Apple Pie for A Birthday

When I asked my friend Manning (well, it's actually Eric's friend from college who has become my friend too) a few years ago what I could bake him for his birthday, he asked for Dutch apple pie.  Expecting an entirely different response, like "a cake", I was surprised.

This isn't the first apple pie I've baked.  I spent years apprenticing at my grandma's table, learning how to crimp the edges just so.  Then I tried my hand, dabbling with a Martha Stewart recipe here and an Alton Brown recipe there.  It turns out, I'm like Goldilocks when it comes to apple pie recipes.  Nothing is just right.  Each recipe has its own pros and cons -- too much crust, too much sugar, double crust instead of crumble topping, a splash of apple cider vinegar for a tart surprise...

This year, as I made Manning's birthday pie, I cobbled together multiple recipes (Alton's classic pie crust, Martha's filling with a splash of apple cider vinegar a la Alton, and a crumble topping inspired by both Martha and Deb Perelman but totally improvised by me) to create what I dare claim is my best pie to date.

Oh don't worry.  I'll keep searching for an apple pie that is just right.  It's the chase that's fun, after all.  Well, that and the eating part.


Dutch Apple Pie a la Ashley
Crust recipe from Alton Brown, Filling recipe adapted from Martha Stewart (with a splash of Alton Brown), Crumble recipe loosely adapted from Martha Stewart and Deb Perelman
Makes 1 pie

In case you're wondering why I made two pies, it's because my father had not-so-subtly hinted he wanted a plain old apple pie for Christmas (even though he'd been steadily diminishing our supply of Christmas cookies for weeks).  

Ingredients:

For the crust:

6 tbsp. unsalted butter, chilled

2 tbsp. lard or shortening, chilled

1 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling the dough

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup ice water

optional - use 2 tbsp. plain vodka, then use ice water for any remaining liquid needed

For the filling:

Approximately 3 pounds of baking apples (I prefer Honeycrisp, Braeburn, MacIntosh, Jonathan, and Granny Smith.  A mix is even better for flavor and texture.)

1 tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp. all-purpose flour

3 tbsp. granulated sugar

1 tbsp. light brown sugar

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

1/8 tsp. salt

optional:  about 1/4 tsp. ground grains of paradise

For the crumble topping:

1 1/4 cups old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup plus 3 tbsp. light brown sugar
3 tbsp. turbinado/raw sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/8 tsp. salt
10 tbsp. (11/4 stick) unsalted butter, cut into cubes and softened to room temperature

Preparation:

For the crust:

Place butter and lard/shortening in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.  Keep them there until ready to use.

Meanwhile, combine the flour and salt in a food processor.  Pulse 4 times to mix everything well.  Add the chilled butter chunks and pulse 5 times, so the texture looks mealy, with still recognizable pieces of butter the size of peas visible.  Add the chilled lard/shortening and pulse 4 times, so that the texture now looks more like a very rough cornmeal.  

Now pay attention!  Add 2-3 tbsp. of your ice water (or, if using the vodka, add 2 tbsp. vodka and 1 tbsp. ice water) to the bowl, sprinkling it to cover as much of the surface as possible.  Pulse 5 times.  Wait for 1 minute before testing your dough.  Seriously, just wait a moment. It'll keep you from adding too much liquid too quickly.  Continue to add ice water in 1-2 tbsp. increments (add, pulse, wait 1 minute, check consistency) until the dough holds together when squeezed.  Stop adding liquid before the dough becomes sticky/tacky; if you already went there, add a bit more flour (about 1 tbsp. increments) sprinkled around the top.  

Transfer the dough to a sheet of cling wrap and press it into a roughly disc-like shape and wrap tightly in the cling wrap.  Store in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days.  This allows the flour to hydrate and rechills the fats, which makes for a tender and flaky crust when cooked. (Psst - now is a good time to get started on the filling and the crumble!)

I had to be resourceful and use a wine bottle as
my rolling pin.
Wine bottle is NOT to be confused with the "home security device"
French rolling pin we have at our apartment. 

After the dough disc is chilled, set it on the counter.  I like to sandwich it between two pieces of wax paper when rolling, but you can also go direct contact with counter and rolling pin, sprinkling flour as needed to reduce sticking.  Roll the dough out to a 10-11 inch circle (slightly larger than your 9 inch pie plate).  I find turning the dough a quarter-turn every time helps maintain a relatively even thickness and circular shape.

Transfer the dough circle to your pie plate, using gentle pressure to mold the dough to the pan.  If you're feeling fancy, crimp the edges.  If you're feeling minimalist, just trim away excess dough for a flat edge even with the pie plate.  Dock the dough with a fork.  Store in the refrigerator until ready to assemble the pie.

"Hi!"

Preparation (continued):

For the filling:

Peel and core apples, then cut into roughly 1/4 - 1/2 inch slices.  

In a large bowl, toss the apple slices with the remaining filling ingredients until evenly coated.  

Preparation (continued):

For the crumble topping:

In a medium bowl, stir together the dry ingredients (oats, sugars, flour, spices) until thoroughly mixed.  Add the butter and use either a fork, pastry cutter, or your fingertips to work the butter into the mixture.  It should be the texture of coarse meal, with no visible pieces of butter and nearly every oat moistened with butter.

Preparation (continued):

For assembly and baking:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

Remove the pie plate containing your docked pie dough from the refrigerator.  Pour the apple filling into the pie plate, distributing evenly with your hands.  Gently spoon or place handfuls of the crumble mixture on top, trying to evenly cover the apples without compressing the crumble.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, until the crust and crumble topping are lightly golden brown and the filling is bubbling.  Allow to cool 10 minutes before cutting a piece and serving with vanilla ice cream.  Even better, have a piece cold for breakfast the next morning.  

Happy Birthday, Manning!

Good Things - Holidays 2012

Random good things from the past few weeks...

By happy chance, I discovered a fantastic spice store in a nearby market -- Colonel De.  Jars line shelves above and below the counter, filled with every imaginable spice, dried herb, flavored sugar, flavored salt, pepper, and spice blend.  I was, quite literally, a kid in a candy store.  Their most adorable offerings were samplers packaged in miniature tins, like this flavored sugar kit.  I can't wait to go back for their Some Like It Hot kit to taste different dried peppers and spicy blends!

Trader Joe's continues to rock my socks off.  Pomegranate arils already removed from the pomegranate?  Yes, please!  I've been adding the juicy seeds to everything, but my favorite dishes so far are an improvised pumpkin parfait (pumpkin puree, Greek yogurt, maple syrup, spices, chocolate granola, and pomegranate arils) or atop baked pumpkin oatmeal with maple syrup.

This salad has also been knocking my socks off recently - lacinato kale, granny smith apple, feta or goat cheese crumbles, pomegranate arils, and a mustardy, vinagery vinaigrette.  Since I'm still coming to terms with salads, the fact that I've enjoyed this salad 3 times last week is saying something.

I'd read about a set of four mini bottles of bitters in Bon Appetite and kept my acquisitive eye out for them.  I actually found these two quality kits at Anthropologie, of all places.  In the two sets from Scrappy's Bitters, there are both traditional flavors for bitters (orange, aromatics, celery) and some more unusual ones (lavender, caradamom).  No cocktails with them yet, though I couldn't resist sampling a few flavors with seltzer water.  The lavender is going to make for a killer lavender daquiri, inspired by one I enjoyed at The Winds restaurant in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Granola.  It's almost a niche market anymore, one that I'd avoided for a few years in search of balance.  See, I went to a rather liberal school...where some people might be labeled with the term granola.  So it just felt over the top to actually eat granola.  Then I rediscovered how dang tasty granola + yogurt is.  Follow that with Sprouted Kitchen's recipe for lemon cremes with thyme-oat crumble (it's granola in disguise, people!), and I was hooked again.

Best of all?  I can make my own granola.  For a lot less money, using only the ingredients I want to eat.  This is the second batch I've made in the last few months.  It's pumpkin pecan granola from The Sprouted Kitchen Cookbook, which is filled with so many tasty AND healthy recipes I actually want to eat.  

Coming sometime in the near future....David Leibovitz's persimmon cake!

Since I didn't have time to make it before Christmas, I frugally peeled and pureed my uber-ripe persimmons and stored them in the freezer.  I love the vibrant orange of persimmon!

Our New Year's Eve spread included the standard snacks (pretzels, salt and pepper chips), leftover tapas from a family shindig (piquillo peppers stuffed with manchego, herb and olive oil marinated feta, crudites), a full plate of Christmas cookies and candies (see the full list!), and a roasted pork tenderloin seasoned with smoked paprkia.  I roasted my first full tenderloin, people!  I even brined it for a few hours beforehand, another first for me!  It turned out moist and tender, perfectly cooked through because - get this - I used a meat thermometer! Bam, bam, bam, I started off 2013 kicking ass in the kitchen, if I do say so myself.

To go with the pork, I made one of Eric's favorites - oven roasted potatoes seasoned with salt, cumin, and chile pepper.  And sitting next to that, looking somewhat questionable, is one of the most delicious regional dishes ever to come from Cincinnati.  Skyline Chili Dip.  It's a layer of cream cheese on the bottom, topped with Skyline's famous Cincinnati-style chili from a can (it's a rather liquid chili, with miniscule pieces of meat and no bean, characterized by its use of chocolate) and lots of cheese.  Add chopped onion and Skyline's hot sauce after warming in the oven and you have some serious crack dip.  Well, I do mean crack.  Even after I ate dinner, I was still shoveling tortilla chip after tortilla chip of Skyline dip into my greedy little mouth. Mmmmmm...

(disclaimer: Eric refuses to acknowledge the glory that is Skyline Chili, claiming the actual chili is awful.  I have to agree, if you're eating it as a bowl of chili.  But on top of spaghetti (Cincy's three way, four way, or five way meals) or on top of a hot dog (coney style), it's amazing.)

(I also admit to eating Skyline's hot sauce on nearly everything.  Seriously.)

The New Year

Cheers!  Happy New Year!!!

Mimosas start things off right

I hope I'm not too late in wishing that!  I feel a bit behind in everything, but I most definitely want to send my own wishes for a fantastic, happy, exciting (in only good ways), delicious (because we're all into food and drink here), and memorable (again, only in the best of ways) 2013.


I'll be back soon with more food and drink. I know I have a lot of catching up to do. I will, I promise!

PS - Happy holidays, since I forgot to tell you earlier. I hope you had a wonderful time, filled with family, friends, and lots of good cheer!

Gold Rush Cocktail

With all the get-togethers of the holidays, you're bound to need a few tricks up your sleeve.  Preferably ones that make you look awesome while taking minimal effort and enjoying yourself.  Well, here's a cocktail recipe you can trot out to impress family, friends, coworkers, or even your cat.  It's only three ingredients and all you have to do is shake or stir.

And in case you don't need any tricks, this cocktail is still an excellent way to relax and enjoy a winter's evening.

The Gold Rush

from Domaine de Canton

Makes 1 drink

Ingredients:

1.5 oz Domaine de Canton (ginger liquer)

1 oz. bourbon

0.5 oz. fresh lemon juice

Preparation:

Combine all three ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously...or put them in a tall glass and stir vigorously.  If you're feeling fancy, pour into a martini glass and garnish with a cherry.

Notes:

--This cocktail might be a bit too strong for some.  I'd suggest you add quality ginger ale (like Reed's Ginger Brew) to taste.

--My bourbon of choice is Bulleit bourbon. It's smooth, an excellent value, and made in Kentucky, where they know a thing or two about bourbon.  I'm looking forward to trying their rye bourbon soon.

The Christmas Cookie Extravaganza of 2012

When I was a young one, I distinctly remember helping my mother bake Christmas cookies.  We'd bake the family favorites - sugar cookies rolled around Hershey kisses or maraschino cherries, buckeyes (peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate), date bars, lemon bars, and a seemingly endless supply of butter cookies.  Those butter cookies were the star of the show, cut in a variety of holiday shapes and iced/sprinkled with care.  A few years, we even made divinity, a traditional Southern candy made with very hot sugar syrup and jello mix.  The divinity was quite memorable, since some of the sugar syrup leaped out of the bowl and onto my hand, instantly blistering skin and instilling in me a healthy respect for sugar work.  

I love the tradition of baking Christmas cookies with my mother.  Even though we've adjusted our routine, making smaller batches and swapping in new recipes for our older ones, it just doesn't feel like the holidays without a flurry of cookie baking and sharing.  

I've extended the tradition to include my coworkers, gifting them with boxes of each year's Christmas cookie offerings.  This year, I was responsible for choosing all of my family's holiday treats, and I wanted to include the familiar flavors of the season.  

Here's what we made...

Chewy Chocolate Mint Cookies

from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

This is their most recent cookbook, separated into sections by their 10 favorite ingredients.  While I've enjoyed their two previous books, this volume is definitely my favorite.  It has a whole section on pumpkin! And chocolate!

About the cookie:  Chewy texture, with a slightly crunchy exterior thanks to a roll in some granulated sugar.  Studded with chocolate chunks.  A rich dark chocolate and strong peppermint flavor

Ginger Rum Molasses Cookies (or Joe Froggers)

from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Their gingersnap recipe won out over the more crunchy version of David Leibovitz and the chocolate-gingerbread version of Martha Stewart.  I suspect the winning factor was the rum...

About the cookie:  Chewy, with a very mild crunch from the demarara sugar we dipped them in before baking.  Uses A LOT of molasses, so that's the major flavor you'll get from these, with a bit of gingerbread spice (ginger, clove, nutmeg....no cinnamon, which was interesting).  My mother claims to clearly taste the rum, but all I can taste is molasses.  Since we used dark rum, which has a strong molasses flavor, maybe we're both tasting the same thing.

Swedish Christmas Cookies

(aka Cardamom Shortbread Cookies)

from the Food Network Kitchens

Last year, we wanted to make traditional holiday cookies from around the world.  In our search for recipes, I stumbled across these shortbread cookies, laden with cardamom and lemon zest.  We didn't make them last year, but, oh boy, are we happy we did this year.  They're such a wonderful change from the other cookies and from more common butter cookies.

About the cookie:  Crumbly and tender shortbread cookies with the barest hint of crunch from the granulated sugar rolled around its edges (you could use colored sugar or chopped nuts to be more festive).  The smell of these cookies baking was marvelous, filling the house with a rich, exotic, spicy scent.  When you bite into one of these, you taste warm and comforting spice - that's the cardamom taking you to the fireside and filling you with warmth.  The lemon zest seems to get lost in the glory of cardamom, but I suspect it's supporting the cardamom's flavor more than I can taste. 

North-by-Far-East Brittle

(aka Spiced Pecan Chews)

from Sugar Baby: Confections, Candies, Cakes, and Other Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Sugar by Gesine Bullock-Prado

This book tempted me into the finicky land of playing with sugar.  While it has excellent explanations and creative (but do-able) recipes, I've run into problems with making some of the recipes.  I'm not sure if it is the recipe's fault or my own, but I followed this recipe and emerged with a not-so-brittle treat.  I love this cookbook, I'm just baffled about the results. 

About the cookie (err...candy?):  This candy was supposed to result in brittle, which means sheets of candy that snap and break easily into beautiful and irregular shards.  Even though I followed the recipe precisely, my product dried to a thick and chewy candy.  And by chewy, I mean this could sticks to and pulls on your teeth like those caramel apple lollipops you see around Halloween.  Since it was still quite tasty and I hated to see so much food go to waste, I decided to roll with my much chewier than brittle candy.   It's delicious, redolent with flavors of maple syrup, ras-al-hanout spice mix, and toasted pecan pieces.  A welcome change from the toffee so often seen around the holidays.  Eric and I combined our muscles to wrangle cut the "chews" into pieces as small as we could manage.  I'd like to try this recipe again, perhaps with a new and improved thermometer (though I genuinely thought my current thermometer--the third of its ilk in my home--was alright).

Apple Cider Caramels

from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

From one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen, this newly released cookbook is not only gorgeous, informative, and incredibly approachable, it's totally my new favorite cookbook.  It'll stay in the favorite category for, well, forever.  It's got everything, and Deb does her typical excellent job of breaking it down and making it work for everyone.  She previewed this recipe on her blog the day the book was released and I vowed to make them immediately.  Immediately came and went, but I still had to make them.  Cider and the promise of all the flavors of fall on your tongue?  How could I resist?

About the candy:  Deb's instructions are easy and clear to follow, but my caramels came out a bit harder than she intended.  Instead of cutting into pliable squares, they shattered along fault lines into pieces of their own choosing.  Oh well. I rolled with this as well.  They're insanely delicious, with a strong taste apple cider (make sure you use a good quality cider, like Trader Joe's!) and a delightful salty counterpoint from fleur de sel.   While these are rather hard in your hand, they soften up quite a bit in your mouth, becoming the stick-to-your-teeth-in-a-dangerous fashion for a bit before settling down to small pieces you can savor.

All these treats were wrapped in wax paper to keep them separate and carefully stowed inside of Martha Stewart's lovely cookie boxes.  They're the easiest and most lovely way I've found to package cookies for gifting.

So far, it seems that my coworkers love all their treats.  Most have declared the apple cider caramels their favorite, though Eric is quite enamored of the chewy chocolate mint cookies, especially once he realized they were chewy and not crispy, like the first cookie he'd sneaked for a taste (serves him right, stealing a cookie and snagging one of the few that didn't turn out properly!).  I'm hard pressed to choose a favorite, since my tastes change with my mood.  I can confidently say, though, that all three cookies are quite delicious in their unbaked form as well.

Oh, and one of the fantastic features of the cookies is how easy they are to make, compared to the usual production of butter cookies (mix dough, chill, roll out sheets, chill, cut shapes, chill, re-roll dough, chill, bake, cool, ice, cool).  My mother and I made all of the doughs the day before, allowing them to chill overnight.  We baked everything in a single day, which was fairly easy with the cardamom shortbreads being a slice-and-bake and the two other cookies being drop/roll into a ball cookies.  

And I promised to give major credit to Eric for his photography in some of these photos.  He was quite artistic in arranging the boxes and the cookie list.  He also snapped several action shots of the candy making process, but I didn't include them here (sorry!).  If he's not careful, he's going to become Hops' official photographer...

It finally feels like Christmas is coming!

What treats do you make for the holiday?

Do you have any family holiday traditions in the kitchen?

Cider and Spiced Rum

It's finally decided to settle into winter here in Ohio.  Temperatures dropped to 40s and below.  The wind is bitingly brisk and the sky is an uninspiring pale grey.  Ugh.  If I had my druthers, I'd spend winter in a charmingly cozy ski chalet, where none of my interactions with winter would involve driving through snow and ice to go to work and I'd never be chilled to the bone.  Of course, I'd grow tired of being cooped up in a single building, but the thought is quite picturesque, isn't it?

Until I'm whisked away to my dream ski chalet or until I no longer have to drive through snow, I'll settle for wrapping my hands around a tasty adult beverage. Whether it is hot or cold, I don't mind, as long as its flavors sing of comfort against fall and winter's biting chill.

Cider and Spiced Rum

Makes 1 drink

Serve hot or cold, your choice

Ingredients:

6-9 oz. apple cider

3 oz. spiced rum

Preparation:

For a cold drink (sometimes you need a change from all the hot beverages you're warming up with):  Combine cider and spiced rum in a glass.  Stir and enjoy.  Add more rum or cider, to taste.

For a hot drink:  Heat cider in a small saucepan on your stove, stirring occasionally, until you see steam rising but before you hit a boil.  I've noticed some ciders (though not Trader Joe's most amazing spiced cider) separate into spices and juice when heated too much.  Remove from heat and stir in the spiced rum.  Enjoy, and adjust to taste with more rum or cider.

Easy, right?  You could also use bourbon, if that is more to your taste, though I've found hot bourbon and apple cider is like an easier version of a hot toddy.  Add a strip of lemon peel and some honey for full hot toddy effect.

And I can't recommend Trader Joe's Spiced Cider enough.  By far my favorite cider in flavor - not too sweet, tastes like apples, and a strong dose of spice.  I'm inconsolable when it disappears for the year.

Chinatown Salad from A Periodic Table

This is long overdue, seeing as this recipe was developed as a way to utilize your leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  By now, you've either polished that bird off, pawned all remnants on unsuspecting and/or gullible others (Guilty. I added my bag of turkey to Eric's bag of turkey. One day he'll realize and toss them. Until then, I am turkey free.), or decided the leftover scraps were old enough to move out of your refrigerator and in to your trash bin.

But!  But I tell you that while this salad is delicious with turkey or chicken, it is equally delicious without any meat.  Actually, I preferred it without meat, since I would scoot the turkey over to the side so I could load my fork with salad, fresh green beans, sweet red bell pepper and crunchy, savory peanuts.  That's where it is in this salad, friends.  It's the actual salad you want to eat, and that's a rare thing.

Without further ado, I give you A Periodic Table's recipe for Chinatown Turkey (or Chicken) Salad. It's a breeze to make, it's filling without weighing you down, it's not your typical daily salad, and it's absolutely delicious.  Make it already!!!

A few notes on my version of the salad...

--As I said, this salad is perfectly satisfying and delicious even without meat.  So if you don't have turkey or chicken breast lying around, try it without. 

--I prefer my salads to be as fresh as possible.  Since I was the only person eating this (until I urged my mother to try it), I reduced the total portions listed in the recipe and filled a large bowl with the ingredients.  Yes, it was a bit haphazard and perhaps my ratio of ingredients was off, but, yes, it was wonderful.  

--I'm a saucy lady. Meaning, I douse just about everything I eat in extra sauce, from chicken wings to french fries to salad.  Thankfully, the dressing recipe makes plenty.  I made and stored my dressing in a jar in the refrigerator, so all I had to do was assemble the salad and add dressing. 

--There aren't any bean sprouts in my salad here because a whole two days after purchasing them, my sprouts had sprouted and gone slimey. Not a good thing. But the salad was stupendous even without.

Between us, I'll make this salad quite often.  It's addictive and refreshing, as perfect for mid-winter as it is for mid-summer.