Category: Recipes

She cooks,too

A Pecan Pie That Won’t Hurt Your Teeth

pieI love pecan pie or at least I thought I loved it.I guess I grew up and my palate just can’t handle a certain level of sweet anymore.And I want a drier pie filling because a wetter one skeezes me out to the max. But I’ve got more important things to obsess over so I went online and typed in not too sweet pecan pie and found this recipe from alpineberry.blogspot.com:

1/2 cup brown sugar,packed.
1/2 cup light corn syrup.
1/3 maple syrup.
3 lg eggs.
3 tbs melted butter.About 35 seconds in a microwave should do it.
1 tsp vanilla.
1 pinch salt.
2-cup bag of chopped pecans.
1 pie shell
Pre heat oven to 350 on bake.
Whisk together in a large bowl brown sugar and the eggs.
Whisk in corn syrup and maple.
Mix in melted butter vanilla and the pinch of salt.
Mix in the pecans and pour into pie shell and bake for 35-40 minutes.

If you’ve checked out my other cooking efforts you may have picked up on the fact that I bake in a toaster oven.Lately the oven has been running hot so my pie crust burned on the bottom and singed on one section on the top of the crust.Next time I will not place the pie directly onto the wire rack and use a real pie pan instead of an aluminum one.And I will turn it every 10 minutes or so so that the crust doesn’t get singed.
Otherwise the pie was still a little too sweet for my tastes but A. loved it burnt crust and all.

Absolutely the best Apple Pie,ever.

What a bold statement that is. But even more shocking was that this was my 1st attempt at pie baking. Obviously, I am a genius.OK,I can’t take all the credit.I did look up how to make a pie as I hadn’t much of a clue beyond that I knew I needed crust and stuff to put in a crust and then bake it.

What I really wanted to make was a crumble and apple pie combination.

I found a good recipe on epicurious.com that I used as a guide.

To start you will need a premade graham cracker crust or regular pastry pie crust and a 350 degree oven.

The apple filling:

6 Macintosh apples, peeled and cored and sliced into wedges.

2 tbs of milk.

2 tbs of white all purpose flour.

3/4 cinnamon

Dash of nutmeg.

Some pear juice, about 1/4 a cup.I used Looza’s pear juice instead of lemon juice.
dash vanilla extract
1/4 cup of sugar.

1/2 cup brown sugar (mine had gone hard so into the microwave with a cup of water and soon it was soft)

In a large bowl toss apples with all the ingredients in list above. Spoon into pie crust.

The topping:

4-6 oz walnuts in pieces or pecans (walnuts are better I think)

4 tbs butter

4 tbs brown sugar

2 tbs flour

little squeeze of honey

another little dash of cinnamon

Squeeze in the little bit of little honey, mix up and refrigerate.

After the pie has baked one hour take it out and spoon the topping into the center. As it melts it will spread out. If you want it to cover more pie spread it out-but be warned if you used a lot of wet ingredients for the filling, ie juice, the pie will probably spill over as it cooks.This happened to me but didn’t affect the outcome as it was the best apple pie I’d ever tasted.

Wednesday evening, 2 quiches later…

I got the crazy idea that I should make quiche.Because I never have. So off to the store to get the ingredients. One potentially fatal flaw to the quiche outcome was that the local store had only ready made graham cracker pie shells for sale. I grabbed them anyway.To hell with first time quiche and pie shell making at the same time? I am not stupid you know.So the crusts were a bit sweet- it didn’t kill us. It made us stronger.

I made 2 quiche:one with cheese, onion and mushroom- the other with cheese, broccoli and onion. Our toaster oven could only fit one quiche at a time and the mushroom was the one I made first so that is the one we ate for dinner.The broccoli sits in the fridge,unmolested for now.

Although it was 100% vegetarian the mushroom quiche was highly edible. That and a side of brussels sprouts was plenty for 2 folks and we are almost done with our first week of less red meat more (antibiotic free or kosher) chicken and vegetable diet.We haven’t eaten red meat since the lamb and lentil stew I wrote of a hundred years ago (last week).

The unfortunate side affect of a more vegetable laden diet is gas. Allegedly less meat is supposed to free up the bowel and freshen the breath-but all we have noticed so far is gas and greener pee. Wondrous!

Continue reading Wednesday evening, 2 quiches later…

Mushroom lentil lamb stew with rosemary and wine

I love to make soup but it’s only recently gotten to be perfect soup weather. My soup making tends toward stews. I want lots of stuff in the pot- not lots of broth.

Last night I went to my local store and saw they recently upgraded their vegetable and produce aisle to a much better selection and presentation. Good going Bravo, thank you! I can now more easily stick to my pledge to eat more vegetables.

Determined to eat less red meat as we are we still had to deal with the pound of roasted lamb lingering in our fridge pre less red meat pact. It was a little overcooked and really not that eatable all by itself. Perfect for reincarnation in a stew.

I bought lentils and celery,onions and garlic,2 kinds of mushrooms,although I only used Baby Bella for this recipe. Baby carrots,again, but no shallots;Bravo hasn’t upgraded that much.I used that bottle of cab,that famous 8 dollar too sweet to drink wine.I also cheated with a whole can of low sodium vegetable broth.One day I will make my own stock.

We had rosemary on hand and I debated throwing in parsley but didn’t.

This stew was very easy to make.

Chop onions. Heat on high large deep pot with a heavy bottom. A heavy bottom pot is best because we will be reducing wine and don’t want to burn it. Pour in olive oil-just a splash or maybe two splashes. Throw in onions- stir them and watch them, on this high heat they may burn-cook on high for 2 minutes then reduce heat. Chop celery and lamb(You can use raw lamb or beef or chicken or any of those,pre cooked) toss in with onions.

Let all that cook for a bit.Then turn the heat back to high and pour in the red wine.I didn’t measure but I am pretty sure I put in a good cup and a half! You will have to pay attention to this part.You’ll want to notice how high in the pot the wine was before it started reducing and then turn the heat back down when it has reduced almost entirely.Then pour in a cup of vegwetable stock or broth. Lucky you if you have the real thing on hand.

Chop up the whole package of Baby Bella mushrooms and add to pot. Put in about half a bag of baby carrots.You can use regular carrots, too, of course. I love how baby carrots look in the pot which is the reason I use them-that and I think they are sweeter. Rinse a half or quarter cup of lentils and throw in. Lentils are great because they expand when cooking and do not need to be soaked or peeled or shelled.The lentil is my potato substitute. You could use green or red, doesn’t matter, I happened to use green.

Tear off 2 large sprigs of rosemary and add to pot. Then chop garlic (I used 4 medium cloves) and add. Grind black pepper and add a healthy amount of paprika but be stingy with the salt.If you add the salt to the pot before you reduced the red wine you would stand the chance of having a very salty stew because for some reason reducing intensifies the saltiness.

I let this cook covered on low heat for as long as I could before my starving boyfriend lunged upon the pot and ate 3 bowls in a row (about an hour and a half).

The rosemary had a delicious nutty buttery taste to it. I had one large bowl but would have eaten more if A. had shown more restraint.

This stew would feed 3 people. A. eats for two most of the time although he is male and couldn’t possibly be pregnant. If I say so myself this was delicious.