Or what I like to call "cooking ADD".
I did a mental run-down of the ingredients available to me while trying to decide what to cook for dinner...ground turkey, mixed veggies, onions, tomatoes, tomato paste...I decided to try my hand at hand pies. It sounded like fun and was something that I had never made before. I searched the internet for a good recipe and found a Martha Steward recipe that sounded pretty good.
But the thought of hand pies reminded me of my Aunt Alma's fried apple pies.
Aunt Alma had a learning disability (my best guess is that she was dyslexic) and could neither read nor write. There are no hand written copies of her recipes, but she was an amazing cook. And her fried apple pies were to die for. Aunt Alma and Uncle Fred would go to my Uncle Ed and Aunt Mary's farm and pick apples in the heat of summer. They would take them home, peel them, slice them, and lay them on newspapers on the shelf in the back of their 1963 Chevrolet Impala until they were perfectly dried. She would reconstitute the dried apples in a pot with a little water, lots of sugar and cinnamon, and finish it off with a little butter.
Uncle Ed is standing behind my grandmother in this photo, that is my dad holding me beside him, and Aunt Alma is the beauty in the white color. I love this picture because it has my grandmother with all of her living children.
She would make a dough much like a biscuit dough and fill them with the apple mixture. She fried them an iron skillet. They appeared at family reunions and disappeared quickly, but Aunt Alma always had a bundle for my dad and I stashed away.
I loved those pies.
I've tried over the years to duplicate them and have come close, but never fully succeeded. Possibly the fact that the apples weren't from Uncle Ed's farm. that they weren't hand dried, or the fact that I could only try to guess the proportions.
So, while preparing the dough for my hand pies I looked over and saw a bowl of peaches sitting on the counter.
So I decided to try fried peach pies.
The Filling:
2 c peeled and diced ripe peaches
1 c sugar
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 c warm water
3 Tbs corn starch
Mix corn starch in water and set aside. Cook peaches, sugar, and lemon juice until sugar is melted. Add corn starch mixture and cinnamon and bring to a boil. Cook until thick and remove from heat. Allow to cool.
The pastry:
2 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 c cold butter cut into 1/2" dice
1 tsp kosher salt
1 large egg
1 1/2 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 c cold water
Mix together flour and salt. Using a pastry cutter, mix butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Add egg to water and beat slightly. Add liquids to flour mixture and work with hands until it comes together. shape into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Place in fridge for a minimum of 1 hour. Roll between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick and cut into 4" rounds. Place filling in the middle, fold over and seal with a fork along the edges. Refrigerate approx 20 minutes.
Heat approx 2" of oil (canola) to 350 degrees and fry pies two at a time. Place on paper towel lined plate.
I had lots of filling left because the pastry only made 4 pies.
I decide to make a cheesy macaroni for supper. I'll get around to making hand pies one day.
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