Jade Cafe

Recipes

Warm Morning Goodness:
Corn Bread
Biscuits
Pancakes
Corn Cakes (Sweet)

Pies and things:
Pie Crust
Jam Pockets

Small Dishes:
Mushroom Stuffed Bread
Chicken Whiskey Wontons
Savory Corn Cakes

Soups:
Eggplant Soup
Squash Soup
Chicken Stock
Vegetable Stock

Drinks:
Agua Fresca

Pie Crust

2 cups cake or pastry flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
about 4 tablespoons cold water
extra flour for kneeding and rolling out

What this recipe makes:

This makes one crust. That means if you are making a pie with a top or lattice on it you need to make two of these. It is best not to double the recepe, but to actually make it twice. Usually, when you are making a covered or latticed pie, you make the bottom first and bake it a little, then add the filling and the top. You can make the dough for the top when the bottom is baking.

Making the Pie Crust:

Put the flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Add the olive oil and cut it in so that it is even throughout the mixture and the mixture starts bunching up into little pea-sized balls. Add two tablespoons of the water and mix it in lightly. The trick here is to handle the dough as little as possible. Add more water, one tablespoon at a time, just till the moment when all the mixture adheres into a single ball. Then turn it out onto a floured bord, push it into a round disk and roll it into the shape you want, using the flour on the board to keep it from sticking to the board.

A note on handling the dough:

I do not kneed the dough when I am making a pie, just kind of push it into a disk and let the rolling pin make a cohesive thing out of it. If I am making filled pockets, (that's little hand-held pies that don't cook in a pie pan) I kneed the dough just a little, to give it some structure to hold together without a pan