yankee doodle dandy

A belated happy July 4th to all SSH readers!  I celebrated our nation's independence up in the country with my mom and husband and our new charcoal grill.  It was too hot and muggy for sitting outside in proper barbeque fashion, but it felt very summery to be eating grilled hot dogs (since nothing is more all-American than German sausages, I had stopped by Schaller & Weber on 86th and 2nd before driving out of town on Tuesday to get some knackwurst and bratwurst for the occasion), homemade baked beans, and my favorite summer side of all time, summer corn and orzo salad with cucumber-feta dressing.  As you might have guessed from the picture above, we had a lot of leftovers.

Over the rest of the self-imposed long weekend, I decided to try my hand at something even more traditionally American and summery: deep-dish blueberry pie.  Normally, I do not like to bake anything that involves rolling out a crust, but the recipe for this pie, which came from an old issue of Food & Wine Magazine, seemed simple enough. You really just need a food processor, a lot of blueberries, and several hours to let the pie bake and cool and VOILA! A pie Norman Rockwell would have been proud to paint and any allegiance-pledging (or simply pie loving) American would be happy to eat, especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Here's the recipe:

For the dough:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, still cold and cut into 1/2" dice
1/2 cup ice water, plus more if needed

For the filling:

8 cups fresh blueberries
3/4 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon zest
pinch of salt

1) Pulse the flour and salt in the bowl of a large food processor.  Add the butter and pulse 5-10 times, until the diced butter is the size of peas.  Drizzle in the ice water and pulse until the dough forms a ball. 

2) Remove the dough from the food processor and divide in half.  Flatten each half into a round disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until firm, at least 30 minutes.

3) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl, toss the blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, lemon zest, and salt. 

4) Roll out one half of the dough into a 13" round, about 1/8 in thick. Line a pie dish with the rolled out dough and pour in the blueberry mixture.

5) Roll out the second half of the dough the same way and lay across the top of the pie filling. Press the edges together and trim the overhanging dough. (I tried to also create an attractive "crimp" pattern, but I think as long as the top is sticking to the bottom, it doesn't really matter). Lightly brush the top with water and sprinkle with sugar (~1 tablespoon seemed right). Cut a few slits in the top crust for steam to escape.

6) Bake the pie until the filling is bubbling and the crust is golden brown, about 2 hours. Let cool for 5 hours at room temperature before serving.