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

Summer Fun!

Whee! We have some friends in from out of town and we've been having fun!! These kinds of things are what really make summer great!

We went strawberry picking and last night we had Strawberry Rhubarb Pie and we used this recipe, substituting 1 C sugar for 1 C honey. We also skipped the arrowroot and just used 1/4 C flour and 1 T cornstarch. And we used this recipe for the crust! Thanks Kittee! It turned out soooo super nice, although we used regular wheat flour instead of pastry so it was hard to handle without cracking... BUT it did not get soggy (even when we forgot to prebake it) and it was so tasty and good! Oh, and we doubled it to make a lattice top- so pretty! My friend did such a great job with it, I'm afraid she got stuck with the tricky dough while I made Tofu Paprikash. She also whipped up a great warm vinagrette type dressing with some spring onions from her garden for the spinach and it was so yummy! Did I luck out or what?

Pie crust;
1 C flour
1 C ww pastry flour
2/3 C vegetable shortening
1 t salt
up to 1/2 C water

Filling;
4 C rhubarb cut into 3/4" pieces
1 C sugar
2 C strawberries
1/4 C flour
1 T cornstarch
1/2 t cinnamon

Make dough, cutting shortening into flour, then adding water SLOWLY until dough sticks together and handles well. Roll out half of the dough and fit into pie dish. Cut 2nd half into strips.
Meanwhile, mix all filling ingredients together.
Pour into pie crust, cover with lattice, weaving strips over and under each other and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.
Mmmm.





























My friend also brought some hummus she'd made from some garbanzo beans she ordered- she had had them at an Indian restaurant when they lived in Japan and the translation from Japanese is 'black garbanzo'. It makes a really good hummus! You can see the color is kind of caramel-y and the texture is more texture-y.

Hope you're enjoying the summer too! It's finally here!