Friday, June 03, 2005

Seymour Lake "Pandowdy, of sorts"

"Shoo fly pie and apple pandowdy. Makes your eyes light up, your tummy say 'howdy.'" --Hit song from 1946

J. and I cooked together this weekend.

Our feat was a pandowdy.

Given that J. was in town, and given that we were cooking together and given that we had a whole weekend of eating our meals simultaneously, forgive me if I'm inclined to say that "[o]ur FETE was a pandowdy."

In any event, I would be more accurate to call it a "pandowdy, of sorts." And I should probably be quite clear about this: there was no apple in this pandowdy - I just can't do apple desserts until autumn/fall when the orchards are crowned with "U-Pick" signs.

Rather, J and I made a blueberry peach pandowdy.

Actually, in all honesty, it was a blueberry peach pie, baked in a ceramic pie plate, with the bottom crust rolled over like a country gallette and a top crust fashioned out of various shapes of moose and whales placed to frolic in the middle. The blueberries and peaches boiled over the moose and whale shapes. As a result, it came out looking like a pandowdy, which are made by breaking up and submerging parts of the top crust with a fork halfway through the baking of a pie.

Hence the pandowdy name.

We took it to my firm's summer picnique at a co-worker's cabin, and made a day of feasting, laughing, boating, and gatherin' 'round the firepit on Seymour Lake.

Hence, the Seymour Lake Pandowdy.



*recipe: The filling can be made with the usual hodgepodge determined solely by availability - a bag of peaches (which J. peeled and sliced), a handful of frozen Northwestern blueberries (very important to support the sustainable farmers and recognizable farms), a handful of sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a dash of cardamom, sprinkle of salt, grated peel of half a lemon, juice of half a lemon, a couple finger-pushes of cornstarch and a safety dash of flour. The crust was made with 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup of chilled butter, salt and 6 tbsp of water. It was mixed with a pastry cutter and chilled for an hour. Then it was rolled out rough and choppy. I am a country girl at heart - I like my pies to show that the ingredients were gingerly selected, but the pie itself was assembled with bravado - not shy devotion. I divvied up the crust so that most of it was allotted to the bottom crust, which I rolled out especially wide so that I could fold the edge over the filing. I cut out the whale and moose shapes with some Alaskan cookie cutters I've been so eager to use. I put a few chunks of butter over the filling before topping it with the moose and whale crusts. Then I baked it at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, turned the heat down to 350 degrees, and baked it until the filling was bubbly and hot. We let it cool in the back seat of the car on the 2 hour drive to Seymour Lake (of course, that would have been merely a 1 hour and fifteen minute drive, if anyone else but me was driving).

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