Cooking with Golondrinas: Red Chile Apple Pie

Since we’re focusing our History Herald this week on apples, and my apple trees are starting to yield some great fruit, here’s a recipe that has become a fixture at our house for holidays and special occasions — the red chile adds a great little (or big) kick, depending on how much you opt for — it really depends on the heat of your chile powder and your tolerance for that heat!

Red Chile Apple Pie

INGREDIENTS
5–6 cups apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/2 cup sugar
1 T vanilla
2 T Cinnamon
1/2 – 1 T powdered red chile
1/ stick butter
2 pre-made pie crusts (or see crust recipe below — I have heard that some are afraid of making crust from scratch at altitude, but it’s really not that hard — the secret is REALLY cold water and Crisco instead of butter, which makes a more flexible crust)

Pie Crust

4 cups flour
2 sticks Crisco, room temp
1/2 t salt
2 T Greek yogurt
COLD WATER as needed

Make pie crust first so you can refrigerate, either overnight or for a couple of hours:

• mix flour and salt
• cut in Crisco — you may need to add more flour
• add Greek yogurt
• Continue cutting in with pastry cutter; sprinkle in water until it starts to look like cornmeal
• Form dough into two balls and wrap in plastic wrap; chill in refrigerator

Pie Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Mix apples, sugar, spices in large bowl
• roll out one ball of dough and place in pie plate with enough hanging over the edge to merge with top crust
• place apple mixture in pie plate
• add butter to top of apples
• Roll out dough and cover apples with top crust; pinch edges and remove excess dough; vent crust with 1–3 vents
• Bake for 35–45 minutes, until top crust is golden

ENJOY!