Linden: Easter dinner

In England, we get a four-day weekend for Easter - Good Friday and Easter Monday. On the Thursday leading up to that weekend, me and Chris returned to our favorite restaurant - the Theo Randall at the Intercontinental in London.

This is the kind of place where Papa would say to Mama, "Our children have become accustomed to a luxurious lifestyle", despairingly. It is expensive and fancy, in a restful, luxurious, enjoyable kind of way. It also has the most amazing lemon tart, and amazing chocolate cloud cake, and also the beef ragu that inspired me to find, try, and add to regular rotation my pork ragu. And this time, we happened to be there on the day his new cookbook came out, and Theo Randall came out to talk to us and sign his book for us. (It turns out, his ragu tastes better than mine because he adds a stick of butter at the end.)

Now I don't buy a lot of cookbooks (usually, they are finicky and fiddly and either super fatty, use super expensive ingredients, or lots of simple carbs), but I bought his, because it has all three of those recipes. And it was super worth it, because it had a recipe for leg of lamb that I used three days later for Easter dinner. It called for butterflying, which I had not done before but was pretty easy (plus, it meant we did not have to cook a massive leg of lamb for just three of us. I did cut it into thirds and froze the other two portions). Then I seared it and put it in the oven to finish. We had it with a traditional roast dinner.

Plus Yorkshire puddings (which always seem to come out 3 minutes after you've sat down to eat). Every time I cook Yorkshire pudding with roasts that aren't beef, Chris says to me, "but Linden, why are you making Yorkshire pudding? We're not eating beef." BECAUSE THEY ARE DELICIOUS. And, because it's not like the English have ever been able to accurately and faithfully cook any other culture's food, they have no leg to stand on. And, ALSO, because some midlanders told me recently, that in Yorkshire, the HOME OF YORKSHIRE PUDDING, they make it with everything ever, and this roast beef thing was just made up by southerners. SO I WIN. Yorkshire pudding with everything!
The best thing about Easter was that while I was cooking Easter dinner, he and his mum did the spring gardening, and our garden now looks less like a wilderness.

And then for dessert, I made a french apple tart, which . I had a moment when making this where Chris asked, "Is this hard to make?" And I said, "No, it's pretty straightforward, I'm not sure why I didn't make this years ago" and then had to backpedal - BACKPEDAL - because in the negotiations of how often I cook this, Chris thinking it's straightforward is not in my interest, and in reality, it's not exactly Level 1 dessert making (brownies and cookies); it's more like Level 4 or 5. You have to make the tart crust and chill it, prepare the filling, and peel, core and quickly&regularly thinly slice your apples and then arrange them on the top of the tart. I didn't make it 4 years ago because it would have been really hard then. But it is so worth it, except that it disappears so quickly? And Chris got really upset that I sent some of it home with his mum?

 

 

It is SO GOOD that I'm including the recipe here. Set aside at least two hours unless you are an apple peeling ninja. (Modified from here)

Pastry:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup butter slightly softened
1 egg yolk
3 T cold water

Frangipane:
1/2 cup butter, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 egg yolk
1 T Cognac or calvados or apple brandy (traditionally it's made with calvados, which is a French brandy made from apples, which is different from apple brandy, which is American brandy made from apples. You can substitute cognac, which is what I did because it is more flexible and if I'm going to buy a big bottle of spirits that I'm going to use 1T at a time, I'd rather it work in more than one dish.)
2/3 cup ground almonds
2T all-purpose flour

3-4 medium sweet apples (I used gala) peeled, cored, halved and thinly sliced.
Powdered sugar for sprinkling on top.

Directions.
1. Pastry: Stir together flour and salt. Add butter, egg yolk and water, and stir until the mixture forms large crumbs. Add water until you can form a ball. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 mins. (Pastry dough easily lasts 2 days in the fridge if you're doing this in advance. Wrap it well, and don't leave it next to bananas or onions, because dough picks up fridge odors.)
2. Frangipane: Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg and egg yolk. Mix in cognac. Mix in almonds and flour.
3. Roll pastry dough out to a 12 inch circle. Put in 10-inch tart or pie pan. Press into bottom and sides. Prick with a fork and flute the sides. Put back in the fridge and chill until firm.
4. Preheat oven to 400F (200C). Place a baking sheet inside oven while it preheats, on a lower rack.
5. Spoon frangipane into chilled pastry and spread into even layer. Arrange the apple slices in an overlapping spiral pattern. Each slice should have one edge pressed into the frangipane until it touches the pastry base, and then overlap the previous slice. Start at the outside edge, and work towards the center.
6. Place the pie plate on top of the baking sheet in the preheated oven. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the filling begins to brown. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake for another 10 minutes, then sprinkle sugar over the top of the tart. Return to the oven for 10 more minutes, or until the sugar caramelizes slightly.

Done! Eat warm.

Xan, Catherine, and Kathleen: Turning up the Heat!

[We break radio silence to bring you this special edition of Vongsafood.  In today's episode, we chronicle one family member's lifelong quest to conquer Spice Mountain. Also, Pizza Madness -- that's making you mad with pizza.  And what does a hedgehog have to do with pie? All this and more on today's episode of Vongsafood!]

The rest of this post will not, however, sound like NPR.

Kathleen came to visit us in Chicago last weekend!  As you are no doubt aware, it is a very good idea to hide the spicies before Kathleen arrives. Unfortunately, things were just a little too hectic on Friday and I missed this crucial hosting step.

So, Dad, I apologize in advance for what you are about to witness.  I just screwed up, and I take full responsibility.  Do not blame Kathleen!  She is basically not a player character where spicy is concerned.  Whatever control she may have in other areas of her life, when food arrives in front of her, the spicy subroutine kicks in and takes over.  It goes like this:

1. This food is not spicy enough. 
2. I must apply spice until the food is spicy enough.
3. This bottle does not dispense spice fast enough.
4. I must remove the lid so the bottle dispenses spice fast enough.
5. I must shake the bottle harder to increase the rate of spicing.
6. I must not stop shaking until spice has attained supermajority status.
7. Spice has attained supermajority status and now controls the spicing vote on plate.
8. Request further spicing instructions. Food plate constituents: Please advise.
9. Spice supermajority has voted for More Spice.  Executing request.
10. Food is no longer visible beneath Spice Mountain. Finally, it is time to eat!
11. My mouth is on fire.  It burns so good.
12. [Cough! Gasp! Wheeze!]
13. Note to self: Inferior airways still not robust to atmospheric conditions at top of Spice Mountain.  Training regimen must continue.

I cannot emphasize enough that these steps just happen.  Sometimes Kathleen doesn't even like it that much, but she has to do it because eating ultra spice is part of her identity.  There is nothing to be done, except stand back and watch with some combination of awe, amusement, and terror.  In what follows, I document a few of these moments for posterity.

Here Kathleen has just executed Step 4:

Red pepper flakes in full pour mode.

And here is Step 5 in action.  Dear reader, please do not try this at home.  A bottle of red pepper flakes with lid removed should never be shaken vigorously enough to produce motion blur:

As you can see, here we are just starting to lose sight of the People's Pepperoni Party.  This is an important step on the road to attaining a 100% Spice Approval Rating from all visible food constituents, and as such it forms the very foundation of Spice Mountain in Steps 9 and 10.

The individual steps of the subroutine are practiced and automatic, and as such they pass by quickly.  But I was also able to capture the precise moment of Step 12 at Dim Sum the next day:

This is her second dish of chili sauce. She has decided to drop all pretense and simply put it on her plate.

Anyway, you might think that next time I will be more careful to hide my red pepper flakes.  However, you would be wrong.  Your mistake is to presume that I still have any left. 

What a rookie mistake!  Do you even know Kathleen?  The more experienced among you are more likely thinking, "But Xan! So far you've only discussed a single bottle of red pepper flakes and a couple dishes of chili sauce in Chinatown.  Kathleen was there for 3 days!  What happened the rest of the time?"

Pepper Palace is what happened.  Kathleen discovered Pepper Palace.

Kathleen gleefully displays her spoils.

Inside the bag: Ghost in the Darkness, Pain 100%, Death Stalker, and two more monstrosities I can't remember the names of.  This kept Kathleen busy -- and my hot sauce reserves safe -- for the rest of the weekend.

Of course, Kathleen also travels everywhere with at least one bottle of her own personal hot sauce.  Don't mess!  She's always packing heat.  Someone should probably get her a holster.

*

Okay, can we talk about actual food?  There was actually food, somewhere, underneath all the spice.

Is this pizza one quarter cheese or three quarters pepperoni.  It depends...are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Kathleen really wanted deep dish, being in Chicago and all, but I refused to make it, and she was pretty happy with this pizza instead.  Because it is so delicious, of course.

In principle this pizza can be very easy to make but I amped it up and it is now more of a maximally delicious pizza than a maximally convenient pizza.  On top of the dough, we have tomato puree, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, paprika, caramelized onions, sundried tomatoes, cheese, pepperoni, and panko bread crumbs.  (Of course I had my own cheeseless one).

That said, it can be done with as little as half an hour of active labor, if you know all of Xan's secrets of timesavingness.

Kathleen really liked this pizza.  In fact, as is her custom, she "praised" it by favorably comparing it to my past "failures."  "You didn't used to make pizzas like this!" she said.  It is always about my what a long way I've come.   However, in this case she completely failed to negate her compliment, because she compared this pizza to my pulled pork pizza, and we know how certain members of the family feel about that one.  So there! I'll take it!

You know what else? Why does everyone in the family always have to say things like, "Don't you dare tell Linden, but this pizza is the best!"  Relax, Kathleen, why would I ever tell Linden you said that?  She would just be mad at both of us.  Especially you, since you're the one who said it and also you forgot her birthday.  And the rest of you lot: I get it, okay?  Mom, I agree it's best if Linden thinks you "like all of your children's pizza equally."  And Dad, I would never reveal that you bestowed upon my pulled pork pizza the highest culinary compliment you are capable of giving, namely the suggestion that I should drop out of school (i.e. fail to graduate) and make pizza instead.  The point is, I think I'm old enough to keep a secret.  Relax, everyone.

And Linden, you too! Don't blame Kathleen for forgetting your birthday.  Unlike me, she does not have a foolproof organizational system for remembering these things.  She relies on her far superior elephantine memory, which means she always remembers your birthday, she just doesn't necessarily remember that it is currently your birthday.  Also, what do you want for your birthday?  I did not want to ruin your birthday by asking.

See?  See how considerate I am?

I feel like I'm five steps ahead of you people.  I know what you're probably thinking right now: Gee, I really, really hope Linden doesn't read this post...because then she would have to think of something for Xan to get her for her birthday.

No no no. You are totally missing the point.  Linden does not want anything for her birthday, but she also doesn't want to be forgotten.  She wants to be asked but doesn't want to have to answer.  So because I am a genius, I have found a way to ask her without making it common knowledge between us that she has been asked, which means she never has to admit she has been asked, even though she has, and thus she never has to answer. (Unless she actually wants to, in which case she can).

And because I am a double genius, she can also never complain about any of the other content of this post without making it common knowledge that she has been asked and therefore has to answer.  More specifically, she can never complain to me.  She can make all your lives super difficult, but the beauty of it is that I never have to live with any of it.  And that, my friends, is called treble genius, because it does treble damages.

*

Speaking of pizza and Linden and her birthday, when I talked to her on her birthday, she suggested that I replace half of my bread flour with whole wheat flour in my pizzas.  So I tried it, and the results were pretty good!

It's denser than my usual dough, but not that much, and overall I was surprised at just how well it behaved.  It definitely had that whole wheat flavor, and reminded me a bit too much of bread in some bites, but I will definitely be repeating.

*

Coming back to Kathleen, I will be in big trouble if I don't mention how good this pie was!  Kathleen and Catherine made a chocolate pecan pie. How good? Really good!

Kathleen said multiple times that the pie was "for me." Somehow her eyes told a different story...

"I wish Xan weren't so attentive. Also, this pie is not spicy enough."

You can also see a gratuitous magic bar on my plate.  Just because.

AND look at this hedgehog cookie cutter she got me!  In the background you can even glimpse a second hedgehog cookie cutter in huff-and-puff mode:

Mmm, delicious pie!

We don't have a lot of cookie cutters, but I don't see the purpose of keeping the rest of them at this point.  I can scarcely imagine a scenario where replacing your cookie cutters with hedgehogs wouldn't automatically improve the outcome.

Catherine: Pie tips

For those of you considering the pie recipe in my last post, Catherine shares a couple pie tips:

• When I'm done with the food processor part, my "dough" looks nothing like dough.  It looks like vaguely chunky powder.  (I mention this is because I thought I did it wrong the first few times and potentially over-processed it.)

• It makes a really big difference to weigh the flour (instead of using measurements by volume).

Catherine says this crust is one of Kenji's best recipes.  Since we are fans in general, that is high praise.  I mean, our Thanksgiving is like 50% Kenji recipes.  Ooh, Thanksgiving...it's coming up!  

Gobble, gobble!

Xan, Catherine, Ryan, Kris, Cammy: Apple-picking!

Folks, it's apple-picking season!

Last year, apple picking was a bust.  An early warm-spell/frost killed off all the apples in the midwest.  Instead, County Line orchard hung up miles of rain gutters and stocked them with pre-picked apples flown in from Washington.  They helpfully decided to inform us by advertising on their website not only that they were open for picking, but furthermore that it was in fact "raining apples."

Needless to say, we showed up at the orchard excited and left disappointed.

Despite their devious lies, we returned to the orchard last weekend, after verifying that it actually had apple-picking, of course.  

Gala, McIntosh, Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and Jonagold.  Here's the haul:

As you know, I like climbing trees.  It's kind of the main point of apple picking for me, actually.  But I haven't been able to find any orchards around Chicago with big trees.  All the places that offer apple picking were planted in the last 25 years and the trees just aren't that large.  I think it's actually becoming more usual to plant trees closer together and keep them smaller because it makes picking easier, but even the "old-style" trees they have just aren't big like the ones we grew up with in the DC area.  "Climbing" a tree at most consists of taking 1 to 3 steps up the tree.  What?  Moreover, they are mildly annoying steps, because small trees have lots of leafy shoots everywhere, because even the "interior" gets sunlight.  Nevertheless, I enjoy it because it is my natural habitat.  And I think the trees enjoy being inhabited by a native as well.

A farmer guy yelled at me for climbing a tree.  He said I would break the tree and then break myself.  It's not his fault; the tractor is his natural habitat, and he does not recognize his agile woodland kin.  I continued to climb trees away from the farmers, because it is socially optimal to break rules that are not designed for you, so long as you can avoid getting caught.

The farmer reminds me of a particular security guard at Pomona.  The golf cart was her natural habitat, and she had it out for the parkourists.  However, golf carts cannot do parkour, so she only ever caught up with us when we weren't doing parkour.  A catch-22, or perhaps a not-catch-4.  In exchange for her hypothetical lectures, let us say a prayer for our pathbound kin, it is not their fault.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, pie!  We converted our bounty into an apple pie and applesauce:

8 apples each

The crust was really good, which was Catherine's doing.  She has made Kenji's recipe a few times now and is getting it down pretty well.

Recipes for crust and filling:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/07/easy-pie-dough-recipe.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/perfect-apple-pie-recipe-double-crusted-thanksgiving-dessert.html 

Or for the science behind those recipes:
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/07/the-food-lab-the-science-of-pie-how-to-make-pie-crust-easy-recipe.htmlhttp://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/10/the-food-labs-apple-pie-part-2-how-to-make-perfect-apple-pie-filling.html

I know some of you like the vodka pie crust method.  That was also developed by Kenji (during his time at Cooks Illustrated).

If you are having problems with your apples turning too soft, this pie recipe with fix that.  Before filling the pie, you soak the apple slices in hot water for a few minutes.  This gives the pectin time to convert into a heat-stable form that won't break down at higher temperatures in the oven.

For the applesauce, I used this recipe:

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/applesauce/

I put in 2 cinnamon sticks instead of 1, because Catherine specifically likes cinnamon applesauce.  It was delicious, and so easy!  In fact it was so good that we just bought more apples at the grocery store and made another batch of applesauce.  I guess we did not pick enough!

Ryan, on the other hand, picked a lot of apples.  He walked away with a couple bags, and a pumpkin too!  Doesn't this baked apple look delicious?

Unfortunately that only gets rid of one apple...

And here is his pork tenderloin with cinnamon applesauce:

Apple sauce, that's more like it!

And here is our parallel dinner:

You might think that's a pork chop, given that it looks like one and is served with applesauce.  But actually it is lamb!  I do not regret this, although I do wish we had included peas, and put the applesauce in its own bowl.

Linden's Curry Puffs

So I have just finished my intership, and it's time to try and work through a little backlog of cooking I did over the course of it. While I'm trying to progress towards a healthier diet, I often slip a little - right now, I'm really wanting onion rings for some reason...

A few months ago (before christmas) I decided I really wanted curry puffs. So I made my dough (I tried an all-oil crust, which I think I didn't quite do properly, as it was very crumbly and difficult to work with) and made my filling. The cat came to investigate, and I had to shoo him out, because he is very sneaky.

Post-shooing, I rolled out my dough and filled the puffs (they never fit as much filling as I think, and I try to overfill because there's so much filling and so little pie crust), and crimp them closed with a fork.

Pop them in the oven for a while, and...yum yum.

Linden's quiches, crusty or crustless

Good try, Xan, but you're going to have to wake up earlier than that to fool me! I've watched Ratatouille and No Reservations, so I think I know what happens in a proper chef's kitchen.

A proper chef's kitchen.

Of course these, days, it's just me cooking so I can't put any of that into practice. I know, you're thinking, "maybe she needs a pet!" but we have one, and far from helping me cook, he steals my food. One time, I put a scone out on my desk and went to make tea, and by the time I had, the cat had snuck into my room, a No Cat Zone, and jumped up on my desk and stolen my scone! I caught him walking out of my room with the whole thing hanging out of his mouth. So I'm not taking the risk of a pet, and I'll just keep cooking on my own for a little while longer.

But before I start all my cooking for the day I'm going to try and work through some of my backlog. This one is about quiche, which I know people don't really like for a variety of reasons, but I do, and it is super easy to make, so it happens a lot here.

Alas, the most delicious quiches involve bacon, which is solidly in the no-eat-zone, and while I can justify a little bit of it occassionally, I can't excuse a whole week of constant baconing (it's the nitrates, you can't trust them).

So instead, broccoli, which is much healthier, and vegetablarianer, than bacon. Swap in skim milk for the cream, add lots of cheddar to that, and delicious whole-wheat pie crust and you have a super-delicious weekful of lunches.

Plus, with the leftover pie crust, you can make proper pie! (Mm, look at all that rustic whole-wheat pie crust. (Don't be fooled by it's slightly darker color, that is not overcooking but wheaty goodness!))

If you are feeling lazy, you can leave out the pie crust entirely, and just have the delicious eggy cheesy bit. (This was a more recent go, the result of my lazy weeknightness and a leftover head of broccoli that wanted eating.

Well, I think I am willing to concede the the deboning of a chicken is a win for Xan in the "Impressive" category.

Now, on to more important things, like me. I spent, as I often do on Sundays (well, actually I usually do it on Friday nights or Saturdays, but this week I was in the lab all day and evening Friday and Saturday, so it got delayed until this morning), a little while trying to decide what I was going to cook for dinner and leftovers lunches for the week. I was initially thinking beouf bourgignon (or however they spell that, how many letters do they need?), but wasn't really up for all that meat, so I pingponged between different cuisines and meats and recipe sources, until I came upon one that sounded really good: Butternut squash and caramelized onion pie with biscuit base.

Perfect, for it is turning slightly colder and more than slightly damper (also today, I demolded my room), and because it will feel healthy and virtuous all week long (Papa initially didn't believe me, for it had biscuit crust, but I triumphantly informed him that my biscuit crust is made with milk instead of butter, which makes this dinner practically fat free, aside from the gruyere sprinkled on the top.

And it may seem like a lot of cheese, but my pie dish (le creuset, $16 on sale, I am occassionally an awesome shopper) is about two inches deep, so there's a lot of squash under that little layer of cheese:

It turned out surprisingly delicious; next time, I will probably change a few things, but I think Butternut Squash will likely be on the menu more in the coming months (especially given how inexpensive it is during the winter.) Now, I'm going to go to bed so that I can wake up early tomorrow morning and go into work and get more done.