Archive | August 2008

The Domestication of Gina Series 1 – Blueberry Pie

Aug30

I’m perturbed right now.  I wrote most of the following when I wasn’t so perturbed so expect brief injections of perturbation throughout.

Written 2 weeks ago or something:
I have a lot of whims.  One of these whims was to go blueberry picking.  Due to my limited number of friends (read: i have one)  I forced the G to come along.   I suppose it wasn’t really by force.  I promised blueberry pie/muffin making for the  benefit of hpj and jvj, as a means to my domestication of Gina ends.  

We of course, pick a day involving severe thunderstorm warnings.  Not the “watch”, WARNING.  Oh well.  So I went to pick up Gina and it started to rain.  SWEET.  As she got in the car, it started to pour.  We considered purchasing blueberries at the store and lying to the aforementioned acronymed boys but decided to throw caution to the wind and drive out to to Reilly’s Summer Seat Farm and hope for clearing skies and sweet blueberry pickin’ weather.  (The fact that I actually typed pickin’ there is making me cringe.) Well, we got there.  We were the only ones there.  We wandered around hoping that they might have pre-picked blueberries to buy since it was raining still.  We couldn’t find the blueberries but started to take pictures in the green houses with the flowers.  As I handed G a random potted plant to hold as I took her picture, we noticed a worker staring at us curiously.  We scurried away embarrassed because we’re 14 and find amusement in taking pictures of ourselves.  

Finally, another customer drove up and we found some more employees.  We asked about the blueberries and to our surprise, he said we could go and pick them.  Ahoy, glorious blueberry fields.


So we went and speed picked these lovely blueberries because we only had about 40 minutes before they closed. 


We got a wee bit lost on the way home but made it back after stopping for some coffee and set out to make the pies. 

I decided that I should look for a recipe in the many cookbooks that I’ve been acquiring but rarely use.  I spliced together a couple of recipes and the following is what I came up with.

Fresh Blueberry Pie
A combination of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from my Home to Yours and Great American Brand Name Baking(available for $1.49 on Amazon.
Thank you Tutu’s basement and 1991.)
For the innards:

  • 1 store bought crust for the bottom(Don’t hate)
  • 2 pints blueberries
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • pinch of salt=less than 1/8 tsp
  • Squirt of lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup plain dry breadcrumbs (trust me)

    For the streusel top:

  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup cold butter

    Directions:
    Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 425. (We baked two pies side by side and it worked great). Put the berries in a large bowl and gently stir in sugar, flour, salt and juice. Let sit for five minutes. Taste the filling and add more sugar if you’d like. (I added more because mine was a bit watery. Gina did not. Either way works). Sprinkle an even layer of the bread crumbs over the bottom of the pie shell. (Prevents the bottom from getting soggy). Pour the berry mixture into the crust.

    In a small bowl, combine all of the streusel ingredients. Crumble it all together with your hands until you get the streuselesque consistency. Sprinkle generously on top of the berries, covering completely. Gina and I ended up making a third batch of this. We each used a batch and 1/2 on our pies.

    Bake the pie for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 and bake another 30 minutes or until the filling is bubbling through the topping. Our crust started to brown pretty quickly so I put loose aluminum foil dooms over the tops for about the last 15 minutes.

    Take out your pie, let cool and serve.

    It turned out AWESOMELY.  My first success with pie.  We were quite pleased with ourselves.  The pie innards of each of ours looked completely different because mine had extra water. I added some more sugar and a little cornstarch to absorb that shit and all worked out well.  Our pies looked glorious!  Triumph. 
    Look at them:That looks like a picture from a 1970s cookbook thanks to my overzealous editing.
     
    We high fived our success and set out to deliver them.  Everyone was pleased.  Everyone got to eat pie.  Gina and I got to high five a whole bunch.  All in all, a good, baking/cooking filled weekend.  Oh, and there were many a gin and tonic to placate any problems.

    • Saturday Evening Dinner Party

    Aug3

    I’ve been very lazy with actually updating this thing.  The problem is, it’s been 90 degrees lately and I just haven’t much felt like cooking or baking.  Well friends, you’re in luck.  This weekend was full of cooking AND baking. Whoaaa.  Let’s discuss Saturday night…

    Andy and I decided to cook dinner together before going to see a show at the Thunderbird.  We decided to attempt to recreate thai spring rolls with dipping sauce because I came across spring roll wrappers (rice papers) in the international foods aisle (which houses things like prego spaghetti sauce) at Giant Eagle.  Anyway, I was excited!  Let me tell you.  I think at the time I was searching for bulgur for another of our creations and giddily found the rice papers.  (Yes, this is my life).  So I purchased the papers and they sat in my cupboard until I worked up the courage to attempt to make good tofu. (A daunting task). I’m going to cut the rambling now.

    Here is the end result:

    Anyway, bff and her bf (friends with coordinating outfits below) called Saturday to see if we wanted to go out to dinner.  Well…I prodded them until they agreed to come over and have dinner with us.  YES! Dinner party! 

    So I proceeded to prepare the ingredients for the spring rolls.  This consisted of the following – grating carrots (Someone explain to me how you julienne a carrot.  Did I even use the word correctly?  Is it a verb?), chopping up some cabbage, rinsing the bean sprouts, slicing up some fresh basil and baking the tofu.  

    Here is what I did to the tofu: I purchased a block of extra firm tofu.  I then pressed the tofu for about an hour.  I placed it in a dish on top of a bunch of paper towels, put some more paper towels on top, then I balanced a heavy pot on it with two weights and a can of soup inside.  (Those two pound weights finally have a use other than finely sculpting my arms) I let that sit for about an hour.  Then I cut the tofu into thin slices and placed them on a lightly oiled baking sheet.  I dripped soy sauce on each and the little tofu sponges absorbed like crazy.  Put them in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes.  I pulled them out and flipped each and dripped more soy sauce on each, covering them completely.  I used low sodium soy sauce because they do absorb A LOT and no one likes high cholesterol.  So I baked them another 15 minutes and then pulled them out to cool and then refrigerate.  It turns out, you should not slice them too thin because the extremely thin ones ended up getting too crispy.  That would be a tasty snack though.  Tofu jerky? Yes.

    I also prepared two dipping sauces for the rolls.  Sweet Chili Sauce and Peanut Sauce.

    Sweet Chili Sauce
    Adapted from The Taste of Asia 

  • 1/4 cup soy sauce (i used low sodium again)
  • 2 Tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1 finely chopped green onion
  • 2 Tbsp Maggi Sweet Chili Sauce
  • 1 tsp vegetable oil (the recipe calls for sesame oil but vegetable worked just as well).

    Mix everything together. Chill for an hour or so before serving.

    • Peanut Sauce
    Adapted from Cooks.com

  • 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 tsp hot chili pepper
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons vinegar
  • 1/3 cup creamy, natural peanut butter
  • 1 cup of light coconut milk   

    In a blender, blend oil, garlic, vinegar and chili pepper. Empty mixture into a small saucepan. Add coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add peanut putter, lower heat and simmer until it reaches your desired thickness. For me, about 5 minutes. (I also let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and it thickened just a tiny bit).

    Spring roll assembly time…
    Fill some kind of large, shallow dish with hot water. Hot tap water was warm enough. I used a 9 inch cake pan filled with about 1-2 inches of water. Submerge a rice paper for about 20 seconds, until pliable. I then put it on a plate and put a slice of tofu in the center, then bean sprouts, cabbage, carrots and about 2 small leaves of fresh basil. Roll it up like a burrito and serve.

    Assembly didn’t take long. I also forced my guests to try making one. Gina’s was…unique. More like a wan ton but still tasty.

    Andy’s contribution to the dinner involved bunches of vegetables and rice noodles sauteed together in a big pan with seasonings and things.  Sorry, I do not have the recipe and don’t feel like getting it from him at the moment but here are some lovely pictures.

    It involved things like chopping onions:

    and shelling peanuts (while wearing matching clothes):
    Dinner turned out wonderfully see: