A year of pies...

Ever since Christmas when I received a fabulous cookbook from my brother called 'A Year of Pies' by Ashley English (http://www.smallmeasure.com/) I have been thinking about PIE!  For those of you who actually know me you may recall that pie has always been one of my favorite things to make and I have even had a few pie parties in my time. Moving to Australia of course expanded my understanding and taste for pie as I discovered the big wide world of savory pie...YUM!

Ashley has inspired me to take my pie baking to a new level and make this my own year of pies and hopefully Tablenosh will begin selling pie at the local farmers market this Spring!  My year of pies kicked off  about 2 weeks ago and I announced 'Friday Pie Day' in our home.  Every Friday I will do my best to experiment with a new recipe or work on mastering a favorite.  Pies will also of course include tarts, galettes, crostata, quiche and any other 'pie-like' thing I can muster up!

So far I have made 5 recipes from Ashley's pie book and each one has been pretty delicious.  I kicked off with a savory 'collards and cornbread quiche' recipe - this had a quiche like base and a crusty cornbread on top.  Then I made 'shoofly' pie and a lemon-lime chess pie.  Last Friday was an apple & pear crostata... I served it warm with some crème anglaise and it was delicious, definitely a winner.  Oh yes and the 5th pie I made a few weeks ago which was a chicken pie, very similar to other chicken pies I have made except I stuffed it full of every veggie I could find and used a regular pie crust versus puff pastry, this is one of my favorites especially for winter and so easy!

Apple & Pear Crostata with Creme Anglaise

I made a double batch of all butter pie dough last week and froze half of it, so this week I can just thaw it and put it to use.  A dear friend of mine who has much more baking experience under her belt has generously given me some top notch lard (she special orders this stuff in bulk) to experiment with as well, I have heard that using lard in a pie crust can take it to a whole other level so I am looking forward to finding out!  I am not sure what pie is next...possibly a rosemary bourbon sweet potato, depends on what I have in the cupboard.  Keep ya posted!