Just a Touch of Vodka

For years I have been reading that one should add a bit of vodka along with the water to make pie crust.  Supposedly the vodka evaporates and leaves a much more flaky crust.

Now, I am all about the flaky crust.  The most flaky crust I remember having was at the home of a friend of Walt's mother, so flaky I tried to get her secret out of her...and she didn't have one.  Her crust just turned out flaky.

I have made flaky crust most of my life, except that I started having pie crust problems a few years back.  I can't get it to roll out properly and it's never as flaky as I think it should be.

The main problem is the rolling out.  I stopped trying to roll it on a floured wooden bread board and went to rolling it on a no-fail plastic mat, measured for how wide I want it.  I can still never get it to roll out big enough.

My friend Mary told me she always uses a pie bag where you put the dough in and roll it inside the bag.  That worked better than anything else, but I still was not happy with my crust.

It's not the recipe.  It's by Julia Child -- and would Julia steer you wrong?  Jeri asked for the recipe (I think the only recipe of mine that one of my children has ever asked for) and she makes wonderful pies.  So the problem is me, not the recipe.

Yesterday I decided to make a quiche for dinner and made my usual pie crust only decided -- what the heck -- and I mixed vodka with the water I was adding to the dry ingredients.

With my approaching dementia, I actually forgot that I don't use a bread board any more, and floured the board the way I used to.  To my amazement, the dough rolled out well.  Not perfectly but better than usual.

When the quiche came out of the oven, a small piece of the crust broke off and I tasted it.  Perfect.  In fact, perhaps the most flaky crust I had ever made.

Never again will I attempt to make pie dough without vodka.  Assuming I remember.  And that we have a bottle of vodka around (given that neither one of us drinks vodka and that we only bought it for my mother, who won't be coming over here any more, when I run out of that bottle, I will actually have to buy another bottle)

So if you are searching for the most flaky pie crust, take my word for it--add vodka!

Best of all, we have half the quiche left over for dinner tonight.

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Sunday has become a special night for me.  It's the night when the new Outlander episode comes out.  This was episode 3 of Season 4 and it was a great episode, not depressing because of Claire's disapproval of slaves at Jamie's aunt's plantation last week.

This is just Claire and Jamie traveling to find a place to make their new home, having survived a pirate attack and nearly provoking a riot for medically treating a slave others wanted to hang, things are trying to return to more normal. 

Add a scary storm and a ghost Indian who was probably also a time traveler, like Claire, and you have a good story, which ends up with Jamie falling in love with the land with a great view...and strawberries growing.  I assume they will be building their house next week.

The episode also contains a good bit about their daughter Brianna, back in the 20th century, and her boyfriend Roger.  I found those parts distracting and frustrating the first time I read the book, but enjoyed them the second time I read it and enjoyed that side story last night.

As usual, there were the expected plethora of negative comments on Facebook this morning, people who nit pick every. little. thing. (like how can Brianna have brown eyes when Jamie and Claire both have blue eyes?), but there were more positive comments than for the last episode, which is nice.  There is so much more interesting stuff to come.....

Happy Pi Day

Happy pi day.  Well, technically it was yesterday, 3/14.  I decided to celebrate as many do on pi day...I baked a pie.

It was a chicken pot pie and it was delicious.  But once again it was a crust fail.

I just don't know what's the matter with me.  This is a recipe I have been using for about 40 years, it originated with Julia Child and I have made countless pies over the years using this recipe, but in the last several years--too many for my tastes--I just can't get the crust right.

I've tried everything.  I've tried barely handling the dough at all, so that it retains all of the flakiness.  I've tried working it into a smooth ball.  I've tried refrigerating it and not refrigerating it.  I've rolled it ut on a floured bread board or between two pieces of waxed paper, or in one of those special bags where you put your dough, zip it up and then roll it out, or on a special Wilton's pie crust pad, with the right sized circle marked for you.

It used to be that I made this dough, rolled it out thinly, put it in a pie pan effortlessly, and even had leftovers to make little sugar pies.

Now it seems that no matter what I do, I can't get it big enough, can't get it to roll into a circle without breaking into a zillion pieces.

Tonight I thought I'd mixed it perfectly, and put it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes, but when it came to roll it out, the bottom crust was too thick and not large enough.  I put it in the pie pan and it barely covered the sides.

I put the chicken pot pie filling in it and then rolled out the top crust, this time using waxed paper.  It rolled out better, but stuck to the paper (yes, I had floured it!) and broke into pieces when I tried to put it on the pie.

Expletives were uttered.

I finally did the best I could and then cooked it and, truth to tell, it looked like crap, but was one of the flakiest crusts I've made.  Good thing it was just for the two of us so I didn't have to have guests see my crust failure, yet again.

Jeri asked me some years ago for my pie recipe and I gave her this recipe and she has been making it unerringly ever since.  

I just don't know how I lost the pie crust gene.  But nevertheless I persist and when we next need a pie I will give it one more try.

Caroline arrives tomorrow night and we might be ready for her.  Not as ready as I thought we would be six months ago.  With our usual efficiency, we have saved all the work for the last two days.  In the process, I uncovered some lenses I have purchased for my old iPhone. Not very useful, but I did like this fisheye lens.

Totally impractical, but kind of fun to try.  The other lens was a close-up so close up that you have to almost be ON the item you want to photograph.  

I did get most of the stuff that has been piled where the kitchen table usually goes all emptied and stuff either tossed out or, believe it or not, finding a home in my office  The furniture is still there.  We haven't figure out where to PUT it, exactly, so we still have no kitchen table, but I have hope that when we finish the chicken pot pie tomorrow night, we can both sit at the kitchen table.  We may have to move the furniture out to the back yard.  Now that rain seems to be over, it should be OK.

Walt has washed all the bedding in the guest room so that's taken care of.  He also removed the 30 or so empty Blue Apron boxes that have adorned the stairs for months  He says he moved them to the garage.

Walt picked up the bike we are borrowing for her visit and I tried to contact our friend with the horse ranch, which Caroline would like to visit if there is time.  She also wants to visit Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum, which should be interesting.  I have lived here 43 years and have never been in it!  And I've arranged for tickets for her to the two shows I will be reviewing while she is here.

I sent a note of bon voyage to Caroline tonight and told her that she should have no trouble spotting our car at the airport, "It is a silver-ish Honda Accord...like about 85% of all the cars on the freeway today!"