Cooking Laurie's Blackberry Pie

Laurie makes amazing pies, including this blackberry pie.

Crust
2 cups flour
2/3 cups of shortening (Laurie uses Crisco)
7 table spoons of cold water

Filling
4 cups of berries washed
3/4 - 1 cup of sugar, depending on sweetness of the berries
3 tablespoons of flour
couple of table spoons of lemon juice
butter

I am not a big fan of Crisco (or margarine). So while I follow Laurie's instructions for the filling faithfully, I improvise on the crust. It usually comes out fine (Nick being the judge), though it tastes very differently (understandably so) from Laurie's. Instead of Crisco, I use butter and substitute some vodka straight out of the freezer for some of the cold water. (The vodka idea came from this "foolproof" pie crust recipe from Cooks Illustrated.)

The butter is great for taste, and shortening is great for flakiness. To make up for the flakiness that my crust will lose due to my resistance to shortening, I try to leave the butter in relative large chunks while mixing the dough.

The alcohol from the vodka will evaporate during baking, and no aftertaste will remain. Yet using vodka gives me a slightly larger margin of error for adding too much liquid. (If you add too much water, the crust will be tough and soggy.)

1. Cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces and sprinkle them over the flour in a bowl. Work the butter into the flour until the butter pieces are about the size of beans. To accomplish this I use a pastry blender, but a fork and a knife will also work. You want to keep the butter as cold as possible. (Sometimes I even refrigerate the bowl before starting.) So resist the temptation to use your hands.
2. The amount of liquid for the recipe is approximate. Add one table spoon at a time, gently working it into the dough. Switch to vodka after about 4 spoons of water. Stop adding the liquid as soon as the dough starts coming together. (You will certainly need to use your hands for to do this.)
3. Form the dough into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate while you are making the filling.
4. In a bowl, gently toss berries with sugar (I have yet to add more than 3/4 cups), flour and lemon juice.
5. Grab your favorite pie plate--a 9 inch Pyrex one works great for me.
6. Remove one ball of dough from the refrigerator, and roll it out into a circle (12 inches in diameter according to most cook books) on a lightly floured surface. (Laurie uses a pastry cloth, while I roll it out directly on the kitchen counter.)
7. Place the dough into the pie plate. The dough edges should be hanging a bit over the plate. Refrigerate while you work on the second half of the dough.
8. Roll out the second ball of dough.
9. Remove pie plate with the bottom crust from the refrigerator and pile the berry mixture into it.
10. Dot a few pieces of butter here and there on top of the berry mixture. I generally use less than a table spoon total for this step. I do not know how much Laurie uses.
11. Place the remaining rolled out dough on top of the berries, and seal the edges. Cut slits into the top crust to allow steam to escape during baking.
12. Preheat the oven to 375F.
13. Edges of the pie need to be covered at first to prevent them from overcooking. I have tried doing this with strips of foil, and what a pain that was. Finally, I discovered a much easier way to do it in the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. The book suggests to "fold a 12-inch square of foil into quarters; cut a 7-inch hole out of the center; unfold and loosely mold the foil ring over the pie's edges." (You do not need to measure the foil--just approximate.)
14. If you pie is ready to go, but your oven is still heating up, put the pie into the refrigerator until the oven is ready.
15. Bake for about 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 20-30 minutes, until the top is golden and the filling is boiling. The times here are very approximate and really depend on the oven. The filling sometimes escapes from the pie and into the oven, so you may want to put the pie plate onto a small cookie sheet in the oven.

We love to eat it warm with vanilla ice cream.

Excellent information on making pie crust:

• Smitten Kitchen's Pie Crust 101
• Smitten Kitchen's Pie Crust 102
• Cooks Illustrated Foolproof Pie Dough

Gardening

Somehow this weekend turned out to be mainly about gardening. I do realize that it is August already. But you can think of it as a learning experience/testing the waters.

On Saturday I joined a few neighbors to plant some flowers in front of our building. We kept hoping that our landscaper would do it, but for various reasons that never happened. So we pitched in a few bucks, picked up some pretty flowers at Home Depot, and stuck them into dirt here and there.

Our building has a little courtyard in the back, with two areas of dirt (dirt mind you, not soil) where weeds and ivy have been growing wildly for as long as we have been living here.

Inspired by yesterday's gardening adventure, I cleared the ivy from about two square feet of dirty in the courtyard and planted a couple of herbs.

Honestly, I do not expect any harvest at this point. I mainly want to see if anything will grow at all. If it will, I just might try a real vegetable garden next spring.

Walla Walla Fields on a Greeting Card

5K on One of the Boston Harbor Islands

Last Thursday, Bess and I ran the Camp Harbor View's 2nd Annual Harborthon 5k. It took place on Long Island--not THE Long Island in New York, but one of Boston Harbor Islands. Nick came along too, but he did not run.

We all took a refreshing ferry ride to the island, from where we had a beautiful view of Boston. The scenic course with views of the Boston skyline was rather hilly, not something I had expected, but enjoyable nevertheless.

Afterwards, we ate dinner watching the sun disappear behind the city.

On the way back our ferry stopped at Quincy before dropping us off at the Long Wharf. We just enjoyed sailing around the Boston Harbor enjoying all the lights a little longer.