Cake used to be my favorite dessert. But maybe the past five or so years, pie beats cake's fancy pants in my book. In my kitchen, too. Oh, I love to bake a cake, but I love to bake and eat a pie.
Normally I shy away from making a pie crust from scratch. I'm still working up to it. I use the pre-made Pillsbury pie crusts, but this time I tried the all-natural kind found at EarthFare. I forget which brand they sell. But, I didn't love them. Don't get me wrong. They were flavorful. But, they were wimpy. Didn't hold the pie's contents in as well as the artificially flavored/colored and preservative-packed Pillsbury brand that I'm accustomed to. Then again, this pie was ultrajuicy.
White peaches and blueberries I bought at our farmers market. Super yummy. Super sigh. My mother's pies were standard apple pie. Or possibly plain peach. She wasn't the mashup type when it came to melding the fruits and berries together.
My first job out after graduating from high school was as an historical interpreter at Rocky Mount (lookie, it's the eighteen year old me!). It's one of those pioneer log cabin places that demonstrate fireplace cooking. That's where I learned all my fireplace cooking skills, too. One of my co-workers there, Anna Jane, inculcated me into the ways and means of dutch oven cooking, as well as the sweet combination of peach and blueberry baked together in the juiciest of pie forms. I learned well at her elbow. When we run out of fossil fuels and revert back to campfire cooking, I won't be starting at square one.
I'm one of those cooks I read about last night. Creative Nonfiction has a food issue and one of the articles is an interview with Ruth Reichl wherein she talks about the difference between women cooks and men cooks. Men are about gadgets and measurements and finished products; women are about process. So rather after I threw my pie together and decided I'd blog about it I figured I should deconstruct my process in a receipt.
Peachberry Pie inspired by Anna Jane
Preheat your oven to 350-375 depending on how your oven heats (hot or cool).
You'll need two nine inch pie crusts.
Sprinkle a teaspoon of all purpose flour in the pie pan before lining your pie pan with one pie crust. This eases removal of your pie from the pie pan after it bakes and cools.
Rinse and pick through your blueberries and cast off any weepy ones or unripe ones or stems.
1 quart of blueberries less about 1 1/2 cups (sorry this is imprecise)
4 white peaches peeled, pitted, and sliced
2 T crystalized ginger (the secret ingredient I add to most every fruity pie I make)
4 T butter, sliced into small pieces
3 T all-purpose flour
1 C sugar (you could add more if you like a sweeter pie, I don't)
1/8 t salt
Combine fruits in a medium bowl. Add the flour, sugar, salt, butter, and ginger, and fold gently into the mixed fruit. Pour this into your pie crust. Place other pie crust on top of this and pinch together the two crusts. I don't have the best technique, so I can't give you any pointers here. Pop into your oven and bake approximately 45-55 minutes.
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