My new recipe for this week is a Skillet Apple Pie. I live apple pie in the in the fall; in many ways it *is* fall to me. The combination of baking butter, apples, cinnamon, crust: when it all comes together, especially on a cool night with the windows open it just defines the feeling, the sense of leaving summer behind and looking forward to colder weather to come.
I picked this recipe out because I wanted to make my first apple pie, but was intrigued by the possibility of not having to do all of the work required around making two crusts and then running the oven for an hour an a half to bake the thing. It's out of Cooks Illustrated (Number 94, September and October 2008). The recipe speeds the process of making the pie by sweating the apples in butter on the stovetop to cook them down. Once they've been cooked down a bit (I think I cooked them for about 10 minutes) you add some additional liquid ingredients (maple syrup, apple cider + cornstarch) stir and let them cool for a bit. Then you put the crust on top and bake the whole thing in the oven.
This is really a pandowdy and not a true pie, but for the first pie of the season, it seemed like it was worth the effort. (A pandowdy is a fruit dessert where the fruit is cooked on the stovetop, a crust is rolled out and placed over the cooked fruit and then cut strategically to allow steam to escape and juice to come through and then the whole thing is baked in the oven to brown the crust.)
I chose to use my cast iron skillet (10 inch) because it can do the stovetop->oven so perfectly. Have I said how much I love my cast iron? I get so much use out of these pans, it's hard to not consider them the most perfect pan ever created for the kitchen. I live my All Clad, it's great too, but if I could only choose one pan for the rest of my life, I would go with my cast iron every time.
The details of the recipe are here:
Crust
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons shortening (chilled)
6 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
3-4 tablespoons ice water
Filling
1/2 cup apple cider
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 1/2 pounds sweet and tart apples (about medium), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2 inche wedges
The crust comes first. The recipe says to use a food processor, which I'm sure is more convenient, but I don't own one. So I did it the old-fashioned way, the same way I've made my pastry crusts for the last 30 years now. I mixed the flour, sugar and salt together and then cut the buttter and shortening into it until I got the "coarse crumb" texture. Then I added the water, starting with 3 Tbs. I think that this was perhaps a bit too much, because the dough was a bit sticky. But since I didn't want to over mix it and I knew that I didn't have to do a lot with it (it just goes on top) I let it be. I wrapped the dough in a ziploc bag and put it in the fridge for about an hour.
I used Golden Delicious apples. That was what I had, but I've found for these sorts of baked apple recipes they are my favorites. Somtimes I like to use a red apple to provide more contrast (Jonathans are my very favorite red for baking, though Winesaps are good too) but Goldens by themselves provide just the right amount of sweet, crunch and tang all by themselves for most baking recipes.
So I cored and peeled the apples and cut them into moderately thin slices (about six per half apple). Melt the butter in the frying pan and then the apples go in. I added a pinch of kosher salt here even though the recipe doesn't call for it. I believe that salt is an intricate ingredient in most everything, but especially in these sorts of sweet dishes; it really brings out the flavor if it's used correctly. The goal here is to sweat the apples, not to saute them. The heat is low, and you're just cooking the apples down, breaking down the internal cell structure to release all of the flavor. You don't want to cook them hot because the sugar that they release will burn and ruin the whole thing.
Preheat the oven to 500°
Once the apples were sweating, I mixed up the liquid ingredients. Basically you just mix the cider, syrup, lemon juice and cornstarch with a whisk and hold them. I didn't have any cider, which I'm sure would have added to the flavor, but I just used 1/3 cup water instead.
After the apples had sweated pretty well (it took about 10 minutes to get to the texture I wanted) I turned off the heat, added the wet ingredients, mixed them and set the whole frying pan aside to focus on the crust.
I rolled the crust out; I was right to think that the dough was too sticky. But between the cold dough and using enough flour, I managed to roll it out to about 10 inches round.
Next is to get the crust on top of the frying pan. I liberally floured the top of the rolled crust and rolled it around my rolling pin. Then I moved it over the frying pan and unrolled it. The recipe says to cut the crust to allow steam to escape and to provide some area for the liquid to bubble up from below. The recommended cut is to cut in half, all the way across one way and then in thirds all the way across the other way (perpendicular).
Next into the oven, and then the fun begins. The smell of apple pie baking is somethin all of its own, the mingling of the apple, cinnamon, caramelizing sugar and pastry smells all mingling into a wonderful mix this is a true snapshot of fall, especially on a cool night with the windows open.
Then, after about 20 minutes, it's done. You can tell by watching the crust till it gets that perfect golden-brown color. Take it out, set it on a cooling rack and give it some time to set and solidify a bit. I'm sure it's good with ice cream or whipped cream or whatever, but to me a true apple pie needs absolutely nothing. And I wasn't disappointed by this one. It was divine, and given how little work it actually took, I was in heaven. At least for a little while.
