196 posts tagged “kcrw”

The first Strawberry Pie of this ongoing project wasn’t fabulous so I’ve been combing through pie books for inspiration.  I came upon a great idea in the massive tome, Pie by Ken Haedrich.  It starts with a chocolate crust that's allowed to cool then napped with cornstarch thickened strawberry puree.  Sliced raw berries are arranged atop the puree and then topped with whipped cream enhanced with more strawberry puree. 

I changed up the recipe a bit.  Ken’s crust was made with chocolate wafers eg, the outside of oreos.  I arrived at Angeli this afternoon to find that chef Kathy had blind baked a beautiful chocolate crust made from a recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours.  It smelled and looked wonderful.  So I chopped up some strawberries, added a bit of lemon zest and sugar then cooked the fruit down to a thick puree, relying on the pectin in the fruit to thicken the puree.  I poured the boiling strawberry puree into a large bowl and put it in the walk-in refrigerator to cool down.

Once it was cool I beat manufacturing cream with a teaspoon of honey and a bit of confectioners sugar until stiff.  I then folded in half the chilled strawberry puree.  The remaining half was thinly slathered over the baked and cooled crust.  The strawberries were arranged onto the puree then I piled the strawberry whipped cream on top and

 It was a bit hit with my servers.  I only hope that they don’t eat it all.

The owner of a barbecue joint in New Jersey might be the answer to figuring out how to deal with North Korea.  Rebecca Mead tells us about Bobby Egan and BBQ diplomacy.  Jonathan Gold gets us into Peruvian food.  Picnics mean pasty potato salad.  Chris Kimball of Cook’s Illustrated has a solution. Liran Mezan has some ideas for meat cuts and Mark Bittman sorts out the dilemma behind buying and eating fish.  Bourbon, corn, rye or straight – there is a big difference between these whiskies, says Scott Gold.  Mary MacVean tells us what state budget cuts are doing to our budding chefs.  And Laura Avery eats green beans at the farmers market.

A gallette is simple a circle of dough gently folded over a big pile of slightly sweetened fruit.  It is the best work to kudos ratio ever for the home cook.  At Angeli we use firm nectarines so we don't have to peel peaches (and chef Kathy and I love the pink tinge the skins give the filling). We cut the nectarines into slices and toss them with a touch of lemon juice and a couple of tablespoons each of flour and sugar.  Then we roll out the dough, usually a very short and rich pate sablee. 

The dough circle is placed on a parchment lined baking pan where the fruit is piled on and the edges are folded up to slightly enclose the filling.  We then brush the pastry with a mixture of beaten egg mixed with a little milk or cream to give the dough some extra color.  You can see how impressive they are.  It's impossible to make a mistake.  Just looking at the photo makes me want a slice.  You?

Another confession, (interesting how this pie thing is so confessional).  Today is the first time I've made a cornstarch thickened custard since I was regularly cooking out of the plaid, ring bound cookbook.  Again, I was inspired by James McNair's Pie Cookbook.  His recipe for Cherry Cream Pie came from his Grandmother Keith in Jackson, Mississippi.
I made that superb Cherry Clafoutis Pie just a couple of days ago and Harry's Berries from the farmers markets are haunting me, so I decided to make the pie with strawberries instead of cherries.  I'm still not convinced about the cornstarch, in fact I think the 2 tablespoons used to thicken the fruit may have been a typo.  I'm going to try another version of a Strawberry Cream Pie with a different custard recipe.  We did enjoy the filling as a pudding although a little went a long way.  I brought the pie with me to a meeting at the DineLA advisory board today.

I was 17 when I really understood that eaters could slavishly be mine.  It was my mother's birthday and we were celebrating with a grand bash at a friend's house.  By then I had a reputation for cooking for celebrations so I made Julia Child's Quiche Lorraine from Mastering the Art.  I followed the recipe to the letter and people went nuts.  NUTS.  I had been cooking on my own for years but at this party a light bulb went off in my brain.  I was to use food to lure beautiful men for years.  Now I just enjoy making people (ages 2 to 100) happy. 

So tonight I just couldn't face another sweet pie.  It's the seventh day of this pie commitment so I thought, "Why not make Mom happy with a quiche for dinner?"  She is a corn aficionado so I put together a "pie" of sauteed fresh corn niblets, a bit of bacon, a couple of tablespoons of gruyere and Julia's ratio of custard (1 egg in a measuring cup then cream to reach 1/2 cup).  I used half and half, (after all my mom is 89) and I poured it all into a cornmeal crust inspired by James' McNair's Pie Cookbook.

Mc Nair's book has all these wonderful suggestions for decorating the edge of your pie.  I attempted the "Checkerboard", forgetting that I had to blind bake the crust,  angling parchment paper and a pound of beans around the little pieces of dough edge facing the filling.  Oh well.  Next time it will be prettier.  I have to buy some different pie pans too.  Getting a little tired of the pyrex thing.  And oh, it was delicious.

This is the first time I made Key Lime Pie.  I don't really know why I never made one before.  It's spectacular!  A friend,

Theresa St. Clair is a talented baker who consented to share her recipe.  As luck would have it there were big bags of key limes at the grocery store, but no regular Graham Crackers.  How is that possible?  They are all cinnamon or low fat, but I scrounged in the baking aisle and found some ready made crumbs. 

Now you have to know that pastry dough just kind of flows out of my hands, but a graham cracker crust?  I had to make it three times.  First time, not enough butter so it was just too crumbly.  Second time, very uneven depth and some nearly burnt spots.  Third time, okay, but not as great as when Theresa makes it.  Her crust is almost like a candy bar it's so buttery and crunchy and sticks together really well.  But the filling was so delicious.  Very creamy with a perfect balance of that floral tart key lime hit of acidity and sugar.

Of course I didn't have anything to juice the limes.  Everything functional always migrates to the restaurant.  So my pal Ivan put the little limes in a big zip lock bag put it on the floor and stepped on them.  They burst open into little pacmen shapes.  What fascinated me was how the acid of the lime juice basically cooked the egg yolks that were lightened by beating then mixed together with sweetened condensed milk.  I happily brought it to a client's house for a Father's Day dinner I cooked.  He loves Key Lime Pie.  And now, so do I.

Laura Avery takes to the market to taste fresh cantaloupes and summer melons.  Josiah Citrin gives a recipe for a delicious potato soup.  Bob Carlson is a super-dad who resorts to putting on a show for his kids to get them to eat vegetables. And how pro chefs feed their kids according to sisters Jewels and Jill Elmore. How to de-bone a duck foot and why you'd want to from Eddie Lin.  Plus Helena Echlin weighs in on the etiquette of photographing your restaurant meals. Cathy Wu makes rings and art from dried fruits.  And Scott Daigre, Mr.Tomato, tells us which varieties of tomatoes are worth planting. The best of summer cookbooks courtesy of NY Times' Christine Muhlke. And Jonathan Gold gives us a restaurant to try.

Here is the cherry pitter I used:

Day two and already I'm panicking.  No great farmers market fruit that I'm allowed to touch at the Caffe.  It's all allready spoken for.  Sooooo, made an old fashioned Butterscotch Whipped Cream Pie garnished with Chocolate Shavings.  I've never eaten such a pie.  Caramel Nut Tarts, but never an American butterscotch.  I got the idea from Country Living's The Farm Chicks in the Kitchen.  A charming page turner.  This is the first recipe I tried out of the book.  Delicious, but I think I'm using 10" pie plates so I'll have to scale the recipes up a little or go out and pie some 9" pans.
I'm leaving this one at Angeli, so if you happen to come by you can have (buy) a slice. 

When Good Food Producer Harriet Ells returned from taping the Market Report on Wednesday, she had a cherimoya with her.  We used it to tape a video (watch it here).  I couldn't help but think that it looked like a little bird.  Here is the fruit with legs and a beak: