A Culinary Trip Around the World

Folks, we're traversing the globe with this post!  In the last two weeks, I've made 4 pies from 4 different cultures!  Represent!  I whipped up an Apple Pie (the good 'ole USofA), a Pizza Pie-a (say it with an Italian accent), Shepherd's Pie (top 'o the mornin' to ya, Ireland!), and Banoffee Pie (yes, that's what it's called... crazy Brits).

So, let's start our global trek!

For my boyfriend's birthday a few weeks ago, I made an apple pie, and it turned out SO much better than the first one I made.  Apart from a pool of juice in the bottom, it was damn near perfect.  I'm ridiculously proud of that pie... it was super full (so it looked awesome) and packed with flavor.  Yum, yum, yum!  I could go on and on... the crust was flaky and golden, the apples were cooked just right... it. was. awesome!

But as that was a "special" pie, I had to make another that week, so I decided on pizzas!  Totally counts as a pie, by the way.  A bit of a background on this... growing up, for all of our family gatherings (on my dad's side), we would meet up at Fricano's Pizza Parlor in Grand Haven, Michigan (sometimes we ordered it to go and ate it elsewhere, but it was always Fricano's).  The owners of Fricano's are old family friends (my dad used to work there too... I think.  Right?  Wrong?  Someone help me out there), but even if they weren't, I think Fricano's still would've been the place to go.  The pizza is amazing.

The original location is in an old house that's been converted into the restaurant, and to get a table, you wait on the steps outside... most nights the line wraps way down the steps and onto the sidewalk.  It's a pretty simple pizza place... they have one size and one type of crust: thin.  I'm not usually a thin crust person, but this is so, so, so good.  It's so hard to describe just how fantastic a Fricano's pizza is... it's all greasy and messy, but so packed with fresh flavors that it's insanely easy to lose count of how many slices you eat (as in, I could easily eat a whole pizza.  Not that I have...).

Well, the Fricano's being old friends and all, my dad has the recipe and we've been making pizzas that way since I was a kid.  Way back in my 2nd post, I told you about our pie making days growing up.  Well, we did the same thing for pizza days, and we would make a huge batch of them to freeze and enjoy for a few weeks.  I always volunteered to be in charge of either the cheese, mushrooms, or pepperoni, as I was a sneaky little foodie and loved to swipe samples as we baked.

I've been dying to make these pizzas as part of my project for months now, so I called up my dad to get the dough recipe and set to work!

My boyfriend and I made 4 pizzas: pepperoni, mushroom, ham and pineapple, and pepperoni and ham.  As it was a Lenten Friday, we ate the mushroom one that night and the ham and pineapple the next.  I still have the other 2 in my freezer.

Unfortunately, I didn't roll the dough thin enough, so that wound up being the dominating flavor :(  Otherwise, though, they were quite scrumptious!  I think mine tasted a bit healthier than they were supposed to... the dough was too thick to let the grease soak all the way through!  Haha.  I could've added more sauce, but these aren't supposed to be super saucy pizzas, so the dough was really the big issue there.  Oh well, it was my first attempt at baking something I've been eating my entire life, and it wasn't a failure, so I'm pretty proud of that!

As last week was St. Patrick's Day, I made a Shepherd's pie!  Again, this was a "special" pie, since I already made a version of this in January, but I wanted to give it another go and hopefully improve on the previous recipe.  If you remember, I complained that there was a lack of flavor in the meat last time, which I attributed to a lack of gravy, so this time around I looked up a gravy recipe and set to work. 

I've never made a homemade gravy before, and I don't know if I ever will again!  I made it WAY too thick, and had a lot of trouble trying to thin it out, so I just mixed it in as is with the meat mixture and let it bake.

It came out looking beautiful and tasted pretty good (my fellow taste testers absolutely raved about it), but the "gravy" (if you can call brown goop gravy) didn't add as much flavor as I would've liked, so it was a bit too bland for my liking.  Next time, I think I'll try more spices or something.  Hmmm...

And finally, Banoffee Pie!  I don't have much to complain about here... this is an AWESOME pie.  Definitely going on the pie shop list.  Yes, I'm creating a list.  It's not very long right now, but it'll grow as I work on improving my previous endeavors.

Anyway, banoffee pie is a British recipe (so thanks to the boyfriend for this one), and the weird name is a contraction of banana toffee pie.  I found three recipes for this, all of which varied slightly but featured really similar concepts.  So I stole my favorite parts of each of them and created my own ultimate recipe!  Sounds a bit crazy, but when you hear how simple this pie is, you'll get it.

Well, I say "simple," because it's a really basic idea and consists of few ingredients, but the sucker took about 4 1/2 hours to actually make... only because I chose the easiest methods of baking from each recipe.  More time consuming, but easier :)

So I first made a graham cracker crust in my springform pan (which I adore), and I discovered when shopping for graham crackers that Keebler sells boxes of graham cracker crumbs!  I don't see this as cheating... I still make my own crust, but I just cut out the process of smashing the crackers with a rolling pin.  Genius, Keebler, genius.

So then I had to make the toffee.  I always thought of this as a complex process (like all candy is), but it was about the easiest damn thing ever!  All I did was take 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk, put them in a pot of water, and boil them for 3 hours!  Hence, the time consuming pie-making process.  But open the cans after they've boiled, and voila!  The milk has magically transformed into a caramel-colored toffee!

That went on top of the crust, followed by a layer of bananas, and topped with homemade whipped cream.  I sprinkled some cocoa powder over the top and after a few hours in the fridge, the pie was done!

Apart from being delicious (the flavors mesh well and are actually pretty light), this was also the most perfect-looking pie I've made so far!  When I took the springform pan apart, you could see each individual layer, and it sliced in perfect wedges.  I was SO proud of that!  Three cheers for sprinform! 

Alrighty, I think all of my typing has probably burned your retinas by now, so I'm out!