Tart Cherry Pie

My mom once brought cherry pie to a church post-Thanksgiving-service pies-only potluck. If there was a competition, she would have won because (well, it was the best) the pastor loved that pie so much he referenced it in a sermon. No that didn't happen, but he did freaking love it. I'm pretty sure my mom is going straight to heaven.

It's the pie crust that is perfect. Most people buy pie crusts at the grocer because they think it's too much work. I admit to having difficulty with pastry crust in the past. Mom uses Martha's easy pie crust recipe, except that she uses the food processor instead of a pastry blender. The real key to good pie crust (as I've very recently discovered) is cold cold cold (cold water, cold butter, cold, put it back in the fridge if you have to), do not overwork the flour when you're kneading and use plenty of flour only when you're rolling out the dough. Check out this blog if you need more explicit instructions.

This pie was made with fresh cherries--not the canned kind. Although, it's important to note that the famed, getting-into-heaven-early pie was made with canned, so people will still love it even if it's not completely homemade. The McKains gave my sister the cherries a while back for consulting with them on how to remodel their house (apparently all she told them was that what they wanted would be expensive).

The recipe for the filling of this pie is from Better Homes and Gardens. To be concise, I'm printing it below.

Cherry Pie Filling and Topping:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca (buy the small ones, the big ones take longer to dissolve)
5 cups tart red cherries (not Bing and not Renier)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
tablespoons butter
6 ounces slivered almonds

Place cherries, sugar and tapioca in a bowl, add almond extract and stir until cherries are coated. Let set for 10 to 15 minutes until the mixture forms a syrup, stirring occasionally. Make your pie crust in the meantime. Transfer cherry mixture to a crust lined pie-serving dish thing (what are those called?).

For filling, in a small bowl stir together flour and brown sugar. Add butter sliced into tablespoons and cut into flour mixture with a pastry blender until crumbly. Add slivered almonds and stir. Sprinkle topping onto pie. Cover pie with aluminum foil and bake on 375 for 25 minutes. Remove foil and cook for another 25 to 35 minutes, until the top is golden.

Salmon with Aioli and Leeks

You could say it is a New Year's resolution of mine to cook more French food and less Italian. And now that I think of it, why? Italian food is quite delicious, and I pretty much know what I'm doing. I'm familiar with the ingredients and techniques, yet there is still so much I haven't cooked, so many territories yet to be discovered, enjoyed and documented. And I'm so much less likely to biff things up. But that would be so boring--delicious, but boring. I got a couple French cookbooks for Christmas, and I wasted no time jumping into a braised lentils recipe one dark and lonely night a couple weeks ago. But then friends called and I was out eating Creole rice with them mid-preparation. As a result (or maybe because of some other fluke), the lentil were heinous and inedible. Well, I did eat them, but I didn't enjoy it. And then I tried to bring the leftovers to work and the smell solicited dry heaves.

But instead of giving up, I went straight for the gold, the quintessential French accoutrement: aioli. Made of garlic and olive oil, what's not to like about the sauce? Well, there's a thickening process for one thing, and that always makes me nervous (unnecessarily in this case, and now I'm fascinated with emulsifying). And raw egg yolks, hmm, fishy. I'm no chef, but I'm pretty sure the lemon juice and vinegar cook the eggs. Truly, this recipe was surprisingly easy, not very messy and pretty quick.

I even got to use my garlic mincer last night. The mincer may have been the kitchen accessory that spawned my interest in cooking. Before then I thought the only garlic available was in a powder or salt. What's not fun about squeezing the guts out of a pungent clove?

But when I got to the part of the recipe that said "1 1/2 cups olive oil," I balked. "WTF? We're in an economic crisis here, I am not pouring five dollars worth of oil into aioli." It turned out I didn't even have that much oil.

So I halved the recipe (the remainder of the oil is back in that bottle), and voila, still more aioli than I was able to use on the salmon. What I love about this as well is that there is so much room for improvisation on this recipe. I've seen aioli with all manner of herbs and spices. One of my favorite restaurants serves it with their sweet potato fries--a-maz-ing. The salmon recipe is a tweak from The French Market by Joanne Harris and Fran Ward--do yourself a favor and skip the braised puy lentil recipe--with aioli and leeks instead of straigh dijon mustard (leeks are a mild member of the onion family, no worries, that's a vegetable I've looked up before on Wikipedia).

Aioli: 4 cloves garlic, minced sea salt (or kosher) 2 egg yolks 3/4 teaspoon dijon mustard 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar (yeah, I used balsamic) 1 1/2 cup olive oil pepper Mince garlic cloves (or bash up with a pestel and mortar) and whisk with salt. Add egg yolks (if you save the whites you can make macaroons--I am kicking myself for letting them go down the drain), vinegar and dijon and whisk together until smooth. Slowly whisk in the oil. Add pepper and more salt to taste. Salmon with Aioli and Leeks: 2 salmon fillets 1 leek aioli olive oil salt and pepper Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place fillets on baking tray and sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Brush aioli generously onto the fillets. Dice leeks to make little disks (as seen in the photo above) and place on the fillets. Bake for 12 minutes or until the salmon is flaky.

Birthday Wishes

So Monday was my birthday. The day marking the monumental 25th birthday has come and gone with less pomp and circumstance than an ego-centric, attention-loving person such as myself would hope for in her wildest dreams. And thus begins what I have decided will be the best year of my life to date. Highlights: Emily made me a birthday cake (How freaking cute is she?! Fifteen-year-old following in her older sister's footsteps, improvising cake recipes and everything.) My other sister (Al) made me an ottoman. And not, as you may be imagining, a piece of wood nailed to some planks. It looks like it should be sold at Target, nay, Pottery Barn, on third thought, it is way too cool for all of those places. For dinner, we went out for Thai food at Thai Spice. Yum. Emily ordered phad thai--and liked it. She said while looking at the menu, "I don't like Chinese food." What?! Who doesn't like Americanized Chinese food? It's fried and loaded with sugar and salt. After we teased her for being too picky, I thought we were in trouble for sure. But she ate nearly half of the phad thai and left the remainder in my fridge.

Here's an almost really cute photo of me and Megan. Except for my wonky eye!!!! Which I totally deserve because just last night I was making fun of this girl-who-dated-this-boy-I-really-liked's eye while looking at her facebook profile. Karma.

Al and I both ordered green curry, which was good and spicy (but not this spicy). And while it was good and savory and everything great about green curry, it's still not Pee Lek's green curry. No one makes green curry like your adopted Thai mother.

You may be scrolling through these photos and thinking "Wow, it looks like Lainey and her sisters and roommate are having a splendid time." (We did). "But where are her parents?" Strange, where are those sires on such a momentus occasion? Did Lainey finally achieve her lifelong dream of becoming an orphan just like her childhood heroes Annie, Anne of Green Gables and Heidi? No. The padres skipped town on a "much needed" holiday to swoosh down ski slopes and purchase cowboy boots in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Before I am the recipient of an enormous guilt trip in a few hours (Does this post hit too close to home? Is it too soon?), let me digress.

My birthday is never fails to turn into a giant family drama, pitting me against my dear-and-loving mother with my sisters caught in the middle and my dad (the supposed) true cause of it all (not sure I believe that). Last year on my birthday we were in the car for 12 hours (granted it was on the way to go skiing in Colorado ... details). The year before that, hey, it was pretty good. The year before that--another 12-hour car ride. The year before that, January blizzard that shut down the entire city.

I, of course, never miss a chance to make these people feel bad about slighting me on the one day a year that we can universally acknowledge is all about me. But seriously, I get the shaft (except for those legendary birthday parties sledding at Mahoney State Park back in elementary school).

Now, I know that my birthday comes on the day that the holidays are officially over. Everybody is going back to school/work. It's cold out. We've all eaten more than we should, shopped more than we like and gone to more parties than is reasonable. Yet I reserve the right to be irritated that my padres left town on purpose (maybe), so they didn't have to celebrate. And weren't even nice about it.

My one consolation: knowing that they would have had way more fun on vacation with me and my sisters because we are hilarious.

And here's a random photo of icing ...

Broccoli Raisin Salad

Broccoli and I have never got on very well. It was the vegetable that caused many a long night sitting at the dinner table after everyone else had finished. I can recall hiding the limp vegetable under my plate once--it was, of course, discovered. I even tried to slip some to our cocker spaniel--she didn't eat it.

Nowadays, it's another thing on my list that I've grown to enjoy--though I suspect my stomach disagrees. I'd say the conversion took place when I stopped eating any sort of frozen vegetable.

I've had this salad before at Christmas or Easter. I decided to make it for a pot luck at work. There are some folks at work trying to lose weight, and I figured this could be a nice alternative to all the fried chicken, meatballs, chips, dips and cookies that would be making up the majority of the buffet. I'm sure it would have been, had I remembered to take it out of the refrigerator that morning. I even made it using turkey bacon to boost the salads health factor--mistake. Turkey bacon is horrible. Never use it. It's suspiciously pink and turned out tough and flavorless.

Broccoli Raisin Salad: 1 head of broccoli 1/2 cup raisins 1-2 ounces bacon optional: sunflower seeds For dressing: 1/2 cup mayonnaise 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 tablespoon sugar pinch of salt and pepper Trim broccoli florets and place in bowl. Toss with raisins. Mix dressing ingredients in a separate bowl and toss with broccoli. Marinate overnight. Add crisp, fatty bacon.

Keys to a Good Party

I'll confess New Year's was the first football game I watched all season. That sort of thing doesn't stop me from getting into the game, however. It's a bit ridiculous. If everybody else wasn't screaming at various fumbles/sack/interceptions, I would be embarassed. Somehow, the Huskers were able to squeak out a win, apparently the first bowl win in a decade.

The real draw of this party was (of course) the food. Jim (the host) is a food broker--so he sells food to grocers, restaurants, convenience stores, etc. There's almost no point to bringing your food to a gathering with the McKains. For a summer concert featuring Three Dog Night and the Doobie Brothers a few years ago, the McKains brought beenie weenies (3 dogs) and white asparagus (the doobies).

We weren't classy enough for this cheese plate that included gorgonzola, two kinds of cheese I can't recall, pears and a "bad piece of cheddar."

Nobody was too classy for the soup: red beans and rice, chili and chicken noodle. My dad specifically instructed my mother to not leave without the recipe for the red beans and rice. (I'll see if can get it to you soon.)

But the winner of the party was the spinach artichoke dip (unfortunately, the photo didn't turn out). But trust me on this you must make this for the Super Bowl and/or any other occasion.

Spinach Artichoke Dip: Canned artichoke hearts Frozen spinach mayonaise sour cream
(updated) lemon juice garlic powder onion powder salt and pepper a lot of parmasan cheese As I mentioned previously, Jim works as a food broker, thus has access to bulk amounts of food. He's also a great cook. So his methodology was to throw all this together until it looked good. You should try to do the same. I don't think you're going to mess up with any of the listed ingredients.

Drain and coarsely chop the artichokes. Dethaw the spinach and squeeze out all the water you can. Mix together with the mayo, sour cream, garlic and onion powder and a bit of salt and pepper until you have a gooey consistency. Jim used slightly more mayo than sour cream. If you mix them a bit at a time, this should work out. Finally, you should add more grated parmasan cheese than you could ever imagine to be necessary until you come to a good, chunky consistency. Serve with tortilla chips or pita bread, hot or cold. To serve warm, heat in oven for 5 minutes on 350. Jim also recommended serving this with baked fish.

Omaha Blogroll

I suppose you could say that food bloggers are a dime a dozen. We're everywhere, posting, photographing, reviewing, cooking, not to mention eating. Here are a few Omaha-area food blogs you, dear readers, may be interested in checking out. Snekse over at Gastronomic Fight Club put a blogroll and RSS feed together so you can get them all in one place. All the blogs are a bit different, some post recipes, some post reviews, a "day in the life" and culinary news. See what you like and keep eating. Here's the feed. Check It Out geeks.rate(food) Omaha Critic Jamie's Kitchen What Greg Eats (almost forgot) Gastronomic Fight Club

Thank Goodness for Chef Boyardee Pizza

You're going to see this week's postings and think my mom lives for cooking. Don't believe it. Not for a second. I should elaborate before I am banished from her kitchen (that will never happen--I'm the only one who will eat indiscriminately). Would you love cooking if you worked from 6 a.m. until 3 in the afternoon (or so), came home to kids probably running around pretending they weren't watching TV while you were gone and have them hover over the stove asking "What's for dinner?" in the whiniest tone? And then, once you tell them it's beef stroganoff or stew, they mope and say, "Steeewwww?" and you have to threaten taking away that evening's episode of Cheers or I Love Lucy to get them to finish their meal. This has been happening for nearly 25 years people. Give this woman a break!

She's learned a few tricks over the years, 1.) never introduce something new on a Monday and 2.) stick with your standbys. One of these standbys is what is viewed here: Chef Boyardee pizza. Pretty simple, you buy the box, follow the directions, embellish with extra vegetables, mushrooms, pepperoni and extra cheese. (I believe Mom uses provelone, mozarella and grated parmasan.) One very important trick she learned is to make two pizzas: one for adults and one for kids. I am proud to say that I now take from the adult pizza.

We had this pizza for birthday parties or on Fridays (when she was too tired to care about serving us a plate of steamed vegetables) or, as in this case, Christmas Eve (no turkey here). She would dole out the slices (I always picked one with the most parmasan) and set a bowl of baby carrots on the table. On these nights, we even would get to drink soda with dinner (sometimes).

I think Chef Boyardee's slogan fits this situation pretty well. And don't you want to come over to my mom's for dinner someday?

Cinnamon Rolls

Now it's back to work after what I declare to be one of the best Christmases ever. I'm not exactly sure what made it so spectacular. The gifts were great (my mom made me an apron out of two dish towels from Anthropologie!), but they're always good. I think it may have more to do with maturity on my part. It seemed like for the first time Christmas was really all about relaxing and being with friends and family. These awesome cinnamon rolls didn't hurt though.

It's a Seyler family tradition to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning, post present destruction. My mom has a bread machine that she probably uses once or twice a year, but one of those times is to toss flour, yeast, butter, etc. into the machine, turn it on, go back to bed whilst the bread wizard mixes the dough. She lets the rolls rise in the laundry room as we labor over opening gifts. Rough morning eh? This year the cinnamon rolls turned out (by miracle) robust and savory. And look at the above photo: White Christmas.

Dad even got in on the action. Blog readers may not be surprised that he was assigned the task to fry the bacon. I usually shy away from eating bacon, but dad makes it right. The first one I tried was so well-done and crispy it disintigrated in my mouth. I even snapped a photo of my dad ... in an apron, looking annoyed. "Lainey, it's just bacon."

Some family friends came over for breakfast (as their kitchen is under renovation). They supplied a ridiculous amount of farm fresh eggs. And Emily went to town on them. Her trick is to add fresh, chopped or minced garlic to scrambled eggs. Don't be alarmed by her wrist brace--it's just jammed (not broken) and has been for like two months now (I tease). Cinnamon Rolls: Dough: 1 cup water 2 eggs 1/4 cup butter 4 cups flour 2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup sugar 3 tablespoons skim milk powder ( it’s amazing the volume you have to buy) 2 teaspoons quick-rise or bread machine yeast Filling: 3 tablespoons butter 2/3 cup brown sugar 2 teaspoons cinnamon optional: 1/3 cup raisins or chopped pecans (my family hates nuts in things, minus my mom and me Icing: 1/2 stick butter 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 or 3 tablespoons milk 2 cups powdered sugar (or until you reach desired consistency) (I believe my mom adapted this recipe for those of us who may not own a bread machine.) Add dough ingredients in the order listed. Mix together, knead and allow to rise in a warm place for 60 min. Then roll out into a rectangle (see photo 3). For filling, melt 3 tablespoons butter and brush over dough. Mix together brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle over dough. Roll up and pinch edges together (see top photo). Cut into 12 slices and place in greased dish or in muffin cups. Cover and let rise a second time for 30-40 minutes. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. The recipe says you can freeze 1/2 of the dough to use at a later time. I have never tried that. Why not just eat it all? Here comes the part of the recipe I took care, and thus didn't measure anything, crap.) For the icing, in a medium mixing bowl add softened butter, milk and vanilla and mix together. Add the powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time and mix until smooth. Continue adding powdered sugar until the icing is at your preferred consistency.

Pumpkin Quiche - Success!

Something fantastic happened in my kitchen on a cold winter night last week. Something new was made, something that may have never been done before (at least not the way I did it). But let me start at the beginning. I wanted to make these adorable peach hand pies. But as peaches (or almost any fruit) aren't in season, I decided to substitute pumpkin custard. I looked up a few custard recipes online and in my Better Homes cookbook and came up with something I thought might work. The key word here is thought. No, that's not true. Before I even started I told Megan that it was going to be a fiasco.

You know my history with pie crust. Well this time, it was easy. Seriously. I read Smitten Kitchen's encouraging directions on crusts, and even though there were a few moments when I thought all would be lost, it turned out fine (as you can see below).

The real problems came when I realized my custard was too runny to lie flat in the hand pie (sort of like a jelly- or custard-filled doughnut). Shit. OK, I improvise. What if I add more of the canned pumpkin? That could thicken it. Ummm, nope. I score through the pages of my Better Homes cookbook. Corn starch! I dumped a load on top of the orangey mixture. Then rethought and scooped the powder out of the soupy mixture. I even tried mixing it on high, hoping either the eggs or the cream would thicken--you know like whipped cream or my favorite French silk pie. After five minutes of straight up whipping the "pumpkin custard," I was out of ideas. Until, stroke of genius, I recalled the muffin tray I had just bought. I lined the muffin tray with my tart dough and filled the cups with my "custard." Who says you need tart trays when everything you own is non-stick? After 22 minutes in the oven, these babies slid right out.

And they were good. The crust was flaky and salty. The filling was creamy but not too sweet. To be honest, because of the ridiculous amount of eggs in this recipe my pumpkin-hand-pies were more like pumpkin quiches, a dish I'm sure some Frenchie came up with a millenia ago. And check out the kitchen: (biggest mess ever--there was custard filling on the walls, yikes)

Tart Crust: 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 16 tablespoons (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pieces 1/2 cup sour cream 4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice 1/2 cup ice water Apparently the key to good pie crust is keeping everything cold, so cold butter and ice water. Smitten Kitchen even recommends throwing the bowls in the fridge or freezer (just don't forget about them like I did). Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, add butter pieces and mix with pastry blender until it is coarsely blended. Put bowl in the freezer. In a separate bowl, mix sour cream, lemon juice and ice water with whisk. Remove dry mixture from freezer and pour half of liquid into it and mix with your fingers until liquid has been absorbed. Add the remainder of the liquid and continue to blend with your fingers. (Note: my mixture seemed to be very dry and lumpy. This turned out to not be a big deal once I rolled the dough out.) Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour or freeze for up to one month. To begin rolling dough, remove half of the cold dough from the fridge. With a lot of flour, roll the dough out onto a smooth surface. Using a four-inch biscuit cutter or a four-inch Starbucks mug with the skyline of New York on it to cut out circles from the dough (you can adjust the size). Place dough into either a tart pan or the wells of muffin trays. If you think your dough may stick to the sides, rub butter on the side of the trays to grease it up. K, now we move on to the filling. Pumpkin Filling: 5 eggs 3/4 cup cream (to lighten it up you could use half and half or milk) 1/2 cup sugar 1 15-ounce can pumpkin 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon nutmeg Add the ingredients to a large mixing bowl and blend until the consistency is smooth (and a bit runny). Easy, right. Add about 2 tablespoons of the pumpkin mixture to each well of the muffin tray. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, until tart crust is slightly browned and a toothpick pulls out clean.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Just to put you in the holiday spirit, I'll let you gaze longingly at these beautiful chocolate chip and reeses chip cookies. Look how golden brown they are, and yet I can assure you that they were soft and chewy in the middle. Megan made these for our party. Thankfully there were a few leftover. I believe she followed the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag--in this case she actually followed all the dirctions and didn't miss any ingredients--thus they turned out perfectly.

At one point whilst making these Megan asked, "Do you think I put too many chocolate chips in them?" (She is hilarious.) "Megan, I don't think it's possible to put too much chocolate in anything."

So for those of you who aren't sick of holiday cookies yet, just scroll up and down this page and try not to drool.