pie for Charles

I'm taking a pie to my buddy Charles Wednesday evening. Here's a standard angle:

Food-porn angle:

The angle that reveals something:

Not sure why, but the pie is way more sunken on one side than on the other, as may be visible in that last picture. It could be that I filled the pie in a lopsided manner.

A remark about crimping the crust: I've tried and tried to get a legitimate crimp out of my crusts (for a legitimate crimp, see here), via both fingers and forks, but the pie-crust recipe I use, while idiot-proof and very forgiving for us inexperienced pie-makers, must somehow be conducive to puffing because damn does that crust love to puff up. Every pie I've made has had the same result: however pronounced the crimping, it all disappears during the baking. And what you see is the, uh, rustic result. (I've noticed that the term "rustic" is something of a running joke among YouTube cooks and pro chefs; whenever something comes out wrong, you just call it "rustic" because now it's got that country look.)

I did make another, happier discovery, though, with my extra, unused pie crust: you can microwave it for a couple minutes and end up with something quite edible. I'm now wondering whether I can take my extra crusts and do a microwaved pie-dough version of garlic knots. And even though pie crust isn't the same as puff pastry, I'm starting to think about making a variation of one of my favorite dishes: escargots au beurre d'ail persillé (snails in garlic-parsley butter). Many versions of this require the snails to be cooked inside shells, but other versions use puff pastry as a sort of shell surrogate. I've done a cheat version of this dish in the States by using Pillsbury biscuits that come in those exploding cardboard cylinders. Now, I'm all sorts of curious as to what I can accomplish with simple pie dough.

But that is neither here nor there. Charles gets a pie, and it sounds as if he's going to force me to eat some of it while I'm at his residence, probably to make sure the pie hasn't been poisoned. My friend can be a bit paranoid at times.