LJ's Half and Half pie.

[gurdymonkey]

I like pie. I would like pie MORE if it didn't usually involve cloyingly gooey fillings that don't let the fruit speak. The following is adapted from an old apple pie recipe in a Pillsbury cookbook. I have tweaked and removed ingredients to suit my evil purposes. The original had apples only, no currants, an additional 1/4 cup of sugar, plus flour. The flour is the component that makes pie goo, so I don't use it.

2 pippin apples
2 pears (Total peeled, sliced fruit should come out to about 6 cups)
A generous handful of either currants or raisins (if you don't like either, leave them out and add 1/4 cup sugar)
1/2 cup brown sugar (you can substitute white cane sugar or honey as well)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
A good squirt of lemon juice (1 tablespoon if you need to measure)

Preheat oven to 425.
Measure out the sugar into your measuring cup, spoon in cinnamon, salt and nutmeg and mix it in the measuring cup.
Put peeled, sliced apples/pears and currants into a large bowl.
Pour dry ingredients in.
Deploy lemon juice.
Cover bowl with plate big enough to use as a lid and shake well - I know, Grandma would be appalled, but this works beautifully.

Take premade store-bought pie crust out of refrigerator. Cursing is optional when you realize you should've let it come to room temperature first.
Follow instructions for microwave thaw of 20 seconds. Cursing is optional when you realize one of the crusts will not unroll properly because it is now too warm.
Unroll the Good Crust and lay it in the bottom of your pie plate. Pour fruit filling into plate and spread it around so it's relatively flat.
Put cutting board in sink. Wad the Bad Crust a ball. Take an old, unlabeled sake bottle you have on the windowsill just for such emergencies and use as rolling pin to re-flatten Bad Crust and make it see the error of its ways. (If I had proper counter space, I'd be making my own damn crust in the first place....)

Place flattened crust on top of filling and pinch top and bottom crust edges together all the way around.
Pierce top crust with fork or knife so you don't have a pie bomb. (Which is not the same as a pipe bomb.)
Set timer for 30 minutes.
Be driven mad by the smell of pie. (Mad, I tell you!)
Check pie at 30 minute mark. I just did. Top crust is starting to go pale gold, but isn't quite done.

What happens next depends entirely on the calibration of your oven. I just turned the gas down to 350 and will check progress again every five minutes, because even though the cookbook recipe I adapted this from says 40 minutes at 425,  my 1940's vintage Wedgewood range is a model of thermodynamic efficiency. I always time well under recommended cooking time and check back from there.

Mmmmmmm, pie. Came out of the oven at the 40 minute mark.




 

Comments

[takadai-no-tora.livejournal.com]

Your recipe sounds good; I just discovered apple-pear combinations last fall and they're great.
I'd probably add a little bit of tapioca flour, like maybe a teaspoonful so the apple and pear juice wouldn't make the bottom crust soggy, but my pie wouldn't be full of goo either. Oh yeah and if people are going to substitute white sugar for the brown (that's a nice idea, BTW,) they should cut the amount to 6 tablespoons to keep the sweetness the same.

[laurensa.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, that sounds delish.

This is the year in which I shall make strawberry-rhubarb pie, I think.

And I am going to have to try your recipe, cause pears make me happy.

[purplepenguin.livejournal.com]

You are evil. Now I want pie.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Not evil enough to snag a piece for myself other than a couple of random slices of cooked apple off the pie plate. (It turned out perfectly, as far as I could tell.)