Fill 'Er Up
It's 10:30p and--even after playing hide and go seek with your subjectivity by sipping pear brandy and overdosing on Stargate SG-1--you're feeling a little restless and looking for something to ease your mind? Don't despair, pare. It'll give you something (else) to do with your hands.

It's time to get your apple and rhubarb pie filling together and bake yourself a little happiness. Start by pulling the two disks of pie dough you made half an hour ago and put them on the counter to warm up a bit.

Bitter Fruit
Technically, rhubarb isn't a fruit. Rather, it's a stalky spring vegetable known to some as the "pie plant". When stewed in sugar and spices, the rhubarb's natural bitterness yields a balanced, sweet-tart vegetal flavor that's unique and unexpected. Apples add texture (rhubarb tends to melt a bit when cooked), bulk, and moderates the rhubarb's intense style. The classic rhubarb pairing, of course, is strawberry. But when I went shopping, the granny smiths were looking like money in the bank.

Granny smith's firm structure and sourness survive the high heat of baking. For a single pie, you'll need about 8-9 medium apples, cored and peeled. As soon as you put the first of your apple pieces into a bowl, squeeze a little lemon over them and toss. Every few minutes as you add more, toss the bowl around to coat the new bits. Lemon juice adds a bit of flavor to the filling and prevents oxidation browning. In a pie filling, brown pieces aren't terribly bad, but the reddish rhubarb color holds up better without any competition.

Chop the rhubarb into half to three quarters inch chunks, discarding the ends. Throw them into the bowl with the apple and toss in half a cup of sugar. To thicken the filling toss in a quarter cup of flour. Next, choose your spices. If you like the fall flavors, throw in cinnamon, a tiny bit of ground clove, and some ginger, or eave them out entirely. It's your evening, after all. No matter what you decide, however, add a solid pinch of salt. It just makes everything in the filling taste more like itself.

Construct
Here's the tricky part. Take your disks and unwrap them. Spread a little flour on a clean surface and start rolling with your trusty pin from the center of the disk, rotating your approach an hour on the clock face with each strike. Your objective is to create a round, eighth-inch plane of luscious buttery dough. Once you've achieved it as best you can, dust a tiny bit of flour onto your round and roll it up, window-shade style, onto the pin. This makes the transfer to the pie plate a lot less painful.

Now do it all over again with the second disk, pour the filling into the bottom half, and gently lay your second round over the top. Trim around the edges leaving about half an inch of overhang, which you'll fold over onto the pie plate edge. Crimp the edges, cut a few vents into the top, and throw it into a preheated, 425 degree oven. Bake it on a low shelf for 10 minutes, drop the heat to 350 and set your timer for 40 minutes. Once your crust has turned a nice golden brown and the fruit is soft, you're done. Take out the pie, cool at least 45 minutes on a rack (trust me don't skip this step) and serve. Hopefully you haven't gone through that pint of ice cream in the freezer yet, because it goes perfectly with pie.


(This one's for N...hope you had a chuckle :-)

Late Night Pie: A Sensual Affair

Moon Pie
Baking pie late at night may not substitute for dinner and a movie, but it’s better than mowing a pint of ice cream and watching a Kevin Costner rerun. And if, like me, you’re an unrepentant first-thing-in-the-morning eater, making late night pie has a lot to offer that dates don’t—it looks as good as it did when you went to bed, makes breakfast for you, and although not as hot as it was last night, its just as sweet and tender.

The Heart and Soul of Pie
At its very best, a fruit pie offers a hearty, toasty, salty, and delicately butter-flavored crust along with a moist, intense filling that reveals your chosen fruit's unique character and complexity in it's most favorable light. The crust might be flaky or it might be tender—the filling always luscious and redolent of fruit and spices.

For my late night pie, I decided on apples and blueberries. The apples were fresh, organic granny smiths. The blueberries were good quality, frozen berries from Washington state. For me, the soul of the pie is a golden and tender crust. Tarts demand flaky, more structured layered crusts and pies gently call for golden brown, melt-in-your-mouthiness. Without a stunningly beautiful and fork tender crust, the pie is just a tart without direction.

Approach the Crust
Buying a pre-baked pie shell is not only easy and cheap, it’s a total cop out! Embrace the flour and butter: make your own. It tastes and looks much better. Industrial pie shells skimp on the quality of the fat, and it’s the fat that makes the flavor in a pie shell.

So buy the good butter (unsalted) and flavor-neutral vegetable shortening. Be sure to avoid any vegetable shortening that contains trans-fats or has been partially hydrogenated. That stuff'll kill you...

Cool Your Jets
First, make everything as cold as you can: the flour, the food processor (or good old) mixing bowl, and the fat (a blend of vegetable shortening and butter, or butter alone). The flour can be stored in Ziploc bags in the freezer, as can your sticks of butter and shortening. Before you start, throw the food processor bowl in the ice box for a few minutes while you gather the rest of your ingredients and measuring spoons. To make a crust with both top and bottom, you’ll need:

2 ½ cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 stick of unsalted butter (8 tbs)
1 stick of vegetable shortening (8tbs)
Ice water

You can elaborate this recipe by making pastry flour (half all purpose flour, half cake flour) but it's not really necessary.

Start by cutting up the butter and shortening into sugar cube sized pieces, then throw it back into the freezer. Measure the flour, salt and sugar and put it in the food processor or mixing bowl and pulse or whisk it around a couple of times to combine. Next add the fat cubes and pulse in brief bursts or cut in with a pastry tool until you see pea sized bits of fat scattered evenly in the flour.

Next add super-cold ice water a few tablespoons at a time, pulsing or cutting it in until you’ve mixed in a total of 8. You’re looking for a loose mealy texture that sticks into a semi-stable lump when squeezed. If it falls apart easily after clumping, you’ll need a bit more water, pulsing or cutting in after each addition. Be careful to add it just a tablespoon at a time until it’s ready. Take care not to push too far too fast in adding water and mixing: careful and frequent listening to your dough is the key.

Round it Out
Once you've gotten to a mealy mass that sticks under pressure, split it in half and pour into two Ziploc bags. Working quickly, form each of the dough into disks about an inch and a half thick and place in the fridge.

Now it's time to pop some corn and catch up on your movie for half an hour...the dough, like you, needs to relax.

Come back soon for part two, in which:

• The filling is made and added
• The pie is baked
• A potentially tearful evening of alone time becomes a dramatic crowd pleaser the next day at the workplace, home, picnic, or dinner party.

More From Brussels (and Alsace)

Go To France!
When you think about the Alsace-Lorraine region (if you ever do) you might imagine misty rolling hills tucked between the River Rhine and the Vosges mountain in the north east of France. At least that's pretty much what you should be imagining, because it looks like that. Without getting into a huge history lesson, Alsace has passed between French and German control a thousand times, and the result is a blend of culture, language, and wine-making technique that makes the region unique. Also a bit creepy in light of the Nazi collaboration that may have taken place?? It's all a bit hazy what happened during that time, but there were heroes and fascists...like in all wars.

Back to the Wine
If you're an aromatic white wine fan (as I am) you may imagine the so-called 'noble vine' (aka Riesling) flourishing on vineyards overlooked by castles and dotted with walled cities built hundreds of years ago. It's really like that, which is why Disney copied it and jazzed up the local folklore to create his scrubbed-up, family-friendly Anaheim paradise.

In Alsace today, there's a 'rue de vin' that's pretty much the same as Napa's wine trail, although it all feels more genuine because it's been around so long. For literally hundreds of years, families in the region have produced some of the most profound, aromatic Rieslings and a host of smaller varietals I had never heard of before visiting: Sylvaner and Pinot Auxerrois among them. They're both less acidic than Riesling, more rounded and mellow without the powerful floral perfumes you normally associate with Riesling. Sylvaner has Grand Cru terroir, so take it seriously when you go. Grand Cru!

The Food Sucked
I love food. I love food more than I love my doctor and my cat, which is a lot. But I have to say the food in Alsace wasn't good. The bread wasn't the crisp, light, slightly sweet Parisian baguette I had hoped for. And the big "must try" food for tourists is a monstrosity called the Choucroutte Avec Cochon de Lait--roughly sauerkraut with the piggie cooked with milk. Also simply called Choucroutte Avec Cochon. By either name, it was a disgusting pile up of blended pork products on a haystack of sauerkraut. I don't think the original dish must have looked this grotesque...it's kind of like the "chowder in the bread bowl" of Alsace. I stuck religiously to grilled meat and did fine. I advise the same. I have no doubt you can find a place that serves great Choucroutte...just proceed with caution.

The Cutest Town Ever Created
Globalization has brough big box stores to Alsace Lorraine. But a mile away on the 'rue du vin' you'll find the most amazing town called Riquewihr. It was a hub of wine trading for a long time, which explains why it's nestled in the heart of the vineyard country. When you're in Riquewihr it feels like a completely other world, except that all the shops have the same crap in them you can get anywhere (bascially). That's globalization again. It's a tiny walled city with a well and tiny streets that radiate from a central square. Yes, it has a drawbridge.

The Homophobic Hotel
I normally don't rant about political injustice, but I need to say something here. I was travelling with five other people (a couple (men), my partner (also a man), a gay man and a straight woman (both of whom are coupled but their SOs couldn't make it).

At this one hotel in Riquewirh that specializes in younger/poorer travelers, there was an immediate assumption on the part of the desk clerk that Pedro and Amy were a couple couple, and that the rest of us four guys weren't. In addition, the hotelier (who finally caught the vibe) asked us fifteen times whether we (the gay couples) wanted 'separate single beds' instead of doubles. Ok, once maybe to be polite, but he kept asking with an evil twinkle in his eye. Not cool.

And on top of that, the shower sucked and the room smelled like a carton of cigarettes had been lit on fire, dissolved in water, and then used to wash the sheets. The name of this place is "Hotel De La Couronne". If you're gay and not looking to be disrespected, avoid. To be fair, the younger man who did the check-out in the morning was extremely cool, and they had a very furry dog that was also excellent.

Sugar Shack-The Coco500 Cocktail Connection

I'm blogging today to blow the whistle on a technique I learned recently at Coco500, one of the most innovative cocktail garages in San Francisco. As you may already know, Coco500's bev list was developed by Thad Vogler, the same mixmaster who manages the bar at Slanted door. If you had to come up with a short description, it would have to be "grand old standards with twisted ingredients". For example, the Manhattan is made with blood orange and they use organic sugar.

When I went to Coco500 a few nights ago, there was a bartender in training who made my cocktails, so I got to watch the blow by blow instruction. I ordered the signature drink (the Coco500), a mojito-inspired affair made with Thai basil and kefir lime vodka (which by the way is delicious). The cool trick they used, however, was to grind up the organic sugar using a coffee grinder into powder, helping the sugar to dissolve quickly and speed up the mixing process.

Serious Social Lubricant
Cocktails are a wonderful thing. They transport time-tested and honored liquors, bathing us in a bit of history with each sip, but they can also prepare the palette for food and loosen your tongue for a steady flow of conversation. But to accomplish all of this, they need to be delicious. And delicious means balanced, interesting, and greater than the sum of its parts. At Coco500, they treat each cocktail as an appetizer. During the training of the new bartender, I personally witnessed at least a dozen drinks being prepared under the careful scrutiny of the head bartender. And after each one was prepared, a fresh swizzle straw was dipped into the freshly poured drink, a little captured by covering the other end with a thumb, and then tasted before sending it out and disposing of the straw.

A Couple of Take-Homes
Get yourself a $15 blade grinder to use for sugar, but don't use it for anything else. Once you get into the habit of pulverizing your sugar, you'll start to think about doing things to it like tossing in a couple of bay leaves, maybe a vanilla bean, or kefir lime leaves to create flavor nuances that can womp up your creations.

Next, invest in a box of those black or red skinny bartender straws. Not only do they look mighty real leaning against the inside of the tumbler when serve your guests at home, they're also indispensable for sanitary, focused tasting of your latest concoction.

Fancy Flights, and Flights of Fancy

Tempt your adventurous mixologist within (or the one at your favorite establishment) to take you on a whirlwind tour of the top shelf by preparing a flight of cocktails for you and a couple of thoughtful drinking buddies. It's a fun way to try out new concoctions, and a great excuse to survey the field of spirits. Some bartenders team up with the restaurant's chef to bring food pairings into the mix.

A Couple of Ways to Go
One approach is to showcase a single liquor in a variety of cocktails. You and two or three friends get a little pour (just enough to really taste it, but not so much that you have to pack it in and head for home early). This is a great do-at-home approach, because you only need to purchase one bottle of the liquor in question.

Another approach is to make the same cocktail featuring five or six brands of the same booze. While this is probably the most scientific way to find out which brand tastes best in your favorite cocktail, the variety and interest comes in the subtleties of the liquors. If you're feeling highly rational and looking to hone your tasting skills, this might be your gig. I found out how little difference vodka filtered 35 or 135 times makes once mixed with citrus or other potent flavors. Whiskey, by contrast, remains fairly recognizable even when dosed.

The third, and perhaps least scientific but highly entertaining and crowd-pleasing way, is to have your mixologist prepare a bunch of cocktails using several brands. In the end you won't learn much about the subtle differences between liquors as sharply as you might using a stricter approach, but if your bartender is knowledgeable, it can still be a great way to get introduced to new spirits.

Who's Doing It?
In Boston at the Metropolitan club, the Flight to Provence martini sampler is offered with snacks and a unique “liquid Caprese” salad created by chef Todd Winer. In New York at Flaturon, mixologist Julie Reiner offers themed cocktail tastings. At Trois restaurant in Atlanta, Eric Simpkins brings Sazerac to several classic and not so classic recipes.