Category: Desserts

Traditional Pie Crust: Leaf Lard & Butter Dough

Culinary, Desserts, Southern Cooking
FOR ONE DOUBLE-CRUST PIE OR TWO SINGLE-CRUST PIES

Ingredients

  • 2½ cups all-purpose unbleached flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 8 tablespoons (punsalted butter, in tablespoon-size pieces
  • 8 tablespoons rendered leaf lard, in tablespoon-size pieces *
  • ½ cup ice water plus 1–2 tablespoons more as needed
  • Flour for rolling out dough

* Leaf lard is available at most butcher shops, some farmers’ markets, and also Online.

Directions

  • Add all ingredients except the ice water to a large bowl.
  • Quickly mix the mixture together with your hands or a pastry blender with an up and down motion, until the ingredients appear like cracker crumbs with lumps the size of peas.
  • Sprinkle ice water over the mixture and stir lightly with a fork until a handful of dough holds together. Add more water as needed.
  • Divide the dough in two and make two discs about 5 inches across.
  • Wrap the dough in two plastic wrap packages, and chill for about an hour.
  • Take out the dough and allow to warm slightly  until they feel slightly soft to the touch and easy to roll out.
  • Unwrap one and place it on a well-floured board or pastry cloth.  Sprinkle some flour on top. Hit the dough with your rolling pin several times. Turn it over and hit the other side.
  • Sprinkle more flour onto the dough as needed to keep the pin from sticking, and roll the crust out from the center in all directions.
  • Roll the dough until is is approximately 1 to 2 inches larger than your pie pan, brush off the extra flour.
  • Lay the dough in the pie pan carefully.  Don’t worry if the crust has cracks or even a small hole. Brush a little water where it needs to be patched and glue on the patch piece.
  • Put the filling in the pie and repeat the process with the other piece of dough.

Note: You may add a teaspoon or two of sugar if you prefer a sweeter dough.

Basic Halva

Culinary, Desserts, Israeli/Jewish Food

Halva is a confection made from raw tehina and sugar, sometimes stabilized with additives.  In Israel, you’ll see halva stalls with huge slabs in every imaginable flavor, from rose water to pistachio to chocolate to coffee.

2 cups sugar
½ vanilla bean, scraped
Zest of 1 lemon
1½ cups tehina
Pinch kosher salt

Line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper. Have ready another sheet of parchment paper.

Combine the sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest with ½ cup water in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Then cook, without stirring, until the mixture registers 245 degrees on a candy thermometer.

While the sugar syrup is cooking, place the tehina and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle. Beat on medium speed.

When the sugar syrup reaches 245 degrees carefully stream it into the tehina with the mixer running. Mix until the syrup is incorporated and the mixture begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Working quickly with a flexible heatproof spatula, transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Press the top of the halva flat with the sheet of parchment paper and your hands. Let cool completely to room temperature. Cut into squares and store at room temperature, well wrapped in plastic wrap.

Will keep for up to a week.