Easy as Pie
So, I went a little crazy at the roadside fruit stand and found myself with way too many apricots and some strawberries on the brink of going soft. The answer to my dilemma arrived like a dream from the heavenly blue: Pie! Creamy-fruity pie! Pie, pie, pie. (Can you tell I love pie?)
All I had to do was figure out how to summon up the particular variety of creamy fruitiness (or perhaps fruity creaminess) that was already on the tip of my tongue. I looked up some recipes online but they weren’t very helpful, so I just made it up as I went along. It came out so well that I decided to share the recipe with you. In honor of the FBI’s quest to infiltrate the infamous vegan potluck, I call this my
Vegan Potluck Pie(*)
Ingredients
strawberries and apricots in equal measure (enough to fill half a pie)
1 vacuum-packed container firm Mori-Nu tofu
confectioner’s (powdered) sugar (um, I don’t know exactly how much)
1/4 cup sugar (more to taste)
1 tsp rosewater (**) (more to taste)
baked pie crust of your choice
Instructions
- peel your apricots and rinse your strawberries
- pull out about 1/3 of an apricot and a couple of big strawberries
- chop the pulled out fruit very finely and set aside
- chop the remaining fruit into bite sized pieces
- layer the bite sized pieces in a mixing bowl, sprinkling each layer with 1/4 tsp of rosewater and enough powdered sugar to coat it, stir and refrigerate
- make and bake your pie crust — you can use any basic pie crust recipe, such as the one in Veganomicon(***), or any of the many online
- wait until the pie crust is out of the oven and cooling to go on to the next steps (this might be a good time to do the dishes)
- dump the tofu, the sugar, the finely chopped fruit, and 1/4 tsp rosewater into a blender
- blend
- taste, adding sugar and/or a touch more rosewater until it tastes heavenly to you
- pour the blended mixture into the pie crust
- spread the refrigerated fruit on top
- optional: bake at 400F just until the fruit on top softens
- chill for at least 3 hours, trying not to think about pie the whole time
I ate the whole pie over the course of a weekend and didn’t feel bad about that at all. What could be more healthy than tofu and fruit?
(*) I actually don’t recommend making this pie for vegan potlucks attended by non-vegans as it might be a bit too tofu-y for them. For events attended by non-vegans, I like to make what I call “tropical mini-muffins” made with lots of vegan margarine and packed with shredded coconut and mandarin orange wedges. I’ll share that recipe another day.
(**) “I used to think I invented baking with rosewater,” I told Isa Chandra Moscowitz after finding cookie and cake recipes calling for it in Veganomicon. “You did!” she said. She did too. You won’t find many pastry recipes calling for it. Most are probably by people who, like me, bought some on impulse thinking, “this looks interesting,” and then went with impulse again when baking. (It’s usual use is in Indian cooking.) Where can you get it? I expect you can order it online. I get mine at an Indian/Pakistani grocery in a nearby town. Isa says its often shelved in Bodegas in NYC.
(***) Speaking of Veganomicon, the “Lost Coconut Cream” pie recipe in there is to die for. I make it with less sugar and lime instead of lemon juice, adding more lime juice in lieu of the vanilla extract and topping it off with lime zest, for a refreshing blast of lime-coconut deliciousness.
