Saturday, August 23, 2008

Plays Nice With Others



It's Pisto Manchego Pie! Oh, ho, ho, I amuse myself sometimes. For example, here's what I did with this one, I combined the most unholy of combinations, a fancy NYT recipe aaaaand, crescent roll dough! Bwah-ha-ha-haaaaaa!

No really, you know, we had all this yellow squash that needed to be used up, and somewhere I had seen some kind of savory pie using these squash, but then I wasn't up to making the dough from scratch (read; ran out of time) and there was this crescent roll dough in the fridge, and well, you know what happened next. No, wait, you don't. Then I was surfing around and saw this Mark Bittman video about Tomato Jam and found the recipe for the Pisto Manchego, which looked suprisingly easy and fit the bill for something to use the yellow squash (and tomatoes, which we also had a lot of!) that I could make pie-like. Voila! Really, my intentions were good, I knew there was some non-sweet pie dough somewhere in my files, I really was going to get it and make it... yah, well, you know how it goes.

And while I was making this, I kept wanting to add !oregano! or !spices! and stuff, but I'm really glad I didn't. It was very good.

I also tried out this thing where you put your mesh strainer over a bowl and then slice open your tomatoes and shove out the seeds into the strainer and then when you've done that you mash the juice through the strainer and throw out the seeds. I felt so fancy. Then you use the juice in the recipe and you have no seeds. I guess this is nice, kinda makes the tomatoes work more saucy. The most best thing would be to blanch the tomatoes, peel them and then do this. But that seems super intensive.

Somehow, the squash and tomatoes sweetness and the rich crescent roll dough married perfectly. I'm serious.

Pisto Manchego Pie

1 T olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
6 yellow squash, sliced thin in the food processor
6 paste tomatoes, deseeded or 1 14 oz can diced tomatoes
1/4 t salt
pinch sugar
pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Saute onion and garlic in oil.
Stir in squash and 1/4 t salt and mix until well coated.
Cover and when squash has started to soften, add tomatoes and sugar and turn up heat.
Stir while simmering 5 - 10m until tomatoes are cooking down.
Add tomato juice and 2 T water and simmer uncovered 30 - 35m, mashing with a potato masher. When it begins to stick, it's done.
Meanwhile, in a small pie plate (I used a Baker's Square one, they are quite small), lay out your triangles of crescent roll dough, wide side out along the edge, overlapping slightly and pressing together seams with your fingertips.
Bake the crust 10m.
Remove crust from oven and fill with filling, sprinkle with pepper and bake 5m.
1/4th of the pie = 6 points

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