Culinary delights

Lots of knitting to show you guys this week -- check back often!

But first, a little something for the taste buds.

I had this dish over at Jenny's house, and it was so amazing that I had to try to recreate it at home:



Whole-wheat pasta with olive oil, chopped garlic (lots of it! I heated the olive oil with the garlic in it to bring out the flavor, but didn't roast the garlic), halved cherry tomatoes, and feta. So good, and so, so easy to make. I forgot the basil, but it was still delicious.

Fresh steamed asparagus on the side.

Then I decided I had to learn how to make apple pie. Something about the weather getting colder and gloomier just drives me to bake. And what better to bake in October than apple pie from scratch?

The fact that I've never made apple pie, and have never made pie crust from scratch didn't stop me.

I was also undaunted that I had two hours to make this thing, between church and going to babysit. During those two hours, I also had to get butter and eggs and make lunch. I left to go babysit with the pie in the oven, trusting the husband to turn it off. He bakes alot, too, and probably better than I do, so he did a good job :)

I found a crust recipe. It WAS easy, and came out great! I cut the recipe in half and threw the flour and butter in the food processor. That gave a pretty workable dough, so by the time I added the water and egg it was nice and pliable. I rolled it out between two sheets of wax paper and flipped the
bottom crust out into my Pyrex pie plate:



The apple filling was very easy! Five Gala apples (a representative sample shown below):




(Like lambs to the slaughter, aren't they.)

The apples were peeled and cored and chopped to half-inch cubes, which took no time thanks to a peeler and an apple corer. That was the hard part, too, because adding the sugars and spices and stuff was a breeze.

And it baked up delicious! I was told that this recipe has too much sugar, but I liked it. So did my Husband. It was certainly sweet, but not annoyingly so. It was, however, quite rich.



For the record, the crust is great. Very buttery and flaky, almost like shortbread, but without the sugar. It set off the sweetness of the pie well, but the crust would also do well in savory pies, I think.