t be tempted to take it out too early or you may find your bottom crust is soggy. Serves 4 for lunch with a nice soup to go with it.

Rating: This made a fine fast lunch that’s not too heavy. I don’t know that it rises to the level of company food unless you upgrade the crust, but the combination of the nice pesto, Quark and sun-dried tomatoes worked fine. It’s worth repeating some time with a decent crust to see what difference that makes, but then it’s a lot less like fast food. Well, until I evolve to be the person who always has pie crust tucked away.

 

Herbed buttermilk biscuits

Since the herbs are a fairly subtle flavor in these, they could work either along side eggs for breakfast or with soup and salad for supper.

Herbed buttermilk biscuits

From Fine Cooking, March 2003

Ingredients

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

3 tablespoons shortening or lard, chilled

2 tablespoons chilled butter

¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and soda. Stir in dill and parsley. Cut lard and butter into small chunks and cut into flour mixture using a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Make a well in the center and add buttermilk. Mix just until combined.

Turn the sticky mixture out onto a lightly floured board. A bowl scraper helps with this. With lightly floured hands, form dough into a flattened round and then fold it over on itself about six times. (You're building up layers here.) Pat it out again into an even thickness about ½-inch thick. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 20 minutes.

Remove cutting board from refrigerator. Cut the dough into desired shapes with a cutter or just into squares or triangles as you prefer. Makes 8 to 12 depending on the size you choose. (I prefer to cut mine out without a cutter to avoid rerolling, since it’s both tedious and detrimental to the texture.)

Place on parchment lined sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake about 9 to 12 minutes, depending on biscuit size, until raised and golden brown.

Rating: Tasty carriers for butter. Nice texture. The herbs are pretty subtle. Actually fairly fast to fix on a weeknight once you make yourself start, the hardest part to everything in life.

Sauerbraten

Talk about slow food: This recipe doesn't really involve that much cooking time, but it does involve a fairly lengthy total elapsed time from start to finish, since you marinate it for three days.

Sauerbraten

Adapted from “The Complete Book of World Cookery” from Crescent. My mother had this 1972 cookbook on her shelf unused for many years and passed it along to me in hopes it would get some mileage. Can’t say as I’ve done right by it either, but it’s an interesting book, organized alphabetically by country. Measurements are imperial; directions are minimal, almost church-cookbook-esque in that regard. They smack of handwritten recipes passed along upon request, from Germany to Ghana.

Ingredients

3 pounds topside (or in our world top round or bottom round)

2 cups red wine (or at least that’s how I liberally interpreted 2 glassfuls, since I figured a bit more liquid for covering the meat seemed called for, and in my experience the contributors to this book did not believe in small glasses)

1 tablespoon wine vinegar

1 onion, sliced

1 carrot, sliced

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 bay leaf

1 spring thyme

4 whole cloves

6 peppercorns

Salt

2 ounces lard (!)

1 ounce flour

1 cup sour cream

½ cup broth if needed (I didn't need it)

Method

Combine wine, vinegar, onion, carrots, mustard, bay leaf, thyme, cloves, peppercorns and some salt in a large container. Add meat, trying to get it below the surface of the liquid as much as possible. Cover, refrigerate and let marinate for 3 days, turning every 12 hours or so.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Drain meat, retaining marinade. Heat lard in an oven proof pan that has a lid. Brown meat lightly on all sides. Pour marinade on top. Cover and bake for 3 hours.

Remove meat to a cutting board to let rest while you make the sauce. Strain the sauce and pour liquid back into pot over medium-low heat. Add flour and stir with a whisk until well blended. Add the sour cream (and some broth if needed to make a sauce) and cook and stir until thickened. Serve slices of the meat with hot buttered noodles or spaetzle and top with the sauce.

Rating: Dave's response: "My satisfaction level is quite high." Dave says this brings back memories of Sunday roasts at his grandmother's house after church, which for him is a good thing. I grew up on all beef, all the time, and I'm still not really nostalgic for that. But I agree that a wet roast is much better than a dry roast when it comes to this cut of meat. The meat is fairly moist and the sauce is essentially a really nice gravy. I'd say the three hours of braising resulted in a superior outcome compared with half that time dry roasting. Was it worth waiting three days for? Not sure. But it was a really nice gravy. And Black Forest sells its spaetzle at Kowalski's, so I balanced a slow food with a fast food.

 

My brother always likes to joke, "What's pie?" So when he gave sufficient warning that he was contemplating riding up for a visit a few weeks ago, I decided it was high time it was pie time. 

Blueberry pie

From King Arthur Baker's Companion. It’s a variation on their bumbleberrypie, which uses a mix of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
6 cups blueberries
1 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling on  top
¼ cup cornstarch (or quick cooking tapioca)
¼ teaspoon allspice
1 9-inch double  piecrust (see recipe below or use your favorite)

Method

Combine juices, zest, blueberries, sugar, cornstarch and allspice in a large pan and simmer until thickened. Cool to lukewarm.

Preheat oven to 425.

Roll out one pie crust into a 13-inch circle and set into a 9-inch pie pan. Spoon the filling into the shell. Roll out the other pie crust and place on top, crimping edges. Sprinkle with sugar.

Bake pie for 15 minutes at 425. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for an additional 35 to 50 minutes, until the top is evenly brown. Allow to cool several hours before slicing.

Rating: Really nice the second day. It was probably a few hours too warm for the best slicing the first day for lunch and would have been better baked either the day before or a few hours earlier than I had any interest in getting up, but set up nicely once fully cooled. Packed with blueberry flavor and a respectably crackly crust. Beats the heck out of canned filling. If you want filling to have on hand, try out Cathy Barrow's blueberry pie filling you can put up.

Julia Child’s Flaky Pie Dough

From “Baking with Julia.” This recipe is cut in half from her recipe; this yields two crusts for making one 9-inch pie with a top and bottom crust. I went this route because I know myself and the chances of me using the other two before they went off in the freezer seemed unlikely. But otherwise it would be a good time saver to make the double batch. And it makes for easier-to-measure amounts than the 2-crust version.

Ingredients

2⅝ cups pastry or all purpose flour
½ tablespoon kosher salt
3 ounces butter (6 tablespoons) cold butter, cut into small pieces (she specifies unsalted, but I didn't have any on hand and regular seemed fine)
5½ ounces (⅞ cup) chilled solid vegetable shortening (I used butter flavor Crisco)
½ cup ice water

Method

(Note: Julia gives three methods, one for a food processor, one for a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and by hand. I opted for by hand since it saves messing up an appliance and it makes it less likely that I’d overwork the dough.)

Mix flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the chopped butter and cut in using a pastry blender or two table knives. Mix until coarse and crumbly. Add shortening in small bits and work in until it’s in small clumps. Stir in ice water with a wooden spoon to blend it in. Turn out onto a board and fold it over just a few times. It will be a soft dough until chilled. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill. The recipe calls for at least 2 hours, but in my refrigerator I’ve found overnight yields a happier outcome. Once when making this the morning of for use in a quiche that evening for guests, there was some panic time in the freezer to get it to the right consistency to work with. (It can be stored for up to 5 days in the refrigerator or frozen for a month. Defrost first  if using frozen pie dough.) Divide in half and roll out as directed in the recipe.

Rating: A really good, reliable crust providing you've got the chilling time. Good for both sweet and savory pies.

All-butter crust purist? Lard fan? Swear the store-bought ones are just fine in a pinch? I won't say you're wrong. I spelled out my open-minded approach to pie crusts here.