I made tomato pie yesterday–inspired by a post on Facebook’s “Not the NY Times Cooking Community” page. I had never heard of such a thing before, but I not only liked it a lot, but I have ideas on how to improve the recipe, which means that it will happen again. The idea is simple: make a pie shell. Put down a (fairly well-packed) layer of ripe tomatoes, followed by about a layer of caramelized onion, a scattering of crisp bacon bits, a quarter cup of chopped fresh herbs… then do it all over again. Then you top the whole thing with a mixture of shredded cheese, mayonnaise, and pimentos, and bake.
The result is nothing like a pizza, but delicious and fresh tasting. Next time I will use Roma tomatoes rather than slicers, make sure that at least half of the fresh herbs are basil (I had parsley, so I used parsley), increase the amount of onion and bacon (because really, onion and bacon) and try using yogurt rather than mayonnaise in the topping. Also might change up the cheese to make a mixture of cheddar and jack (this time out it was all cheddar).
But that isn’t actually what I called you here to discuss. Over the course of the last year I’ve done a lot of cooking, and because of that I’ve indulged myself by purchasing tools for cooking: a better hand-held citrus juicer (the old plastic one had been half-melted); a new pie plate; a stainless steel rolling pin*; a beautiful new dough scraper; and most recently, a silicon mat for rolling pie crust on. I had always thought that last was a bit of a preciousness. Real Cooks Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Silicone Mats. Except that this meant I was always using a tape measure to make sure that crust was the right size, and cleaning up my counter was a gummy pain in the ass.
Yesterday I got to use my pastry mat, and realized that this was a thing I had not known I needed. The thing I had bought it for–the marked circles that enable you to roll your dough out to the right size–was of course wonderful. But… this thing sticks to my counter, not in a why-won’t-you-come-off sort of way, but in a things-aren’t-sliding-around sort of way. I can put down a sprinkle of flour, roll, turn, and roll again, move the dough around without it sticking, and when it is the proper size, pick up one edge of the mat to make the crust drape over my rolling pin for easy transport to its destination pie plate. Then I can put the whole mat in the sink (try doing that with a granite counter!) for quick clean up.
This is hands down the most orderly looking pie crust I have ever made.
My father and I used to bond over a mutual love of good tools–particularly good cooking tools. On more than one occasion we went to restaurant supply stores just to wander through faunching after the professional grade pots and dishes. Dad wasn’t a baker, but I suspect he would have joined in my glee at having a new and wonderful tool to play with.
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*this was another thing I hadn’t realized would be minority life-changing: if you’re making a butter-rich dough you do not want to melt or get too soft, you can put the rolling pin in the freezer for half an hour prior to rolling out, and it keeps your dough from getting shapeless due to overworking. My old wooden rolling pin, dearly fond of it as I am, couldn’t claim that