Potlikkery

oh sweetie pie, my sweetie pie

Wednesday morning while I ate my less than appealing oatmeal (had run out of Quaker Oats and settled for instant oatmeal in a bag) I flipped through Sweety Pies. Admired it for a while, and then saw that a Nova made her rice pie, and decided then and there that I ought not be without this book. I read several types of pies aloud to Ian, along with their ingredients. Soon, he laid down the book he was reading and took up Sweetie Pies to browse it's colorful pages filled to the brim with photos of pies.

He picked up pie crusts and berries for me at the grocery store a few days ago because I told him I wanted to make a pie. This was before we both looked at the book. I'd planned to make some type of fruity pie, much along the same lines as every other fruity pie I make. This one had 5 nectarines, a pint of blueberries, a Gala apple, and maybe 2/3 cup of bing cherries. Besides that I added about a 1/2 to 2/3 cup of sugar, and about as much flour to make the juice a bit thicker. Maybe a teaspoon of cinnamon, which I don't normally add, a pinch of salt, and ginger. I love ginger flavoring in a pie. Probably added about a teaspoon and a half. Then baked for 40 minutes at 350 (F) degrees.

It baked that morning while I showered. Then waiting until I got home from a late late night at work to sample it was devilish, really. Ian wondered why I didn't taste it after baking it, but it had to cool. Anyway, I sliced it into several small pieces and had a bite last night. Pure heaven. Yum. Love me some fruity pie.

Besides its fabulous recipes, Sweety Pies includes the author's anecdotes. She can make anything relate to pie. Seriously. She is talented. She talked about her mother, or maybe it was her grandmother always painting her toenails red. She thought her husband never noticed that extra step she took to keep herself looking purdy. She stopped painting her toenails. Wouldn't you know, that her husband, who never said the first word about how nice her toes looked, suddenly commented on the fact that her toenails weren't looking so lovely anymore. All this was a segue into a cherry pie recipe. 

Something I really like about her book is that the flavor combinations excite me. They're not run of the mill. They don't disappoint the palate, at least, at the level of contemplation or anticipation. So yeah, I'm dying to try the same rice pie that Nova made. And there's an oatmeal, pecan, and coconut pie that Ian and I are slobbering over. There were more, many more. It's just that my memory is failing me since I don't have the book before me. She's tempted me to make my own pie crusts. I don't bother with that. Those Pillsbury roll up pie crusts do the trick for me every time.

Jack's Birthday Cake

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
4 eggs
½ cup Jack Daniel's® Tennessee Whiskey
1 cup chopped pecans
1 package (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
Hot Buttered Whiskey Glaze (recipe follows)

Note: Cake may be baked in a greased 10-inch tube pan. Increase the baking time to 1 hour. Cool in the pan 10 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. Drizzle with the glaze.Hot Buttered Whiskey Glaze

Heat oven to 325°F. Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Set aside. Melt butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat. Stir in the brown sugar, eggs, flour mixture, and Jack Daniel's®, stirring well after each addition. Pour batter into the greased pan. Sprinkle evenly with pecans and chocolate chips. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until center of the cake is firm and edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool on a wire rack and drizzle with glaze. Makes 16 servings.

Hot buttered whiskey glaze

¼ cup melted butter
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons Jack Daniel's® Tennessee Whiskey
1/3 cup Jack Daniel’s® Tennessee Whiskey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Blend well with a wooden spoon. Drizzle over the cake.

From: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey website.

summer squash casserole

2 or 3 cups of squash, sliced and cooked (boil in water for 10-15 minutes)
2 carrots, grated
4 or 5 green onions/scallions, chopped
2 eggs
1/4 cup of flour
1 can of mushroom soup
1 8 0z. container of sour cream
1/2 cup seasoned dressing
a few pats of butter
teaspoon of cayenne pepper
teaspoon of nutmeg, freshly grated
salt & pepper to taste
paprika

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In medium to large-sized bowl mix sour cream and cream of mushroom soup together. Add eggs and mix well. Add 1/4 cup of flour. Then add onions and carrots and mix well. Add cayenne, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Mix.  Once squash is cooked, drain water and mash squash to a pulp. Drain. Add squash to mixture.

Cover top of casserole with seasoned dressing. I use the dressing by Pepperidge Farms, I think. Arrange pats of butter on top of dressing. Sprinkle top with paprika.

Bake in oven for 30-40 minutes.

**I added 1/4 cup of flour because I thought the casserole might be too wet. And meant to add about 1/4 or 1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, but forgot to do so.

**The pepper I used is a mixture of four kinds of peppercorns.

This is a semi-healthy way to use up all the summer squash gardeners bestow upon you. I like my squash best dredged in cornmeal and fried in butter, which is the way I learned to prepare most vegetables, but sticking to a traditional southern-fried diet clogs the arteries. And other stuff, too.

Now what to do with zucchinis? Zucchini casserole?

This recipe is based on the one that my sister-in-law, Aleda shared with me. Her recipe is a super-secret-passed-down-through-the-generations type of thing. But I always make any recipe my own, so I'm fine with sharing my summer squash recipe. Ian ate two servings of it, and usually he bypasses veggies that aren't beans or potatoes. Having his stamp of approval is great.

Actually made two casseroles, one big and one small. The small one is for Jim, my riding instructor. It's his garden from which we've eaten this summer. His generosity with cucumbers, onions, beans, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes is so appreciated that I wanted to give some squash back to him. If my summer squash experiment had not worked out so well, then he'd not be getting any at all. Food as thanks is my favorite gift to give.

an abundance of cucumbers

Wash, peel, and slice cucumbers horizontally (longwise).

Take two slices of 12-grain pumpernickel bread and toast them.

Slather whipped cream cheese atop one or both slices of toasted pumpernickel bread. Assemble sandwich by aligning cucumber slices on top of cream cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Place other slice of pumpernickel over cucumbers. Cut into halves with knife.

Eat. And possibly make another.

But this time, walk out of the kitchen. Outside, even, to your flower box and pick two leaves of basil directly from the stalk. Bring them inside. Rinse under water, and lay them over your cucumbers. Cover with slice of pumpernickel.

Eat. Enjoy. That bit of basil makes all the difference. I've rarely eaten a better sandwich anywhere.

can she bake a fruity pie?

Double Crust Fruity Pie

Pint of blueberries (remove stems from berries)
Four nectarines, pitted and  sliced finely
One peach, pitted and sliced finely

One box of Pillsbury Pie Crust (you'll use both crusts) usually in your refrigerated section @ grocer's

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon ginger
teaspoon of vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.

Sprinkle a bit of flour in the bottom of your pie pan so that the crust doesn't stick to the pie pan. Next, unroll the first of your pie crusts and place it inside the pie pan.

In a medium sized bowl mix fruits together, then add ginger, vanilla, sugar, and flour. Mix together well. Pour mixture into pie pan on top of first pie crust.  Place second pie crust atop the fruit mixture and then crimp both layers of pie crust together around the pie's edge. Make four or five small slits in the top crust.

Place pie in preheated oven. Bake 40 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.

Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

it's a roast

Friday I made a roast. Ian went to work around 9 pm,  so I pulled it from the oven a bit early and sliced a few bits of meat off for him. Also gave him some organic yellow potatoes, turnips, carrots, garlic, and onions.

I combined two different recipes, of sorts. The meat was a bottom round roast, or some such. I can't recall. It lingered in the freezer a bit too long and was tough to eat, but I'd rather eat tough meat of my own making than out. I rarely use a recipe like I'm supposed to. I check the list of ingredients and then throw them in as I see fit. Now, if I'm baking, or making something ethnic that I have no experience with, I follow recipes exactly.

First I rubbed the roast with salt and let that soak in a few minutes. Then I thew the meat into a pan for it to brown. Ian cut the carrots, onion, and turnip. We used four or five long carrots, half a turnip and half a yellow onion. I threw in four or five garlic cloves. Salted and peppered it a bit. Poured half a box of organic chicken stock in the bottom along with half a bottle of red wine. Only it was too sweet. 

It was Bully Hill Love My Goat. How can you not buy wine that features a goat on it's label. I know so little about wine, that I totally judge it by it's label. Also got some Red Truck wine a while, also because I liked the truck on its label. I also judge books by their covers, too. And then there was Worcestershire sauce. And a bit of fresh thyme that I clipped from my flower box. Always gratifying to use something I grew myself.

Oh yeah,  Ian bought a meat thermometer, probably at the evil mega-store where I don't shop, so we could cook the roast to a medium 160 degrees.  Meat was great, but the veggies were undercooked. Crisp, like.

And, it made for great leftovers. Am thinking, am wondering, whether the broth is too strong to recycle into a soupy-stew-like concoction.

simple strawberries

The way my mother served strawberries was simple: With sugar.

Wash, remove tops from berries, and slice in half or quarters depending on size. Sprinkle a teaspoon to a tablespoon of sugar on top. Eat.

I don't like real sweet, but this small amount of sugar allays the berry's tartness.

banana pudding

It's banana pudding. And it was never my favorite. But it is my dad's favorite. One day, desperate for something semi-sweet, I wandered to the student center and came back to my office with this serving of banana pudding. It wasn't bad for institutionalized food. Really hit the spot, diet and all. And probably not so different from my grandmother's recipe. She taught me how. It's the simple kind.

Two boxes of jello instant pudding
One box of vanilla wafers
A few ripe bananas, sliced

It's about layering. Line a clear casserole/dessert dish with vanilla wafers. Layer banana slices over top the wafers. Pour pudding in center and gently smooth it over banana slices. Repeat until you've used up your ingredients. Something I learned later is to dip your bananas in lemon juice after slicing them so they don't turn that yucky brown color.

I have a fancier recipe that I may try sometime. You make the pudding from scratch and use whipped cream, too. But, it's essentially the same.

take the pickle

Leave it to John T. Edge to report on the newest thing going in Mississippi Delta roadside food attractions:  Kool-Aid Pickles.  You'll find them at filling stations and convenience stores shelved next to the other pickled items like eggs, pig's feet, okra, etc. Their bright colors make them super-appealing to children but the new market is adults.

I'm fascinated.

And the process is simple:

“They’re easy to make a gallon,” Ms. Williams said. “You pull the pickles from the jar, cut them in halves, make double-strength Kool-Aid, add a pound of sugar, shake and let it sit — best in the refrigerator — for about a week. The taste takes to anything. A while back I made a mistake and bought a jar of pickle chips instead of halves or wholes. Came out fine. This whole Kool-Aid pickle thing is going so good, you wonder why somebody hasn’t put a patent on them.”

Also, someone is pursuing the trademark Koolickle. Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm.

key lime pie

I made two key lime pies the other day; one to keep and one to give away.  Can't make just one, despite the recipe declaring that it yields one 9-inch pie. That has never been the case. 

Before coconut cream pie usurped it from it's number one slot as my favorite pie, key lime pie was the be-all, end-all for me. The first time I ate key lime pie was in the summer of 1988 in Hilton Head. Harbortown, or nearby, as I recollect. I loved it. Don't know how I never had any before then. But from then on, I was on a quest to eat the best key lime pie. I always ordered it if it was on a menu.

And I learned to critique key lime pie after much exposure to the dessert. Was it too sweet? Too sour? Not sour enough? And usually there was a problem with it's color. I remember hearing that key lime pie should be yellow, never green, from Meryl Streep's character in Heartburn. So that was always a criteria as well. I haven't sone on a similar quest for the best coconut cream pie recipe. I'm content to eat it at Jane's Lunchbox since the place that serves the best coconut cream pie ever closed up shop last month, that being the much-missed Starving Artist of Abingdon, Virgina.

Here's the recipe. I stopped looking for other recipes once I found this one because it tasted perfect:

Crust:
1 1/2 cups of crushed ginger crisp cookies
1/3 cup melted butter (or margarine if you're into that)
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Filling:
2 14 oz. cans of condensed milk
1 cup of key lime juice
5 egg yolks
key lime zest ( you determine the amount, between 1-4 limes)
1 pint of heavy cream, whipped.

Preheat over to 350 F.

Start with the crust. Put crumbs and sugar in a bowl. Add melted  butter. When well-mixed, squish into your pie pan, covering the bottom and sides.  Pop pie crusts into the oven for 8 minutes. You can place a smaller pie pan on top of crust to give it more shape if you desire. Remove from oven and let cool.

If you make two pies be sure to do this crust part twice; once for each pie.

Whip heavy cream. Add other ingredients in any order you choose. I've found that the zest is tricky to add. It clings to my mixer's beater and doesn't get incorporated into the filling. this problem came to light while I cleaned the beater with my tongue.

You may discover that you have far too much filling for just one pie. Do with it what you will. That's why I make a second pie crust. I'm not skilled enough to understand how to divide the recipe. But, I think that my problem stems from too much whipping of the heavy cream.

Pour filling into pie crust and stick it in your oven to bake, still at 350 F, for another 8 minutes.  Remove from oven. Let cool. Then freeze/chill. When ready to serve, top with non-dairy topping, or
whipped cream and garnish with sliced limes.

Wow. A discovery. This recipe came from Key Lime Cooking, a small-press published cookbook I picked up maybe ten years ago on on of our trips to Florida.

This recipe is called Joe's Stone Crab Key Lime Pie. It's title indicates that it was created by a restaurant, one I've not been to. Online I googled Joe's Stone Crab, found a website, and a recipe. So, it seems to me that the recipe I have in the cookbook was incorrect. And this may explain the reason for my two pie quandary.

Here's the real recipe (note the quantity of ingredients):

Graham Cracker Crust
1 wax paper-wrapped package graham crackers (1/3 of a pound box) or 1 cup, 2 1/2 tbsp  graham cracker crumbs
5 tbsp melted unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar

Filling
3  Egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp  Grated zest of 2 limes
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
2/3 cup  freshly squeezed lime juice

Topping
1 cup  heavy or whipped cream, chilled
1 tbsp confectioners sugar

For the graham cracker crust:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch pie pan. Break up the graham crackers; place in a food processor and process to crumbs. (If you don't have a food processor, place the crackers in a large plastic bag; seal and then crush the crackers with a rolling pin.) Add the melted butter and sugar and pulse or stir until combined. Press the mixture into the bottom and sides of the pie pan, forming a neat border around the edge. Bake the crust until set and golden, 8 minutes. Set aside on a wire rack; leave the oven on.

For the filing:
Meanwhile, in an electric mixer with the wire whisk attachment, beat the egg yolks and lime zest at high speed until very fluffy, about 5 minutes. Gradually add the condensed milk and continue to beat until thick, 3 or 4 minutes longer. Lower the mixer speed and slowly add the lime juice, mixing just until combined, no longer. Pour the mixture into the crust. Bake for 10 minutes or until the filling has just set. Cool on a wire rack, then refrigerate. Freeze for 15 to 20 minutes before serving.

For the topping:
Whip the cream and the confectioners' sugar until nearly stiff. Cut the pie in wedges and serve very cold, topping each wedge with a large dollop of whipped cream.

I was duped. I followed a wrong recipe for 5 or 10 years. Now I have to decide whether to try the real Joe's Stone Crab key lime pie recipe or stick with mine. Not making two pies would be a relief. But, I hate not to have one to nibble when I give the other away. Usually my father-in-law gets the other pie. It's my way of thanking him for the help he gives us with our spaniels when we're both out of town for short lengths of time.

There were two pies. I tried to do the whipping cream topping, which I normally don't do. But there was user malfunction. I whipped the cream too long, too hard? It came out grainy. And the other whipped cream was ruined beyond use. I've got to return to whipped dream school. I garnished it with sliced limes and took it over to my brother-in-laws' home. Family from Ohio was in town for the races (NASCAR at Bristol, Tn.) and we met to eat pizza, and fabulous potato salad (Dorothy's recipe that I'm supposed to get a copy of), and my pie.

Every five minutes someone asked "Did you make this?" I guess it was that good. And they should know by now that I don't bring store-bought items to any family gathering. I rarely do store-bought at all.