Weekend Update: Anna Olson's Country Apple Pie

During the week I kept our menu pretty frugal by making a number of different soups and they all came out amazing. I made an all veggie soup with a really delish roast chicken broth. I roasted a carcass as well as the head and feet of the chicken (nice), then boiled it, took out the bones and feet and stuff (not beautiful to look at but great in soup because of all the cartilage - natural thickener), added the veggies et voila, a really, really healthy and slurpalicious vegetable chicken soup. I also made a roast pumpkin soup with cayenne that was to die for, and then towards the end of the week fish chowder using the fins from cacao (baby shark that is cheap and easy to come by here in Rio).

On Sunday my brother Aaron and his girlfriend Patti came over for lunch. We had roast chicken thighs in gravy and prunes, rice with matchstick potatoes, and sauteed carrots in butter and sugar. For an appetizer we had small rice patties with sweet Thai chili dipping sauce (possibly my fave dipping sauce ever!). We all played Risk for hours and Aaron won. For dessert I made Anna Olson's Country Apple Pie. It's a super easy recipe and my pie came out exactly like hers. I was very pleased with myself. The real reason for this post is to share her recipe with you all. With winter upon us this is a perfect weekend treat. I hope you give it a go.


Anna Olson's Country Apple Pie
makes one 9 inch pie

Ingredients:

Pastry

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 6 tbsp to 10 tbsp cold water as needed

Filling

• 8 cups peeled and sliced tart apples, such as Spy or Spartan (I used Gala)
  
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 egg whisked with 2 tbsp cold water for brushing
• sugar for sprinkling

Directions:

Pastry

1. Combine flour with salt. Cut in butter and shortening until mixture is a roughly even crumbly texture.
2. Add lemon juice and water and blend just until dough comes together. Shape into a disc, wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Filling

1. Toss all ingredients except butter together and set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 400 °F.
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out half of dough to just under ¼-inch thick. Lightly dust bottom of a 9-inch pie pan with flour and line pan with dough. Fill pastry with apples and dot top with butter.
4. Roll out remaining half of dough and place over apples. Trim and cinch edges of pie and cut in holes in top layer of pastry to let steam escape. Brush top of pie with eggwash and sprinkle lightly with sugar.
5. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 375 °F and bake about 40 minutes, until filling is bubbling. Cool pie for at least an hour before slicing. (Super important: make sure you put your pie dish to bake on top of another bigger oven tray in case there's any dripping. You don't want the drippings burning and smoking all over your brand new Brastemp oven you just bought and almost suffocate to death trying to clean it while the oven is still hot so you can bake your chicken - I learned this the hard way.)

Tata for now!