I have long been inordinately proud of my pies. And yes, I know it goeth before a fall. But I learned from the master, Maureen Kavanagh McCann... my mother. We even had a friendly rivalry concerning pie crust!
When it's just the two of us for dinner, a whole pie is a bit much. But Fairway had a HUGE sale on blueberries, sooooooo...
I looked around the kitchen and found two ramekins that were deeper and a bit wider than my regular ramekins. They had actually been a gift of sorts... (The actual gift was a Lobster Gram from the world's greatest friend, screenwriter Deb Stenard. The package also included some "chowda" in said ramekins! www.lobstergram.com), so I determined that I would make two individual blueberry pies.
Now, never having made individual pies like this before... you can see I overfilled. But hey, blueberry syrup running down the sides makes it look "rustic," right?
My dough couldn't be simpler: 2C AP flour, a pinch of salt, 2/3 C lard (yes, you heard me), 2T unsalted butter, and 4T ice water. It's the basic recipe from The Joy of Cooking that I've used forever.
And the filling was 1 pint blueberries, 1/3 C sugar, a dash of cinnamon, 2t tapioca, and a pinch of salt.
I fitted the dough in the ramekins, divided the filling, topped each pie with dabs of butter, put on the top crusts, sprinkled the tops with sugar... baked them on a cookie sheet at 450° for 10 minutes... and then 350° for about 35 minutes...
OMG I've missed my pies!!!
Since there was going to be an actual dessert at the conclusion of tonight's meal, the meal itself had to be fairly light. I had some of the black bean-quinoa burger mix from a few days ago, so I made us each three small "sliders" and a salad of greens from the garden dressed with pumpkinseed oil, smoked salt, and sherry vinegar. A little smoked paprika-sriracha mayo for the sliders and dinner was served!
