Category: Food & Cooking

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Pie ala Road

Plums, ready for harvest

The air over the Hood River area finally cleared and our fridge was in need of a seasonal fruit infusion. This week’s trip sent us north to the Fruit Loop.

Aftermath of a wildfire on Mt. Hood

The devastation of recent fires scarred the hills along Hwy 26 and 35. Mop-up efforts were still underway as we descended the eastside of Mt. Hood.

But Kiyokawa Orchards was open for the season, and while not overflowing with varieties, there was plenty to choose from.

Our go-to orchard.

The boxes of fruit set out on their shelves included some late season peaches and a wide range of small stone fruit  .  .  .  plums and plumcots.

Also on the wood racks was an early harvest of apples and pears. We loaded a basket with something from nearly every box.

First haul, there will be more trips in the future.

We were looking for a tart apple to turn into pie. Pies are wonderful treats but lousy picnic fare. The easiest way to change that is to bake individual servings.

Hand pies are no more trouble to make than a whole pie and so much easier to have on the road.

America’s Test Kitchen “Baking For Two” has an excellent pie crust recipe, see attached. Rest in the fridge a few hours (or freeze for later), rolled out a quarter of an inch thick and cut into 5 inch rounds.

You load these disks with pie filling, although the fruit needs to be chopped into smaller pieces.

With peach or apple filling, start by chopping the fruit in small chunks, about a cup will fill the eight to ten disks that a single recipe of pie dough will make. 

They freeze and re-heat well   .  .  .  if they last that long

Toss these cubes of fruit in a tablespoon of lemon juice, to discourage browning. Add one tablespoon each of brown and white sugar and AP flour. To this we also put in ½ teaspoon of  cinnamon and nutmeg, though spices are a personal matter.

Print Recipe

Pie Dough (American Test Kitchen "Baking for Two")

Ingredients

  • 9 Tbsp unsalted butter chilled and divided
  • 1 1/4 cups AP flour divided
  • 1 Tbsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • ¼ cup ice water

Instructions

  • Grate 2 tablespoons butter on large holes of box grater and place in freezer. Cut remaining 7 tablespoons butter into ½ inch cubes.
  • Pulse ¾ cup flour, sugar, and salt in food processor until combined, 2 pulses. Add cubed butter and process until homogeneous paste forms, about 30 seconds.
    Using your hands carefully break dough ball into 2-inch chunks and redistribute evenly around processor blade.
  • Add remaining ½ cup flour and pulse until mixture is broken into pieces no larger than 1 inch (most pieces will be much smaller), 4 to 5 pulses.
    Transfer mixture to medium bowl. add grated butter and toss until butter pieces are separated and coated with flour.
  • Sprinkle 2 tablespoons ice water over mixture.
    Toss with rubber spatula until mixture is evenly moistened. Sprinkle 2 more tablespoons of ice water over mixture and toss to combine.
    Press dough with spatula until dough sticks together.
  • Transfer to sheet of plastic wrap. Draw edges of the plastic over the dough and press firmly on the sides and top to form a compact, fissure-free disk.
    Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 2 days. Allow to sit on counter top for about 10 minutes to soften before rolling out.
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Fruits of Summer

Bull Thistle turns from a green bulb to a spiky threat in late summer

As we move into the middle of August and our ad streams get clogged with back-to-school sales, we’re reminded of autumn’s imminent arrival.

We are not ones to lament the end of summer, particularly now that it’s permeated with wildfire smoke.

To be truthful, we prefer the edge seasons, fall and spring.

More Willamette Valley farms are growing food crops rather than landscape plants  .  .  .  or at least that’s how it should be.

However, it should be noted that it’s the height of fruit season.

We are not talking about that season-less stream of fruit crated up in some distant field in every grocer’s produce aisle.

Diamond Princess Peaches

What you need to be doing, right now, is enjoying the local crops at peak freshness and perfect flavor. 

(left to right) Splash Plum, Star Pop Plum, Sugar Twist Plum

It’s also a good time to restock jam, jelly and syrup jars. It’s important to preserve some of that seasonal goodness to enjoy on those dark winter mornings.

Taking in the orchard views

This calls for a trip to the farmers market, or better yet  .  .  .   a local orchard, farm, or farm stand.

Prevailing winds cleared smoke from the Willamette Valley, so that was this week’s destination.

A beautiful old barn located east of Salem in the Willamette Valley

We have some favorite spots  .  .  .  Nanneman and Schlecter Farms are a couple of our favorites.

We also try to make it to Hood River and Kiyokawa Orchards, but currently there is a pall of smoke over that area, so that trip will have to wait.

A variety of berries in a variety of sizes

At Nanneman Farms we find berries.  Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, and marionberries   .  .  .  an abundance of flavor nuggets spilling out of fiberboard cartons. 

The white corn from Schlecter Farms is super sweet  .  .  .  our favorite.

At Schlecter’s we pick up a bag of sweet corn (both yellow and white). Their corn is available well into the fall, but it’s only a few minutes from Nanneman’s  .  .  .  so worth the effort!

We’ll be back when these are ripe.

As the berry season wanes, we’ll stock up on stone fruit and apples from Hood River Orchards.

That usually involves a couple of trips as different varieties ripen throughout the season. Hopefully the fire season eases by then.

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Seasonal Shift

The sky above Hood River orchards

Summer seems to be rushing away. We’ve been heading out early and seeking shade by late morning. Now, the cool of the morning lasts longer and we linger along the river until past noon. Very soon it will be fall.

One of the harbingers of fall is stone fruit.

These beauties are ready to pick.

When the produce aisle peaches actually give off their sweet heady aroma, the skin of a plum gives to the touch, and apple varieties triple, then summer is near its end.

A late summer storm starts to engulf Mt. Hood.

We’ll make several trips to the hillsides above Hood River before the end of October. Each visit is rewarded with a new variety of tree ripened fruit.

Stone fruits mark summer’s close. Apple and pear varieties will reach a peak toward the end of September, trailing off by Halloween, and at that point winter looms.

Some varieties require extra protection from birds.

On this trip we were treated to a glorious display of weather patterns. Clouds, rain storms and patches of sun encircled us.

Looking North just outside Madras

From a vantage point on a sage steppe above the Columbia River, all you have to do is change your angle of view to get a different sky.

We started the day with rain and moved in and out of storms all the way north.

However, by the time we were at Kiyokawa Family Orchard it was under sunny skies.

A half dozen varieties of peaches were set out in boxes. There were some early apple types, as well as a couple of different early pears.

Tables holding thumb sized plums in various shades of purple rounded out the offerings.

A sample of orchard offerings kept cool for the drive home.

We had no problem filling our cooler, even with the limited early season offerings.

This is only the start of our trips to collect orchard treasures and take note of the seasonal shift.

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Snow Days

Chest deep in untracked powder

Once again weather dictates plans. A winter storm watch that didn’t materialize last week, showed up this week and brought along a foot of new snow.

Central Oregon winters are a mix of clear cold, then broken when a front shoves storm clouds across the Cascade range. Last week started almost spring-like and then came this week and a return to shoveling snow.

It’s not impossible to travel in these conditions, just easier to wait for the inevitable string of clear days.

Tomatillos in the Cuisinart for Verde Salsa

In that waiting we managed to accomplish a few home based projects. Starting with the pantry.

Cold winter days are a perfect time to start up a canning operation and restock soups, sauces, stews and chili.

We’re also trying to put up some late season vegetables, like broccoli and carrots. Found a good price on sliced mushrooms, so they got piled into half pint jars and loaded into the canner as well.

Little offsets cabin fever better than a warm meal, good book and comfortable chair. We enjoy that while we wait for the skies  .  .  .  and roads  .  .  .  to clear.

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It’s about weather . . . Again

Winter driving in Oregon

Our week was a deluge of endless ‘black friday’ ads and rain. Not sure when this Black Friday exploded out of control, but it can stop any time, as can the rain.

There was also a winter storm advisory from the weather service. A ‘Snowmageddon’ was supposed to blanket the Pacific Northwest.

For us it was a no-show-mageddon, though some nasty weather hit coastal areas. By week’s end, rain had obliterated any snow accumulation and we were left with cold, wet and gray days.

That is not a complaint. Really.

Soup is the best remedy for a gray day

While we didn’t get out much this week, we weren’t totally dormant.

This pre-winter weather is a perfect time to enjoy soup or stew. And really, what is the difference  .  .  .  tomayto, tomahto.

… wine helps as well

This week we ladled bowls full of steamy French Onion soup. A classic topped with slices of toasted baguette and melty Gruyere cheese. We’ll share the recipe. It’s not a quick cook, but well worth the extra steps.

A great soup cook book is invaluable, especially in winter months.

A couple of years ago JQ picked up a copy of Cook’s Illustrated “All Time Best Soups” and with that began Soup Sunday at the Schommer house.

In the process many of the book’s pages were stained and it’s margins filled with hand scribbled notes  .  .  .  signs of a good cook book.

Skies and the ground have cleared and the weatherman is calling for slightly warmer and much sunnier days ahead. So next week we’ll return to our favorite streams and backroads  .  .  .  though we are still braced for winter.

Print Recipe

French Onion Soup

Ingredients

SOUP

  • 4 lbs onions sliced through root end into ¼ inch pieces
  • 3 Tbsp unsalted butter cut into 3 pieces
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 cups water plus extra for deglazing as needed
  • 1/2 cup dry sherry
  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 6 sprigs fresh thyme tied with twine
  • 1 bay leaf

CROUTONS & CHEESE

  • 1 small baguette cut into ½ inch slices
  • 8 oz Gruyere cheese shredded (2 cups)

Instructions

For the soup

  • Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Generously spray inside of Dutch oven with vegetable oil spray. Add onions, butter, and 1 tsp salt.
  • Cover and bake until onions wilt slightly and look moist, about 1 hour.
  • Stir onions thoroughly, scraping bottom and sides of pot. Partially cover pot and continue to cook in oven until onions are very soft and golden brown, 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours longer, stirring onions thoroughly after 1 hour.
  • Carefully remove pot from oven and place over medium-high heat. Using oven mitts to handle pot, continue to cook onions, stirring and scraping pot often, until liquid evaporates, onions brown, and bottom of pot is coated with dark crust, 20 to 25 minutes. If onions begin to brown too quickly, reduce heat to medium. Also, be sure to scrape any browned bits that collect on the spoon back into the onions.
  • Stir in 1/4 cup water, thoroughly scraping up browned crust. Continue to cook until water evaporates and pot bottom has formed another dark crust, 6-8 minutes. Repeat deglazing 2 or 3 more times, until onions are a very dark brown.
  • Stir in sherry and cook until evaporated, about 5 minutes. Stir in chicken broth, beef broth, 2 cups more water, thyme bundle, bay leaf, and 1/2 tsp salt, scraping up any remaining brown bits. Bring to simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes. Discard thyme bundle and bay leaf and season with salt and pepper to taste.
  • Soup can be refrigerated for up to 3 days, return to simmer before proceeding.

Croutons and soup prep

  • Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Lay baguette slices on rimmed baking sheet and bake until dry, crisp, and lightly golden, about 10 minutes, flipping slices over halfway through baking.
  • Position oven rack 8 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Set broiler-safe bowls on baking sheet and fill each with hot soup. Top each bowl with 1 to 2 baguette slices (do not overlap slices) and sprinkle evenly with grated Gruyère cheese.
  • Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly around the edges, 3-5 minutes. Sprinkle lightly with chopped parsley and serve.