Good Food on KCRW.com

Barbara Treves' Winning Apple Pie Recipe

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:10:37 -0800

Forever Favourite Apple Pie

Crust

1-1/2 cup organic whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup unbleached, organic all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla powder
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped
3 T sugar
1-1/4 cup sweet butter, unsalted (freshly made if possible)
1 Tablespoon white vinegar, chilled
6 - 8 Tablespoons ice water

Measure out all dry ingredients, combine and place in freezer, keep butter & liquid ingredients in refrigerator for at least one hour prior to preparation.

When ready, add dry ingredients to food processor and pulse to mix thoroughly. Add butter cubes and pulse until mixture resembles pea-sized meal. Add vinegar, pulse to mix then add ice water, 1 T at a time, until dough begins to stick together and when pinched by hand, holds together. Remove from processor and transfer to work surface. Divide the dough into two equal parts and gently form into balls, and wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Filling
4 Tablespoons sweet butter
12 organic apples from local farmers market (mixture of Granny Smith, Fuji or other tart, crisp apples the best) – peeled, cored and sliced.
1 vanilla bean, split seeds scraped

1-1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 cup organic sugar

4 Tablespoons organic, unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup dried, sour cherries, soaked in 1/4 cup Calvados for at least 2 hours

Filling Preparation

Mix all dry ingredients, including vanilla bean seeds together. Add 2 tablespoons of this dry mixture to roasting pan, along with peeled and sliced apples. Place under broiler and broil until apples are slightly browned but not cooked through. Once nicely browned, remove and add rest of the ingredients, except butter.

Adding Filling to Pie Dough

Chill pie plate while you roll out 1 of the dough discs on a lightly floured surface until you get a disc that measure slightly larger than your pie plate and about 1/8 “– 1⁄4” thick. Pull out pie plate and gently place rolled out dough in plate.

Add broiled apples mixture, then dot with 4 T butter. Roll out 2nd disc into a circle about 1/8” – 1⁄4” thick and place on top of apples. Pinch top and bottom dough edges together and form a decorative edge.

Final Topping

1 egg
1 Tablespoons Cream
Turbinado Coarse Raw Sugar

Beat the egg and cream together in a small dish then brush top and edges of pie with mixture, sprinkle with sugar.

Bake

400 degrees for 45 mins. Cover edges of pie with aluminum foil if starting to brown too quickly. Turn pie in oven and cook an additional 15 mins. or until done.

Cool for at least two hours prior to serving.

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Announcing... The Pie Contest Winners!

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:31:25 -0800

Pie Contest

Photos coming soon. Here are the winners of KCRW's First Annual Good Food Pie Contest, held today at Westfield Topanga:

Best in Show
1st - #109 - Barbara Treves' Apple Pie

Fruit & Nut
1st - #109 - Barbara Treves' Apple Pie
2nd - #115 - Jeff Winett's Chocolate Walnut Rum Pie
3rd - #118 - Hae Jung Cho's Blueberry Hand Pie

Cream/Custard/Chiffon/Mousse
1st - #22 - Marni Landes' Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Banana Pie
2nd - #15 - Daniel Hong's Banana Cream
3rd - #5 - Marina Castle's Dulce de Leche Coffee Peanut Butter Mousse Pie

Savory
1st - #137 - Chrystal Baker & Amir Thomas' Tarragon Chicken and Grape Pie
2nd - #143 - Zoe Jarocki's Mushroom Pie
3rd - #140 - Edie Black's Veggie Pot Pie

Interpretive (Defies Categorization)
1st - #123 - Nita Larronde's Yin-Yang Pie
2nd - #131 - Sharon Treinen's Ice Box Lemon Pie
3rd - #119 - Lisa Giardino's Mystery Pie (aka Ritz Cracker Pie)

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Cranberry Harvest; Healing the Wounds of War; Paraguay; Bacon as a Weapon

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:16:08 -0800

Cranberries require a flood of water during harvest. This week, third-generation cranberry grower Dawn Allen Gates tells us just what happens in a cranberry bog. Farming is hard work, but it can also be therapeutic. Michael O'Gorman explains how getting veterans out in the field can help deal with the damages of war. Food writer Jonathan Gold takes us to a hip new street in Palms for some Indonesian food. How about a chipa with your yerba mate? Good Food listener Natalia Goldberg tells us what tea time in Paraguay is like. Can pie be gender specific? Barbara Swell shares stories about her pie competition in rural Appalachia where they had a special category for men's pies. Still looking for WMD? You just might find them in your fridge. Arun Gupta explains how bacon is a weapon of mass destruction. Laura Avery finds fresh macadamia nuts at the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

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Early Holiday Shopping for Dad

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:06:44 -0800

Think about getting Dad some bread slippers:

Bread Slippers

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Video of the Day: Cranberry Harvest

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:51:25 -0800

This week on Good Food, I chat with a third-generation cranberry farmer about harvesting cranberries. Here's a video explaining the process:

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Video of the Day: South LA Food Deserts

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:44:22 -0800

This video comes through Market Makeovers, a very cool organization trying to "green the food deserts of South LA."

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Eating Tomato Leaves: A Rebuttal

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:45:41 -0700

A few weeks ago on Good Food, noted food scientist Hal McGee and I spoke about eating tomato leaves. Hal has been using them in sauces and in pestos. Nat Bletter, ethnobotanist who has also been a guest on Good Food, has a few things to say about this:

When my friend Pizza Hacker's asked me whether tomato leaves were safe to eat I decided to delve into this interesting ethnobotanical discussion. Apparently several chefs like the Bay Area's Chris Cosentino at Incanto, Heston Blumenthal in the UK, and noted food scientist Harold McGee have started using a few leaves as flavoring in tomato sauces, much like bay leaves. Given that tomatoes are from the nightshade family that includes such toxic or psychoactive plants as deadly nightshade, potatoes (when they're green), and angel's trumpet or datura, the idea of eating tomato leaves didn't strike me as a good idea. There are unfounded prejudices against tomatos and all the nightshades (eggplant, peppers, tomatillos, tobacco, tree tomatoes) in the West due to the only European nightshades being toxic or psychedelic plants like Belladona or Mandrake root. I am also the founder of the Nightshade Anti-defamation League (NADL) since I think they get an unfair bad rap, so I want to have an open mind about eating this potentially beneficial green.

It worries me that no one in the native range of tomatoes of Central and South America eats the leaves despite that they eat just about every other green in sight. Mexicans figured out how to eat plumeria flowers (considered toxic by most people), use psychoactive datura (kills you with just a tad bit more than what gets you tripping), and the lengthy process of making raw nasty-tasting cacao beans into something delicious, so the fact that they don't eat tomato leaves when they're so abundant and that they eat their close relative's chili greens, tells me something is weird there. It seems if something was edible, the Mesoamericans would've figured out a way to eat it.

One can't ignore the fact that one almost never sees bugs eating tomato leaves as opposed to chili leaves and there is the question of climate. Although the tomatoes in California and NY may be unstressed and their leaves marginally edible, it's unsafe to ignore history and recommend everyone eat them when they may be in hotter climes which stress the plant more and spur it to produce more toxic defense compounds. Given that many foods in small quantities can be fine, but large quantities are toxic (such as apple seeds, onions, and brazil nuts) we should take heed to history of people who have experimented with these plants for thousands of years and know the long term effects. Despite McGee's soothing argument, testing tomato leaves as food on a ruminant such as a cow with a very different physiology from ours or testing one compound, tomatine, on rats is not a good indication of what effect eating the whole leaves on humans would have in the long term. As I'm doing field work in Thailand right now I'm realizing many people eat many plants considered toxic in other cultures, yet they also do not eat any tomato leaves. I think it pays to be cautious and take heed of people who have done long term experiments with these plants rather than a few cursory studies in the last few decades. Eat the delicious tomato fruits, inhale the great smell of the leaves, but get your green flavoring from the hundreds of other delicious herbs we know are safe and nutritious, and avoid the tomato leaves!

I would like to thank Dr. Abby Cuttriss, Dr. Will McClatchey, and Dr. Michael Nee for extensive discussion, information, and encouragement on the topic of tomato leaf toxicity.

What do you think? Would you eat tomato leaves?

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Culture Clash; Delicatessens; Alton Brown; Wines after War

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:27:37 -0700

What is liquid meat? Food Network's Alton Brown explains. Food writer Jonathan Gold is a pie-lover. He shares some stories of what pie means to him. A tour of the Los Angeles Times' test kitchen. Ching Ching Ni tells us about a culture clash involving rice noodles. A delicatessen serves ethnic food of a different sort. David Sax explains how the deli is endangered. Timothy Childs works for NASA and makes chocolate. Find out what those two things have in common. Mark Peel has us over for a family dinner. And Stacie Hunt takes us wine tasting in Croatia. It's the story of wines after war. And Laura Avery takes a trip to the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

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Salad Dressing Success!

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:55:09 -0700

Thank you to everyone who came out to Westfield Fashion Square yesterday for the Vinaigarette event. I loved seeing people experiment with different flavors. And the veggies! Who knew that red carrots and sunchokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) would be such a hit? A special thanks to Rachael Narins on Chicks with Knives and Alex Weiser of Weiser Family Farms who helped explain just why the carrots are so sweet.

After the event, a few of us gathered for some burgers at Barney's in the mall. More photos of the event to come.

Burgers and Beer at the Mall

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Alton Brown Bonus Tracks

nobody@vox.com(Good Food on KCRW) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:05:31 -0700

I absolutely love talking to Alton Brown. No matter what the topic, I always learn something. He will bring out the inner food geek in anyone, foodie or not. This week on Good Food, we chat about pie (of course), eggs and gelatin. We ran out of time, so below are two more nuggets from our conversation: butter and pie crust:

Alton Brown on Butter

Alton Brown on Pie Crust

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