pie on the mind

Last year, round about this time of year, I wrote about my cranberry pear pie. It was so much fun writing about that pie. I've been hoping to recruit the cosy comfort I got out of writing about pie last year. A gal in Denmark (or somewhere Nordic) actually wrote to me and said she was going to make that pie with her kids, although she was going to substitute something for the cranberries. Her favorite part of my recipe was loving the assistant chefs/children. I don't think any berry would be a good sub for a cranberry. A cranberry's tartness is special but what the heck. I hope she succeeded with lingonberries or something else red.

I have just remembered another pie I used to prepare. Cheese, tomato and onion pie. Sometimes when I served it, people suggested it was a quiche. If it does qualify as quiche, my cheese, tomato and onion pie would be the only quiche I've ever made cause I've never made one intentionally. Isn't this fascinating, me writing about nothing but still me having fun? Entertaining myself. There are lots of eggs in this pie.

So you make a pie crust. You don't need a top crust for this one.

Slice up a whole bunch of onions. A lot. If you can get a variety of onions, go for it. Use at least a pound of onions. Slice them as thin as you can. Well, if you are looking for interesting texture, you could vary the slices, some thick, some super thin. That could be interesting. Then you saute all the sliced onion in butter until the onions become translucent. If you don't know what I mean, keep sauting. Once the translucence occurs, you will know.

Drain the buttery yumness of those onions. It is nice to keep all the butter but resist this urge. If you keep all the butter, your pie will be messy, which is okay, I guess but if you are presenting this to honored guests, it is nice to fuss about appearance. Dump all the onions on your pie crust.

Oh, it is a good idea to prebake the crust, just for a few minutes at 350 degrees. This is a soggy pie. Bake the crust to keep it dry. Dry-ish. This is a gooey mess of a pie, it will be messy but prebake in hope.

Next, take all your evenly sliced tomatoes, lots of tomatoes, upwards of a pound, and layer them like bricks over the onions. If you like, you can hold back a bit of onion and put onion on top of the tomato but I prefer to end with tomatos on top. Later, then the cheese bakes, the tomatos peek through the cheesiness beautifully but you lost the peek-a-boo effect of the red tomatos under the cheese if you finish with onions. Try it both ways, find out what you like.

Then you take some milk (cream if you are feeling decadent and why not, you are already larded up with butter in the crust and butter in the onions, prudence no longer applies, go for the cream), about a cup of milk. One cup of grated gruyere cheese, one cup of swiss cheese. You could use other cheese, but stick with white ones, sharp white ones are best. Also hard cheese is good. I hate to keep dwelling on the gooeyness of this pie but the onions dripping with butter make for a wet wet dish. Hard cheese helps holds things together.

Beat the milk and cheese with a couple eggs. I haven't made this pie in a long time. I forget how many eggs. Actually, I am making up all the amounts given here, from ancient memory. I got this pie from one of Anna Thomas's Vegetarian Gourmet cookbooks. She called it 'savory cheese and onion pie' but I have always felt the tomatos deserved billing. If you care about quanitites, look for her recipe.

Sprinkle some parsley or chives over everything, just a little tiny bit. The green can be pretty.

I haven't made this pie in years. I stopped making it cause people would grouse about the cholesterol. It is no fun serving yummy comfort food just to hear whines about cholesterol. Itis particularly irritating to watch the whiners scarf this extremely delicious concoction down after their ungracious plaint. I used to want to snatch the forks out of their hands and take back this hot, creamy, cheesey, tomato-y delight.

A friend of mine told me a story awhile aback about the time he made a bunch of onion pizzas for a party. He said his guests scarfed down his pie. I bet they did. In my humble opinion, not enough people know how fabulous it is to combine hot cheese and onions.

One time, my sister, her husband and my niece went on a prepaid tour of China, the kind of tour where all your meals are part of a set package price. They were living in Korea when they decided to visit China over their Christmas holiday. I guess it is pretty cheap to get to China from S. Korea. The tour was going to take them to some rural areas, places where restaurants were no common. they were advised to take a tour with meals because in some places, it would otherwise be hard to find something to eat. So they signed up for some package. They spent two weeks crawling over rural China on a crowded bus, staying in farm houses. They had a good time. How could you not have a good time, traveling around China? The newness of everything would be awesome. One meal on this trip was particularly memorable. The meal consisted of onions and rice. As they gathered for their dinner and realized onions and rice was all they were going to get, their hostess explained to them that they were eating three kinds of onion.