Or about 400 cranberries baked into a pie. OK, probably more like 100, whatever makes up a roughly 1-lb bag. Herein I record the dessert-making adventures of The Crafty Doctor and her comrade-in-arms, aka her sister's roommate. Last weekend, while the sister was away at voice lessons or classes or studying for the bar or whatever ridiculously difficult accomplishments said sister is in the habit of acquiring, her roommate and I decided it was our afternoon/evening to cook. Since sister dearest is allergic to practically everything that carries the name of fruit, we knew our options were limited. C---- has been threatening to make pie for ages but hadn't gotten himself psyched up enough to do it. I'd made pie from scratch once before (ever) and rather enjoyed it. Recipe? We don't need no stinkin' recipe.
The following is an exact recipe of what we made. Do not follow it to the letter unless you want your pie to be sour--SOUR, I tell you! In parentheses are changes I'm probably going to make to the recipe if I ever make it again. Assume American standard terminology.
Pie crust:
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour (generally I do 3, since the 3-2-1 rule's easier to remember)
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into approx 1cm slices
1 cup water
1/2 to 2 teaspoons sugar or salt to taste
Cranberry filling
approx 3 cups fresh cranberries
2/3 cup sugar (make that 3/4 cup in the revised version)
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon (please decrease/leave this out for your poor tongue's sake)
1 teaspoon ground ginger (alternatively, 1 tablespoon ginger simple syrup and decrease sugar back to 2/3 cup)
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 to 2 tablespoons corn starch for thickening
Combine flour, butter, and sugar/salt for pie crust in food processor and pulse until small balls form (I prefer to hand-mix my dough, which makes a tenderer, less flaky crust probably due to larger fat particles but can be a little harder to roll out later). Add water approximately 1 tablespoon at a time and mix until dough forms. Divide into 2 balls and refrigerate, approx 20 min to 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit. Y'all can calculate Centigrade by subtracting 32 and multiplying by 5/9 if you really want to). In a large mixing bowl, combine cranberries, lemon juice (if used), lemon zest, sugar, ginger, and cloves. Toss until cranberries are well-coated. Add corn starch and stir until mixture starts to thicken.
Roll out pie dough onto floured surface. Spread 1 round evenly onto bottom of pie plate. Pour in cranberry filling. Place second pastry round over the top, shape edges as desired, and trim off excess pastry. Pierce top of pastry with fork or knife. Try a decorative pattern, or a joke (pi!).
Bake in oven approximately 1 hour, checking periodically. If pastry browns too quickly around the edges, cover with aluminum foil.
Remove from oven. Serve warm or chilled. Consider adding a dollop of cream-like substance (ice or whipped). Enjoy. I dare you. Makes one 9-inch round pie.
There, I've done it. Bwa-ha-ha! Kitchen experiments FTW!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
more wedding plans and a letter
I went to my first wedding when I was, what, 7? 8? Some age where if you're not the flower girl or ringbearer or something importantly cute like that, you pretty much just stand around and try to avoid scoldings for looking too bored. Maybe that was a sign, because I went 20 full years with not a wedding to come by, only to culminate in...2 in the same summer? Friend of the bride in June, bridesmaid in August, and lots of fun presents to plot in the meantime.
Alas, I can't tell you what the presents are going to be. Spoiling surprises is not something I ever do...knowingly. All I'm gonna say is since they're my former med school classmates, there's gonna be too much science/fantasy nerd to be contained in words.
I can mention the dress I'm making for wedding number 2. Technically, I have a dress, or will have, since the bridesmaids are all getting custom-made saris. But C--- told us to bring reception dresses for when the saris fall off or get too restrictive, so again, mental catalog of my closet, shudder, to the fabric store. This time experimenting with a light satin with chiffon overlay. Oh, nothing floofy (blech!). I was thinking spaghetti strap and almost camisole-ish top. For reference, see Kiera Knightley's dark green evening dress in the movie "Atonement," but think shorter and swirlier on the bottom, maybe knee length. Also, considering what was going on in the joann.com fabric sales, think hot pink. Yeah, I'm a little apprehensive too. It might declare war with my hair, now that I think about it. Or it could be really pretty. I haven't drafted my own pattern from scratch since "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," so I'm actually kind of pumped.
I mentioned a letter. That...may be the product of a very long subway commute. See, my sister used to be a lawyer with an interest in copyright. She's also only slightly less of a die-hard "Doctor Who" fan than I am. We're both surly Americans who want to be able to stream our favorite shows from across the pond, thanks much. So here's what we came up with.
Dear BBC,
Had a really good idea to help with the budget issues. A number of us across the pond really love your shows (ahem, "Doctor Who") and really dislike having to wait to either stream/download episodes illegally or buy the adulterated BBC America versions when they come out on DVD. Unfortunately at the moment there does not seem to exist a mechanism to stream your shows legally from the internet. I have no objection to paying $1 per episode to watch legally the day after air time. I will probably still watch episodes repeatedly even if I have to pay. High quality a plus. Think of it as an economic investment. Please and thank you.
Yours, etc.
Alas, I can't tell you what the presents are going to be. Spoiling surprises is not something I ever do...knowingly. All I'm gonna say is since they're my former med school classmates, there's gonna be too much science/fantasy nerd to be contained in words.
I can mention the dress I'm making for wedding number 2. Technically, I have a dress, or will have, since the bridesmaids are all getting custom-made saris. But C--- told us to bring reception dresses for when the saris fall off or get too restrictive, so again, mental catalog of my closet, shudder, to the fabric store. This time experimenting with a light satin with chiffon overlay. Oh, nothing floofy (blech!). I was thinking spaghetti strap and almost camisole-ish top. For reference, see Kiera Knightley's dark green evening dress in the movie "Atonement," but think shorter and swirlier on the bottom, maybe knee length. Also, considering what was going on in the joann.com fabric sales, think hot pink. Yeah, I'm a little apprehensive too. It might declare war with my hair, now that I think about it. Or it could be really pretty. I haven't drafted my own pattern from scratch since "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," so I'm actually kind of pumped.
I mentioned a letter. That...may be the product of a very long subway commute. See, my sister used to be a lawyer with an interest in copyright. She's also only slightly less of a die-hard "Doctor Who" fan than I am. We're both surly Americans who want to be able to stream our favorite shows from across the pond, thanks much. So here's what we came up with.
Dear BBC,
Had a really good idea to help with the budget issues. A number of us across the pond really love your shows (ahem, "Doctor Who") and really dislike having to wait to either stream/download episodes illegally or buy the adulterated BBC America versions when they come out on DVD. Unfortunately at the moment there does not seem to exist a mechanism to stream your shows legally from the internet. I have no objection to paying $1 per episode to watch legally the day after air time. I will probably still watch episodes repeatedly even if I have to pay. High quality a plus. Think of it as an economic investment. Please and thank you.
Yours, etc.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Greetings from sunny New York!
Yeah, I said it. I'm writing this at a window in my sister's apartment, and it is in fact a sunny day in Brooklyn. In February. And 50-odd degrees outside. What is the world coming to?
The reason why I'm writing this at my sister's apartment window in Brooklyn is that I felt the intense desire to write something and really couldn't think of anything story-like or poetry-like to work on. So, blogs it is. I know you feel blessed and favored.
The fact is I've been feeling a lot of pressure to write since I got up here. Medical journalism may not be my cup of tea, precisely (Sanjay Gupta I ain't), but with all the slogging through scientific journals and figuring out how to make medicine accessible and even interesting to the lay public, I'm actually having to think about things like grammar and style and subject-verb agreement and all that English-teachery goodness I haven't touched since college. It's really rather refreshing. It also opens up the floodgates so that I keep wanting to write poetry on the subway. Wanting to, not being actually able to either mentally or, well, physically: this is the Q we're talking about here. Hypergraphics of the world unite and grab your pens/laptops and don't stop till you run out of words? Somehow that just doesn't have a nice ring to it.
Well, in any case, because you may not care but I believe in the sharing-is-scaring principle, things I've accomplished so far in the Big Apple:
1. Finished the TARDIS washcloth. Picture below:
2. Made my sister a Regency gown with sash. Only took me about a gazillion tries to get the top to actually fit. I don't remember the pattern giving me that kind of issues the first time around. What a difference a thicker/stiffer fabric makes?
3. Discovered I need gray embroidery thread for awesome wedding present.
4. Covered the Whitney Houston story for 2 hours on a Sunday and compiled expert quotes for a flu season update.
5. Sat on the set of ABC World News and watched the back of Diane Sawyer's head.
6. Wrote a poem. Yeah, and it doesn't totally suck. Few more weeks of this and I might actually get back to college level.
7. Started a Twitter account. To be more accurate, my boss made me start a Twitter account. When your boss is the chief medical correspondent at a major news station, you get your arse on a computer and start twittering. Tweeting? Whatever.
8. Made hot buttered rum without a recipe.
Actually, maybe I'm proudest of that last one. Think if the pediatrician thing doesn't pan out I might have a future as a bartender. No, I'm not serious, you can go back to the bars now.
The reason why I'm writing this at my sister's apartment window in Brooklyn is that I felt the intense desire to write something and really couldn't think of anything story-like or poetry-like to work on. So, blogs it is. I know you feel blessed and favored.
The fact is I've been feeling a lot of pressure to write since I got up here. Medical journalism may not be my cup of tea, precisely (Sanjay Gupta I ain't), but with all the slogging through scientific journals and figuring out how to make medicine accessible and even interesting to the lay public, I'm actually having to think about things like grammar and style and subject-verb agreement and all that English-teachery goodness I haven't touched since college. It's really rather refreshing. It also opens up the floodgates so that I keep wanting to write poetry on the subway. Wanting to, not being actually able to either mentally or, well, physically: this is the Q we're talking about here. Hypergraphics of the world unite and grab your pens/laptops and don't stop till you run out of words? Somehow that just doesn't have a nice ring to it.
Well, in any case, because you may not care but I believe in the sharing-is-scaring principle, things I've accomplished so far in the Big Apple:
1. Finished the TARDIS washcloth. Picture below:
2. Made my sister a Regency gown with sash. Only took me about a gazillion tries to get the top to actually fit. I don't remember the pattern giving me that kind of issues the first time around. What a difference a thicker/stiffer fabric makes?
3. Discovered I need gray embroidery thread for awesome wedding present.
4. Covered the Whitney Houston story for 2 hours on a Sunday and compiled expert quotes for a flu season update.
5. Sat on the set of ABC World News and watched the back of Diane Sawyer's head.
6. Wrote a poem. Yeah, and it doesn't totally suck. Few more weeks of this and I might actually get back to college level.
7. Started a Twitter account. To be more accurate, my boss made me start a Twitter account. When your boss is the chief medical correspondent at a major news station, you get your arse on a computer and start twittering. Tweeting? Whatever.
8. Made hot buttered rum without a recipe.
Actually, maybe I'm proudest of that last one. Think if the pediatrician thing doesn't pan out I might have a future as a bartender. No, I'm not serious, you can go back to the bars now.
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