Pastry

 PASTRY

This is an unusual pastry recipe. I have never talked with anyone who uses a
recipe like this one. It is an "easy, no-fail" pastry recipe. It makes 5-6 single pastries, so we freeze some in single pastry balls.

If you heat one of these frozen balls in the microwave on high, forgetting to put it on a lower level to thaw, it will melt into a liquid. If you then put it back into the fridge until it is firm and roll it out to use as regular pastry, it will have "failed" and will be tough and unusable. ("How do I know this?" you ask. Well, uh, hmmmm. I just do and that's all I'm saying!)

Pastry Recipe:

5 cups flour
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 lb lard or shortening
1 egg
1 tablespoon vinegar
3/4 cup milk, approximately

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients together until well blended. Cut in fat with pastry blender, leaving it fairly rough and not totally mixed, sort of like baby peas in flour.

In a measuring cup mix together vinegar, egg and add enough milk to make 1 cup of liquid. Add wet ingredients slowly to dry ones, stirring as gently and as little as possible. It is these tiny, unmixed pieces of fat that make the flakes in the baked pastry, so you want to keep them intact and not make it any smoother than you have to while working it and rolling it out. It will take a bit of work with floured hands to get it into a cohesive dough that can be rolled. Do not add more liquid, just take the time to gently knead it with your hands until it is blended enough. It will form a good dough when mixed enough. Do not use a food processor for this or you will end up with hard bread, not pastry.

Divide this dough into five equal balls. Use one ball for one pastry. If making a pie with a pastry top, use another pastry ball for the top. Keep the trimmings, as the trimmings from all five balls should make a good sixth pastry, if gently handled. If you want to do this, don't use the left over pastry for little turnovers filled with jam. Put each ball into a small freezer bag and freeze until needed. Take out the day before to thaw. Keep refrigerated until needed. (Microwave thawing is not recommended as it is too uneven.)

Heavily flour a flat surface for rolling. This is not a cake. You can mix as much flour into it as you need to and it won't affect the outcome. Pastry is meant to be dry. So use a lot of flour and it won't stick to the rolling surface. Another trick to keep it from sticking while you roll it is to keep it moving. Turn the circle continuously while also adding more flour underneath as needed. If you are rolling and it feels like it might be starting to stick in one area, gently lift that corner, add more flour and turn the dough to spread out the flour under it.

If the dough starts to crack while rolling it, roll it in the other direction, leaving that crack on the outside edge. Watch the dough carefully while rolling to prevent large uneven cracks and keep it turning. When you have a ball rolled out that is the right size for your pie tin, roll it up onto the rolling pin. Lift pin and dough onto the pie tin and unroll in place. Trim edges around outside of pie tin, with about 1/2" left over outside edge. When the top pastry is added, fold this extra edge over the top and seal with water and a fork.

This pastry can also be used for turnovers, apple dumplings, etc. etc. It's just very good pastry.

Fruit And Berry Pie Filling:

Measure how much your pie tin will hold by filling it with water and pouring that water into a easuring cup. Most 9" pie plates will hold about 4 cups of filling.

Wash, peel, core, pit, seed, chop and generally prepare fruit and berries as you would for pie. Make enough berries to fill your pie tin, measured as above. Add from 4-8 tablespoons of flour depending on how watery this particular cooked fruit/berry usually is. Add 1-2 cups of sugar depending on the tartness of this fruit/berry and how tart you like your pies. (Any type of berry will usually need the full 2 cups.) Stir together in pot on stove and bring to a boil before adding to
pastry. Do you often find that you have to overcook the pastry to get the filling completely done? This step will avoid that. You can even cook it halfway before putting it in the pastry. Don't add cold filling to a pastry shell and expect it to cook before the pastry burns.

If you are pre-baking the pastry shell for a custard type filling, bake it full of dried peas to keep it from losing shape in the oven.

Optional ingredients:

- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon - always add this to apple pies.
- REAL butter in small bits under top pastry (Please people, use real butter here. It's PIE, after all. What's a few more calories...)
- Small amount of sweetened, condensed milk for creaminess or REAL cream (see "butter" above.)
- Nuts or shelled sunflower seeds
- Raisins - good with apples and nuts
- Pineapple (What goes well with Pineapple?)

I think a pie made with a mix of cherries and blueberries, with chopped walnuts would be Heavenly! Why don't people put nuts in pies? Or chocolate chips. What's wrong with chocolate chips in a fruit pie? You can just add them on top under the crust, after you put in the hot filling. They would certainly go well baked with bananas. Has anyone ever made a hot banana pie - probably not. Hot fudge pie is certainly delicious, as is butterscotch pie!

 

Making Tallow

 

I use tallow to make soap, as well s for cooking. Beef fat is called tallow, pork fat is called lard - prepared in exactly the same way. Tallow is harder than any other common fat and will make a harder soap. Shortening can be used to make vegan soap but the soap won't be as hard as that made with beef fat.

I picked up some beef fat scraps from a butcher nearby and have put them into a pot to render. Rendering is cooking the fat scraps until all the fat has been liquefied, straining it and letting it cool and harden. This separates the fat from other impurities. The fat rises to the top and can be taken off in one hard chunk after it cools. The fat will simmer slowly in this pot for awhile, until I am satisfied that it has cooked long enough.

When it is finished I will strain it through a colander, then through a fine strainer before letting it cool outside on the front porch. If you are cooling it outside, a lid is important. Otherwise you might find little racoon prints in it or you might even find it completely gone! The smell will draw the surrounding animals. I will leave it there throughout the day and bring it in at night. The next morning it will look like this in the pot.


Now that it has cooled I can separate the fat and give the rest to the chickens. They will love it! This is the bottom layer under the pure fat. You will need to make sure none of these impurities get into the tallow.

While the fat simmers, I will go through the rest of my things and make sure I have everything I need to make soap. Tomorrow is a holiday, after all, and there will be nowhere open to buy ingredients.

This is the pure tallow. Isn't it beautiful! It looks just like lard or shortening from the store!

If you have especially smelly fat to render, the addition of a potato to the simmering pot will help to remove odors. A few teaspoons of white vinegar will also help remove odors from the fat.

It can be boiled twice if it is not clean and pure enough the first time. A tablespoon of salt added to the boil will help make it cleaner.

Too Many Sweet Bell Peppers

 

I got these peppers at the grocery store, all in one large bag marked down. They do this sometimes when they have produce that's not selling. It's usually bananas, but yesterday it was bell peppers. I grabbed two bags and was lucky to get thoese. Other women were grabbing at the basket too. 

I wanted these for drying. It's an experiement I have wanted to do for along time so, since I got these cheap, I tried it today. I have seen photos of apple rings drying on a stick or a string across a window and have often though, "I wonder if that would work for peppers...hmmmmmm...". I'm trying it in my window, as well as in the oven. 

I sliced them all into thin rings, trying to keep them similar thicknesses. I hung most of the rings on the wooden chopsticks and put them in the oven on "Keep Warm". I think it may be too hot, sitting at 170f. Drying temperature is quite a bit cooler but it's all I have, so I used it. 

I put the rest of the rings in the window on a small wooden piece of dowel I had hanging around. I washed it first, of ocurse. I used a Farmer's Market display thing to hold it. (I have a LOT of Farmer's Market displays I have made in the past few years, just hanging around in the garage.)

The little pieces got chopped up and spread out of paper towels to dry. I have dried a lot of seeds and herbs this way in the past years, so I'm trying it with peppers. 

I kept the peppers in the oven for hours. I turned it off from time to time and just left them in there to dry. It works for meringue kisses...

When I took them out to roast a chicken in the oven, they were still not quite crispy dry, so I just put them on my resin counter top to finish drying. They look kind of shriveled and dark. I think they look okay and they have gotten dryer and crispier over the evening. I may still leave them out until morning, just to make sure they are dry enough. Then crush them into a glass jar. Do they look okay? Too dark? What do you think? They look kind of overcooked to me, maybe "roasted"?

They don't look very appetizing, but then something dried never does. They sure do smell good! Very much like green bell peppers. Well, I don't think I'll do the oven thing again. I may stick with drying rings on a stick or a string in a sunny window.

Drying things in a vehicle on a sunny day works well too. I've done herbs like that. The truck smells wonderful on those days! ("Stinky!" is what hubby calls it...)

I'll post again with the results of the pepper rings on the stick in the sunny window, when they are ready.

We get our motorhome back from the garage on Saturday. I'll have to find a spot for drying things in there when we hit the road.