Blogsgiving Pies

It’s Thanksgiving…time to give thanks for pie!

Pie #1 – Buttermilk.

I had never even heard of buttermilk pie until a couple of years ago.  I think it’s somewhat old-fashioned.  I saw it at a café and was curious about it, but not curious enough to actually order it.  A few months later, I found a recipe for buttermilk pie in a Penzey’s catalogue.  It looked pretty harmless, so I gave it a try.  I don’t know why this pie isn’t more popular, because it’s pretty awesome!

I also used Cook’s Illustrated “foolproof” pie crust recipe.  The secret ingredient, Comrade?…

Vodka (shocker!)

Why vodka, you ask?  It’s flavorless and evaporates in the oven, so you’ll never even know it was there.  The alcohol also keeps the dough moist, but it doesn’t lead to as much gluten-formation as using water, so you get a nice, flaky, non-tough crust in the end.



You have to let the dough rest in the refrigerator, so I made the dough the night before.  It’s easy to forget this step.  If you are having a pie emergency and need pie RIGHT NOW, just buy the pre-made dough at the store.  It’s pretty darn good in a pinch!



The hardest part is rolling out the dough and getting it into the pan.  I won’t lie…it took some trial and error.  It’s all about having the right amount of flour on the board to adjust for the gooey-ness of the dough.



The filling is just eggs, butter, sugar, buttermilk, lemon zest, vanilla, a wee bit of flour, and a pinch of salt.  Pour it into the pie crust and then throw it in the oven.  Notice the beautiful crimping of the edges of the pie crust.  That’s probably the first time I’ve ever done that successfully!



Mmmmm….delicious.  It’s really rich and VERY SWEET, so I recommend cutting small pieces.  You have to let it cool down completely so that the filling will set, or else it becomes a gooey mess.  It’s also good completely chilled in the fridge.

Pie #2 – Mini Pecan Tarts

My great-aunt Wanda makes these amazing little pecan tarts.  These were always a huge hit when I was a kid, and they still are today.  A couple of years ago, I started seeing mini pecan tarts at the grocery store, and I was worried that the secret recipe had gotten out.  But never fear….those grocery store tarts are nothing like the original (those hussies!).  I think the secret is in the pie dough.  It’s made with cream cheese, so it soft, flaky, and a little sweet.  I won’t post the recipe online since it’s a family recipe, but if you’re nice to me I might give you a copy.



The ingredients are very simple.  This is all you need!  Unlike a traditional pecan pie, there is no karo syrup in this recipe (take that, King Korn!).  Just good ol’ fashioned pecans and brown sugar. 



The dough is super easy to make in the food processor.



The filling comes together in a flash.



And then it all comes to a screeching halt when you have to fill the mini- tart pan with the dough.  Ughh…it’s so annoying trying to fill these tins.  I got this handy little tool that cuts down on the manual labor, but it’s still a pain.  If it weren’t for this step, I would probably make these tarts all the time.  But I suppose it makes it more special if I only make them a couple times a year.



Almost ready for oven time!



Happy Thanksgiving!

Kiss My Class: We’ve Got Crabs

Occasionally, we at Chez Venza like to attend a cooking class (we didn’t get to be this awesome all on our own… j/k of course we did!).  Living in Austin, we’re blessed with both Central Market and Whole Foods, both of which have nice consumer-grade cooking schools. 

Now, we only do this occasionally for two reasons: 1) They tend to be pricey and 2) most of the classes offered are unappealing.  The second reason is really the prevalent obstacle to our attendance.  It’s pretty easy to get past the price ($50-65 a head) because (at least at Central Market), this includes two glasses of wine, an enormous amount of gourmet food, an evening’s entertainment, and did I mention two glasses of wine.   If you find a course that interests you, we really recommend it!

While some of these classes are hands-on (which we prefer) most (like this one) merely involve observation and eating… so there’s totally no pressure!

This Friday night, we were very fortunate.  We’d been stood up on our dinner plans because the other couple discovered they had plans to see the new Twilight film.  And we thought we were nerds.
Anyhow, we managed, at the last minute to get into Central Market’s Crab Class.  It’s always a good sign when the lady whose taking your money says: “It’s incredible how much crab you’re going to get for your money.”  Now, we like crab… but we almost never buy it outside of restaurants.  Here’s what we learned how to make/ gorged ourselves on:


Crab Claw Cocktail.  A delightful amuse bouche.


King Crab Rolls with Slaw (A riff on a New England Lobster Roll)

Mayo was a definite theme in a lot of the dishes.  Not our favorite, but possibly a necessary evil for deliciousness.  Led to a lot of richness.


Dungeness Crab Cakes with Spaghetti Squash Slaw

(we are definitely intrigued by spaghetti squash at this point.)


Cioppino with King Crab (and mussels and clams)

A very flavorful seafood stew.  Nice spicy heat and briny awesomeness from the seafood.  We definitely had to roll up our sleeves to crack into the crab.


Blue Crab Imperial with Red Quinoa and Asparagus roasted with Gremolata.

The “imperial” is basically a crab/mayo/spice mixture coated in panko and baked.  Rich, but tasty.  The gremolata is a mix of garlic, lemon zest, parsley, olive oil, salt, and bread crumbs. 

Quinoa is a type of whole grain.  It’s apparently quite good for you.  This preparation was just quinoa cooked in chicken stock.  It was fine, but the instructor mentioned a recipe for quinoa tossed in pesto… now that sounds like a winner!

Usually, these courses include a dessert, but we were informed they’d blown the entire course budget on crab.  No kidding!  We practically needed wheel barrows to get us to our car!

Milk & Honey

Panna cotta….nectar of the Italian gods.    I recently ordered this at an Italian restaurant, and I made a comment about how easy it is to make.  The other people at the table looked at me like I was nuts (they were all like, “Whaaaaa…..?!”.  But really, it’s true!



The recipe comes from Giada de Laurentiis.  It’s a very simple dish:  milk, cream, sugar, honey, gelatin, and a pinch of salt.  You can also add whatever flavor you want (vanilla, orange, lemon, lavender…).  We chose to use orange extract this time around.  The flavor was subtle, yet sweet.



First you soften the gelatin in milk and then slowly heat it up on the stove.  The gelatin gives it texture, but it’s not as tough as Jello would be.  It’s light and creamy and smooth and the honey flavor is awesome.

After you mix everything together, it gets poured into fancy glasses or bowls or whatever you have on hand.  It has to sit in the fridge overnight so that the gelatin will set (that’s the hardest part – waiting for it to be ready!).

We topped it with a berry compote:  frozen strawberries, blueberries, and a little sugar mixed together and heated over the stove.



The simplest things are often the best.







Giuseppe the Italian-Stereotype says
“You oughta not-a bought-a panna cotta! 
Itsa so easy to make!  Fuggitaboutit.”

You say Tomato, I say “…soup with grilled cheese.”

Our reign of soup terror continues!  Watch out Giuseppe!

It has slightly become an obsession.  I had this idea that we could have like four different homemade soups in the freezer… it would be like living in a restaurant!  Unfortunately, we keep eating them. Today, we tackle the classic Cream of Tomato.

Today’s recipe comes from… you guessed it… Americastestkitchen.com.   When trying a lot of new recipes you can either buy  a lot of cookbooks… which gets expensive and impractical (How do you know if it’s a good book until after you’ve used it extensively?) or you can go to the internet, which has its own trust issues.  The ATK family of magazines, websites, and tv shows are all pretty solid, and you can feel confident that the recipe has been well vetted.

However… they generally expect you to PAY for their content.  Luckily, the good recipes have usually been reposted on someone else’s food blog….. so here’s the RECIPE for the soup.  As you can see from the photo above, quite a few ingredients in this soup.



Good, fresh tomatoes are hard to find in a store.  Especially this time of year.  This recipe calls for canned whole tomatoes, which is great because they are cheap and you know they’ll be consistent in quality.  Here we’re straining the juice (to be used later).



Pulling the seeds out of the tomatoes.  Then, after sprinkling with brown sugar, they get oven roasted.  That creates a bit of a mess.  Definitely want to coat your pan in foil for quicker cleanup.



After last week’s feature of leeks, we bring you this week’s boutique onion… the SHALLOT!  Mild, sweet, and delicate.



Simmering butter, shallots, tomato paste, and allspice (Which is “one thing” not a combination of all spices… what a dumb name.)  Fun fact:  allspice is actually a dried berry.



The soup looks strangely orange after we added the flour and chicken stock to the soup.  Now, the reserved tomato juice.  The roasted tomatoes go in at this time too.



Just like the Smitten Kitchen lady, we skipped the final strain step, thanks to our magical immersion blender.  The soup gets finished off with 1/2 cup of cream, a couple tablespoons of dry sherry, and a pinch of cayenne pepper (just for kicks).

Well, before we show the final soup shot…. lets go to the Ur-Accompaniment for Tomato soup… the grilled cheese! Who doesn’t love a good grilled cheese sandwich with their tomato soup?  Just like mom used to make!  Coincidentally, neither of our mothers ever served us tomato soup with grilled cheese (that we can recall – No worries mom, I don’t think I liked tomato soup as a kid anyway).  Insert sad face here.

We started with some good sourdough bread cut into thick slices.  Then I scavenged through our fridge to see what kind of cheeses we had on hand.  That’s a Chez Venza rule:  always have cheese on hand in case of emergency.  I came up with Swiss, cheddar, and parmesan.  Three-cheese sandwich, here we come!





Shredded cheese wasn't the best choice, but it was all we had.  It gets a little messy, especially when I was buttering the outside of the bread and had to flip it over halfway through.  Can’t lose any of that precious cheese! 

For experimentation sake, we used a George Foreman grill as a makeshift panini press.  It worked out pretty well, but I wish I had more control over the temperature so that I could get a really good brown crust.  Here’s the final, delicious result:



Check out the nice grill marks!



Warm and cozy comfort food.  The cayenne pepper in the soup adds a nice surprise.  It’s very subtle, but there’s definitely a nice finish to the soup that comes from the pepper. 

One Fish, Two Fish, Pink Fish, Orzo, and Almonds

Ohhh salmon.  You have such a funny name.   Did you know that dudes used to be named Salmon, and one was almost President?

Oh Salmon, you are also hard to like sometimes.  You can be a little too rich and buttery.  But every now and again a good recipe comes along that compliments your fishy McFishiness.  This is one of our favorite easy weeknight meals for salmon.  It also features one of the best pastas in the world…..ORZO.  Is it rice or is it pasta?  Will the world ever know?



Oh Salmon! This recipe came from an advertisement for Crisco cooking oil.  Pretty weird place to get a recipe, but it turned out to be a winner.  We usually have most of the ingredients on hand….onion, can of mushrooms, slivered almonds, dill, lemon, and chicken stock.  The Ziplock bag in the picture is cubes of frozen lemon juice.  Pretty smart of us, right??   Smart…not crazy.  RIGHT!?!?!



Hark, O Salmon! First step is to saute the onions and mushrooms for a few minutes.



Meanwhile, Mr. O. Salmon getting all spiced up for a night out on the town (in this case, “town” means “oven”). 



O.S.: Meanwhile, the mushrooms and onion are removed from the pan, and then in goes the orzo and chicken stock.  The pasta cooks for about 15 minutes until done.  Then add back the onions & mushrooms, dill, lemon, and slivered almonds.



O’Salmon! This stuff is pretty delicious on its own.  But it’s even better topped with the salmon fresh out of the oven.



OH SALMON!

Butternut McSquashinsteen

Giuseppe the Italian-Stereotype Wine-Bottle man and
official mascot of Chez Venza says: "Eat-a Your Soup-a!"

Ohhhhh butternut.  Soooooo buttery and nutty.      



Squashy.



We don’t cook with butternut squash very often.  It’s one of those “winter” vegetables that everyone associates with Thanksgiving (and…“winter”).  We’ve been on a soup kick lately, especially with our new immersion blender.  So now that the first “cold front” has finally made it’s way to Austin, it seemed the perfect time to try out butternut squash soup.  We found a couple different recipes but decided to go with this one from Cook’s Illustrated magazine (yes, we subscribe a few cooking magazines).  This recipe tries to be quick and easy by using the microwave to jump start the cooking time on the squash.  More on that later.



Up until this recipe, we’d only ever cooked with butternut squash one time before.  The one thing we learned is that this silly little squash has a very weird starchiness that gets on your hands and is hard to get off.  Thus, the gloves.

 
    


Into the microwave for 18 minutes to soften (it is a little weird to set your microwave for 18 minutes, by the way).  Then it sits in a colander to drain off any excess liquid.

Next strange vegetable on the list….leeks.  It’s a type of mild onion.  You really only use the white and light green parts.  It typically has a lot of grit and dirt wedged inside of it from when it was growing in the earth.  But that's how you know your food came from the ground, right, and not produced in some laboratory?  So it should be comforting, not gross!  Anyway, cut it on a plastic board, or you’ll get mud on your good wooden cutting board. 
Then, thoroughly rinse the pieces.  A good tip for drying it is to use a salad spinner, if you have one.


 

Now, it's finally time to cook something on the stove! 



The CIA wishes it could Squash Leeks like this.  Get it?



All that dark stuff at the bottom of the pot is pure flavor, baby.  A whole boat full of flavor!



And then… PUREE.  Gotta find those squash pieces and obliterate them!  The blender saves on dishes, but it requires a bit of diligence!



Ta-da! The Butternut Squash Soup!  The recipe had us make a fried leek garnish (basically fried onion strips)…they weren’t awesome so we won't get into the details on that.  The soup is great with just a dollop of sour cream.  It's like Autumn in a bowl!