Crack pie

Photo by Benji Shirley

We had some friends over for a pre-thanksgiving dinner (we had to stretch our stomachs in preparation for the real day after all).  I was excited to bake the pie to complete the meal and had planned to make a salted chocolate ganache tart, the recipe for which I'd seen in Real Simple. 

I had gone so far as to buy all the ingredients for the tart and was literally about to begin to prepare it when I found myself skimming the archives of Bon Appetit Magazine online. I stopped skimming and started reading when I saw the words "Crack pie." This pie recipe was created by the pastry chef from Momofuku's Milk Bar in NYC.  The reviews were complete raves and let's just say that that apparently, this "Crack" pie was granted its name for a reason.  Anyways, long story short, I just couldn't resist trying out the recipe.

The filling for the pie is essentially a chess pie (which means that it contains every bad-for-you ingredient imaginable...heavy cream, egg yolks, butter, sugar...) And the crust--I love this--is made from crumbled oatmeal cookie that you pre-bake.

The pie was amazing and rich. It has that wonderful buttery sweet flavor of a sugar cookie, while maintaining a delicious soft, almost custard-like texture in the filling. The oatmeal crust has an almost nutty butter flavor and provides a nice textural contrast for the filling.

Overall the recipe was simple, although I had a little bit of trouble getting the crust to smush together into the pie dish. It worked out eventually, although as you can see from the picture it didn't necessarily fill my deep pie dish.

I'm definitely going to keep this recipe filed away although it is so decadent that I will reserve it for the most special of occasions.

Crack Pie
Recipe from Momofuku, published by Bon Appetit. This recipe can also be found here, at the LA Times, but it's important to note that the LA times recipe makes 2 pies. The recipe I've listed below is based on the one published by Bon Appetit and makes one 9 inch pie.


Ingredients:

For the oat cookie crust:
-9 tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature
-5 1/2 tablespoons of brown sugar
-2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
-1 large egg
-3/4 plus 2 tablespoons of old-fashioned oats
-1/2 cup all purpose flour
-1/8 teaspoon baking powder
-1/8 teaspoon baking soda
-1/4 teaspoon of salt

For the filling:
-3/4 cup sugar
-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
-1 tablespoon of nonfat dry milk powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt
-1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
-6 1/2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
-4 large egg yolks
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-Powdered sugar for dusting pie before serving (I skipped this because I forgot!)

Preparation:

First prepare the oat cookie crust:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 13x9x2-inch metal baking pan with parchment paper or a sil pad. If not using sil pad, then oil the baking pan.

Combine 6 tablespoons butter, 4 tablespoons brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat mixture until light and fluffy, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl, about 2 minutes.

Add egg; beat until pale and fluffy.

Add oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and beat until well blended.

Turn oat mixture out onto prepared baking pan; press out evenly to edges of pan.

Bake until light golden on top, 17 to 18 minutes. Transfer baking pan to rack and cool cookie completely.

In a food processor, pulse to crumble the oat cookie; add 3 tablespoons butter and 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar. Pulse further until butter and sugar are well distributed.

The mixture should be moist enough to stick together.

Transfer cookie crust mixture to 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Using fingers, press mixture evenly onto bottom and up sides of pie dish. Place pie dish with crust on rimmed baking sheet.

Now prepare the filling: 

Position the rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350 F.

Whisk together both sugars, milk powder, and salt in medium bowl.

Add the melted butter and whisk until it is blended.

Add the cream, then egg yolks, and vanilla and whisk until well blended.

Pour filling into crust.

Bake pie 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 F. Continue to bake pie until filling is brown in spots and set around edges but center still moves a bit when the dish is shaken, about 20 minutes.

Cool pie 2 hours in pie dish on rack. Chill uncovered overnight.

Note: I made this a day in advance and it was nicely set and chilled. If you think of it, sprinkle powdered sugar on the pie before serving although its certainly not required!

First apple pie of the season! and Joyce Maynard

I hadn't made a pie in ages but got a sudden urge on Friday evening after a long and tiring week. And so I ran to the grocery store and bought a pound of apples before my pie baking energy escaped.

In addition to being inspired to bake by the crispness of fall and my need to do something that doesn't involve staring at a computer screen, I had recently stumbled upon Joyce Maynard's website, where I discovered an entry on pie making. Apparently, Joyce Maynard is not only a writer and story teller, but also a pie maker. She teaches her late mother's pie making style and boasts, "I'm guessing the number of my pie students has probably reached the quadruple digits now, and I'm not about to stop. I have been known to travel with a rolling pin." I love Joyce Maynard's pie making spirit, the fact that her teaching of the craft serves a sort of homage to her mother, and that she uses the process of pie making as a metaphor for life. (For example, in her pie making video, Joyce Maynard says that she cuts that apples into uneven pieces since this is the way life is; uneven and unpredictable.)

Apparently, in her recently published book, Labor Day, one of the main characters teachers another to make a pie:

" We were his ticket across state lines. That was the story. I’d watched enough episodes of Magnum P.I.. to get it. Only then Frank turned around to face us, and he was holding a knife.These peaches, he said, looking even more serious than before. If we don’t put them to use soon, they’re goners. What did you have in mind? my mother said. There was a sound to her voice I could not remember ever hearing. She was laughing, not the way a person does if you tell them a joke, but more how it is when they’re just in a good mood and feeling happy. I’m going to make us a peach pie, like my grandmother did it, he said. First thing, he needed a couple of bowls. One to make the crust. One for the filling. Frank peeled the peaches. I cut them up. Filling is easy, Frank said. What I want to talk about is crust.You could tell, the way he reached for his bowl, that this man had made more than a few pies in his life."

The passage continues and provides detailed instructions for making a pie crust. The recipe calls for 3 cups of flour (for a double crust pie), 1 stick of butter, about an equivalent amount of shortening, salt and sugar.

After reading this I was inspired to try Joyce's recipe for pie crust making myself. While I have experimented with using butter, and shortening, separately in pie crusts, I hadn't ever before tried to use both in roughly equivalent amounts.

All in all I was pleased with the pie that I made. However, I had some trouble rolling out the dough. My theory is that this problem results from the fact that I took the oft-cited rule of pie crust making that one should never add too much water to an extreme. As a result, the raw pie crust dough was dry and therefore crumbly and difficult to roll. When baked the pie crust was tasty but remained a bit soggy. After this experiment using shortening + butter I decided that I prefer an all-butter crust, to a butter/shortening one, because of the far superior flavor that the butter provides. The apple filling that I made was quite delicious and consisted of ~ 1 pound of apples, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, sugar, lemon juice, rum, and corn starch.

After this pie making experience I was left with renewed energy for pie making, and with ideas for future pies. Stay tuned for more!

Olla Podrida

This perfect fall recipe was inspired by a dish that I had during my trip last December to the northern coast of Spain. As you can imagine, we tried many delicious foods while there (god, the food of Spain is just amazing!), but one dish, in particular, a bean and sausage stew that we had in the town of Burgos, was especially memorable. In fact, I've wanted to recreate that meal ever since our trip but it's only now, 9 or so months later, that I mustered up the energy and confidence to try.



After a quick internet search I decided that the dish that I remembered is something that's known as Olla Podrida. The so-called "authentic" recipe calls for blood sausage, which is really hard to come by here in the States. For my stew, I ended up using an Italian Sausage that we bought from a local farmer here in Carrboro--the use of this type of meat in the context of this stew is probably completely atypical and some might even skoff and roll their eyes at the thought of my having done such a thing. But my excuse is that this was meat that I trusted and that I could find relatively easily. So there.



Truth be told I ended up tweaking the recipe a lot--so much so that I don't know that
it's even appropriate that I titled this post "Olla Podrida." Nevertheless the outcome was really tasty. It made our apartment smell amazing and G. already bought the ingredients so that I can make the stew again!! And yes, it was so good that I wanted to record the recipe on this blog, before I forget what I did. And so here goes. This is a really flexible, loosey-goosey recipe (at least in my humble opinion), so enjoy and don't follow the instructions too closely!


Olla Podrida--North Carolina version

1 pound of Italian Sausage
1 pound of dried white beans, such as Great Northern Beans
1 onion, coarsely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons paprika
pinch of saffron
1 can of tomato paste
salt to taste
2-3 bay leaves
4 tablespoons of olive oil
red wine for cooking

1. First, cook the beans, in water and with the bay leaves. I did this in our slow cooker, but use whatever method suits you. I recommend taking them off the stove/out of the slow cooker when the beans remain al dente. This way you can simmer them with the other ingredients and make sure that the beans don't fall apart.

2.When the beans are nearly finished cooking, saute in a dutch oven or large sauce pan the sausage in 2-4 tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat until it is browned and fragrant.

3. Add the onions to the sausage and saute for a 1-2 minutes.

4. Add the garlic and saute with the onion and sausage for a minute.

5. Add the beans, about a cup and a half of the water that they cooked in, the spices, tomato paste, and a nice chug of red wine to the sauce pan. Add salt to taste. Give this a nice mix.

6. Now allow the ingredients to simmer on medium low to medium heat for about an hour or so (or longer, if you have the time).

Serve with crusty bread and a glass of red wine.

Welcoming fall

Well hello there, long time no see. My last post was ages ago, in February. Since that time we survived a long, cold winter (especially for North Carolina) and an equally brutal summer. And already it is time to celebrate the arrival of fall. I always become nostalgic during this time. The smells of the season, the falling leaves, they make me sentimental and ever so aware of the cycles of life. The colors and the smells that appear during this time make these things tolerable and beautiful and so any sadness is engulfed by beauty and hope.

But enough of the sentimentality. Fall is also a great time to begin to think about food and cooking again. Because it's now that the days become shorter, the temperatures begin to drop in the evenings, and I want nothing more than to smell spicy warm bubbles emanating from my kitchen. And it is with these thoughts that I resolve to cook more this season and to post more! Because I realized that this blog is a wonderful way for me to catalog the flavors and events of the seasons. Well I guess I missed most of the winter and all of the summer of 2010. Hopefully I will manage to preserve some of fall 2010. And with that I leave you with some food images from these past few months. Until next time!

Yeasted sweet potato rolls

About a month ago I excitedly bought an entire bushel of sweet potatoes; we now have an overabundance. As a result, I have been seeking varied and creative ways to incorporate sweet potatoes into our daily eating. Sweet potato pie, sweet potato soup, sweet potato stew...there are so many possibilities.

When we needed a starch to accompany the soup that we cooked for ourselves and some friends this cold and rainy past Thursday, I thought I'd try my hand at incorporating the sweet potatoes into a bread of some sort.


After doing some research I settled on a sweet potato rolls recipe that I found here, on group recipes.com. Honestly, I chose this rolls recipe over the many others that I saw largely because it called for substantially less butter. I wasn't sure if the relative healthfulness of this recipe would negatively affect the taste of the rolls. Turns out it seemed not to, or at least not too severely from the perspective of my naive tasters, because these rolls were absolutely delicious. Each of us ate at least 2 that evening.



One thing that I feel inclined to mention is that these rolls are not heavy in sweet potato flavor. We didn't complain though since the rolls were light, airy, beautifully golden in color, and tasty. I am putting this recipe on my "prepare for thanksgiving" list for sure. The rolls are certainly worth remaking.



The recipe calls for regular milk. As I so often do these days, I substituted buttermilk, and the rolls came out nicely, indeed. I used all purpose flour and that worked nicely as well.

Mississippi Sweet Potato rolls, from "Group Recipes."

1 1/2 cups cooked sweet potato (reserve 1 cup potato water from cooking)
1 cup milk
1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup dry milk
2 pks dry yeast
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1tsp salt
5 1/2 cups flour

Wash and chunk unpeeled sweet potato and simmer until tender. Remove and peel immediately. Cool. Reserve potato water for later use. Mash potato meat.
Add salt, nutmeg, sugar and cinnamon.
Add one cup reserved potato water and milk and puree.
Add yeast to puree. It should be warm, about 100 degrees.
Let yeast proof.
Add melted butter and beaten egg.
Add dry milk and about 5 cups flour.
Knead until silver dollar pinch of dough stretches without breaking. Add additional flour if necessary to get right consistency. If using mixer, it should pull away cleanly from mixer bowl. Or if by hand, it should be elastic. Place in greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down and form into rolls. Size and shape is your choice. Place on greased backing sheet and let rise until almost doubled. Remember dough will rise again in oven. bake at 325 until lightly browned.

Apples atop pancakes makes for a delicious Sunday brunch

And yes, we are still working through the bushels of apples that we acquired in Asheville. This Sunday, we made regular pancakes, with regular milk rather than buttermilk to make a lighter pancake.


Then we peeled and chopped a few apples, threw them in a buttered saucepan, which we placed on medium heat, sprinkled in a bit of cinnamon for spice effect, and PRESTO: delicious topping for delicious pancakes.

YUM!


PS: That's whipped cream on top of the pancakes in the first picture. Double YUM.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Happy Halloween, a day or 2 belated!

Yesterday, a friend had a day-after-halloween pumpkin party: bring your favorite pumpkin dish. The menu consisted of pumpkin soup, a black bean and pumpkin stew, pumpkin seeds atop a green salad, pumpkin brownies for dessert, a carved pumpkin for decoration, and...pumpkin lasagna!

Okay, now let's focus on the last food item that I mentioned. Close your eyes. Now, when I say the words "pumpkin lasagna", what comes to mind? Well, when the chef of said food item said pumpkin lasagna, what came to my mind was the following: "Okay, he layered chunks of pumpkin between lasagna noodles, then covered the noodles with cheese and sauce, and there ya go! Pumpkin lasagna!"

Well imagine my and everyone else's surprise when what emerged from the oven was not your usual casserole dish holding neat layers of noodles and sauce, but rather one half of a carved out pumpkin with noodles, meat and sauce on the inside.


After recovering from our initial shock at this new development and piece of culinary ingenuity, we all circled around the pumpkin lasagna to have a better look. We then tentatively shoveled the contents of the pumpkin onto our respective plates. And guess what. The contents basically tasted like lasagna. Now, place this idea on reserve in your head for next halloween. You, too, can delight your friends and impress your loved ones. Cook a lasagna in a pumpkin.

Big Apple "Pancake" for brunch with the sisters

My sister who now lives in Asheville, NC was in town for a brief visit, but she had time for only one meal--brunch. She and my other sister contemplated eating out but I insisted that we stay in. This way, I could try out a new recipe on them!

I had recently been perusing old archived Gourmet Magazine recipes, as a tribute to the canceled magazine. One that immediately caught my eye was their Big Apple Pancake recipe, especially since apple season is now in full swing. It sounded (and looked) delicious and my sisters are generally exceedingly patient when it comes to my trying out new recipes on them.

Well this recipe did not disappoint. It was relatively simple to execute, tasty, and a little bit different from your standard brunch fare. The one comment that my sisters had was that the product does not really taste like a pancake; it's more of a cross between a sponge cake, frittata, french toast, and a pancake. Regardless, this apple whatever-you-call-it is worth making. I highly recommend it, and I'm definitely going to keep this recipe on file for future brunches.



Below is the recipe. I skimped on the butter a bit and used 2% instead of whole milk, and the pancake still turned out splendidly. I'd like to try using buttermilk instead of regular milk next time.

Big Apple Pancake, recipe from Gourmet Magazine

Ingredients:

• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
• 1 large sweet apple such as Gala or Golden Delicious, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4-inch-wide wedges
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Confectioners sugar for dusting

Special equipment:

• a well-seasoned 10- to 11-inch heavy cast-iron skillet or other ovenproof skillet

To prepare:

• Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 450°F.
• Melt butter in skillet over moderate heat, then transfer 2 tablespoons to a blender. Add apple wedges to skillet and cook, turning over once, until beginning to soften, 3 to 5 minutes.

• While apple is cooking, add milk, flour, eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt to butter in blender and blend until smooth.
• Pour batter over apple and transfer skillet to oven.
  

• Bake until pancake is puffed and golden, about 15 minutes. Dust with confectioners sugar and serve immediately.

Corn, tomato, and cheese pie

A friend recently sent me a link to a terrific blog, titled "nothing-in-the-house," which is fully devoted to (and dare I say 'inspired by??') the art of pie baking. Well, reading the blog has completely reignited my somewhat expired love/passion/obsession with pie baking. It's been really fun, actually, rediscovering my interest and getting excited about making pies again!

So I've been dreaming all week of making a pie...meanwhile the weather has begun to feel like fall, making it an even more perfect time for baking (and eating) pie. I'd seen the recipe for a tomato corn pie on the smitten kitchen blog earlier in the year and been intrigued. And so with my new found inspiration I looked up that recipe, adapted it a bit, and made my own version.




Well, the pie turned out so well! We shared it with our 2 sisters and there is not a crumb left of the pie.

The original recipe that peaked my interest can be found here. However, I altered the recipe quite a bit and so I've written my version of the pie recipe below. I hope that you will be inspired and try baking this, or perhaps another type of pie.




Ingredients:

For the crust:
1 cup whole wheat flour (I used bread flour b/c that's what I had but I'll bet pastry would be better)
1 cup white pastry flour
sea salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup buttermilk
A little over 1/4 cup olive oil
Water as needed

For the filling:
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
Corn from 2 cobs, coursely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh chives, chopped
3 tablespoons fresh basil
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup goat cheese
1/4 cup mild cheddar cheese, grated
salt to taste
paper to taste

For the crust:

Prebake oven to 375 degrees.

Mix together the flours, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add the olive oil, followed by the buttermilk, and mix into flour. Slowly add water while stirring, until the mixture forms a nice ball that is not too sticky. If you add too much water, just add a little extra flour to the mix. Divide the dough into 2 equally sized balls. Wrap one ball of dough in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for later. Roll out the other ball on a lightly floured surface until it measures a 12 inch circle. Carefully drape the rolled out dough over your rolling pin and transfer it to a 12 inch pie dish. Place lightly oiled aluminum foil over the crust, and pie weights or dried beans on top of the foil. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes. Remove the weights and foil, lower the heat to 350 degrees, and then bake the dough for another 10 minutes. Remove the dish with the bottom crust from the oven and allow to cool. Raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Layer the filling ingredients in the your bottom crust:

First, empty the contents of the can of tomatoes in the dish. Next, sprinkle the chives and basil on top of the tomatoes and sprinkle salt and pepper on top of the herbs. Follow this with the coarsely chopped corn, and then spread the ricotta and goat cheeses on top of the corn. Finally, sprinkle on the grated cheddar cheese. Roll your second ball of dough into a 12 inch circle and pinch into place as the top crust. Cut 3 or 4 slits in the top dough layer for ventilation. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the dough is brown, the filling is bubbling, and the smells emanating from your kitchen are causing your tummy to growl and your mouth to water.