welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to
sunday morning and the old cookbook show
today we're going to do a recipe out of
this cookbook
sent in by one of our viewers thank you
very much for sending us these cookbooks
they
are a fantastic resource and if you've
got a bunch of old cookbooks that you
don't know what to do with and you don't
want to keep them any longer
i'd be happy to take them off your hands
because i really love these
so today's cookbook is called aunt
sammy's
radio recipes revised so this was
published in 1931
by the bureau of home economics and the
u.s department of agriculture
and today we're going to do a recipe
called green tomato pie
now i had no clue who aunt sammy was
none whatsoever so i had to look it up
and of course
aunt sammy is uncle sam's wife
i did not know that um not being
american
not totally into the whole uncle sam
aunt sammy thing
and so aunt sammy's radio recipes it was
a weekly radio show
that they produced scripts
and sent the scripts out to the radio
stations and then they had someone local
who would be the voice of aunt sammy so
it always sounded like
your neighbor was aunt sammy and so it
was a radio show
that was all about helpful home tips
and recipes and ways that you could save
money
during the depression and it was really
cool that aunt sammy was voiced by
someone
local to you because then it didn't
sound like government propaganda someone
from washington telling you what to do
it sounded like your neighbor and i
think that's a really kind of cool
perspective on this cookbook
now we're using green tomatoes and we're
early september here in toronto
and these are green tomatoes from our
garden
any tomatoes that are out there that are
green like this
aren't going to ripen it's too late in
the season the days are starting to get
too short
it's not going to be warm enough so i'm
always looking for
different ways to use up green tomatoes
so we're going to find out how this pie
works so i'm slicing these up first
now in addition to the tomatoes it tells
me to slice
in half of a lemon so cut that up as
well
and i imagine the lemon is a little bit
of flavor but also
pectin and other things to thicken it up
tomatoes and
lemon go into this pot now i'm supposed
to cook this together until the tomatoes
are almost tender so i'm going to put a
lid on it i'm going to watch it very
closely because i have no clue how long
that's going to take
in this bowl i have sugar and to that
i'm going to add cornstarch
which will be a thickener in this recipe
and a little bit of
salt and i'm going to mix this together
and then set it aside
yeah okay not yet
looking good i think although you know
what do i know so i'm supposed to take
this off the heat now
and we take the tomatoes out of the
liquid and we let the liquid cool down
before we move on to the next step
now it doesn't tell me what to do with
the lemon
so i am going to pull it out and set it
aside
because i don't think it gets included
into the pie
this is a two crust pie and the bottom
crust gets blind baked
and i've never done a two crust pie this
way so i'm just gonna go with it i'm
gonna follow the instructions and the
instructions are
very clear about how they want you to
blind bake it
and again it's not the way i would
normally blind bake a pie shell
so you're supposed to dock the crust
with a fork which i normally do
and then it goes into a hot oven for 10
minutes
without any pie weights anything like
that so let's give it a try
now this goes back on the heat and we
mix in the sugar salt and corn starch
and we stir this until it starts to
thicken
and while that's going we'll roll out
the top crust
now this cookbook like a lot of other
cookbooks from this time period doesn't
say what size the pie plate is
i chose to use a nine inch shallow pie
plate
since that seems to be what most of the
pies in this time period tend to use
so we'll roll out the top crust to match
now when you're rolling pie dough don't
be afraid to lift it up and move it
around
and if it starts to stick a little bit
just put a little bit more flour down
i'll often turn it over a couple of
times
it it's very forgiving don't
think too much about it
okay i think the top crust is big enough
we'll check on our filling it's looking
pretty good so i'm going to turn the
heat off
and i'm going to add the tomatoes back
in and get them coated with that sauce
and i think the bottom shell is ready to
come out of the oven
ah but before it comes out of the oven i
need to add these two things so this is
cinnamon
it goes in and some butter i'm supposed
to mix those
in let them melt
in now i can get the pie shell out of
the oven
let's see how'd we do
uh a little bit of shrinkage probably
not the greatest
blind baked pie shell i've ever made but
it'll be okay
so and in goes the
filling
i think i've got the right size pie
shell
a little bit of water around the outside
and hopefully we'll get the top to stick
on now i have never i
think i said this earlier i have never
done a double crust pie where the bottom
crust is blind baked
totally new territory for me so let's
see if we get the top crust
on here
and i know people are going to tell me
roll it over the rolling pin it's so
much easier
i don't have a problem doing it this way
so let's pinch it on
and see what happens
and we'll get a knife
cut a vent hole in the top
and into the oven
hey glenn hey jules hey friends so you
better get a fork
and a spoon is it that runny um it's a
little bit runny and the first piece
isn't
always oh it's not too bad piece is
always graceful no no
that's actually not too bad all right i
got one of each
okay so a little bit runny
i think it'll be fine okay i am going to
use a spoon though
um i think the top is a little bit plain
the recipe said
nothing about putting on like a milk
wash or an egg wash or
sugar or anything okay i think it
presentation-wise
would benefit from that and of course uh
there are those people who are super
skilled at all the very lovely pirates i
know and they make little
leaves and they're lovely i know okay so
um i'm fascinated because it it uh
it's clearly a fruit pie it is a fruit
part
it's a fruit pie i can see the fruit
it's a uh but i'm it it doesn't look it
looks
more like it i was gonna say it looks
more like a tomato than like a plum or
anything it is a green tomato
there we go now
it's almost i don't know
it's got a really tart someone's got a
little bit of a bitter in it it's
a little bit bitter yeah right but it is
it also still has a
it's it's got all those other lovely
flavors of a fruit pie though
you know the sweetness there's still a
sweetness to it which of course is
probably the sugar
yeah it could maybe
do with a little bit more of a thickener
but i might switch to the fork
and i think that's a really good pie i
think that people would be
people that had i think people would be
very intrigued by this
if they'd never had you know a green
tomato pie before
yes it's intriguing it's but there's
some i would need
i'd need something to counter that
bitterness i'm not that fond of the
bitter there is a little bit of bitter
and
so i had to slice up half a lemon
and boil that maybe that's where and
that could be
partially where where the bitter is
coming from that i mean
if i was going to predict yeah that
might be where it came from
was the lemon like whole like you know
yeah it said just
slice up half a lemon and put it in so
maybe you do get a little bit of bitter
from the pith
which makes sense so maybe zesting the
lemon and then squeezing the juice in
um i don't know i think this is a great
like i say a lot of times a great
starting point to play with this idea
i am super surprised though as a as a
pie yeah the green tomatoes so yeah
i'd make this again i would definitely
make this again i might tweak it a
little bit more
i might up the and vary the spices a
little bit more
because i think that you could drop this
down
and fool people almost apple and well
and yeah i think you could almost apple
the giveaway would be
um oddly not the texture no the
chocolate but the fact that the visual
on
the tomato and the seeds and things like
that right the seeds are a bit of a
giveaway
but it's not apple so aunt sammy
oh there you go that's that's okay um
i i would give this a try if you've got
some you know green tomatoes hanging
around in your garden that aren't going
to ripen
this might be another option to uh to
give a try so
green tomato pie thanks for stopping by
see you again soon
you