Puff Pastry Tomato Galette

This blog post falls under the unfortunate heading of “things what got effed up and postponed because I had to go and get married and that are just now resurfacing with a WTF look on their faces.” I think this post is from August, when tomatoes were still awesome and I foolishly believed I could do both blog shit and wedding shit at the same time. So, pretend it is August still and it is warm and dry outside and everybody feels like autumn is a memorydream that will never come. Also, you might notice that I wrote about a billion words about what is quite honestly, the simplest and easiest of recipes that I have shared with thou to date. I tend to do shit like that. So, read my over explanation once, and then make up your own instructions.


Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

I have been under, what you might call, stress, lately. I’ve struggled a little with the decision of how much personal info I am comfortable sharing with this semi-anonymous audience of mostly people I know. So, whereas it would only make sense to follow up the first sentence of this paragraph with an example of the outrageous shitstorm that has been hailing into my life sphere and the life spheres of several close family members and friends, I hesitate. Because that shit is heartbreaking and sad. And my family would probably get mad as hell if I aired all of my business for all twelve or thirteen of you to read. They wouldn’t agree to have their shitstorms immortalized alongside stuffed mushrooms and asparagus crepes. And I don’t really feel like asking them for permission. It is actually my only true desire that none of them ever even figure out that I write cuss words and racist sex jokes about food on the internet in my copious amounts of spare time. What do you do, you know. I think a picture of an eggplant wiener is the pinnacle of class and comedy, but does my Uncle really need to know that about me? I ask that like they all didn’t immediately figure out the second I came screaming into this fart-smelling planet that I was “special.” But it helps me nap in the afternoon to think that there is some amount of mystery atmosphere, hazing out the direct line of sight between my mother and my butt jokes. So, in one part reverence for my family who hopefully never know this blog exists, and in one part chicken shit avoidance and dodging of authentically owning what kind of bitchface stress machine I have been in the last few weeks, I won’t get into the specific causes of my stress. But I can tell you how I’ve been getting through it.

A small example of my prowess at growing mutant veg. 

Firstly, like every upper middle class white woman in Portland, I been exercising and doing as much yoga as I can. I was preaching the other day about what amazing magic exercise can do for anxiety and depression, so I’ll skip that particular diatribe at this time. The second thing I have been doing for myself is to get my hands in some dirt and grow up some veggies. I never have before. I tried to grow some basil in a pot in a window three years ago, and it croaked before I got a single leaf off it. Not really a green thumb kind of person. But I live in my own house for the first time as an adult now, and I stopped looking for a job a couple of months ago after I was turned down for waiting tables seven times in a row, so I have that rare and fleeting combination of both time and opportunity to devote to growing a portion of my own food. Of all the reasons one might grow their own food – to cut costs, to grow rare varietals, to stick it to the man, to show off in front of their neighbors and friends – the greatest of these, is that food you grow in your yard just tastes a million billion times better. That is the only reason you really need. I mean, it’s like, leagues of difference. I didn’t know I liked carrots until I made some in my yard. Now I eat fucking carrots.

I can feel your jealous ire rising and heating up your loins.

 Building and growing a garden wasn’t an easy task for me. I don’t really like bugs that much. I wouldn’t say I have a phobia (any more) but I was terrified of all manner of flying and wiggling, waxy and grubby buggies when I was a small child. I can step on a roach now, but that is after literal years of concentrated effort and dedication to the cause. I been like Uma Thurman trying to knuckle open a wooden board from 3 inches away with this business. And the thing I guess I never really considered when I started this enterprise, is that working in the dirt to grow your own food is like 91% dealing with bugs. Trying to get the right bugs to like your set-up and the wrong bugs to stay out. Fishing out the wrong bugs and ending their lives with abandon. Food doesn’t grow unless you have bugs there to pollinate and churn up your soil and digest your compost and shit out nitrogen or whatever gross awesome things they do. I got A’s in AP Biology in high school and briefly majored in it in college, so none of this should have been a surprise to me. But it was. I almost couldn’t do it at one point. I had a bunch of broccoli plants that I planted too close together and they got Root Maggots. You don’t know the personal commitment it took to take care of that particular problem. But I did, and now my garden is a sort of personal triumph for me, and I look to the literal fruits of my labors as little trophies for overcoming my fear and for actually setting and meeting a goal, which I usually can’t do for shit.

The greatest of these trophies, are my tomatoes. They are the most beautiful and delish tomates I have ever, ever had. So please enjoy this simple and easy recipe of almost Margherita Pizza but not quite, and for Pete’s sake, grow some tomatoes already. Or next year, grow some, because it’s already wet and cold again now.

Not just for threatening Andy Capp.

Shizz Besides the Basics:
A rolling pin of some kind might be useful to you in this endeavor, as well as a cookie sheet or pizza pan or baking stone, or however the hell you usually put your shit in the oven. Use that. Also, parchment paper. I am a privileged and obnoxious white woman, so I use something called “Martha Wrap.” It is literally parchment paper on one side and foil on the other side and marketed to me by the Martha Stewart Corporation in a soothing robin-egg-blue colored box with her fucking face right on it, so I bought it like a dupe, and I use the shit out of it, even tho it curls under high heat and bugs the shit out of me, I paid $900 for one tube of it, and I intend to use it to the last, as punishment for my pride before Safeway Brand parchment paper. Oh, and paper towels. I know a lot of you are hippies and don’t believe in paper towels anymore. I am sorry for your inconvenient lives.

Puff pastry before it's had its morning coffee.

Ingredients:
Puff pastry: I have never tried to use puff pastry before this recipe. Seemed like it was outside of my skill sets. Turns out, not so. It’s just like 99 % butter, so the sheets of pastry can kind of melt and stick to everything, so you must allow some time to re-chill your pastry, throughout its preparation. Pepperidge Farm makes a relatively inexpensive box of puff pastry with two sheets in it, but I’ve seen pricey Gucci organic puff pastry in the hippie section of the frozens at the store.

Pesto: I chose a cheap pre-packaged basil pesto because I was in a hurry and lazy. It was delicious, but use your own if you like, or any version thereabouts.

Shallots: A nice sized one, slivered.

Cheese: I used three kinds of cheese on this mo’. There are two people in my family at this time. One of us loves goat cheese more than the other. And by that I mean that I love goat cheese more than I love the other person, not that I love goat cheese more than the other person loves goat cheese. I would probably sell my other person for the right amount of goat cheese. I love it. I love it. It’s goat cheese that I love. Having cleared that up, half of this yummy galette got goat cheese, and the other half got sliced up balls of fresh mozzarella. Then, the third cheese, which gets shredded and distributed evenly over the whole bizz, is a little cheese called Rosemary Touvelle, from the fine folks over at Rogue Creamery. An excellent cheese. A fine, delicious cheese. The only caveat I would issue with this cheese, is that once you get it out of its original shrink wrap, be sure to have uses for it lined up, as mine got molded and yuck within a week of opening. That’s probably because it doesn’t have the 8 pounds of preservatives I am used to in my usual grocery store cheese. So, thumbs up for the rosemary touvelle, but thumbs down that I lost over a third of it to spoil. Life lesson learned. The point I meant to make in this paragraph was that any cheese will do. I mean to say, any cheese that melts well enough, and that isn’t super stinky or super blue or outrageously aged. A nice fontina would be grand. Maybe even some Port Salut, or some grated Iberico for nutty outrageousness. God forbid what a lil Humboldt Fog might do. I don’t think I could handle it. I might expire on the spot out of shear overload. Anyway, shredded bagged mozzarella is fine if you are not me and cannot see the point in blowing outrageous amounts of money to keep your Cheese Drawer fully stocked. I myself see no other way to live.

I mean, just LOOK at these bitches.

Tomatoes: I feel like I have discussed this  enough, but the idea is to find the best looking tomatoes, grown close to where you live, and in a variety of colors, just because it looks prettier. I used a mixture of slicing tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, but the cherry ones can be acidic as hell and awful damned tart, depending on their ripeness and growing conditions and all that noise. If I were using grocery store tomatoes, I would buy a couple each of the red, yellow, and orange hot house tomatoes on the vine.

Olive Oil: You just need a little drizzle.

Herbs: If you got fresh, then use fresh. I think I used a handful of basil and a couple sprigs of lemon and regular thyme. But if you are a nut for oregano, then by all means, ruin your galette with some fresh oregano. Dried herbs might work but I’ll never know because I am too snobby to try them out.

Salt & Pepper to taste. Also, if you have fancy salts, like smoked chardonnay or Spanish rosemary salt, then go ahead and show off with those.

Flour: All-purpose flour is fine. You will need maybe 2/3rds a cup for rolling out your puff pastry.

You might notice that I didn’t give any specific measurements for these ingredients. The reason being, I don’t think I used any. Save for using only one sheet of frozen puff pastry. The rest is pretty much eyeballed.



Order of Operations:
1. Un-freeze your one sheet of puff pastry. You can do this by letting it sit in the fridge overnight, or by leaving it on the kitchen counter for approx. 40 minutes. Wrap up your other sheet in foil and shove it in a gallon freezer Ziploc and then lose it in the back of your freezer until you remember it around Thanksgiving.

2. Preheat your ovenator to 400F degrees.

Flour looks like cocaine joke # 740B.

3. The important thing to remember about puff pastry, again, is that it is all butter. It will act like butter. It will get limp and mushy when it is room temp. You need it chilled in order to work with it. So once it is defrosted, open it up and place it on a WELL FLOURED work surface. Because almost instantaneously, your pastry will start to melt and turn into bubblegum.

As usual, there is an oft-useless phallus between me & my dough.

4. Alright. So you have floured your work surface, and lain out your sheet of pastry. The next goal, is to get that little square of dough to be about 12 inches on a side. The instructions in the recipe I originally used for this puppy, encourages one to roll out this obviously square sheet of dough into a circle sheet of dough. I have no idea how one actually, physically, in real life, does that shit. It seems logically and physically impossible. And in the end, I think it is all about aesthetics, and I am just going to chew it all up and make it into doo doo anyway, so I have forgiven myself this little defect of character, insomuch as I can’t make a circle out of a square. I guess maybe the idea is to roll it out LARGER than 12x12, and the use some kind of form to cut a 12” circle out of your dough. Lols, as if. No way in hell I’m doing that.

Ironing my edible khakis.

5. Extra flour at the ready, use your rolling pin to gently begin the process of extending your square by about 3 or 4 inches each side. Stop occasionally to see if you can pick up your sheet of pastry, or as I mean to say, make sure that shit ain’t stuck to your cutting board or countertop. Because it is all butter, and it will. You have to kinda roll it out for 10 or 20 seconds, and then lift it up and re-flour under it and also your rolling pin, and sorta continue that process until you have a sheet about a foot square.

6. Apply your parchment paper to your pizza sheet. Make sure your edges are curled under tightly and will not spring out at the first sign of heat and then curl into the surface of your pastry, pissing you off, and causing you to cuss Martha in your own kitchen. She can hear that stuff, you know. She sees you when you’re sleeping. She knows when you’re awake.

The rolling pin transfer method also works with Herpes.

7. Using your very floured rolling pin, scoop up your rolled out pastry dough, and flop it onto your parchmented pizza sheet. Then, and this is the tricky part, find either a place in your fridge or (preferably) freezer. You have to re-solidify this giant sheet of butter that you have softened against its will. Place it in your freeze for 15 mins, or your fridge for 30 mins. I went into the garage and used my chest freezer for 15 and that was totally tubular.

8. While your dough is firming up, work on ya tomatoez. Using a serrated knife (like the bread knife that came in your knife set that you rarely use) slice your well-washed tomatoes as thin as you can. If ¼ inch thick is the thinnest you can do, well bully for you. If you can do a little skinnier, all the better.

Cutting this tomater like it was education funding.

9. If you are using cherry tomatoes as well (I got some wicked yellow pears and some super sweet reisentraubes) slice them into 4 long slices. The idea is to have all of your tomatoes sliced uniformly. Which, as we should all very well know by now, uniformly sliced shit tends to cook more uniformly.

This is my favorite picture.

10. Continue to slice through your amazing assortment of bad-ass tomatoes, and then lay them all down on a big ol’ palette of paper towels. You want those bitches as drained as you can get them. Try to remove the seeds, to the best of your ability. The wetness of your tomatoes along with their bitter-ass seeds, can make for a soggy galette, and that’s just ludacrisp. Nobody wants that, now do you. Do you. No, you don’t, just as I thought. Feel free to blot your tomato slices, and work your grubby fingers into their every crevasse, loosening their inhibitions and seeds until you can scarcely see traces of either. Flip them over a couple of times. Confuse them of their upright orientation. All of these will only work to your scheming benefit in the end.

11. If it’s been 15, remove your pastry + tray from the freeze, and go about your assemblage.

12. I put on my wizard robe and cast pesto unto this dinner. I have this pastry brush, which I use for everything, and in keeping with tradition and necessity, I continued to use it here. The best way for me to ensure an equal slathering and also soothe my vague shades of OCD is to paint the pesto on in stripes. Like Danielson, I paint the fence up and down in long strokes, and then side to side, leaving an approximate one inch border around the whole business.

I studied under Chef Bobby Fischer. (Asshole....)

13. Now it is time To Cheese. Line up your hunks of cheese on your pastry dough, leaving enough space (half inch or so) between them, so as they have Melting Room. Mine are like chess players, facing off for the duration. My goat cheese plops against his fresh mozz slices, using the divot in the crust lined up with a mark on the pan, clearly delineating the “halfway” point, so there is no chance that he might accidentally ingest my goat cheese soldiers.

Making it rain.

14. Players in their place, it is time to administer the fooking ROSEMARY TOUVELLE, y’all. I use a microplane and I dosed the hell out of this fake pizza. All up in every space not previously covered by a soldier, gets a healthy coat of touvelle. I coulda used twice as much as I did, but not everybody in my family likes to overdose the dairy, and I guess this isn’t a total food police state. I can allow a little wiggle room from those not as enlightened as I.

Tic-Tac-Tomato.

15. Now it is time to arrange your mostly not sopping wet tomato slices onto your chessboard. I like to add as much symmetry and whimsy of color as my current tools and brain power allow. Fortunately, in this case, my tools and brain power are simple and adequate, respectively. Or conversely. So grab up your de-seeded slices and lay them out on top of the pestoed part, so that the tomatoes are touching, but not so much overlapping. Again, the thing about uniform cooking because of uniform density. Start with your largest slices, and lay them out, and fill in the holes with the cherry tomatoes, should you have chosen to include them.

I think my Ouija Shallot is trying to tell me something.

16. Once you are satisfied with the saturation and beauty of your tomatoes, slice up very thinly a little shallot. I love a shallot. I didn’t start using them in my cooking (or to a more accurate point, I didn’t really start cooking, or at least didn’t start LIVING cooking,) until around the start of 2009. For a short expensive while, I replaced onion entirely with shallots in my cooking. I still don’t understand why those fuckers are so pricey. I also don’t know why I didn’t think to include freaking shallots in my garden plan this last summer. A mistake I do not intend to repeat. Anywhoo, slice up your shallot into slivers, as many as you can stand, but the thinner the better, and scatter them atop your tomatoes.

17. Now, the folding of the crust.

18. I have thought long and hard about how to describe with words, the physical process of bending and pressing the outside one inch border back onto both itself, and the face of the galette, without becoming so embroiled in what I find to be semi-technical jargon with accurate angles of incidence included, that I have been staring at this screen with my mouth agape for close to five minutes. It’s just not that worthy of confusion. You just start in at one spot and fold the dough over and down 45 degrees, to the best of your ability, repeating all the way around. I think the pictures say it best though, so let’s just enjoy their story.

Fortunately, my finger was not constructed by BP.

19. Now that your crust is formed, a sprinkling of salt and pepper is in order, a drizzle of olive oil over the whole shebang, and then a scoot on into the oven. I did 8 minutes in, flipped around 180 degrees in an attempt to cancel out the bizarre temperament of my oven, and then another 8 minutes. We like things, well, we like doughy things, a little undercooked in my house. Especially pizza crusts and the like, so whilst I find 8 minutes a hemisphere to be perfectly on the dot doneness, you might use this as an opportunity to discover your own likes and preferences. Go on, it’ll be fun.

20. When it is appropriate to you, remove your galette from the oven and allow it to cool for a couple of three minutes. You might notice at this time that maybe you were not as diligent in removing the moisture from your tomatoes, etc, as you originally thought, and you might find the occasional Juice Puddle pooling amidst your fruit. Simply take up the corner of a paper towel and gently blot up the errant wetness. Nobody has to know about this. We can keep it just between ourselves. You know, like that other thing. Shhhhhhhh.

I already served the 99%.

21. Now, friends, chop your fresh herbs and distribute them atop your galette with abandon (whether reckless or calculated abandon is a choice only you can make). Slice it up and serve it to your starving family who will take one look and say, “Oh. Pizza. Cool.” Serve it with a little mixed green salad and you have the world’s easiest dinner that takes almost 4 thousand words to describe. Yay!

Summer Berry Icebox Pie

I know it’s been awhile. I could spend a couple of inches talking about why I’ve been absent: because I’m feeling weird while trying to plan my wedding in the middle of my parents’ gnarly divorce, or because I got a very, very small taste of success with this blog and of course I had to immediately nip that in the bud, or because I’m sad because my whole family is in a fight right now, or because I started to care about this bloggo and felt like I didn’t want to do it at all if I couldn’t put the time needed into it for the above reasons, or I could just shut up about my endlessly gay life that is probably as endlessly gay as any of yours, I’m sure, and just shove some fucking content down your gullets. How ‘bout a little pie, everybody.

Separate, but equal.

It is kinda mean, actually, for me to even suggest this pie to anybody outside of the Columbia/Willamette River Valley area of Central/Northwest Oregon. This pie can be the very picture of Garbage In, Garbage Out. It is made almost entirely from 6 cups of fresh berries, and if you live in a place that has shit berries, well then guess what kind of pie you are gonna end up with. I have been spoiled rotten. There are a few farms around my house that produce berries that should not exist outside of magazine covers. They are just amazing. So, you could try to make this pie with your grocery store fruit from Chile and Argentina and maybe California too, and it is probably not going to make anybody throw up or turn your dinner table over in a fit of rage and disgust. However, if you happen to have access to a farmers' market or your own backyard, then by all means use your local fruits to make this pie. I have made it twice now – once with all local fruit, and once with local blackberries and store-bought strawberries and raspberries, and the difference was palatable, so to speak.

I also understand that I sound like every episode of "Portlandia." Here is the thing: When you are in Vegas, you play slots. When you are in Miami, you go to the beach. When you are anywhere even CLOSE to Portland, Oregon, you eat fresh, fabulous fucking food. It's just how things roll around here. The restaurants, the food carts, the wineries, the markets - everybody loves to eat clean and local foods. And I know it's cute to make fun of that and to PUT A BIRD ON IT AHHAHAHAHA RIGHT GUYS?!?!?! but I can't really apologize for being in this environment. Or I could, but then I have to think about how most of the world is starving right now and about a zillion babies are dying in Somalia every hour, and how it is an outrageous fluke of luck and cosmic chaos that I was born a privileged-ass white girl and have every opportunity in the world and yet somehow still manage to feel shitty about myself for a couple of hours everyday, and really man? I just wanna eat some fucking pie about it already.

I got this recipe from American Test Kitchen’s “Healthy Kitchen” Summer 2011 magazine, which of course I had to pick up while I was geeking in line at the grocery. I have been living under a rock and had no idea about this institution or its several magazines and public television show. I also had never heard of the White Stripes until like 2004. This is the way I do things – late and tinged with just enough self-awareness as to make me uncomfortable in most situations. Anyway, I found this magazine to be quite helpful and interesting, and this recipe for Summer Berry Icebox Pie is the bomb.com and you are a dummy if you don’t make it and eat it in your face right this very minute.

Shizz Besides the Basics:

More Crumbs than a Zwigoff film.

9 inches of unadulterated pie plate. However, I used a 10 or 11 inch IKEA pie plate like thing and it was awesome -- a little more like a tart than a pie, but just barely. In addition, you’ll need the use of a blender and access to a fine mesh strainer. Also, the recipe in the book says to use 8 whole graham crackers, broken into 1 inch pieces and then to pulse the crackers in a food processor until you get crumbs, and then pulse the sugar and butter into it. I don’t have a food processor, so I bought already made graham cracker crumbs. They sell them in a box in the baking aisle. Therefore, the recipe I will drop on you below will follow the already-made-graham-crumbs approach.

Ingredients:
Graham Cracker Crust:
1 and ¼ cup of boxed graham cracker crumbs

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

3 tablespoons natural cane sugar (ok, I’ma go off right here for just a tiny second. I recently decided to limit my intake of refined-ass processed white sugar. I got these cookbooks that are all about only natural and organic ingredients, and the one change that has made the most difference in the taste and quality of my foods, is swapping out gross sugar for rad sugar. You can find “sugar in the raw” looking sugar in the bulk section of your grocer. That’s what you want. Those bins are the shit. If you aren’t doing half of your grocery shopping in the bulk bins, then you are a dummy and you are paying too much for your dry foods. Anyway, stop using that shit sugar and use the natural cane sugar you can get in the bins for cheap, else try one of the Gucci natural sugars with a name. I have been all about the Demerara lately. It’s got these (and I totally know I am about to sound like a dick right here, but) subtle notes of vanilla and molasses and it’s just fucking amazing on and in everything. It makes the crust of this pie like a giant brown sugar cookie. Do it do it do it do it do it go get the fucking sugar already do it do it do it.)

Pie Filling:

All I can think of when I look at this picture is cat assholes.

2 cups raspberries (I swapped half my razzies for sliced strawberries and it was magical.)

2 cups blackberries

2 cups blueberries (Also, this recipe calls for FRESH berries only, frozen berries have no place here.)

½ cup natural cane sugar, like Demerara or Muscovado

3 tablespoons cornstarch (to be honest, I think they got it wrong here - or maybe there was enough structure already in the fruit puree - but it seemed like 3 TBSP of cornstarch made the puree a little stiff. I think I will try 2 and ½ tablespoons next time.

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

A pint of berries at their "Scared Straight" intervention.

2 tablespoons red currant or apple jelly (ok, here is a little room for creative interpretation. I have a jar of local blueberry-lavender jam that is, simply put, the bee's knees. The little tiny hint of lavender that infuses the berries is just a righteous thing, man. If you don’t like lavender, then don’t use my jam in your pie, dude. I think any jam could work here. Get freaky with it. Got a little pear & ginger jam? Outrageous. Go crazy. Maybe stay away from the jalapeno jams, or the super citrusy marmalades, but who knows. Maybe those things would be legendary and I just have myopic culinary vision. Do it up. Lemme know how it goes.



Order of Operations:
1. Put an oven rack in the middle position and turn it up to 325.

2. Measure out your (4 TBSP) of unsalted butter and pop it into a microwavable bowl and nuke it until thoroughly melted, approx. 45 seconds. Cool it off on the countertop or maybe in the fridge, if there is room for it to hang out and not get its escaping heat on your other perishables.

Another crumby day on Wall Street.

3. While your butter chills out, measure out your (1 and ¼ C.) graham crumbs like you would flour and dump them into your batter bowl. Follow suit with your (3 TBSP) sugar. Set that batter bowl aside and get to work on your fruit until your melted butter is no longer hot to the touch.

Every caption I can think of is racist.

4. According to America’s Test Kitchens the best way to clean fresh berries of their dirt and debris is to place them in a bowl of clean water and bob them up and down gently with your hands. They go on to say you should salad spin them with some paper towels. I don’t spin them. I probably could, but it seems like an extra step that makes me work harder, and I can’t really abide that. This gal that wrote these natural cookbooks says that she doesn’t do the bob-in-water trick – instead she wipes her berries with a wet cloth like you do with wild mushrooms. Okay, first of all, you are an outrageous bitch, lady. I got six fucking cups of berries over here. It would take all damn day to gently mop down each individual berry segment. You are a freakshow and just because you live in San Francisco and are a vegetarian doesn’t mean that you get to boss me around about my fruit. Plus, if you have ever done the dunking method of berry debris removal, you will recall how many gross-ass dead bugs are floating around in the water afterwards. Like 30 or 40 little weird aphid looking fruit flies all curled up and mortised in your water bowl. Does she just eat all those fucking bugs, man? Because seriously, just wiping a berry down doesn’t get all those prehistoric nightmares out of the crevasses. What a pretentious, bug-eatin’ bitch. Who is the hot vegetarian princess now, you awesome bitch-face dream boat? How dare you be gorgeous and write two really good cookbooks and change my approach to cooking entirely and then also look down your nose at my chosen method of berry washing. The fucking nerve of some people. Kiss me and then go to hell, Heidi Swanson.

5. Fill your water bowl with, well, water. I use the same big-ass bowl that I use for dough and potato peeling and all those other big and messy jobs.

I'm also badass at shadow puppets.

6. Measure out 2 cups of blueberries – be sure to pick thru them first. Take off any weird dead flower blooms and toss any blueberries that look like shriveled smurf testicles. Dump your pretty blueberries into your water (alternatively, if you have a colander that fits into your water bowl, place your berries directly into your colander. It just makes it easier to bob your berries).

7. Follow your blueberries with your (2 C.) blackberries, and your (2 C.) raspberries (or strawberries, sliced into 4 thin triangles, or any combination thereof that equals a total of 6 cups of berries), all of them carefully picked over.



8. When every berry is in the colander, start dunking your colander into your water bowl. Pump those puppies up and down a few times, letting the gravitational pull of this dumb earth we sit on tug the dead and gross bugs and dirtie out of your berries. Dump out your water bowl and refill with clean water. Dunk some more. Pull the berry colander out of the water bowl and examine your water. When it looks like the majority of the flotsam in there is made out of raspberry hairs and not dirt clumps and bugs, then you may stop your dunking. It is ok if some of your more delicate raspberries got a little smooshed or fell apart a little. It happens to everybody sometimes.

9. Having come to the conclusion that you are no longer afraid of eating berry bugs in your pie, transfer your berries from your colander onto some paper towels where they might dry off a bit.

10. Return to your melted butter. If it has cooled down enough, then go ahead and toss it into your batter bowl with the graham crumbs and sugar. Use a stirring device to stir your business until your ingredients become well-moistened and mixed. It should look like what you would think it would look like – damp but crumbly and like you want to eat it right now.

11. Slowly spoon out your crust mixture into your pie plate or dish. Do not do as I did and just dump it all into the middle. It is easier to form a crust if you kind of just sprinkle and scatter the mix gently around the whole plate.

Fake your own moon lading at home!

12. Next, we are going to flatten the crumb mix into a proper pie crust. Use the bottom of a glass measuring cup or a custard ramekin to press the crumbs into an even layer on the bottom and sides of the pie plate. Really get in there and try to make your crust fairly even all around. Even thickness of crust means a better chance for even baking. Pop that bitch into your oven and bake it until the crust is fragrant and beginning to brown – essentially, when you come back into the kitchen and you want to eat the countertops because everything smells like a sugar cookie treat then your crust is probably did and you should take it out. Anywhere from 11 to 16 minutes. Keep an eye on that shit.

13. Transfer the pie plate to a wire rack and let it cool completely, about 45 minutes.

Fruition!

14. So now, you have your berries chilling out and getting dried off on some paper towellage, and your crust is releasing its heat into the atmosphere for 45 freaking minutes. Now is about 20 minutes of time you have to go check the mail, clean that horrible cat box, go shit around on the internet and maybe, if the gods come down from on high and infuse you with a special will of steel, then maybe you could go move that fucking load of laundry. Go enjoy/rue your life for about 20 and then come on back to the kitch.

15. Alright, look down at your berries on the paper towel. Some of them are gonna be ugly. It is just the way of life. Go thru and pick out all the ugly ones. Maybe they are split down the middle, or there is a bruise on that strawberry slice, or that one blackberry has two segments that are so light as to almost be pink and they are situated like accusatory eyes just burning holes right through your soul, or you know whatever you’ve got. The aim here is to get a total of 2 and ½ cups worth of berries that you are going to puree and strain, in order to make a base for your pie. So, ugly berries are meant for this task. You won’t have the full 2 ½ cups. You probably won’t even have one full cup. Just get all the ugly ones out first and then try to leave the best looking berries on the paper towel. These are your show berries. These are your studs. These are the bitches that are going to make whomever you have been so very fucking generous as to share this pie with, stand up and say “Holy Shit” when they see it for the first time.

Blender's Game.

16. Take your (2 ½ C.) ugly berries and toss them in your blender or food processor if you got one. Buzz them shits up into a smoove liquid. You should blend away all of the flesh of the berries until only the seeds remain in your puree. Now comes the only kinda shit part of making this beast.




17. We need to separate all dem seeds until we have a totally smooth puree of berry guts that we can mix with a little cornstarch and use as our pie base. Locate your fine mesh strainer, a rubber or silicone spatula or equivalent, and your smallest saucepan. Pour about half of your berry puree into your mesh strainer over said saucepan.

You jelly?

 

18. Use your spatula to press on the solids to extract as much puree as possible. When it looks like there is nothing left but seeds in your strainer, gently turn your strainer over. “Holy crap there’s like a ton of sauce under here!!” – you, a noob to puree staining. Use the side of your spatula to squeegee the underside puree into the saucepan with the rest of his friends. Do one more press on the solids on the inside, and one more scraping on the bottom side. Rinse both your spatula and your strainer out in the sink, and repeat with the other half of the puree left in the blender. Don’t forget to scrape the underjuice. All told, you want approx. 1 ½ cups of puree, so it might behoove you to extract the puree into a measuring cup first and then transfer to your saucepan. It really just depends on how close you want to fly to the sun.

Warning! May cause you to shill for the Republicans (that's a Cosby Joke).

19. Once you have all of your seedless puree into your saucepan, set it to heat on about 4ish. Medium low. Get a little mixing bowl and into it whisk your (~3 TBSP) cornstarch, (1/2 C.) sugar and (1/8 TSPN) salt. Once mixed, whisk the dry ingredients into the warming puree, making sure that it is evenly mixed. Bring the puree to a boil over medium heat, whisking pretty much constantly. You want your puree mixture to be the consistency of pudding. The recipe says that should take about 7 minutes. Both times I have made this pie, it happened in about 3 or 4 mins. So, either too much cornstarch, or something about the particular molecular structure of the sugars in these fruits that I couldn’t possibly remember from that book I read a few days ago. Just stand there whisking it constantly while it pops out little air bubbles like molten lava, until it clumps in the wires of your whisk like a pudding would. Remove it from the heat and squeeze in the (1 TBSP) fresh lemon juice, stir it up and let it sit until just warm. Go smoke a cig if you still have that horrible habit (what are you, 17?) and when you come back, your puree should be just about right.

20. Find your little jar of whatever awesomepants jam you are going to use, and take 2 tablespoons out and into a little bowl. Microwave for about 30 or 45 seconds until it is warmed thru and loosened up a bit. You want it super spreadable.

Just like gay Christians, these fruits are in a jam!

21. Locate your remaining 3 ½ cups of show berries. Remove them from the paper towels if they are still there, and place them into a large mixing bowl (I use my water bowl). Pour the heated jam or jelly or whatever you might call it over your show berries and toss very, very gently to coat. Just get your spatula back out and do a deliberate and slow pass thru a couple of times. You’ll figure it out. Next,

Al Honey, I miss you!

22. Pour the warmish puree into the totally cooled pie crust. Spread it round nice and slow. Like however many dollars of puddn from that one skit show on MTV in the gross early 90s with not-gay-yet Ian Michael Showatter, remember guys? Heh, remember this pop culture reference from our high school days, guys? Slap me a high five!


23. Now spoon out your delish jam-coated berries directly onto your puree goo. Lightly press them into the pie. Then go thru and obsessively turn every berry so that it faces out and evenly space your red berries so that there is enough symmetry to the pie that I will feel a certain amount of smuggish self-satisfaction like I made a fucking good looking pie just now, y’all. Or you know, however one might feel, were they to clearly demonstrate their genetic and mental superiority by making this super awesome pie. Look at you, sitting over there right now, with no fucking pie. Who is winning right now. And shut up, not like Charlie Sheen Winning or internet fail/ winning, but like actually winning. Actually and physically crossing the finish line of Who Just Made a Magical Pie. It is me. I’m having pie. I am the pie winner. And now, so are you.

24. Oh wait, PSYCH just kidding. You have to put some cling wrap on that pie and chill it in the fridge for THREE FUCKING HOURS until it is all-the-way set. But in three hours my friend, then, THEN you will be the pie winner.