Apple Pie: A Review

I love apple pie. I use my grandmother’s recipe. She made a great apple pie and had a mean hand with pie crust to boot. I’ve been making apple pie for over twenty years, ever since I tried to make one with scraps from my mom’s pie and melted a plastic container in the microwave trying to bake it.

So, believe me when I say I really wanted to like this recipe. I really did. I wanted to have a variation in my repertoire. Something to pull out at Thanksgiving. And this pie looked delicious. It was different. Pecan streusel topping is just inspired.

But I can’t. This pie is just barely edible.

For one thing, it’s far too sweet. You can barely taste the apples because of it. There’s a 1/3 of a cup of sugar per apple, over twice the amount in my recipe. And that doesn’t count the sugar in the topping, or the hard sauce you can serve over it.

And then there’s the vanilla. Vanilla and apples just don’t mix. Each of them are divas, they want to dominate the dish. And the result is just… bleh.

I wasn’t alone. I took this pie to the lab, they’re my focus group for new baked goods. And the general consensus was either “meh” or “hey, free pie”. But the fact that there were leftovers speaks for itself.

I feel bad for not liking it. There are 200 comments loving on that pie, but I’d honestly rather eat one of those prepackaged fruit pies you can buy in a vending machine.

Thanksgiving in a Pot

So I’m experimenting this year. I only have one oven, and too many dishes to cook in it. So I’m going to cook my dressing in the crock pot.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Easy Ice Bath!

Thanksgiving is almost upon us. For those of use that like our green beans fresh, crisp, and delicious instead of canned, mushy, and disgusting, blanching is the way to go.

Blanching green beans is easy. Drop them in boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes, then plunge them into an ice bath to stop the cooking. But this isn’t about blanching green beans. This is about how to do an easy ice bath.

You need:

• a colander
• a bowl several inches wider than the colander
• ice
• cold water

Fill the bowl about 1/3 full of ice.

Take the colander and embed it into the ice so that the top of the colander is below the top of the bowl if possible, and surrounded on all sides by ice cubes. Remove or add ice as necessary.

Fill the bowl with cold water until the colander is full of water. The ice stays outside the colander, but the water gets ice cold.

Drop whatever you’re blanching into the colander to stop it cooking. When it’s cold, you can just pull the colander out of the bowl. The ice water drains back into the bowl and you don’t have to pick ice out of the vegetables!

This technique is especially useful if you’re blanching something stringy like cabbage for egg rolls.

Potato Gnocchi

I love gnocchi. Potato gnocchi specifically, although in the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t realize there were other varieties of gnocchi till I was in my late twenties. But it was my favorite food when I was small, in no small part because I loved dimpling the little potato-y pillows of goodness with my thumb.

It took me almost twenty five years to realize I’d been eating (and loving) bad gnocchi all my life. When I had it in Florence on my honeymoon, it was a huge shock to realize this most favored of food could be even better.

At first I assumed it was due to using real potatoes. My mom’s recipe used potato flakes. I promptly substituted real potatoes, only to discover it made absolutely no difference.

Thus began my long quest to make perfect gnocchi. And now, five years later, I have achieved perfection. Soft, velvety, little potato dumplings that capture sauce instead of repelling it. Not mushy. Not rubbery. They’re perfect.

They do make require a certain amount of specialized equipment, all of which have other applications, and are therefore completely justifiable to irate spouses. You’ll want:

• a potato ricer (make lump-free mashed potatoes!)
• a heatproof pastry board (I hear marble is nice but I wouldn’t know)
• a bench scraper (if you like baking at all, you should get one)
• a kitchen spider (this one is, in my opinion, the best)

You can get by without the bench scraper and the pastry board, but they make the process and clean up much more friendly. The potato ricer and kitchen spider are necessities, albeit useful ones.

Potato Gnocchi

• 4 medium baking potatoes, ~ a quarter pound each
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 cups flour, divided in half

Nothing fancy here. Just potato, egg yolks, salt, and enough flour to hold things together.

 

So take your properly sized potatoes, prick them a couple times on top with a fork, and put them directly into a 350°F oven. Don’t wrap them in foil, you want them to steam out as much moisture as possible. Bake them for roughly two hours, they’re done when you can squeeze them with an oven mitted hand and they yield gently.

Set these hot potatoes somewhere to cool for about 15 minutes. You should be able to hold them in a bare hand without scorching yourself, although they will still be hot.

Cut them in half lengthwise, and scoop the flesh out into your potato ricer. Rice the potatoes directly onto your pastry board, spread the riced potato out and let it cool completely. You want all the steamy moisture to leave. The drier your potatoes, the less flour you need later.

When you’re ready to start making the gnocchi, separate out 4 egg yolks and whisk them up with the salt. Drizzle this over the riced potato, and sprinkle half of your divided flour over it all.

Using the bench scraper, gently fold this mess together until you have a coarse, shaggy looking dough. Scoop it together and continue to mix it gently with your hands (this is very messy). Then press it into a ball, and push it to one side.

Flour your board with about a 1/4 cup of your reserved flour. Put your dough on this floured surface, and put another approximate 1/4 cup on top of it. Mix this into the dough gently. Try to avoid kneading motions, but work this half cup of flour in gently until you have a soft, slightly sticky ball of delicate feeling dough.

Prepare your sauce. I transfer my cooked gnocchi directly to the sauce, and it’s good to have it heated and ready. When it’s hot, turn the heat down to the lowest setting.

Also bring a couple quarts of salted water to a boil.

Back to the dough. Using a bit of your remaining flour, flour your board. Cut off a chunk, flour the top gently. and roll it out into a 1/2 inch diameter log. Slice the log into 1 inch pillows. Dimple each with a finger, or roll down a gnocchi paddle/tines of a fork. Repeat until you have used all your dough. Use as little as necessary of your remaining 1/2 cup of flour to form the gnocchi.

Drop into boiling water in small batches of a dozen and cook until they are floating. They only take a minute or two to cook at a full rolling boil, and small batches won’t disrupt the boil.

As soon as they start floating, skim them out with the kitchen spider. They are too delicate for draining like pasta, and you can catch a whole batch’s worth with the spider in one go. If they cook too long, they get rubbery or mushy, depending on their size.

Taste one, to check for doneness. They should be soft but not mushy, and firm enough to bite without being rubbery. Also, there should be no raw flour taste. If they’re done, drop them into the waiting sauce.

You can let them sit in the sauce over the lowest heat for 15-20 minutes while you prepare any side dishes without harming their texture.

Now has anyone noticed how nicely this recipe scales? This is the primary reason I use egg yolks instead of whole eggs. For each quarter pound potato, use 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1 egg yolk. You can scale this from dinner for one, to dinner for as many people as you can fit in your house. As a main course, estimate one potato per person, as a side dish, half a potato per person.

As for sauces, I generally use a tomato sauce (with finely crumbled and browned italian sausage outside of Lent). But anything goes, as long as it doesn’t have huge chunks. Pesto. Brown butter. Butter and cheese. Homemade tomato sauce is my favorite, but it’s a huge time investment, and so I usually make gnocchi when I have sauce in the fridge that needs a use.

Lentil Soup

Lentil soup is the shining gem among refuse of my Lenten quest for meat-less recipes. It is delicious. Better tasting that my version with chicken stock. And it’s all thanks to a tip that mutated into a major component of the recipe. And it so easy that it’s almost criminal.

Lentil Soup

 

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 28oz. can crushed tomatoes
• 1 cup lentils (~1/2 pound)
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme (or several fresh sprigs)
• 4 cups vegetable stock
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup elbow pasta

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium, then throw in the fresh vegetables and saute with salt and pepper until tender.

Add the marinara sauce and simmer for about 5 minutes, then stir in the lentils.

Add the thyme, stock, and water, put the lid on the pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes or until the lentils are almost tender. Add more water if necessary.

Stir in the pasta and simmer until the pasta is cooked al dente.

Mascarpone Brownies

I love brownies. Deep, rich, chocolatey, fudgy brownies. No nuts. Nuts are an abomination in brownies. When Ms. Humble posted pictures, I knew I had to make them. Unfortunately she didn’t post the tarted up recipe right away, so I took the original and ran away with it.

Later Ms. Humble posted her version, which is similar, but not exactly the same.

They are a curious brownie, incredibly moist and fudgy while remaining cake-like in texture. Also, they practically ooze butter. If you reduce the butter by half, you produce a more traditional, dense, and fudge-like brownie.

Mascarpone Brownies
(adapted from recipezaar.com)

• 1 cup unsalted butter (1/2 cup for denser brownies)
• 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
• 1/2 Tbsp. instant espresso powder
• 1/2 cup mascarpone cheese, softened
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat the oven to 325°F and coat a 8″ square pan with cooking spray.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Once melted, pull it off the heat, add the chocolate, let sit for a minute, then stir until all the chocolate is melted and the mixture is nice and smooth.

Sift in the cocoa powder, then add the sugar, salt, and espresso powder. Mix will and put to the side.

Beat the mascarpone, eggs, and vanilla together until smooth, then add the chocolate and mix well.

Fold in the flour gently. Pour into your prepared 8″ square pan and spread evenly throughout the pan.

Bake at 325°F for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Place the hot pan on a wire rack and allow to cool before you add the ganache.

Bittersweet Ganache

• 8 ounce semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 8 Tbsp. heavy cream
• 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

Place the chocolate in a heat safe mixing bowl. Heat the cream to a simmer in a small saucepan or a stainless steel 1 cup measure, then pour it over the chocolate. Let this sit for one minute, then stir till smooth.

Stir in the butter by tablespoons until completely melted.

Pour the ganache onto the brownies still in the pan and spread evenly over the top.

Permit the ganache to set properly. This takes a couple hours at room temperature, but can be sped up considerably by a refrigerator.

Bagelage

Yesterday, I recieved a windfall – free organic cream cheese! And all I had to do was buy the gallon of organic milk already on my shopping list! They gave me cream cheese for buying my normal groceries! How very awesome is that?

Pretty awesome… If I had had the slightest use for cream cheese. Which I didn’t. Obviously something needed to be done. Cream cheese is so… basic.

So today I made up a bagel recipe, just to use my free cheese. I adapted my basic bread recipe by reducing the sugar and yeast, then boiled the resulting dough. And they turned out pretty darn good. Way better than my one past attempt at bagelage. Those bagels were so bad, I gave the idea of homemade bagels up in disgust. But not these bagels! These bagels are smooth and brown and taste just like bagels should.

Homemade Bagels

1 1/4 cups warm water
1 tsp yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
4 cups flour

Combine the sugar, yeast, and warm water in the bowl of your stand mixer and let the yeast bloom for about 5 minutes. Then fit your mixer with a dough hook, add in 2 of the cups of flour and start mixing. Stop it to add the salt, mix, then add the other 2 cups of flour. I do it this way because salt inhibits yeast, but mixing in flour first helps protect the yeast from being shocked by the salt.

When the dough has come together, run your mixer on medium for about 5 minutes, until you have a stiff, smooth, relatively unsticky ball of dough. You don’t use flour to work the dough later, so make sure it’s not too sticky now. Put the ball of dough in a greased bowl, cover it with a towel, and set it somewhere warm to rise.

When the dough has doubled, take it out and cut it up into 8 4 oz. chunks. Roll these pieces out into ropes about 12 inches long, wrap them around your fingers, overlap the ends and roll the seam back and forth to seal it well. If you don’t seal them well now, they will come undone in the hot water. Set completed bagels on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and cover them with a towel to rise for another hour or two.

When they’ve puffed up nicely, preheat your oven to 450 F and start a pot of water and baking soda boiling (2 quarts water to 2/3 cup baking soda). When it’s boiling, drop your bagels in and cook for 30 seconds a side, then fish them out and put them back on the backing sheet, top side down. If you want to top them, now is the time, but once they’re topped, put them top side down on the pan.

Bake the bagels 5 minutes on each side, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Look at that crumb…

Soft Pretzels

It’s Lent, and that means it’s pretzel season.

I’ve never particularly liked soft pretzels enough to bake them more than once before, and the recipe I tried years ago was terrible, they were hard and a terrible exercise in chewing.

Then I stumbled across Alton Brown’s pretzel show and just had to try it.

And they’re great. Boiling the pretzels in baking soda for 30 seconds is kind of a pain, but it’s so very worth it. The result is soft chewy, infinitely more delicious pretzels than I’ve ever eaten before.

Now, the bottoms were a bit too greasy, I think from using vegetable oil and parchment paper. Next time I’ll skip greasing my paper and see how that turns out. But I’m definitely making them again.

Lent

We’ve given up meat for Lent this year. This is rather harsh, it turns out that I have very few recipes for meatless or fish dishes. I’m going to treat this as a culinary challenge though!

It will be… Fun.

We kicked it off yesterday with Dirty Marinara, which is not only meatless, but completely vegan, and, thanks to the copious application of garlic, tasty to boot.

Quick ‘n Dirty Marinara

• 3 big cloves garlic, minced
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp dried basil, or 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 2 28 oz. cans petite diced tomatoes
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 8 oz. baby spinach
• 1 lb. cooked pasta, rotini, fusili, shells, whatever

Dice up your garlic and sauté it in the olive oil for a minute or two, be careful not to burn it. Empty in your cans of tomatoes and add your basil. Mix this well and cook it over medium stirring frequently. You want to cook it down, so that it thickens and all that extra tomato juice evaporates off. When you can scrap some off the bottom of the skillet and juices don’t rush to fill that hole, it’s done. While this is cooking, cook your pasta according to the package directions. When the pasta is drained and ready, toss in your spinach and let it wilt down. Careful, this is a lot of spinach. Once the spinach is incorporated, pour it over the pasta, toss and serve.

My baby will eat two helpings of this, so that should say something to the spinach-haters out there.

Spanakopita

Well, Valentine’s Day was a success. While the baklava was a previously known quantity and it’s practically impossible to mess up grilling skewered meat, I had two new dishes: spanakopita and Ms. Humble’s saganaki.

The saganaki was… okay. We used kasseri, which was yummy, but I’ve never been good at frying things in oil, and this was no exception. And then we couldn’t get the brandy to light on fire, so it had a distinct kick. The homemade pita (from The Fresh Loaf) however was quite yummy.

…but the spanakopita! That was my pride and joy of the meal. I’ve had it before, there’s usually several lectures a year that are big deals enough to merit a fancy hors d’oeuvres spread and spanakopita is a staple in these. But those just can’t compare to homemade. This recipe is my own and is going to be a staple this Lent, I think.

Spanakopita
~24-36 turnovers*

 

• 8 oz. baby spinach
• 1 yellow onion, quartered
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1-2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 tsp greek oregano
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• 8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 lb. phyllo dough, thawed and brought to room temperature
• melted butter or olive oil for brushing

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and drop in the chunks of onion and garlic. Sauté the onion and garlic until the onion is starting to become translucent and it’s nice and fragrant, then toss in the baby spinach. Sauté the spinach until it’s all wilted (it’s a lot of spinach!) then transfer it all to a food processor, add the lemon juice, and puree it. Empty the puree to a fine mesh strainer over a bowl and drain the excess liquid.

While it’s draining, preheat your oven to 400 F and prepare your phyllo dough. Stack 3 or 4 sheets of phyllo, brushing each with melted butter. Cut each stack of 4 into 6 strips, roughly 3″ x 12″.

Transfer your drained spinach into another bowl, add the pepper, oregano, egg, and feta cheese, and mix briefly to combine. Then drop by tablespoons onto the lower corner of each strip and fold up in triangles.

Place on parchment paper lined baking sheets (you need two) and brush the tops generously with butter. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 F, then pop the temperature up about 50 degrees for a couple minutes if the tops still aren’t a lovely golden brown.

They are alright reheated briefly in the oven the next day too. I kept them at room temperature, but only because it is ridiculously and unseasonly cold here in Texas. I mean, we’re actually getting frost and everything. And I didn’t die. But I wouldn’t do it in summer.

* I made these with 4 layers of phyllo dough and it felt like overkill. I also had filling left over. So I think next time I’ll use 3 layers and make an extra dozen turnovers instead. I’ll also determine if they can be frozen, because even I can’t eat 36 of these in two days.