The Cooking Ninja

Last weekend our whole family was hit by gastric flu. What a torture! It was the first time Little One got sick (poor baby) but amazingly she fought it off rather well and recovered from it very quickly. While she was on the mend, I caught the bad bug and was violently sick (I thought I had it bad). Luckily Pierre was still ok then so he could look after Little One. Then as I got over the worst, it was Pierre's turn to be sick to the gut. Unfortunately for him, the virus hit him the hardest (I have never seen him in that shade of gray). The next day, both of us were lifeless, while our little darling had her energy back and went on trashing the whole house. We have never been hit by an actual tornado, but now I have an idea of how it would look like afterwards.

I made this pie a day or two before all of us fell sick (rest assured that the two events are totally unrelated). There were some leftover old apples and over-riped bananas on the table (as usual). I didn't want to make another apple/banana pie so decided to add some pineapples in it to give it a more exotic taste. Then I thought why not a coconut crumble top - it would go very well with it. Originally I wanted to use a plain pie crust but was inspired to make a nutty pie crust for a change. All those ideas combined this over-the-top recipe :

Over The Top Pie

Ingredients

Hazelnut Pie Crust (variation over a classic sweet pie crust)

• grounded hazelnut
• flour, sugar, chilled butter (cubed), a bit of ice water (like a regular sweet crust)

Fillings

• a few apples (small slices)
• bananas (sliced)
• pineapples (sliced)
• dark chocolate (small pieces)
• sugar
• rhum (a little bit)
• ground cinnamon (only a little bit)
• water
• cornstarch

Crumble

• Sugar
• Chilled Butter (cut into cubes)
• plain flour
• grated coconut

Direction

Hazelnut Pie Crust

1. Mix grounded hazelnut, flour, sugar in a mixing bowl.
2. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it form crumbs or sandy.
3. Make a small well in the middle, add a little bit of ice water. Mix the dough delicately with your hands until it forms a ball of dough. Wrap it up and refrigerate it for an hour.
4. Roll out a clean piece of cloth on the table; sprinkle generously some flour on it.
5. Flatten the dough slightly with your hands and dust the dough lightly with flour before rolling the dough out with a rolling pin.
6. Roll the dough into a circle and larger than the size of your pie dish. Put your pie dish face down to the centre of dough. Put your hand underneath the cloth (centre of the dough) and gently flip the dough over.
7. Without stretching the dough, press the pastry firmly into the pan and trim any excess dough from the edge.

Crumble

• Combine all the ingredients together and rub the butter with your fingers into the sugar-flour mixture till it is crumbly (not as fine as sand but coarse crumbs).

Filling

1. Preheat oven to 210°C (410°F).
2. Spread some apple, banana and pineapple slices in unbaked pie shell. Then sprinkle some dark chocolate pieces on it. Repeat the process till all the fillings are used up.
3. Heat up and mix water, sugar and ground cinnamon together. Once sugar is dissolved, add in a little bit of rhum and stir in corn starch till blend in. (in a small bowl, dissolve cornstarch with a bit of water - this will avoid having lumps in the mixture). Remove pan from fire and let it cool down a bit.
4. Spread the sugary cinnamon mixture all over the fillings.
5. Spread crumble all over the filling covering the whole pie.
6. Bake in preheated over for 10 minutes (at 210°C / 410°F), then reduce heat to 175°C (350°F) for 35 to 40 minutes.

The Verdict

The whole pie itself tasted not bad at all - it has a different taste at each bite : sometimes apple/banana and other times pineapple/apple or banana. I was expecting a tangy and strong pineapple taste but was rather disappointed with the weak pineapple flavour. Pierre felt that I didn't put in enough pineapple whereas I felt that I should have used fresh pineapple instead of canned ones (but I had an old can lying around).

Adding the dark chocolate wasn't a wise choice as we found out that it overwhelmed the whole taste of the pie whenever we took a bite that has chocolate in it. So it's best to omit it.

Notes

As noted above, it would have tasted better if I had used fresh pineapple and the juice of the pineapple for the syrup spread instead.

For the crumble, it would have been better to just use only grated coconut sans flour.