At last!
Today I made my first Tomato Pie of 2009. After the chaos of the past, oh, four months, this feels a little like a symbolic and edible sigh of relief.
We’ve invited some new friends to dinner. They, as far as I know, are completely unawares. They are TPVs (tomato pie virgins).
I snapped a quick shot of the cast and crew, some heirlooms that came in this week’s CSA box:
They are gorgeous, aren’t they? And they made a tasty pie — although I regret to say that it wasn’t as good as last year’s, the tomatoes just don’t have the flavor punch held by the famous sun golds. While I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the unusually mild weather in central Indiana, it’s apparently been a little too mild for the tomatoes, and everyone says it’s not a good year for them.
But the sun has nothing to do with good gruyere, and that’s the second important ingredient in TP. Today, I trimmed a lot of excess gruyere-infused pie dough before crimping the edges, so I made pie puffs (my nomenclature), a savory take on pie cookies. My mother-in-law taught me how to make pie cookies with leftover scraps of dough: for a dessert pie crust, you brush the scraps with melted butter, add a little cinnamon sugar, and roll them up. Cut them into mini-cinnamon rolls, and bake them with your pie (they finish cooking in about 10 minutes). Today, since I had a savory crust laden with nutty gruyere, I brushed the tops with soft butter and stacked them up. They puffed up into nice little cheesy treats:
The last important ingredient in TP is fresh basil, of which I am currently sorely lacking (the movers wouldn’t take live plants, so all of my forward-thinking herbs-in-pots had to stay in Athens). I couldn’t bring myself to pay $3 at Whole Foods for a wimpy pack of untouchable, un-smellable, un-knowable basil, and I knew there had to be some around here, somewhere. So today the kids and I went on a “basil walk.” We knocked on a neighbors door, a few houses down, where a little bird told me there was basil to be had. No one answered, and I didn’t feel like breaking-and-entering the fenced backyard with the kiddos. So we moseyed another block to the “community garden #1,” a totally neglected and overgrown idea that went sour. I knew there was row after row of basil that had long-ago flowered, which meant the flavor would be more in line with licorice — not what the TP needed. But after thorough searching, I found 2 plants that had miraculously not flowered enough to lose their fresh flavor. I “appropriated” what we needed, stuffed little fat hands full of green leaves, and we walked home.
It was a great night. The weather was, really, close to perfect. We ate outside, and enjoyed a really good IPA from a microbrew in Fort Wayne (really? Fort Wayne?). I can’t quite remember the name, since I was so focused on the fact that it came from Fort Wayne (I don’t mean any disrespect to the town, it just struck me as strange, and as a newcomer to Indiana I have no idea why). But it was a really good IPA, which gave me hope for our future here, since our case of Terrapin Rye Pale Ale is only 4 bottles shy of history (the movers didn’t mind loading and unloading a case of beer).
Fall is upon us. There will be some Indian Summer days interspersed, but overall we are turning a seasonal corner. It’s been a little strange; my seasonal clock says that when the weather is like this, I’m supposed to be icing a Barbie’s Chocolate Dream Cake, or planning Thanksgiving dinner. And yet it’s not even Labor Day. I’m ok with that.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
I was all ready to make a second go at tomato pie this week, using your recipe this time - but unfortunately, the CSA guy informed us that this is the last week of tomatoes for the season, due to the East Coast tomato blight. This week’s little bag of romas - the last hurrah - won’t be quite enough (and probably wouldn’t be flavorful enough, I’m thinking - ?). Sad, very sad. I’m glad you got to make one and share it! What was the response?
However, I want to eat those cheesy pie puffs, now and forever. I will have to come up with a different reason than tomato pie to make your gruyere crust.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:39 am
I need to know a little more about this basil hunt, and you took the kids with you? Was this garden for anyone in the community? You know we used to have a community garden at our church in Clinton several years ago. We had to stop it because most people were not willing to take care of their areas. There were more weeds than veggies!
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:29 am
Magnificent! Love that you “appropriated” the basil. With your kids. HA!
May I likewise gush about the tomato pie I made a few weeks ago? Also the first (and last) one for me this year. Friends (dear friends) gave us enough cherry tomatoes and basil from their organic (no less!) garden to make a pie. Because the budget is tight, I experimented with using cream cheese in the crust. Before you sneer, let me just tell you that this was the BEST version of that tomato pie recipe I’ve ever made. It literally brought tears to my eyes, it was so good. Of course most of the credit goes to those marvelous tomatoes. And the fresh basil. But the crust was also amazing! It was like tomato pie nirvana.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
Katy, you know what I wish you’d do? Devote an entry to making “sweet things” that have MUCH less sugar than store-bought items, and contain NO artificial sweeteners. Between your own tastes and that adjustments you’ve made because of Townes’ allergies, I know you have to have some ideas.
My sweet tooth just ain’t going away — and when I am stressed, it goes into overdrive. I need some sweet-but-not-so-sugary options.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
Cassia! HERETIC!!!
I’m gonna have to take your word for it, unless you make that version of the pie for me sometime. You know, in about five years, when you and your family live here in Indy?
Because I have a virtual love affair with gruyere. And I’m not holding it loosely.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:52 am
Amy — I don’t really do low-sugar baking. BUT… I do have an easy solution to your predicament:
Make every sweet thing you eat, from scratch. Don’t buy sweet treats at all. If you start making your treats from scratch, they will still be better for you than store-bought (no chemicals), and the effort will both give you a deeper appreciation for how much sugar you are eating, as well as make it harder to have it on hand. Cookies, popsicles, everything: make from scratch. Recipes abound online, but I can send you some, too.
There are some all-natural replacements for sugar (honey, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, etc), but they are still, calorie-for-calorie, sugar. Better by leaps and bounds than Splenda (or as I lovingly say, “poison”), but still sugar, which does the same thing to your body. I think people get into trouble when they replace sugar with a “healthier” option, but still consume as many empty calories.
September 5th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Katy -
Never fear, my passion for gruyere has not in the least faded. I think, though, that there’s something about the water-to-fat ratio in cream cheese (more water than most cheese maybe?) that makes it a little more ideal for putting in a crust … something about the way it suspends the water molecules between the fat and the flour so that the crust gets all nice and flaky. But I don’t know that for sure, I’m just guessing. Trying to figure out what the hell happened since gruyere is so obviously superior in every other way.
Amy -
Not that you asked my opinion, but … ditto what Katy says. Also, I thought I’d throw this out there - I’ve noticed that if I keep more fresh (and frozen and dried) fruit on hand, my family doesn’t eat as many sweets. Of course, you can go overboard with fruit, too, but sometimes an apple or a bowl of berries-and-cream goes a long way toward taking the edge off. Also, trail mix! We eat tons of trail mix. A handful of dark chocolate chips mixed with nuts and dried fruit can sometimes be more fun to eat and more satisfying than a chocolate bar.
Of course, my downfall is Coke. I love a big, fat Coke over ice. Mixing fruit juice with soda water (or any other healthier substitute, I’ve tried everything) is only mildly satisfying in comparison.