The Tilsons

Last night we made one of our creative, do it yourself, try something new suppers. This time, we invited our friend Matt, who is about to make himself our new roomy, to share in the experience and get a taste of doing it like a Tilson! On the menu was fresh, homemade pasta with pesto and cherry tomatoes from the garden, a beautiful salad, made by my beloved with kale, lettuce, radishes and beans from the garden, a homemade Italian salad dressing and a homemade blackberry pie with blackberries picked fresh the day before! We were all pretty excited.

My brother gave us an uber Marcato Pasta Maker for our wedding (that we received about a month ago - Thanks Lar!) Who knew it would be so difficult to find a pasta maker that doesn’t use electricity? (In case you are looking, we give this one five stars for quality and usability!) Justin found a great video that shows you how to make perfect pasta, step by step, alongside a little Italian man. I can’t believe how easy it is (mind you I had my hands in the pie shell dough). Matt and Justin had a great time getting it just right. Tip from Matt: keep flouring the dough and rolling it through the pasta maker until it doesn’t stick at all. We have also decided that thinner is better because it does expand when you cook it.

I made a blackberry pie for the first time, with a traditional crisscross lid. (I tried the crisscross pie shell on an apple pie once, and the filling became too dry. It works perfectly for soupy filling like blackberries. I forgot one important point - always place a pan under the pie to catch the drippings. The pie crust recipe is a simple standard pie crust (just like my grammas!)

• 3 C flour
• 1 1/4 C Shortening (I used buttery sticks)
• pinch ‘o’ salt
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp of vinegar
• 6 tbsp of water

Cut the shortening into the flour. Wisk the wet ingredients together in a measuring cup. Gradually add wet ingredients to dry while stirring with a fork. When the dough is reasonably consistant, ball up and roll into pie shell shapes. In the case of criss cross top - cut thin strips and weave together over the pie, folding the strips backwards and forwards to make the weaving easier.

the filling is as follows:

• 1/2 cup of flour
• 1/2 a cup of sugar
• Enough blackberries to fill a pie

Mix the above ingredients together and place in the bottom of a raw pie shell. Place in the oven at 425F for 25 mins, lower the temp to 375F and bake another 25mins (watch for burning crust)

As always, it was exciting to try something new, and use a tool that we hadn’t used before. Doing it ourselves always makes the food taste even better than the best fresh store bought food, especially when it turns out as well as it did last night!
Justin and I are super excited about the new addition to our home, great company makes great meals! Thank you Matt!