You Grow Girl™

I promised this recipe months ago but alas my spontaneous, never-the-same-thing-twice cooking style makes recipe writing tricky. This is a good pie to make during the winter since apples and pears are the only local fruits still available at the farmer’s market. I first came up with this recipe as a way to make apple pie sweeter and juicier. In fact it really began with the addition of ripe pears to apple sauce years ago while attempting to make the best apple sauce in the world (without additional sweetner). Once I perfected the sauce it didn’t take long to come up with ways to use the sauce that would maximize it’s usefulness.

Apple/Pear Sauce:

Ingredients:

• 5 apples
• 2 pears
• Pinch of cinnamon
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• Squeeze of lemon (you can add some zest too)
• 1/2 cup water

Get the sauce going before starting the pie. I don’t have any hard and fast quantities when it comes to apples and pears so I’ve estimated for you. I just use whatever I’ve got on hand with about 80% apple and 20% pear (or some similar ratio).

Peel and core the apples and pears. Cut each one in half and slice or dice into 1/4″ chunks.

Toss the apples and pears into a pot and cook on a medium heat with a few squeezes of lemon juice (if you’ve got it on hand), a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg, and the water. You don’t need a lot of water. I’d say about 1/2 cup for 5 apples/pears.

Turn the heat down to a low simmer once the stuff in the pot gets rockin’ and let the whole thing cook until the fruit is soft.

Turn off the heat and let it cool down a bit before mashing with a hand-held potato masher or grinding with a food mill.

Yield: You’re going to get a lot of sauce out of this. You will not need all of this sauce for the pie. Save the rest in the fridge or eat it with just about everything!

PIE!

Prepare and roll out your pie crust using the crust recipe found here. There is enough dough for a bottom and top.

Ingredients:

• Approx 5-7 apples
• 1-2 Pears
• Couple of squeezes of lemon
• A fistful of flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• Optional: 1 tablespoon maple syrup (for extra sweetness)
• Approx. 1 cup apple/pear sauce (above)

Peel, core, and slice the apples and pears into 1/4″ thick slices. Throw everything into a bowl with some squeezes of lemon to reduce browning.

Toss the apple and pear slices together with the flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg until they are coated. Add your optional maple syrup at this time.

Pour the entire mix into the pie crust. Spoon in the apple/pear sauce into all the crevices between the raw apples and pears. Use as much as possible and eat the rest.

Place the crust on top and crimp the edges. You can go the easy route by making a circle and crimping the edges (don’t forget to cut some x’s into the surface with a knife for venting) or get fancy by piecing together shapes or weaving 3/4″ ribbons of dough to form a top.

Bake in an oven preheated to 400° until juices are bubbling through the vents and the crust is golden. If the crust starts to get too dark try turning the heat down slightly.