Jamie Oliver's Sweet Pastry~

This is the last Jamie Oliver Friday I will do for awhile. There are a few more recipes I want to post but they are very seasonal and this is NOT the season for them, and then there is the one last recipe that requires a lot of wild game which my husband has brought home from the hunt and he will prepare it , in his time. This is the sweet pastry, which in the book is directly opposite the savory recipe I posted last week. I like this pastry but instead of using it as a fruit pie pastry as Jamie suggests, I will in the future use it as a ONE crust pie pastry for cream pies, or lemon meringue.The pastry is rich enough for me to be dessert by itself! You will need:

• 3 1/2 cups organic all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting ( *I did not have organic, just used regular)
• 1 cup icing (* confectioners' ) sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons good quality cold butter , cut into small cubes
• zest of one lemon
• 2 large eggs
• a splash of milk (* and he means JUST a splash)
• flour for dusting

"Sift the flour from a height onto a clean work surface (* from a height?) and sift the icing sugar over the top. Using your hands , work the cubes of butter into the flour and sugar by rubbing your thumbs against your fingers until you end up with a fine crumbly mixture. This is the point where you can spike the mixture with interesting flavors, so mix in your lemon zest." "Add the eggs and milk to the mixture and gently work it together till you have a ball of dough. Flour it lightly . Don't work the pastry too much at this stage or it will become elastic and chewy, not crumbly and short. Flour your work surface and place the dough on top. Pat it into a flat round , flour it lightly , wrap in plastic wrap and put it into the fridge to rest for at least half an hour." Jamie Oliver I pulled this out of the oven around midnight and had to let it cool to taste it. The pastry is delicious, my winter apples are a disappointment. Even with the right amount of sugar, cinnamon, and lemon...the lack of flavor the apples show cannot be disguised. My lesson here is that if I am going to invest such rich ingredients and my time into a recipe I will make sure ALL the ingredients are worthy! I think my sheep will appreciate the remaining winter apples from our trees NOT baked into a pie. * asterisk denotes my comments or words

NOT Jamie Oliver Friday, How Bazaar!

I have been crazy busy getting ready for the Lake Lawrence Christmas Bazaar that starts tomorrow. My husband and I set up my booth tonight, which means I was NOT cooking...however last night he cooked for us! He is an excellent cook.( He is the better cook in the family, but don't tell him I am admitting to that!) Since he was the cook he did not use a Jamie Oliver recipe, he used one we read on Noble Pig's blog. Here was my dinner last night, Vanilla Cider Pork & Walnut Wild Rice. It was delicious. My husband was not too crazy about the pears but it turns out his pear was almost too ripe before he sauteed it but I thought my pear was perfect. It was warm and flavorful and still firm inside. The cider pork was perfection and the wild rice dish could be served as a dish all by itself. In fact, I think we will be making the rice dish for a potluck and we had better make a lot because I could eat a LOT of this! To get the recipe from Noble Pig herself click here* and check out the November 4th recipe. ( For some reason my computer will not allow the hyper-link to the specific recipe, sorry) I made this pie for a potluck awhile ago and this Mile High Apple Pie With Cranberries is from Mary's blog One Perfect Bite. I love, love , love cranberries. Sometimes I eat the cranberries just by themselves, no cooking, or sugar, or embellishments of any kind, so I was delighted at the idea of adding them to apples to make a pie. We have a lot of apples from the trees in our orchard and I have been told my pies are pretty good so hey, I tried it. Looks good on the outside if I must say so myself, and there was no pie left-over or tossed in the garbage at the potluck so it must be tasty. My grandchildren informed me it needed more sugar and I can see where they were coming from. I used the least amount of sugar called for in the recipe, next time I will add the max amount. The grandchildren ate their pie, so it was good, they just prefer MORE sugar!For this recipe click here.* I can't wait to have the busyness of the bazaar over so I can get down to holiday baking and cleaning and decorating and....