Help Me! I’ve Made A Pah And I Can’t Stop!
After enduring several arched eyebrows from my Bride over my last pah (and a DAMNED TASTY pah it was, too) I decided for safety’s sake to chart a somewhat more conventional course on my next foray into bakerytude. As we are galloping into the throes of Autumnal Decadence my world is awash with apples, tasty sweet apples, and as that kind soul stated
“It’s apple pies that make the menfolk’s mouths water.”
Who was I to say no? So apple it was. Some searching led me to Simply Recipes, a great site for home cooking. Digging further I came upon this recipe for an Apple-Cranberry-Currant Crumble pie which looked pretty yum, and so with some modifications that’s what I made.
The first thing I needed to get going was a 1/4 cup of dried currants. I had to go to the Commie Store to find them, as they are for some reason not a big seller at the Food Town or ShopRong.
One of many pluses to this recipe is that I got to buy booze; specifically I bought a bottle of Laird’s Apple Brandy to soak and re-emplumpify the currants
The Laird’s distillery is just a few miles from the house so I was yet again able to live my new motto of “think globally; gorge locally.”
Anywho, soak those curranty puppies in 1/4 cup of brandy
Now it’s on to them thar apples. I bought about 4 pounds of Granny Smiths, because I wasn’t sure if the 2 1/4 pounds mentioned in the recipe was pre or post cutting. And since it’s been a week and several glasses of wine I still don’t. Oh well.
Coreman!
then slice the ends off, peel them, quater and slice into thinnish…slices and into the measuring receptacle
wash, rinse, repeat until you get your 6 cups.
In a large bowl (and she does say ‘large’ which I really should have listened to) combine the sugar
and 6 tbs flour, nutmeg (I grated fresh) (actually I also grate a lot of people the wrong way but that’s a different story), cinnamon (I used a heaping teaspoon), salt and zest
I tried fresh zest. I have no idea how much I used; I just took an orange and grated the sucker until it begged for mercy.
and using a slotted spoon you take the currants out of their tasty soak and plop them in here as well, saving the soaking brandy juice for later.
Now add the apples and the cranberries and realize that when she said large she meant large mix well
and fling this glorious goop into a pie shell. Now here is when I went some what agley from her recipe. She calls for “a ten inch pie.” I have no idea what that is. What I could find were 9 inch deep dish pie shells in the freezer…and they come in packs of two. And you know what? This recipe does a pretty good job of filling up both of them!
Cool. Sprinkle the reserved currant-sodded brandy on top of the two pahs.
Now it’s on to the crumble. Her recipe seemed rather…blah. Just flour, butter and brown sugar? Don’t get me wrong, those are all wonderful things! But I wanted more cinnamon zing, so I added a full heaping tablespoon of cinnamon to it.
In a medium sized bowl add the brown sugar, the cup of flour, the heaper of cinnamon and the softened cut up stick of butter…and mix mush those babies together with your fingers
and crumble the crumble atop the pahs
and pop those babies into the oven for an hour or so until the centers are bubbling nicely. Take them out to cool
and after a good two hours of cooling they won’t be so nu-cu-lar in the center and you can enjoy
some mighty fine pah.
Which was more effort? Making the pie, or documenting it?
No one can complain about this pie. Unless they have no soul. Or taste buds.
Probably a toss-up, Skyler!
It was mighty tasty, Jeff. My Bride whole-heartedly approved.
Well, it ain’t no Circus Peanut Pie, but it’ll do I reckon.
My, that looks goo-ood. Nice work, Mr B.
Now that pah looks delicious!
That looks MIGHTEE fine. I could snarf the whole thing my own self.
Yowza! That looks absolutely delicious. It might be worth a trip to the Commie store.
Pah is actually a word in the deaf community. It means “finally” or “at last” and I have no idea why.