I love me some mushrooms, yes, I do. I only found a handful of them in the wild this year, but I buy white button mushrooms and Portobellos at the store all year. Sometimes I make little hand pies, but I made a big’un to share with #4 Daughter.
Okay, the crust is imperfect. As my grandpa used to say, that don’t hurt the eatin’ of it.
I dry-cooked about a pound of mushrooms, added sliced onions and butter (or vegan margarine — I can’t remember which I used. I used butter-flavored Crisco for the crust, though) and some flour. I stirred that around until the onions were tender and the flour was unflourified, then added some white cooking wine and whatever herbs/spices I felt like using.
While I was doing all that, I cooked the bottom crust at 400F for about 20 minutes. This time, I remembered to put cheesecloth between my baking weights and the crust, so I could just lift the weights out once they’d cooled.
So put that filling into that crust and slap on a top crust. Bake, cut, and eat.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about something that doesn’t look good but works, tastes, or is good.
MA
acflory
April 27, 2021 at 7:46pmThe pie looks delicious, Marian, but a question about the crust. After you blind bake the bottom, how on earth do you attach the top to it?
Marian Allen
April 28, 2021 at 9:13amObviously, I have no idea. I don’t know if you can. I just wanted to, so I tried. I rolled out the top crust bigger than the top and tucked the edges under the blind baked crust. As you can see from the picture, it didn’t really work, but I’ve never let that stop me.
acflory
April 28, 2021 at 7:00pmHmm…but the top crust did stay on so that’s something. I’m not very good at pastry of any sort, but making the top bigger seems like a good idea. 🙂
Marian Allen
April 29, 2021 at 9:18amPastry just takes practice and ice water. I’ve thrown failed crust at the wall, and have never been let to forget it. 😀
acflory
April 30, 2021 at 7:56am-grin- oops. lol But what’s that about ice water?
Marian Allen
April 30, 2021 at 9:03amYou have to keep pastry cold so the butter or other shortening doesn’t melt into the dough. So the water you add to make the pastry has to be ice water, and you put the pastry into the refrigerator whenever it starts to get warm while you’re working with it and just before you put it into the oven.
acflory
April 30, 2021 at 8:36pmOh My God….you’ve just explained precisely why my pastry has never worked. Thank you!!!!!
circadianreflections
April 27, 2021 at 11:51pmIt sounds and looks quite French to me! I’d try it! Course you know I’d eat anything that doesn’t eat me first. Cousin Carol coined that phrase about me in the late 60’s when she came to visit…she did. It stuck. With the whole damn family! Sigh! I really, really hate it when they nail it. I do! Sigh…
Marian Allen
April 28, 2021 at 9:19am😀 I used to be a really REALLY picky eater. Charlie and his girls ate differently than I did, so I learned to broaden my taste because I used the girls’ late mother’s recipes to minimize the disruption as much as possible. Then I spent a few years writing a food history paragraph for World Wide Recipes’ newsletter and got interested in new foods. Now if I’m faced with something I’ve never had before, I’m like, “Hold my beer.” lol
Pistachios
May 3, 2021 at 7:35amI sure like your spirit and attitude when it comes to food!
We’re entering winter here, so a mushroom pie sounds like a pretty good idea! Might try it some time
Marian Allen
May 3, 2021 at 9:32amMmm, yes, mushroom pie is a comfort food. 🙂