“Peach Hand Pie” sound like the punchline to a dirty food pun. Probably is. But it’s also the best thing we’ve eaten this summer.
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Chicken Pot Pie
This lousy Smarch weather has got us down. Despite being basically April, there’s like 8 inches of fresh fucking powder on the ground in Chicago. We’re cold, we’re over it, and we need to snuggle up to something hearty.
Chicken Pot Pie is the coziest of all foods. Somewhere between pastry and stew, it’s the culinary equivalent of napping in a sunbeam. Except it’s, like, a sunbeam made by a chorus of heavenly grandmothers. And it’s easier than it sounds. A little poached chicken here, a pie crust there, and you’re out of the kitchen with less than 30 minutes of hands-on time.
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Caramel Apple Skillet Pie
Yesterday was election day here in the States, and it was pretty fucking cool. Beyond the tremendous victory for our President: we have elected our first openly homosexual member of senate, our first Asian woman in the senate, and Elizabeth Warren (who we’re calling now for 2016). Two states legalized pot, four states recognized the right for love to be protected (no matter what you’ve got happening in your pants), and all of those rape-apologist douche bags beefed it really hard.
We’re proud of our country today, and that pride can only be expressed through one medium: Apple fucking Pie.
Nothing says “Yes We Can” quite like the sweet, spiced, fork-tender fruit, dotted with butter and sticky with syrup, wrapped in a flaky, tender crust. From its sordid English immigrant roots to the African and Latin American spices that turned the dish into the country’s favorite dessert; Apple Pie is the best things about America to its core.
Other than liberal use of spices, the key to a good Apple Pie is the apples. Some of the fruits have a harder texture that stands up to long baking times, but tend to fall a little flat in the flavor department. Conversely, the fruits that taste the appley-est tend to turn into mushed when you cook them long enough to brown the crust. To help combat these cruel laws of nature, we like to use a blend of the more intensely apple flavored fruits (like Pink Ladies and Honey Crisps) and hardy fruits that can stand up to a long cook time (like Granny Smiths)– and we always pick hard, slightly tart, blemish-free fruits.
Crust
This recipe is the result of learning good shit from many different places, most notably Rachel’s Gramma Shaw and America’s Test Kitchen
Ingredients
- 1½ cups All-Purpose Flour
- ½ tsp Salt
- 1 tbsp Sugar
- ¾ cup (1¼ sticks) Unsalted Butter, chilled and cut into several pieces
- 2 tbsp Irish Whiskey
- 2 tbsp Cold Water
Instructions
- In your food processor or a large bowl, combine Flour, Salt, and Sugar. We’ll talk about this more another time, but the goal with pie crust is to cover each grain of flour in a protective sheath of butter WITHOUT melting butter.
- Quickly work in the Butter, either in short pulses in your food processor, with your finger tips, or a pastry cutter. You’ll know when you’re done when the mixture looks like coarse sand and kind of stays together, like a shitty snowball, when you squeeze it into a lump.
- Pour the Irish Whiskey and Water into the flour mixture and combine by hand. If you used a food processor so far, you’ll need to do this step outside of the machine, in regular mixing bowl.
- Shape this mixture into a loose disc, wrap it in plastic, and put it in the fridge for at least 2 hours. It’s totally OK if the disk you put into the fridge looks like shit. We promise, if you use the proportions we suggested, no matter how messy and terrible your crust looks going into the fridge, it will come out of the fridge looking perfect.
Filling
Ingredients
- 6 Pink Lady Apples
- 2 Granny Smith Apples
- 4 tbsp Butter
- ¾ cup Dark Brown Sugar
- ½ tsp Cinnamon
- ¼ tsp freshly ground Nutmeg
- 1 Vanilla Bean or a splash of Vanilla Extract
- Pinch of Salt
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400°. Peel, core, and chop the Apples. We like to use a melon baller to do our coring for us.
- In thoroughly cleaned, well seasoned cast iron skillet, melt the Butter and sauté the Apples until they’ve shrunk down by about half and have released most of their juices— about 10 minutes. Remove the Apples from the pan, leaving behind a giant pool of buttery apple juice, and set them aside. Add Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Vanilla, and Salt to the pan of juice. Continue to cook until the mixture turns bubbly, sticky, and reduces by at least half.
- Add the Apples back to the pan and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Apples should be soft but intact, you don’t want your apples to be mushy.
- Roll out the dough for the Crust, and cut a few holes in the center for the steam to escape. Carefully lay the dough on top of the filling in the skillet. Use the back of a knife to cut off any excess dough.
- Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.
- Resist the temptation to dig in immediately. The wonder of this dish comes from the sticky, gooey sauce that forms when the filling cools. Control yourself for at least a half an hour, and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.