Anyone for Pie?

Well, the flat of peaches that my friend Tyla picked up for me was ripe, ripe, ripe. They were white peaches, too, very tender and delicately flavored, so I decided to whip up a pie. I used the all-butter crust recipe, minus the sugar. I usually do include the sugar, and the crust is excellent, but sometimes it browns too much if the filling takes a long time to cook, as in pumpkin pie. Since the prescribed cooking time was 2 1/4 hours, I left it out. My mom's crust recipe was always flour, Crisco, salt and water, so I am not too worried about it. For filling, I used one of the recipes from Food and Wine this month, which is as follows:

Peach Pie
(This was for Peach-Raspberry Pie, but I don't have any raspberries.)

3 3/4 lbs peaches, peeled (never!) and sliced (10 cups)
3/4 c sugar
1/4 c cornstarch
pinch of salt

Bake at 375 degrees for 2 to 2 1/4 hours
I turned the oven down to 300 in the last 20 minutes of baking, as the crust was looking just right. I also added a bit of cinnamon, mostly because I was close to out of sugar, but I did have some cinnamon sugar already mixed up.

Do not forget to put a piece of tin-foil or a foil-covered cookie sheet under summer pies. They can be juicy. This recipe was for a "deep dish" pie. My dish is pretty deep, so I can only imagine how messy this pie would have been with the additional 3 cups of raspberries in the original recipe.

And a few more things to do with zucchini and other summer squash:

6. Zucchini bread and muffins, of course. Do not attempt, as I did, to sneak extra zucchini into the batter.

7. Grate or shred fresh zucchini over salads.

8. Stir grated zucchini into risotto at the very end.

9. Ratatouille, which I mentioned before, is also great on pizza. The store-bought cornmeal crusts are great with ratatouille, soft goat cheese, and pesto.

10. If you have ratatouille on hand (because if you have squash and eggplant like I have squash and eggplant, you are going to make a lot of it this summer!) just putting little bits on baguette slices with a nugget of goat cheese is a quick, tasty appetizer.

One of yesterday's zucchini casseroles: