Pp. 665 & 680: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I’ve never had rhubarb before.  All of my cooking magazines tout the wonders of this celery-like fruit, but I’ve never had the opportunity to sample it.  As we entered spring (and stepped right back out of it again), I knew that as soon as I spied the distinctive red-green stalks at the farmers’ market I would scoop some up and try my hand at the quintessential spring dessert: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie.  (I figured that if I didn’t like the rhubarb, I would at least like the strawberry so the pie wouldn’t be a total loss.)

Despite my mother having made tons of pies during my childhood, pastry dough is something that I never attempted until a few years ago.  I’ve only made it two or three times and each time has proved to be enough of a challenge to make a lesser baker quit, but knowing that my mother has made likely over a hundred pies and can now whip out pastry dough like it’s no more difficult than buttered toast buoys my motivation.  If I keep making it, at some point in time it’ll turn out right.  This is what I tell myself.

Well, that time was not this time, but it did turn out passably.  The Joy’s recipe for a double crust pie is like every other pastry dough recipe I’ve encountered, except instead of using all vegetable shortening or all butter, it incorporates a combination of the two, which I liked.  I like the flavor of the butter, but it’s easier to combine the dough when you’re using shortening.  Where I usually trip up is when it comes to judging how much water to use.  Most recipes will warn against using too much, recommending only enough until the dough holds together.  I sprinkled the requisite 6 tablespoons on the dough and, when I was able to push it into a ball, I stopped and wrapped two flat discs in plastic, hoping it had been enough.

I got to chopping 2½ cups of rhubarb and strawberries each, then mixed them with sugar and cornstarch.  After letting them mingle together for 15 minutes, the sugar had leeched out the fruits’ juices and the cornstarch had turned the liquid into a thick pink sludge.  Not very appetizing in this state, but I knew that this was necessary to create a solid consistency in the finished product.

 

Next came time to roll out the dough.  Here is where I ran into my usual problems: dry, crackly dough that, no matter how much flour I used, stuck to my table.   

 

I amended the dough and my rolling technique as best as I could at that point.  First I sprinkled an extra teaspoon of water on each dough half, then sort of kneaded them with my hands to incorporate it.  Second, instead of rolling the dough on the table, I took a note from meat-pounding practices and sandwiched it between two pieces of plastic.  The plastic not only kept the dough from sticking to my table, but also from my rolling pin which meant that there was much less tearing during the rolling process.  The rolled out dough wasn’t anything to crow about, but it fit in the pan and wasn’t horribly mangled, which was good enough for me.

In went the fruit and some butter and on went the top, which I had vented with some knife slits and brushed with a little cream.  The Joy didn’t call for it, but on recommendation from my mother during my last pie making effort I covered the edges with foil to prevent over-browning for the first half of the bake.  

At first the peek of the pie at the 30-minute mark, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did not look horrible.  I double-checked the recipe to see the lower temperature at which it was now supposed to bake and it was at this point that I noticed that the final step had been to sprinkle the top of the pie with sugar.  Oops.  I was pretty sure that omitting the step wouldn’t have affected the pie much, so I just sprinkled a few pinches on top at that point, removed the foil guards, and put it back in for another 25 minutes.  Upon final removal from the oven, I was greeted with this beauty:

Now that looks like a pie.

The recipe says to “cool completely on rack,” which I dutifully did for three-and-a-half hours, but after eating dinner I was ready to sample my handiwork.  Big mistake.  That curious sound I heard while cutting into the pie?  That was the sound of all the juices whooshing out as the crust dam was lifted.  I’m not sure what I did wrong, except not letting the pie cool long enough.  True, it was still slightly warm at that point, but the juices were so thin that I wonder if my strawberries were exceptionally juicy or if the mix needs more cornstarch than called for.

So how did the pie taste?  The rhubarb was a little bit tart, a little bit citrusy, and a little bit grassy—not like any other pie filling I’d had.  I can see why it has the devoted following it does.  Overall I’d say the pie was too sweet, but I tend not to like exceptionally sweet things and that’s an easy adjustment to make anyway.  The crust, however, despite all my problems, turned out lovely.  I’m a little bit proud of that.

Pp. 607 & 287: Focaccia with Caramelized Onions & Thyme & Focaccia with Rosemary

Oh, I am telling you—if you ever want to stink up your house something pretty, bake bread with herbs.

On Saturday I went to the outdoor Green City Market for the first time.  I guess it’s still not quite berry season yet (and it didn’t even feel like spring yet, what with the 50º weather, rain, and blustery cold winds), but there was quite the array of lettuces, fresh herbs, asparagus, and spring onions available.  For myself I picked up two potted herb plants (English lavender, which seemed like a lovely idea, and mint) to give my window herb garden a second try (I hear you need to water those things; I think that was my problem the first time around), a couple of tomatoes (because why wouldn’t you buy fresh tomatoes when you had the chance), a bunch of rhubarb (that’ll be another post), and a bit of fresh rosemary which I planned to use as a topping for one of my many attempts at focaccia. 

I love focaccia, but I’ve never been able to get it to rise successfully.  I’ve been using Mark Bittman’s recipe and I’ve nailed the problem down to two things.  1) All this time I’ve been buying active dry yeast in the yellow envelope when he’s been asking for instant or rapid-rise year.  I didn’t realize there was a difference so I hadn’t been proofing my yeast.  2) I hadn’t found a good place for my dough that was warm enough to allow it to rise.  I live in an apartment equipped with radiators, so I can’t always count on the temperature being consistently warm in any one particular area.  Still, I decided to give focaccia one final try from Joy.

Like Bittman’s recipe, Joy’s focaccia is no more than a variation on basic pizza dough.  The dough consists of water, yeast, flour, olive oil, and salt.  Problem #1 was fixed when I took a look at the recipe and saw that I needed to proof the yeast.  This is when I realized I been doing Bittman’s recipe incorrectly all along.  Problem #2 was fixed owing to an episode of Chuck's Day Off that I saw when I was at my parents’ house (Oh Comcast!  Why don’t you give me the Cooking Channel?!) where he suggested that if you don’t have warm place to let dough rise, turn your oven to 200ºF for five minutes, then turn it off and put the dough in.  After a ten-minute hand kneading, I oiled up my baking pans, flattened the divided dough inside, covered them both with plastic, and left them inside the slightly heated oven.

Meanwhile I went forth with caramelizing the onions.  Since the recipe makes two pans of focaccia, I decided to try two different versions, one with the fresh rosemary and the other with caramelized onions and some leftover fresh thyme stashed in my fridge.  Low and slow is the game with caramelizing onions.  What started out as a huge onion became small, buttery, intensely flavored pile of supple goodness with a little time and some low heat. 

Having finished the onions, I turned back to my dough.  After an hour and a half, this is what I pulled out:

Beautiful isn’t it?  Problems fixed.

I remembered watching an episode of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef wherein Anne Burrell instructed you to not just dimple focaccia dough, but to really put a dent in it, tear it even, to create deep crags where oil and salt can lie.  So I did that, then drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled them with kosher salt, and topped them with their respective herbs.  Twenty-some very fragrant minutes later, out came two perfect squares of focaccia.

Well, almost perfect.  The onions started to burn in the oven, which leads me to believe that I should put them on the dough halfway through the baking time, and I put a bit too much salt on top, even for me.  Not to worry, though—these are just things to remember for next time.  And, oh, there will be a next time.

Pp. 722 & 794: Chocolate (Texas) Sheet Cake with Quick Chocolate Butter Icing

Cake is one of my favorite things to make because, honestly, who doesn’t like cake?  Cakes are the center of all major celebrations and a nice slice of cake in the evening makes any ordinary day feel just a little bit decadent.  I’ve found that a good, homemade cake never fails to impress so, if nothing else comes of this project, I want to hone my cake making skills so that I never have to reach for a box of cake mix again. 

The other week I was craving chocolate cake, but didn’t feel like putting much effort into the actual baking.  The Joy’s recipe for chocolate sheet cake, also known as Texas sheet cake, looked ridiculously simple, requiring little more than tossing the ingredients in a bowl and stirring them together.  (Does anyone know why it’s also called “Texas” Sheet Cake?  Did the recipe originate in Texas?)  This cake is served from the pan, so I could just use my 9x13-inch Pyrex baking dish and not worry about unmolding the thing when it was done.  I had all of the ingredients on hand, save for the buttermilk, so it really was the perfect recipe for a good cake with a modicum of effort.

On the dry ingredient team, you mix together 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and a half a teaspoon of salt.  On the wet ingredient team, you first bring to a boil a cup of water, a half a cup of vegetable oil, a stick of butter, and a half a cup of cocoa powder.  You pour the boiled wet team over the mixed dry team and stir them until just combined.  Once that’s cooled, and you do want to let it cool lest you end up with scrambled chocolate egg cake, you whisk in 2 eggs, a half a cup of buttermilk, and a requisite teaspoon of vanilla.  Pour that into your greased pan and bake for 20-25 minutes.  That’s it.  You’re done.  You just make a fantastic chocolate cake from scratch.  You made a cake that’s moist and slightly crumbly and darkly, richly chocolaty and that beats the pants off of any cake mix you could have bought.

Now, I’m happy with a plain, unadorned cake, but most people are going to want some frosting so it behooves a person to also learn how to make frosting when they’re in the process of making a cake.  The Quick Chocolate Butter Icing suggested in the recipe seemed like an easy enough addition, but here’s what you don’t want to do: get distracted by the episode of The Killing on your Tivo, dump everything into a bowl at once, and then attempt to stir it.  What’ll happen when you do that is that you’ll end up with something stiff, kind of chalky, and completely unspreadable.  If you do that, you’ll only end up making it again, determined not to let frosting best you.  

  

On the second attempt, I made a smaller amount of frosting because I had already eaten part of the cake plain, I only had an ounce of unsweetened chocolate left, and the Jewel I stopped in on the way home from work was out.  So, I melted the one ounce of chocolate in a double boiler with a tablespoon of butter, stirred in a bit of cream and a splash of vanilla, then gradually beat in 2/3 of a cup of powdered sugar.  The result was a thick, creamy, eminently spreadable topping that, while a bit sweet for my tastes, I think most people would highly enjoy on their cake.

In the end, it was an impressive effort, if I do say so myself.  Cake, when it turns out as delicious as this one did, usually is.

P. 216: Sautéed Apples & Bacon

This past weekend was something of a cooking bonanza.  I spent a few days at my parents’ house and, as we usually do, my mother and I spent much of our time cooking, deciding what to cook, talking about things we’d like to cook, and eating.  Every spring and summer I find myself with massive grill envy, so my one request was the spend some time throwing some meat on the ‘cue, which was easily accomplished with the likes of lamb chops (accompanied by a mint chimichurri sauce courtesy of Cooking Light), salmon, chicken drumsticks, and a ham that had been saved from Easter.  Lest it seem like a meat-fest, I also threw some on skewered cremini mushrooms, eggplant, and zucchini that had been marinated in a balsamic vinaigrette.  For breakfast one morning I made a spinach and bacon frittata that came from the pages of Everyday Food and that I think will make a regular appearance at family breakfasts, cheddar biscuits made with half whole wheat flour that I had my doubts on that turned out to be moist and fluffy and rich with cheddar goodness, mint chocolate chip cookies, and two versions of lime cookies that we’re trying to tweak for optimal lime flavor. 

I left on Sunday, so we decided to do a breakfast in the morning.  I didn’t have the Joy with me, but I did happen to have this recipe for Sautéed Apples & Bacon in my computer, so I proposed trying it out along with Mark Bittman’s recipe for buttermilk waffles, which I altered by using half whole wheat flour and tossing in some minced fresh ginger, and some homemade hash browns.  Because I was at my parents’ house, I don’t have any pictures of the finished dish (I didn’t have my camera with me and while I am savvy enough to have a phone with a camera on it, I’m not savvy enough to have the device that gets the photos off the phone since that costs extra money and I only got this phone because they didn’t make replacement batteries for my original phone), but you don’t really need a photo to be convinced that apples and bacon look as fantastic as they sound, do you? 

This is another recipe that hardly needs a recipe.  Fry up 8 strips of bacon, reserving 2-3 tablespoons of the rendered fat.  Toss in peeled and sliced or coarsely chopped apples and sauté until tender and beginning to brown.  Top with 2-4 tablespoons of white or brown sugar and stir all that up so the sugar melts and coats everything all nice and good.  My decision to use Gala apples proved to be a good one since they were both sweet when raw (I’m not a fan of raw apples, so the fact that I liked these is huge) and maintained their firmness when cooked.  If you don’t eat bacon, you can use butter instead, which I did for my father since he can no longer eat such delicacies as wonderful, wonderful bacon.  The butter-only apples were fantastic in their own right, but the bacon added just enough of a meaty, salty, savory element that brought the dish from something good to something special.  They were the perfect compliment to the waffles, which had their own nuttiness from the whole wheat and spiciness from the fresh ginger.  My mother and I both agreed that this should be added to our holiday recipe repertoire.

Next visit I will have to bring the Joy with me.  I can only imagine what possibilities will come to fruition when I’m in a real kitchen, working with someone who knows their way around and loves food as much as I do.