Catherine Ryan's Pie Crust


Catherine Ryan's Pie Crust

1 cup pitted dates
2 cups pecans, pistachios and almonds mixture
1 cup almonds
2 TBS orange juice

Grind the one cup of almonds (other nuts are too oily) in clean, dry food processor until fairly fine power. Stop grinding way before nuts start to turn buttery. Set Aside. Put remaining two cups of three-nut mixture into food processor. Grind until fine enough that they just barley begin to get some nut-butter sticking on the sides of the machine. Add dates and mix a very long time. Mix will eventually start to ball up as the oils start to pull out of the ground nuts. Finally, with machine still running, add orange juice. The clumps of mixture will suddenly ball up in one solid, rich mass. Put the set aside ground almond powder into strainer/sifter and shake powder over wax paper. Put entire ball of nut/date mixture in center. Press down. Sprinkle more nut powder over top. Put another sheet of wax paper on top. Roll out with rolling pin into size big enough to fit pie pan. Pull off wax paper from top side of crust. Sprinkle almond powder in pie tin. Turn date/nut crust over into pan. Pull off last sheet of wax paper. Gently press into pie pan, trimming off excess. Dust the rim of the pie crust with remaining almond powder. Fill with raw pie mixture: apple-raspberry, pumpkin, banana-carob creme, California lime, etc. A coffe/nut grinder can be used to gind nuts instead, then all other material can be run though Champion juicer for similar results if a food processor isn't available; but filling will not be as smooth. Try adding raw carob earlier on in the processing, for variety. Also, you can put spoon-sized balls of mixture into freezer for great candy.

From: The Rawsome News, March-April 97. Via RawTimes.com 23 Mar 97