Many cooks who can flambe, french and butterfly with ease find pie crusts to be completely unmanageable. I can’t flambe, french, butterfly or even make an acceptable omelette, but I think I’ve found a way to make a reliable and delicious crust.

The recipe I use isn’t actually for pie crust (I know, it’s cheating, but sometimes cheating works). It comes from the Williams Sonoma “Mexican” cookbook and is actually a dough for empanadas. With the addition of a bit of sugar, it’s easy to work and tastes flakey, light and buttery.

Before the instructions: a tip that I probably learned from Martha Stewart. After you make a few pie crusts, you begin to understand what a proper crust is supposed to feel like. You can tell if it’s too dry (which means it will break while you’re rolling it) or too moist (which means it will stick to the rolling pin, and then break while you’re rolling it).

You know you have the perfect combination of fats and flour when the dough peels easily off the sides of your mixing bowl without crumbling in your hands.

It should feel like it’s going to stick just until the moment that it peels away and forms a nice fat little ball of dough. If it sticks to the bowl and you have to scrape it off the sides, add a teaspoon or so of flour and mix it in fast and with a few decisive movements of your hand; overworked pie dough has the texture of plywood. If it’s too crumbly and doesn’t want to make a nice ball, add a teaspoon of water and mix it in fast.

Sometimes these little additions are necessary because of variables such as the humidity in the air or the amount of fat in your butter. It’s not a big deal so don’t get nervous. Just don’t add a LOT of water or a lot of flour to correct your problem. If you need to add more than a teaspoon or two, something is probably deeply wrong and you should scrap your dough and start over.

I know, I promised this would be easy, and it will be.

The last thing to know before you begin (this is the Martha Stewart part): once the dough peels nicely off the sides of the bowl, it should form a nice smooth ball that feels as smooth and pliant as a baby’s bottom (a nice clean one, with a little dusting of powder on it).

Here goes:
Bring 1 cup butter (as with most pastries, butter with a high fat content brings the best results) and 6 ounces of cream cheese to room temperature. Cream them together in a big bowl. You’ll be tempted to use your food processor but don’t do it; the ingredients are so sticky that they’ll just clump up on your blades. Use your hands. It’ll be messy but not horrible. And if once you add the flour, you’ll see: the fats should peel right off your fingers.

Stir in 2 cups all-purpose flour and a pinch of sea salt. Work the dough with your hands until it holds together and forms a nice smooth ball — and then stop working it. Your crust will get hard if you work it too long and hard.

Wrap it in plastic wrap and crush it into a flat round disc. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

This dough works well with all kinds of fillings but it also makes a perfect rustic apple tart: Take a bunch of apples, all different kinds (northern spy is considered the best pie apple, but I also mix in macouns, and anything else that looks fairly crisp and flavorful). Peel them, remove the seeds and cut them into thin slices. Mix with sugar (I go light on the sugar, but you can add 1/2 a cup or more for 10 apples if you like it sweet; or skip the sugar and just use a quarter cup of maple syrup instead), cinnamon, maybe a little candied ginger, walnuts, raisins.

Mix the ingredients together and let them sit for 10 minutes or so until their flavors meld.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out your dough on a flat board or a clean counter. I don’t use flour when I roll out because it makes the dough harden up. Instead, I put a layer of plastic wrap over and under the dough as I roll.

Once again, remember what Martha Stewart said: you want to roll gently and firmly out from the center to the edge in a continuous motion. Don’t vigorously run the roller back and forth.

Put a sheet of parchment paper over a baking sheet. Lay your crust, which should be about 1/8 inch thick, out on the parchment. Don’t worry about trimming the edges so they’re perfect and round (you’ll see why in a minute).

Pile the apples into the center of the dough. Don’t worry if the pile is fairly high, but be sure you leave at least two inches of unencumbered crust around the edges.

Dot the top of the apples with about 2 tablespoons of butter, cut into small pieces.

Bring the edges of the crust up and around the apples, folding the corners in.

Beat one egg with a teaspoon or so of water and brush the mixture onto the outside of your pie crust.

This all bakes up nicely in my oven in about 15 minutes, but I have a hot fast oven. Keep an eye on your crust and when it’s golden brown, take it out. Serve it right away, or leave it for up to 24 hours.

Good luck! And let me know how this recipe worked for you.

My daughter may not have noticed how much Halloween candy I’ve been snitching from her, but my thighs and waist certainly have. When I tried to shrug on my blue jeans this a.m., I found that they had gone from comfortably snug to just plain snug.

Happily, they were being pulled on over my swim suit. Today, after a two-month hiatus, I headed back to the wonderful pool at The Hotchkiss School, which is open to the community several days a week. The pool has been getting crowded lately (so I’m not going to tell you when to come; if you want to swim, you’ll have to figure out the times on your own), which is good on the one hand because it means the swim program is a success and will continue; but it points out to all us swimmers how spoiled we’ve become — we can’t stand the thought of actually having to share a lane.

This morning there actually weren’t that many people in the water, which was warmer and more pleasant than usual (a reflection of the weather, perhaps). Several new faces were there,  which is nice. In the locker room we chatted about how hard it is to stay fit in winter and how lucky we are to have the pool.

One woman said she worries about being seen in a swimsuit, which is a complaint you often hear from women: I don’t want to look out of shape while I’m trying to get in shape. Maybe men say the same thing; I’m not in their locker room to hear it, though.  We reminded her that, at the pool, everyone is in a swimsuit and pretty much everyone is over 40. The pool is a great equalizer.

The pool is also a great relaxer, which is the reason I crave my time there. I shot into the water this morning and let two months of accumulated anxiety pull me along at high speed for 35 trips up and back the length of the pool.

By the time I got out of the water, I was still feeling overly energetic. At least now it was positive energy.

‘Tis the season when The Lakeville Journal staff begins to talk and think obsessively about food (well, more obsessively than normal). In this week’s issue (on newstands Nov. 13), you’ll be introduced to a new multi-grain oatmeal being marketed by Holly’s Place, a Salisbury restaurant; you’ll meet Vanity Fair writer (and Lakeville resident) David Kamp, whose new book is “The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation;” and you’ll learn why cranberries are a nutritious and refreshing addition to the heavy, creamy foods we normally find on the autumn table.

In next week’s edition (due out on Nov. 22, right in time for Thanksgiving), health writer Peggy O’Brien will talk about stuffing (or do you say dressing?), and whether it’s okay to ignore the health department warnings about cooking it inside the bird. Naturopathic doctor Richard Malik (a Lakeville Journal columnist with a practice on Main Street in Lakeville village) will talk about a subject that weighs heavy on all our minds after the annual harvest meal: digestion.

There are some excellent books about food and restaurants at the bookstore these days, and nearly all of them have at least one really smart cooking tip hidden inside.

“My Life in France” by Julia Child (and her nephew, Cornwall native Alex Prud’Homme) finally taught me (after 17 years of marriage) how to make fluffy scrambled eggs for my husband’s breakfast. The trick: just lightly beat the eggs (and some salt ‘n peppa) before pouring them into a hot (not sizzling) skillet. Let the eggs set for a moment. THEN stir in the cream.

While reading Bill Buford’s “Heat,” which describes his journey into the inferno of Mario Battali’s kitchen, I learned how to make creamy polenta. I always used to take the polenta off the stovetop as soon as the liquid evaporated, for fear it would turn dry and crunchy, and then burn. Buford learned from Battali’s staff that the trick is to let the liquid evaporate, then keep the pot cooking on low for an hour or so (!), stirring very occasionally. It was a leap of faith for me, but I leapt — and found that this technique works well even with the quick-cook stuff.

Got any favorite cooking shortcuts? Share them with our readers here at Salty Plums by posting comments!

A nice surprise at the refurbished Taro’s in Milllerton: an astonishingly good lemon cake. It’s a golden layer cake with a creamy bit of frosting up top and some crunchy embellishments along the spine. Between the layers is a pudding-like lemon curd and — this is my favorite part — there is lemon ice cream. Totally delicious.
In Salty Plums, we hope to spotlight favorite bites at local restaurants. We hope you’ll share some of yours with us from time to time.

Sometimes I can read the first line of a recipe and know I need take it no further. A particularly clear-cut warning appears in one of my favorite Chinese cookbooks. It reads: “First, kill the turtle.”
But similar warnings show up in more ordinary publications, too. In a recent issue of “Saveur” a recipe starts with the instruction to open all the windows.
No way. I’ll go out for my tea-smoked duck.
Still, many recipes, though tricky, like hollandaise for example, are worth it. Julia Child’s recipe requires good eggs, a refined butter and an understanding that if the sauce turns it can be, 1. fixed, or 2, tossed and started over.
Now I am not one to cut corners. Yes. During my ill-spent youth I spent three days on a cassoulet to impress Tony’s parents with my culinary zeal. And I made sauce Espagnol after a lunch at Lutece. Once.The real thing. But there are times when it would be nice to make an easy, authentic, unscary hollandaise, and just enough for me.
Which is why I love M.F.K. Fisher. Not only did she shelve a suitor who failed to recognize the sublime qualities of her curried lamb, she wrote about an elderly woman who could make fool-proof hollandaise, in just the right amount for herself.
The recipe is from “With Bold Knife and Fork,” a delightful book, and it’s titled Madge Dresser’s Hollandaise for One:

1 large egg yolk
1/4 cup butter
dash cayenne
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Mix all together in a custard cup placed in hot, never boiling, water while cooking the rest of the meal — the asparagus, for instance. Stir with a chop stick occasionally as it thickens. No beating. No worries. Delicious hollandaise. — Marsden Epworth

By Mark Niedhammer

THE DECADENCE SANDWICH

“You’re going to fry a WHAT and put ketchup on it?” Every so often, it’s fun to take the high and mighty and knock it down a few notches. Especially if you knock it down with ketchup. Try this quick-and-easy combination ordinaire, assembled with premium ingredients, and guaranteed to please.

(makes one sandwich)
1/3 to 1/2 lb. tenderloin of beef (such as filet mignon)
1 hard roll (poppy or sesame seed )
1 medium vidalia onion (or any mild onion)
2 or 3 mushrooms
1/3 cup clarified butter
ketchup (how much? lots!)

Cut the onion and mushrooms into thin slices. Set aside. Cut the medallion of beef, across the grain, into 3 or 4 rounds.

Split the roll and either toast or grill. Brush with a little clarified butter.

In a frying pan, over medium heat, saute the onions with the mushrooms untill the onions are translucent. Move them to the side of the pan and pop in the sliced filet. (Add a little more clarified butter if needed — and it’s ALWAYS needed.) Cook the beef to your liking, but remember, this stuff is supposed to be tender and juicy so 30 to 45 seconds on each side should do it. Check it by incision if you are concerned.

Place the sliced, fried (yes, I wrote the “F” word) beef on the toasted roll, then top with mushrooms and onions.

Put lots (and lots) of ketchup on top of all of this, and garnish with a wedge of dill pickle.

P.S. The ketchup must run down your arms while you’re eating or not enough was applied.