King Arthur, McGyver & The Knight of the Oval Table Present: Case #0-The Tiny Pie Affair

I love cookbooks, always have.  The accumulated images of potential meals and treats is like the best kind of porn.  Not THE best, but pretty close.  I'm definitely not the first to make that connection, but the link is on my mind presently, so I decided to work through it a bit.

The way I see it, the cookbook-to-porn connection seems obviously linked to the concept of desire, with the most basic response closely akin to jealousy.  There's an immediate sensory response to a desirable image that is begging for some relevant Roland Barthes quote that I'm unwilling to dig up at the moment, regardless of his personal hero status, because then this post becomes more about the Barthesian porn response than the food-linked desire that I'm mulling over.  So:

[The Zemanta Assistant widget for Blogger suggested this image for me, as it's clearly topical, so I'll post it.  I can only hope it's sufficiently confusing the next time Sophie Barthes Googles herself :)]

Again: I love cookbooks, the salacious and unrepentant photos of food kind.

Sadly: I hate to follow recipes.

When it comes to cooking, this is ok, as, to quote Captain Barbosa, "they're more guidelines really."  Deviation is not only acceptable, it's expected.  Much like a referential academic quote, you find the recipe, you insert the idea of it into the book that is your epicurean life, cite it if you like, qualify it and then make it your own in order to escape the specter of plagiarism.  At least that's how it is for me.  When I find a recipe, I look over the ingredients and immediately insert the substitutions and measurements that relate more to me and my palate.   As far as cooking goes, this works well.

Baking, well, that's different.  Baking involves a strict adherence to to the minutia, the need for numbered steps to be followed exactly and, at least for me, a total loss of the McGyver -esque confidence that I normally feel in the kitchen and a constant questioning of my short-term memory that makes me walk back to the cookbook convinced that I'm about to use the wrong cup/spoon.

Baking scares me.

I find this to be suddenly unacceptable.

So: rather than flip longingly through the pages of books long enough to drool onto pictures of cakes and pies and assorted pastries, and then replace the volumes back on the shelf, frustrated, I've decided that I will conquer this response.

This aging dog is going to learn some new tricks.

For some reason, the first thoughts I had in this regard were pie-related.  I love pie.  I've made only one in my life, blueberry/peach using frozen crust, and it turned out ok, good, in fact.  But that has been my one and only attempt, and it was only a half-attempt, as the crust was generic.  Last week (these initial posts are reflections on recently past events, deal) I decided to make some little pies to take along to a friend's birthday party.  I have a 24 well muffin pan and thought I should use that instead of making a normal-sized pie, so I broke out a cookbook and started looking up dough recipes, chock full of fire and conviction.

Then I chickened out and thawed out a some frozen pie crust I'd bought to make some quiches (which I may post about later).

The concept of making pie crust was just too daunting, but the idea of slapping the thawed doughs together and rolling them out like I'd made it myself seemed like the right sort of baby step I needed to get some momentum going, so that's what I did.  [Hence the reference to Case #0, as it's really just the preface to my adventures with homemade/from scratch recipes.]  I rolled out the dough, used a biscuit cutter to get the perfect little shapes and baked one to see how it went.  It went fine, except that it stuck to the well, so I used some parchment paper to pop them out easily, which made me feel all McGyvery.

I winged the filling using frozen blueberries, juice from some jarred peaches and pears, some cinnamon, vanilla sugar & flour to thicken it a bit [all things that were in the pantry/fridge].

I made the little tops using a smaller biscuit cutter and fork-crimped, triple-slit then egg-white washed them and popped them into the oven.

And then they were done!  And I was suddenly confronted with a problem I hadn't considered: how was I going to transport 24 little pies.  [If I had a nickel for every time I've asked myself this question, I'd have 5 cents.]

Answer: utilize the to-go container that I'd taken from our last dinner out (Mexican, seafood burrito, yum) and taken home without putting food in it, certain that I could use it for something.  My old scout master would be proud of my preparedness.

Surprisingly, they tasted pretty good!  I was expecting a horrible disaster, but instead felt inspired, and relatively effective.  It was nice.  Momentum achieved.  They seemed to go over well with people, so all in all, as prefaces go, I can't complain.

So, feeling empowered, I broke out the one book that scares me the most, a tome I'd bought as a present for SZ a couple years ago: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion .  620 pages.  A tiny section of clumped pictures, but otherwise porn-less.  My nightmare.

This is the book that I will conquer, my new bible.  Hence the post name.  [Our table is more oval than round, so, you know...]

I'm terrified, but determined.  It feels kind of awesome.

Coming Soon: Case #1: White Bread 101.