Spaghetti with breadcrumbs and mushrooms

This is as good as it gets.  I like this a lot as just spaghetti with breadcrumbs, but it pairs nicely with mushrooms, asparagus, cauliflower - you name it.

I first saw this on a Lidia Bastianich episode, without any vegetable.  It's a wonderful side dish, but I also like it for a light meal or snack - essentially the equivalent of a slice of toast with butter.  The critical element is good breadcrumbs, so use some decent bread to make fresh crumbs - or use panko (Japanese bread crumbs, now available everywhere) if you don't have bread on hand.

SPAGHETTI WITH BREADCRUMBS

Cook spaghetti according to directions

For each serving, use 1/2 - 1 slice of bread, turned into crumbs in the processor or blender.

Melt butter in your saute pan - about a half Tablespoon per slice of bread.  Add a little olive or canola oil if you feel you need more oil - but butter adds essential flavor.

Add some minced garlic - (or a little garlic powder).  You'll need to experiment to see what you like.  I use 1/2 clove garlic for a slice of bread.

Add your crumbs to the garlicky oil and saute until the crumbs are lightly browned, and crisp.
Add a Tablespoon or so of grated parmesan cheese just as you're removing from heat, if you'd like
Salt and black pepper to taste.
Stir in the well drained spaghetti.

To add the optional mushrooms, saute slices in butter until golden brown. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Simple Pilaf

This is a very simple rice dish I can throw together with ingredients I almost always have on hand; in fact, it's basically as quick as using a boxed rice pilaf, but with more control of the ingredients, and it costs less.

I use a vegetarian chicken-flavored broth powder from the bulk section of City Market in Burlington, but you could use chicken bouilion or broth, or some combination.  The addition of a little curry powder heightens the flavor without giving it a noticeable curry flavor. I use dried minced onion just for convenience and speed, but you could certainly saute minced onions, and I do that when I want more onion than I put in this dish. Add garlic, fresh ginger, red pepper flakes if you want.  Or herbs - especially parsley and thyme. But it's not necessary for a basic pilaf.

I always have frozen petite green peas on hand to add to salads or rice dishes.  They only need to be thawed in the dish itself at the end of cooking.  For more onion and a little green I've used minced onion tops that I always have in the winter.

I usually add golden raisins to my curries or pilafs, but used craisins instead and liked them a lot.  I use short grain rice lately, but use the rice you want and adjust the water accordingly (long-grain converted generally takes 2 1/2 times as much water as rice, instead of 2 to 1)

I think sour cream is a separate food group, and so of course I look to use it where I can.

SIMPLE PILAF

2 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable broth powder, or can of chicken broth instead of equivalent water
2 Tablespoons dried minced onion
1/4 teaspoon curry powder
salt and pepper to taste (the broth powder does not have salt)

Bring to a boil and add
1 cup short grain rice

Stir a couple of times, adjust the heat to very low, and barely simmer until all the water is absorbed (generally 20-25 minutes or so).  Stir in frozen green peas.  Add minced onion tops or scallions.  Top with raisins or craisins, and optional sour cream, yogurt, or cottage cheese.

Teriyaki Fajitas

Not trying to do any fusion cooking,  this just makes the most sense for what to call it - though it wouldn't pass for either teriyaki or fajitas.

You could have this without the teriyaki sauce or the sour cream.  You could substitute sausage for the beef, and have sausage with green peppers and onions.  In fact, a lot of things taste good in a pan-toasted tortilla.  Nice change from a bread sandwich.

Teriyaki Fajitas

In a large skillet, pan toast a flour tortilla, either dry or with a little oil in the pan.

After removing the tortilla, saute (with a little oil)
Sliced green peppers
Sliced onions

When nearly done add
Thinly sliced beef of your choice

Saute briefly and add
A little brandy (I use apricot), or port, maybe 1 Tablespoon
Soy sauce (maybe 1-2 Tablespoons)
Sugar (maybe 1-2 Tablespoons)
Grated fresh ginger (maybe 1/2 teaspoon)
Minced fresh garlic (1/2 clove, or 1/8 teaspoon dry)
A little hot pepper, or dried hot pepper flakes

Cook til the sauce reduces and coats the meat and veggies with a sweet, salty, syrup
Place in the toasted flour tortilla, and top with sour cream
Fold and enjoy.

optional:  Serve the beef and vegetables on a green salad, with homemade croutons.

After you make this once you'll know how you want to adjust the sauce.  You could use orange juice concentrate instead of the brandy, or perhaps apricot jam for the brandy and some of the sugar.

You could marinate the beef in the sauce, which is ordinarily how teriyaki is made.

I used bottom round roast, which is a tough cut of meat if not sliced thinly, and this is also why I'm careful not to overcook it.  Skirt steak would work well here, as it does for fajitas. I've used london broil.

Aunt Esther's Fruit Salad

My cousin Alice had a great aunt named Esther. Alice never met her great aunt, but this salad that carries her name (we just call it "Aunt Esther's") has graced our Thanksgiving table for more than three decades.  Wouldn't be the same holiday without the salad, or without remembering generations past. With Alice's kind permission:

Sauce for Aunt Esther's

Drain the juice from one can of pineapple slices into a saucepan and heat.

While the juice is heating mix together
1/2 cup sugar
1 heaping tablespoon flour
1 egg

Add to the boiling pineapple juice, stirring constantly until it thickens.  Let cool.

Beat 1 cup heavy cream into whipped cream (no vanilla or sugar)

Fold the whipped cream into the pineapple mixture.
Spread on top of a bowl of diced fruit

Whipping the cream and adding it to the sauce is best done just before you serve it.  This recipe makes enough for a holiday meal, and is more than I otherwise want at one time -  so I keep the sauce in the fridge for 5-7 days and add some to freshly made whipped cream when I mix a bowl of fruit. The fruit in this salad was pineapple, clementine, grapefruit, bananas, melon, empire apple, and pomegranate seeds

This is wonderful in summer with watermelon, strawberries, blueberries or bing cherries as part of the mix.

Linguini with Peanut Sauce

This sauce is a staple for me in the summer, when I have fresh snow peas or sugar snaps, and new scallions or onion tops.  I add cucumbers as soon as they come in.  But it's a great winter dish too.  I save myself the expense of buying scallions unless it's a major component of a dish, and instead let some onions grow tops on the counter.  I take a green leaf from 2 or 3 onions and mince them for a little taste of summer.  In winter the peas to use are frozen petite pois, just thawed in warm water.  I keep them on hand to add to salads and stir fries, and always add them at the last minute without cooking them.

I don't usually measure ingredients for this sauce, but just start with a big spoon of peanut butter and add the other ingredients to taste.  I wanted to give you a recipe so I measured this time, and it came out just the way I like it.  Start with these amounts and adjust til it's to your liking too.   

Peanut sauce

1/2 cup creamy natural peanut butter
1/2 cup water
3 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
>1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Add julienned cukes,
sliced scallions,
fresh snow peas or sugar snaps, or frozen green peas

Enough for 8 ounces of linguini or more.  This sauce will keep in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks.  It's only the freshly grated ginger that would conceivably spoil.

I suppose this will work with processed peanut butter, but if you aren't using natural peanut butter (ground peanuts and salt) then you're missing out on a healthy treat. I use Hannaford's store brand. 

Add just a Tablespoon or two of water to the peanut butter to begin with, beating it with a fork.  The peanut butter will darken and seize up the way melted chocolate will if a drop of water hits it.  As you add the next water it will suddenly start to turn light and creamy.

I like Sushi Chef brand sesame oil best, and find there's quite a bit of difference in brands.  This is not a dish that needs a lot of soy sauce. If it's not salty enough for you then add salt separately.  Besides adding flavor the ginger adds heat.  Adjust the ginger, hot pepper, and garlic to your level of heat. You won't find these amounts I've given you to be too hot.  You can use fresh garlic of course, but it's harder to disperse evenly to flavor the whole dish, and fresh raw garlic can overwhelm in a way that garlic powder usually does not.

As the sauce sits it keeps getting thicker, and it will do this on the pasta, too.  I used to think the pasta was absorbing the water from the sauce, but I think it's mostly that the starch in the peanut butter is absorbing the water and jelling, so that as time goes on you need to add more water.  It should have the consistency of heavy cream when you add it to the pasta. If I dress this and don't eat it right away (as in my bento box, or if there are leftovers) it will usually need a few drops of water added before I eat it.  No problem.  Some people like it sticky though. Up to you.  I like this best when the linguini is just made and still warm.

The plate is Bennington Pottery blue agate stoneware

Resolution Mac and Cheese

It's New Year's Resolution time.  I may get mine posted soon, but of course I want to eat lighter for the new year - always do - and I'm especially using my bento boxes as a way to eat lighter lunches.

This macaroni and cheese is a modification of Laurel's Kitchen's Sandy's Macaroni, which uses toasted whole wheat flour and vegetables to develop flavor, and just 2 Tablespoons of parmesan for 8 ounces of macaroni.  Not enough cheese for me, so I added 4 ounces of cheddar - about half of it in the sauce, and half on top of the mac and cheese to brown. I also added 1 Tablespoon of neufchatel to add the merest tang. 

I toasted the topping separately so I could carry it in my lunch box and keep the topping crisp.  When I had this for supper last night I sprinkled a teaspoon of Cabot's cheddar cheese powder on top, and that really punched up the cheese flavor.  I'll probably add it to the sauce the next time I make this, and will update the recipe if I change it.

This doesn't have anywhere near the fat and calories of most macaroni and cheese, but then it doesn't have nearly as much cheese.  It's a great light recipe, and worthy of being made. The dish made 6 of these 3/4 cup servings.

Resolution Mac and Cheese

8 ounces macaroni of choice, boiled, and cooled if
  the dish is not to be eaten immediately

Saute together
  2-3T finely minced yellow onion
  1/4 cup minced mushrooms
  1/2 stalk finely minced celery
  1 clove finely minced garlic
  1 Tablespoon butter

1/4 cup flour (preferably some whole wheat) toasted in dry pan
     added to sauted veggies
2 cups 2% milk
1 Tablespoon grated parmesan
4 ounces grated sharp cheddar, divided in half after grating
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional 1 Tablespoon neufchatel or cream cheese
Optional 1 Tablespoon Cabot's Cheddar Shake (cheese powder)

The  crust topping
Coarse bread crumbs from 1 slice bread (or panko)
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon grated parmesan cheese

Directions:  Boil the macaroni in salted water, and cool.  Adding the sauce to cooled macaroni keeps the macaroni from absorbing the sauce.  It's important to salt the water even if you usually don't, because cheese usually brings quite a bit of salt to the dish, and if you replace the salt you won't notice as much that the cheese isn't there.

You could skip the toasting of the flour, but it does deepen the flavor.  Saute the veggies (or whatever ones you want), adding the garlic only when the other aromatics are just about done.  Overcooked garlic is bitter.   Adding the flour to the veggies keeps the sauce from lumping when you add the milk, since you haven't made a flour/butter mix.  Add the parmesan, cream cheese if you're using it, and one half the grated cheddar.  Be sure to cook long enough for the flour to lose its raw taste.  Be sure you've added the salt necessary for this to taste like a cheese sauce.

Add the sauce to the macaroni.  (I portioned the mac and cheese into 6 muffin cups which could take broiler heat, and sprinkled with the remaining half of the grated cheddar.)  Put under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is pleasingly golden, brown, delicious.   When cool the mac and cheese will cohere and slip out of the pan.

Saute the coarse bread crumbs (or panko) and butter until you like the color, and add 1 Tablespoon grated parmesan.  Store this separately and it will be crisp when you eat your dish.

Of course, if you want to bake the mac and cheese to eat for a meal you can add the sauce to hot macaroni, add the topping with the grated cheddar when you bake it.  350 until brown on top.  And if you want to eat this as stovetop mac and cheese you can add all the grated cheddar when you make the sauce, and leave out the topping. 

(Laurel's Kitchen is one of my favorite Cookbooks - good simple vegetarian fare.  This Mother Earth News story from 1977 tells about the book and gives a few recipes.)

Sweet Scent of Summer Salad

I always think I'm going to like the corn and bean salads that appear in the deli case, but they usually have cilantro and I can only barely abide the stuff, and especially don't like the smell on my hands if I make something with it.  Besides that, I love the smell of celery, onion, green pepper, and cukes sitting in brine overnight before making relish.

So I decided to make a salad that smelled like summer to me, with no herbs either obscuring or complementing the vegetables. This tastes very bright and clean.  Best, I suppose, with freshly cooked black-eyed peas, but I use canned.  The fresher the vegetables the better it will all taste.  But one of the great things about this salad is that it tastes really good in the winter with store vegetables and canned or frozen corn and peas. The key is a good cucumber.

Once you mince the onion, rinsing it in cold water will remove the sulfur compounds that were released when you cut through the cells, and take away that harsh onion flavor you sometimes get when cut onion sits in a salad.

For a hot pepper I used a jalapeno which has long since turned red, from my garden.  The best looking cucumber was waxed, so I took the skin off - but even in the winter I usually leave the skin on a kirby or English cuke.

Sweet Scent of Summer Salad

1 minced cucumber or 1/2 English cuke. Peeled or not as you wish.
1 minced stalk of celery.
1/3 to 1/2 minced sweet onion,
1/2  minced green bell pepper,
1 small moderately hot pepper - jalapeno or hungarian wax, for example (or hot pepper flakes)
1 can black-eyed peas.
1 can extra sweet niblets, or about 1 and 1/4 cup frozen or fresh corn
2-3 Tablespoon lime juice
2-3 teaspoons canola or olive oil
Salt and a good amount of black pepper 

Optional: minced red bell pepper added for color, but don't skip the green pepper
Optional: 1/2 to 1 teaspoon sugar, if you don't use the extra sweet niblets.
Optional: diced avocado.

AUSTRIAN PEACHES

The recipe for these cookies came from Betty Crocker's 1970's Sphere Magazine via my sister.  They're a Christmas favorite, but are suitable any time you need a really festive cookie

THE COOKIES

3/4 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 325
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, vanilla and milk and mix well.  Add flour mixed with baking powder and mix well.  You can also just dump all the wet ingredients in a mixer and let her rip.  Very forgiving recipe.  Add the flour in two or three batches.

Form the soft dough into round 3/4 inch balls, and place on an ungreased baking sheet 1 inch apart (they don't spread a lot in the oven).  Each ball will flatten slightly and form one half of each peach.  Bake on the center oven rack until they cookies are slightly brown on the bottom, 15-20 minutes.

Remove to a wire cookie rack to cool.  While still slightly warm and soft insert the tip of a knife into the bottom of the cookie, and rotate the cookie to remove some of the interior, reserving the crumbs.  If you wait until the cookies are completely cool it's more difficult to do this and the cookies are more likely to crack.

THE FILLING

1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate pieces, melted
2/3 cups apricot jam 
1/3 cup chopped filberts, walnuts, or pecans
2 teaspoons rum or sherry
1 and 1/2 cup of the reserved crumbs

Melt the chocolate and mix all the filling ingredients together.  I used blackberry jam and a little raspberry flavoring today instead of the apricot jam, as the cookies themselves are rather bland.  I typically use apricot brandy instead of rum or sherry.  Match up the cookies so they are in pairs that fit together well. Fill the hollows in the cookies to just about level, and put two cookies together to form the peaches. The filling needs to protrude just enough so the filling in one cookie will adhere to the filling in the other cookie.

THE PEACH COLOR

Measure 1/3 cup sugar into a shallow ovenproof dish and add a few drops of red food coloring.  Rub color through the sugar with the back of a spoon until the coloring is even.  You are looking for the color of the blush on a peach.

Measure 2/3 cup sugar and add first a couple of drops of red food coloring and then enough yellow to give you a pleasing peach color.

Dry out the sugars in the oven, or, preferably, make the sugar a day before you make the peaches and let them air dry.

FINISHING THE PEACHES

Brush each peach very lightly with water, and roll part of one side in the red blush.  Roll the whole peach in the peach sugar, or sprinkle the sugar on.  Insert the stems and leaves if you haven't already done so.

THE STEMS AND LEAVES

Remove shards of cinnamon stick from a roll of cinnamon.  They need to be about 1 1/2 inches long.
With green gum drops, or spearmint leaves, or green fruit slices, cut leaf shapes and roll them in sugar on the cut surfaces.  Make a small slit in one end of the leaf with a toothpick - just to make it easier to insert the cinnamon stick.  Insert the shard of cinnamon into the crack between the filled peaches.  I like to have these ready to insert before the filling has hardened, as sometimes the stick will force the halves to separate.  But the sugars really need to be put on the peaches after the filling has hardened, so you can handle them without their falling apart.

APPLE JELLY

The difference in taste between homemade and commercial apple jelly is more pronounced than in any other preserves I can think of.  You can choose the apples and therefore the flavor.  You don't need any specialized equipment, though you'll see that I use a foley food mill to get rid of the skins, so I can use the pulp that's left over for making apple butter.

I made this jelly from empires, and I haven't seen such a red jelly from apples other than crabapples.  The taste is wonderful but lacks a little character, and I think I'll mix northern spies into my next batch.  I usually make jelly from cortlands, (which give a beautiful golden jelly), but I didn't get to it before they had all been used up.  I got these apples from the farm stand a week ago, but I'm confident you can make jelly from store bought apples.

Many jam and jelly recipes will tell you to mix in some underripe fruit, but apples have so much pectin you don't need to do that.

APPLE JELLY

3 pounds of apples, washed, quartered and cored, but not peeled
3-4 cups of water (see note)
3/4 cup sugar for every cup of extracted juice.

How's that for a list of ingredients?  Cut the apples into one inch pieces, and add water.  You've apparently got some latitude here.  Many books will say 1 cup of water for every pound of apples.  Some say to just cover the apples with water.  The old Fannie Farmer cookbook says to use 4 cups of water for 3 pounds of apples, and that might be the best advice.  I used about 3 1/2 cups of water.  Because you're going to cook the apples there will be some evaporation.  It's not as exact a science as it seems like it ought to be, and it's a pretty forgiving process.

Bring the apples to a boil and simmer for 20-25 minutes.  You want the skins to have pulled away from the pulp, and the pulp to mash up easily with a spoon.  Let cool somewhat.  Put the cooked apples through a foley food mill if you want to make apple butter from the leftovers, but all you really need to do is mash the apples against the sides of the pan with a spoon (you could try pushing the pulp through a colander if you want to use if for apple butter). The picture below is of all the skins that are left over from 3 pounds of apples.

Make a way for the juice to separate from the pulp.  The simplest thing to do is to line a colander or nonreactive sieve with wet cheesecloth (or washed cotton flannel or a washed white cotton tee-shirt- no fabric softener!!).  Cheesecloth needs to be in 3-4 layers if you want crystal clear jelly.  One layer of the flannel or cotton tee will be enough.  You can also buy a nylon jelly bag, not that's not necessary.  Pour the pulp into the colander and let it drip into the bowl for a few hours or overnight, until it's not dripping very often.  DO NOT press on the pulp to get more juice out if you want a nice clear jelly.

You should have collected 3-4 cups of juice.  Measure into a nonreactive saucepan - at least 2 quarts in size and preferably bigger.  Add 3/4 cups of granulated sugar for every cup of juice.  Heat on medium high until it starts to boil, and then pay very close attention to it, both because you want to catch the jelly point, and also because as it nears the right temperature it will boil up and double in size, and maybe boil over and make a real sugary mess (not that I've ever done that). Be prepared to pick up the pan if the jelly climbs too high up the sides. This is why you need a big pan.

If you've got a candy thermometer then do use it.  Attach it to the side of the pan, and watch as it approaches 220, which is theoretically the jelly point.  But you also need to do the "jelly test," which involves swirling some juice in the spoon until it cools for a few seconds, holding it up and watching as the juice drips off the spoon.  At first it will drip in single drops.  As you approach the jelly point it will come off in two drops (isn't that weird?).  Then very soon it will come off in a little sheet that will break away from the spoon.  Take it off the heat immediately.  I decided this jelly was ready to come off the heat at about 216 because of the way it was starting to sheet from the spoon.  It is very tender jelly and took a full 24 hours to jell.  It would have jelled sooner if I'd let it cook to 220, but wouldn't have been as tender.  What this means is that you don't really need a thermometer - you can just use the jelly test.

As soon as you take it off the heat skim the foam that has collected on the surface. You can skim while you're cooking if you want, but there will be some at the end, too (the skimmings are edible - in fact my favorite).  If you don't skim it the foam will mix in with the jelly and look really odd, suspended in spots all through the jelly.  Of course if that appeals to you...

You should have already washed jars.  It's a good idea to sterilize them (run through the dish washer or fill with water in a pan and bring to a boil), and it's a good idea to process the jars of jelly if you want to keep them at room temperature, but I'm not giving directions for that because it's more complicated and making the jelly is really simple.  Pouring the very hot jelly from a clean cup into the jars and putting in the fridge will keep the jelly as long as opened jelly will keep.  If you're using canning jars you can cover with a new lid, screw the band on tight, invert the jar briefly so the hot jelly will kill any bacteria or mold on the lid, and the lid will seal and probably give you a little longer life.  Still a good idea to keep in the fridge.  Chances are the jelly is going to disappear long before you have to worry about it.

This batch made 3 1/2 cups of jelly and should have made a little more than that.  Probably could have used a little more water in the apples originally.  No problem.

If you've put the pulp through a food mill or a colander and the pulp looks good, you can turn it into apple butter. I like my apple butter to taste of apples, so I just add sugar to taste and a dash of cinnamon (1/4 tsp for this batch) and bring it up to as hot as I can before it starts to explosively bubble (190-200 or so), put in jars and refrigerate.  The apple butter is relying on the thickness of the pulp as well as the residual pectin to give you a pleasing spread.  But you're not counting on the science of the jellying point, so you can vary your recipe, add more spices, add vinegar, cook it for a long time until it's dark and deep in flavor.  You can also use noncaloric sweeteners instead of sugar, which is not something you can do with the jelly, where you're relying on the interaction of the sugar, acid, and pectin, to create a jell.  With apple butter the flavor and the thickness are all up to you.

TOASTED CHEESE SANDWICH

Had a hankering for a toasted cheese sandwich and the only bread in the house was cinnamon raisin from La Panciata in Norwich.  So I figured I'd go ahead - how bad could it be?  I made it with mild Cabot cheddar [ sharp, actually, which is milder than some of the other cheddars. the one in the green box  Forgotten how good this is]. Best toasted cheese sandwich I've had in a long, long, time, and cinnamon raisin with cheddar will be my Go To cheese sandwich for quite a while.  So much fun to make a discovery this way.  The little dark spots on top are the raisins.

ASPARAGUS WRAPPED WITH PHYLLO

This is another great appetizer, simple to make, and suitable for a formal occasion as well as casual snacking. It keeps at room temperature and travels well, so it's one of my favorites when I need to bring an appetizer somewhere.  It needs to be made the day you are serving it to preserve the crispness of the phyllo.

You'll need asparagus,

1/2 package of Athens phyllo dough

butter to melt

parmesan cheese optional

salt and pepper optional

The phyllo dough should be thawed in the refrigerator overnight if possible, or you can leave it on the counter until you can unroll it.

 Preheat the oven to 400-425

I usually line a sheet pan with parchment paper to ensure these don't stick, but this isn't necessary if you don't have any.  Use a silpat, or just oil the pan lightly.

Prepare asparagus by snapping the bottom end from each individual spear.

Melt butter - a half stick should be plenty for enough dough for a pound of asparagus. Stack 3 standard 9x13 Athens phyllo sheets, brushing each sheet with butter before you add another sheet. Brush the top sheet lightly with butter as well.

Cut the stack in half the short way, and then cut about half a dozen strips from each half, which will be about 1 1/2 inch by 6 1/2 inches.

Wrap each spear with a strip at an angle, and place on the baking sheet. Brush the asparagus spear with a little melted butter or olive oil as well.  sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on the phyllo strip if you'd like.  I prefer them plain.  Repeat as many times as you need to in order to cover all your asparagus (you could probably cover about 6 dozen spears with 1/2 package of phyllo).

Roast until the phyllo is pleasantly golden, but be careful not to overcook the asparagus, which should be tender-crisp.  This should take no longer than 15 minutes, depending on the temperature you've chosen.

I sprinkle a little salt and black pepper on the asparagus when it comes out of the oven.

It's important not to cover the asparagus tightly if you are traveling with it, or the phyllo will absorb moisture and lose it's crispness.

PINE CONE APPETIZER

This appetizer has been part of our Thanksgiving dinner for decades.

The original recipe by Hellman's mayonnaise  used 12 oz cream cheese, 1/4 cup Hellman's, and 1/3 cup parmesan cheese.  However, 8 oz cream cheese is usually plenty, and I don't actually measure anything else.  I use about the same amount of herbs for the smaller amount of mix though, since my taste, and I think ours in general, is for stronger flavors than it was 30 years ago.  I've substituted lighter cream cheese and mayo, too, and find it's just as good this way:

8 oz light cream cheese (Neufchatel - nuke for 30 seconds or so if necessary to soften)
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
<1/4 cup Light Hellman's mayo (one serving spoon full)
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

I try to make this near the time I'll serve it, since the pecans tend to get punky if they absorb moisture from staying in the cheese mix overnight in the fridge, and they're easier to insert into a room temperature mixture anyway.  Once youve done it it's very fast to make.

Shape into an airfoil/teardrop.  Once the pecans are inserted it will magically look like a pine cone even if your original teardrop did not.

Start inserting whole pecans at the tip, and shingle each successive row. The pecans will be horizontal at the tip and vertical at the back.  This will happen naturally.

The biggest difficulty with making this is finding enough good pecans.  I mail order nuts from Sunnyland Farms in Georgia.  The nuts aren't the cheapest, but they are outstanding.  Then if you always have the other ingredients on hand, which I do, you can whip up an appetizer to bring somewhere with a half hour's notice.

I usually serve extra pecans and/or crackers, because there's more mix than the assembled pecans will use up.

I don't worry a lot about leaving this out at room temperature for several hours atan event, but I keep the leftovers in the fridge.

APPLE PIE

Mother made perfect apple pie - thin, tender, flaky crust hugging the cooked bed of apples, caramelized juice dripping down the side with a drop forever jellied in place.  Mine is pretty good too, but I'm not sure it quite measures up to Mom's.  That's what memory will do for you.

I'm here to tell you that you too can make an outstanding apple pie, better than you ever imagined, or maybe as good as you've always imagined.  You'll make some different choices than I do but you'll have a reason for that.  If some element doesn't come out as well as you want, come back here and reassess. The instructions are long only to cover every detail, not because this is difficult.

1)  The pan.
I currently use a pyrex pie pan because I have it around for so many other uses - makes a great shallow casserole or a dish to slice tomatoes into for sticking in the oven to melt the cheese on top.  But I think an aluminum (or better yet, a tin) pan makes a better pie.

2)  The flour
Flour accounts for the biggest difference in the pie crust you might make now and the melt in your mouth crust of your distant memory.  Pastry flour used to be available on your supermarket shelf, and it probably isn't now.  Pastry flour is a lower-gluten flour and it resists being tough, even if you have to rework it.  Most people now make their crusts with all purpose flour, and I think that's a mistake.  Cook's Illustrated devoted an issue last year to apple pie, and in particular to all sorts of trials to get a crust that didn't float above the apples.  The crust floats above the apples if it's made with a flour high enough in gluten so that it will maintain it's original shape as it bakes.  A crust made with pastry flour settles down like the dew on your baking apples.

So what to dew do?  Pastry flour can be ordered from King Arthur Flour, and many co-ops and health food stores will have pastry flour (or whole wheat pastry flour).  But you can lower the gluten content of your regular all-purpose flour by mixing it with cake flour, which is what I've done here, assuming this is what you'd do at first too.  Substituting one third of the total with cake flour should satisfy most of your pastry flour needs. Once you've tried this you might want to search out the real thing, as the cake flour on your grocer's shelf is bleached.  Pastry flour also makes incredibly tender cookies, so it won't go to waste.

3) The fat
Mom used snowcap lard.  Made a wonderful crust with a distinctive aroma and flavor that still means pie to me.  Most people aren't thrilled with the idea of lard and notice the flavor difference, which interferes with their dessert pleasure.  If you think pork fat rules, you won't find anything better, especially if you can find organic lard.  Many other people use solid shortening, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of artificially hydrogenated fats, and that interferes with my dessert pleasure so i don't use it.  It's the second best choice if you don't mind.  So that leaves me with butter (oil crusts are a whole different thing).  Some people use mostly butter and some shortening, and if I had shortening around I'd do that too.  I'm guessing that a better butter with a lower water content might make a better crust, but I use standard salted butter because it's what I have in the fridge.  If I were buying it just for pie I'd buy unsalted butter and add salt.

Pastry is flaky for two reasons:  some flour gets coated with fat, and that keeps it from developing gluten - but more importantly larger pieces of fat, when rolled out, create layers of flour and fat.  Think of puff pastry, which is a flour dough layered with butter and then folded back over itself, and rolled out again, and again.  This creates hundreds of separate layers of flour separated by butter.

4) The apples
I think the best apples are a little tart, firm, and spicy.  The first pie apples of the year for me are Cortlands, and then once the Northern Spies ripen in Mid-October I only use spies.  My sister prefers McIntosh.  If you aren't happy with your available apple choices try making a pie with mixed varieties.  I've tried that too and been very pleased.

5) The filling mix
I use half white sugar and half brown sugar.  Less cinnamon than lots of pies do, because I want the apples to be prominent - and a grating of fresh nutmeg on top of the apples.  For thickening I use minute tapioca.  It gives no flavor to the pie, and there's no chance of the chalky, thick coating that I've tasted in some pies made with flour.  The tapioca mixes with the juices and creates little jellied jewels.  Use less tapioca (or flour, or whatever else you use) as the season progresses and the apples dry out.

APPLE PIE

THE CRUST

2 CUPS PASTRY FLOUR 

2/3 CUPS BUTTER, CUT INTO PATS

1 TEASPOON SALT (do not add if using salted butter)

ICE WATER, AS NEEDED

Fluff up flour before measuring. (Use 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour and 2/3 cup cake flour if you don't have pastry flour). Keep the butter as cold as possible. Cut the butter into the flour using either a pastry cutter, two knives, or a food processor, until it looks like coarse meal with some pieces of butter the size of peas (This is a petite pea).  Refrigerate if necessary (if the butter has softened).  Divide the dough mix about in 2 (a little more than one cup for each crust),  Add water just to the first (bottom) crust.

Add ice water a teaspoon at a time, mixing gently. This will take longer than you want it to.  Here I've added a few spoons of water and some clumps are forming.

 

When it just comes together, stop adding water.  The mix may seem a little dry to you. This is as wet as it should be

Throw a little flour onto your rolling surface, which can be a clean counter, bread board, or a plastic mat adhered to the counter with water.  You will not need to roll between sheets of plastic wrap.

Roll from the center outward, putting more emphasis on the outward movement than on downward pressure.  Turn the crust over every few rolls, and add more flour to the board if necessary to keep the crust from sticking.  Repair any tears in the edge, but don't worry about it a lot.  This looks like it's going to tear and like it's too dry, but it was just right.  This is actually the top crust.  I didn't take pictures of the bottom crust, but you can see in the pictures that the bottom crust doesn't hold its own very well and was too wet.  My hand slipped as I was adding the last water, and got too much in.  It's always best to add the water with a spoon instead of pouring it, and then these things won't happen.

When the crust is larger than the pan, either roll it up on the rolling pin, or (my preference) fold in half twice.  Either roll the crust over the pan, or put the corner in the center of the pan and unfold.  Take excess from one place and add it to holes at the edge.  Especially in the bottom crust no one will ever know.  There are no extra points for rolling a perfect crust.  This crust is actually too thick.  I should have removed some and continued to roll it thinner.  The thinner the crust the more delicate and flaky it will be. In fact, I'm remembering that I only need about a cup of mix for each crust, and there should be more than a half cup of dough mix you won't need.  Save it for the next pie, or make tiny tarts, or sprinkle cinnamon sugar on it, roll it up, and have little cinnamon pastries. 

PREHEAT OVEN TO 425

THE FILLING (SUGAR MIX)

This is for a large pie pan filled to overflowing.
Reduce the sugar mix if making a smaller pie. 

1/3 Cup white Sugar

1/3 Cup brown Sugar

2 Tablespoons minute tapioca

1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon

nutmeg to grate on top

a couple of pats of butter to top apples

Mix together in a bowl.  Sprinkle a thin layer on the bottom crust to protect it from the first layer of apples, which should be placed carefully on the bottom and up the sides. 

Sprinkle some filling on the apple layers as they build up, leaving a good amount for the top. (Mom used a full cup of sugar.  My sister uses none.  Experiment).  Some of you like to mix the apples with the sugar mix before adding to the pie.  That's good too.  I don't because it's not necessary and it's messy.

THE APPLES

Plan on at least 3 pounds of apples for a 9 inch deep dish pie. Cortlands, spies, macs, a mix. Ask for suggestions at your farmstand or farmer's market.

Wash the apples.  Quarter the apples with a paring knife, remove the seeds, peel, and slice either the long way or the short way.  Place the first layer on the bottom of the pie with care, to protect the pie crust.  The apples should mound up high in the middle, as they will reduce in volume as they cook. Leave a little space to adhere the second crust to the first.  Here you can see how sloppy the bottom crust was; it won't matter.   Grate a little fresh nutmeg on the top, and perhaps add a few very thin slices of butter.

THE TOP CRUST

Remove a cup of dough mix from the fridge, add ice water and roll out the second crust as before.  Patch where you need to.  Make a fluted roll at the edge if you want to. 

Top with a tablespoon or so of cream, and spread with your fingers or a pastry brush over the whole top of the pie.  Cut vents in the top crust with a paring knife.   

BAKE

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then at 350 for up to another 45 minutes.  Check at 30 minutes.  When done the crust will be golden brown, the apples pliable when you insert a cake tester.  But most important, some juice will have bubbled out of the crust and caramelized.  (Prepare for this with an oven liner under your pie pan, if you want.)  Letting it cool allows whatever starch you've used to jell (this slice was cut a little warm).  I like it best just a little bit warm, with ice cream or frozen whipped cream.