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Florida is home to a wide variety of many popular and interesting native fruits. Blackberries to Bananas, there's also Highbrush Blueberries, Persimmons, Plums, Peaches, Paw-Paws, Strawberries, Pineapples, and Citrus of all kinds. But nearly all of these fruits only come fresh in early or high summer, or are best after the first frost. Enter the Mighty Muscadine.  A southern native, the Muscadine grape is a powerful fruit of the vine, reaching peak ripeness between September and October. It grows wild all along the south east, from warmer bits of Delaware, through the very tips of Florida and the edge of Texas. It grows best in sandy, fertile soils, and is drought and flood resistant. If you've ever driven along the southern half of I-95 or I-75, or the eastern bits of I-10, I-20, and I-40, you've probably looked off the roadside, and seen the oaks and pines dripping with vines, bright green sawtoothed leaves, and maybe, if the birds and deer didn't get them all, little black jewels of juicy machine gumball sized grapes. Muscadines have sweet, delightfully jelly middles, and tangy, wine-dry skins. Some people just nip a hole in the grape skin and eat the middle. Some people are also unrefined looser-flag waving dixie whistling racists. I'm not saying ALL racists eat muscadines wrong, but everyone that I've ever run into that wont eat the skins was also a racist. Just saying. Do YOU want to be a racist? Eat the skins. Embrace diversity. Black is beautiful. Oh, there are also seeds. Crunch on them if you like, the seeds are full of antioxidants. I go between swallowing them or seeing how far I can spit them.  Muscadines are often used in jellies, jams, and wines. Everyone thinks they are delicious... Except my sister, who also hates India Pale Ales, legumes of any kind, avocados, and when I sing in the car. She obviously has terrible taste. It was also crazy hard for her to find a winery in North Carolina that didn't make Muscadine wines to have her wedding at.  Also made with Muscadines is PIE. So let's make some. I used 2 cups of flour, ¼ teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of white sugar, and 11 tablespoons of butter, then blitzed it in the food processor (I add the butter in three stages, dunno why)  Then add ice cold water a teaspoon at a time, and pulse until the dough just starts to come together. I never get this right, and usually over-wet it. So this time I went a little too dry. It was fixable in the end, I just had a crumbly time rolling out the crust. Now you need to process the muscadines. 4 cups of them. You just make a slit on the top of the muscadine, and squish out the green stuff and seeds into a bowl. It's good fun. Then, you put the skins in another bowl for later. Yes, we're using the skins! What are you, racist?  My mom was there, and thought the grape squishing was good fun, so I left her to it while I did more pie crust stuff (because I ran out of unsalted butter. Dad ran up to Publix for me. What good parents I have)  Ahah, gross, they look like alien eggs  Okay, take your frogspawn and juice, and bring it to a quick boil, then simmer gently for 5 minutes. This loosens up the jelly and releases the seeds.  Then strain it. Haha oh man that looks terrible  Moosh it well, get as much of the good stuff through as possible.  Then huck the seeds in the woods behind your house to grow more muscadines, unless it in turn gets choked by morning glory or kudzu. Put the green stuff aside, let's get to the good stuff! Add a half a cup of water to your skins, and bring to a boil. Then simmer for 10 minutes (longer if you have really sour or tannic skins, up to 20min)  'Till they look like this, and are pie-tender. Try one, you'll figure it out.  Pour the simmered skins back in with the de-seeded green stuff, and.. oh. Wow, that poo poo is pink.  BREAST CANCER AWARENESS Y'ALL. Okay, so add half a cup of white sugar, a tablespoon of melted butter, and half a cup of sifted flour. Stir well. Then, make your pie crust, and fill it.  Does that look too full? Oh well, no such thing as too much pie filling, right? So long as it stays in the tin. (ha) That's a lattice, the first layer fell down into the pink. Then I halved and de-seeded a few leftover muscadines for decoration, and to make it look a bit more like a boob.  Construct a pie shield for the edges, and pop into a 450* oven for 15 minutes.  And I didn't get pictures of this, but the racks of my oven are not exactly level, and the pie filling spilled out a bit. And then I started to burn. So I had to get the pie out, cool the oven, and clean it. I also had to lower the level of the pie filling. Fortunately, this also gave me a chance to taste how good this was going to be. So I ended up sucking out a few tablespoons with a straw. Into my mouf. It was tasty. The pie them looked like this  This is how we learn. So I brought the oven back up to temperature, and baked the pie for 15 minutes. Then I removed the pie shield, reduced the heat to 350, and baked for another 20. Here's what I ended up with  Not restaurant quality, for sure. But hey. It's rustic, or something. I gotta work on my pie crusting. Interior shot. The filling gooed up perfectly, not too runny or sticky, and the crust was crumbly, flaky perfect.  It tasted great. Like no pie I'd ever tasted before. It was tangy, fruity, and delicious. And purple as hell, I love that. I will definitely do this again next year. Things I would do differently: Slightly less filling. Use lemon zest instead of lemon juice, the pie did have a bit of that pie 'bitterness' you get from freezer pies. Stop doing faux-lattice crusts, and just do a double crust, jesus. Egg white wash always looks pretty, remember to do that next time too. PIE
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Oct 19, 2015 01:07
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:54 |
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Very pretty, and it sounds delicious. Have you ever done a muscadine crumble? It seems like a natural choice. But then, I live in Oregon, and we do crumbles with any berry.
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Oct 19, 2015 01:43
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:Very pretty, Oh stop, you  quote:and it sounds delicious. Have you ever done a muscadine crumble? It seems like a natural choice. But then, I live in Oregon, and we do crumbles with any berry. I could have done a crumble, and will probably do that next time. But the contest calls for pie, and pie I shall make. I also take weird satisfaction in pie, as much as I suck at it, I really enjoy making them.
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Oct 19, 2015 01:50
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I never thought of using muscadines in pie! My grandparents grew them all the way up here in Iowa, and we made some of the best grape jelly I've ever had out of them.
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Oct 19, 2015 02:32
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If someone told me they were going to make a pepto-colored alien egg pie, I'd never have believed how delicious it looks. I want that in my mouth!
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Oct 19, 2015 03:03
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Wow! Fun process. Kudos on going regional!
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Oct 19, 2015 03:10
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Liquid Communism posted:I never thought of using muscadines in pie! My grandparents grew them all the way up here in Iowa, and we made some of the best grape jelly I've ever had out of them. Dang, Iowa's the extreme north for Muscadines. Hardy bastards. But the great thing about Muscadines is how tough they are. And they're great rebuilders of native landscapes. A very important food source for native wildlife, and not really too suffocating to the trees they trellis on. Brawnfire posted:Wow! Fun process. Kudos on going regional! Thanks Brawn! Yours looks great too. It really inspired me to try and go seasonal and regional. But our pumpkins failed. The loofah plants smothered them.
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Oct 19, 2015 03:16
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Gonna try this poo poo.
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Oct 19, 2015 21:24
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Suspect Bucket posted:It was also crazy hard for her to find a winery in North Carolina that didn't make Muscadine wines to have her wedding at. Whaaat? Tell one of those winerys to move to East Texas. There was only one winery in the area that would make Muscadine Wine and they closed down in December. (They also made a Jalapeno Wine that was crazy good as cooking sherry.)
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Oct 22, 2015 04:34
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I'd never even considered using grapes of any sort for a sweet pie. My thinking has now changed. Maybe adding the grape skins to a custard, straining and setting would preserve that wonderful purple.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:13
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In upstate New York we have the town of Naples which is famous for its grape pies. They're delicious.
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Oct 23, 2015 17:14
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Cavenagh posted:I'd never even considered using grapes of any sort for a sweet pie. My thinking has now changed. Maybe adding the grape skins to a custard, straining and setting would preserve that wonderful purple. I can only imagine how purple that would be. Do iiiiiiittttttt
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Oct 23, 2015 19:33
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:54 |
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I am intrigued by your grapey pie. Fun topping too.
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Oct 27, 2015 09:44
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