peachy

The Stonewall, TX Peach JAMboree experience (which I highly recommend) isn't complete without mutton riding, wild cow milking, and walking away with a half bushel of peaches. Some idea of what half a bushel minus 20 peaches looks like...
Needless to say, some peaches need eated.

Peach Project #1: Spiced Peach Pie with Buttermilk Crust

Pie crust and I have a brief, yet unhappy history together. However, as a firm believer that buttermilk makes everything better, this recipe prevailed. The crust rolled out easily and baked up tender; the cardamom and cinnamon gave the peaches a hint of warm, delicious spiciness.

I also made this pie with a handful of blackberries thrown in with tasty results. This crust recipe would work well for just about any fruit pie.

Spiced Peach Pie with Buttermilk Crust
Adapted from Bon Appétit | August 1999

Crust
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
5 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 cup shortening, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup chilled buttermilk

Filling
½ cup sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
3 3/4 to 4 pounds ripe peaches (about 6 cups fruit)
1 egg, beaten (for glaze)

Make crust (when you don’t have a processor):
Mix flour, sugar and salt. Toss in butter and lard. Take 2 steak knives and cut up the chunks into smaller bits. Should look like chunky flour, yum! With a spatula, stir in 3/4 cup buttermilk, smearing the bits of dough against the side of the bowl. Dough should look a might dry and crumbly, but comes together in a moist clump when you take a handful and squeeze it. Gather dough into ball. Divide into 2 pieces, 1 slightly larger than the other. Flatten each into disk. Wrap disks in plastic; chill at least 1 hour or overnight.

Peel your peaches:
Boil some water. Cut a little ‘X’ into the bottom of peaches and toss them into water for 30 seconds. Transfer them into a bowl of ice water for a few minutes. Peel, halve and pit peaches. Mix 3/4 cup sugar and next 4 ingredients in large bowl Slice peaches into bowl with sugar mixture; toss to coat. Let filling stand until juices form, 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Roll out larger dough disk on floured surface to 12- to 13-inch round. Transfer dough to 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Trim overhang to 3/4 inch. Mound filling in dish. Roll out second disk on floured surface to 12-inch round. Drape dough over filling. Pinch overhang and edge of top crust together. Fold edge under. Cut several slits in top crust. Crimp edge. Brush pie with beaten egg; sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar.

Place pie on center rack in oven. Bake 50 minutes. Place baking sheet on lowest rack to catch drippings. Continue to bake pie until crust is brown and juices bubble thickly through slits, covering very loosely with foil if top browns too quickly, about 20 minutes. Cool on rack 1 hour, or cut into it hot and let it run everywhere with a scoop of ice cream.

eat more veggies

I love carrot cake, but sometimes there's just too much going on. Pineapple, coconut, raisins, nuts... it skirts fruitcake at times.

Looking for simpler times, I have been eying this recipe I saw for Carrot Honey Cake. I finally made them outsourced their creation (thanks, friend!) in cupcake form for a dinner shindig, and my tummy was glad I did.

I often say that people think they can't cook because they follow poorly written recipes. Ambiguous phrases such as "mix until barely incorporated" or "cook till just done" add anxiety and don't tell the inexperienced cook what to look for. On the flip side, this carrot cake is a good example of a very well written recipe that is concise yet descriptive. At a glance it looks a bit wordy, but follow these directions and you will have a moist, subtly spicey cake with a nice hint of sweetness from the honey. They would be delicious as muffins sans cream cheese frosting, but why wouldn't you want cream cheese frosting?

good pie bad pie

Hard at work perusing my Google Reader news feed (procrastination: more efficient than ever!), I saw a recipe for strawberry pie. Deluded by promises of plump, fragrant berries in pie form I hit the market. Five pounds of strawberries richer, I was confident I was going to churn out a gorgeous scarlet red pie, nevermind my knack for misshapen pies.

Hasty, hasty, Jen. Had I taken the time to read the recipe carefully, I would have realized that I was setting myself up to make strawberry jello in a pie crust. As far as jello goes, this was a winner. I, however, am keen on my food having a little less wiggle to it.

With 3 lbs. of berries remaining, I felt the need for revenge of the strawberry pie. I settled on the recipe below, adapted from Bon Appétit. This recipe was simple, fast, and gone soon after its conception. The orange zest provided a nice brightness, and the cookie crust was easy to make (no rolling out dough, yay!).



Strawberry Icebox Pie with Almond Crust
Adapted from Bon Appétit | April 2003

Crust
1 cup slivered almonds, toasted
1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 2 graham crackers)
3 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling
5 cups quartered hulled strawberries (about 24 oz)
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons orange zest

1 1/2 cups chilled whipping cream
1 tablespoon sugar

For crust:
Preheat to 350°F. Butter 9" pie dish. Coarsely chop almonds. Add graham cracker crumbs and sugar; mash up together to mix. Add butter, mix. Press crumb mixture onto bottom and up sides of pie dish. Bake until crust looks toasty, about 12 minutes. Cool.

For filling:
Place 2 cups strawberries in medium saucepan.

Mash strawberries until chunky. Add sugar, cornstarch (slowly so you don't get clumps), and lemon juice. Stir over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves and mixture boils and thickens, about 3 minutes. Stir in orange zest. Transfer mixture to bowl. Cool to room temperature.

Stir in remaining 3 cups strawberries and grated orange peel. Mound filling in crust. Chill pie until cold and set, at least 2 hours and up to 6 hours.

Using electric mixer, beat cream in large bowl until peaks form.

Spread whipped cream decoratively over filling. Cut pie into wedges and serve.

Spread a few spoonfuls of mixture over bottom of crust. Organize remaining strawberries till pretty. Mound filling in crust. Chill pie until cold and set.

Beat cream and sugar in large bowl until soft peaks form. Serve together!

yum?

Sneaking contraband durian into the restaurant, disallowed in most public places due to its... pungency.

The verdict? Like eating creamed onion. In fruit form. The flesh is soft, and well, creamy, and somewhat stringy with a pit in the middle. The taste is somewhere between onion and chive, reminiscent of the delicious lily bulbs we had in China. I wonder if there are any durian recipes...

sea-salted

Phi Phi Island, Thailand - clear water, white sand, biting monkeys... do we have to leave?

school of new thought

Safely back in Hong Kong and still recovering from the culinary adventures of China, I was informed that the menu for the tonight would include more specialties from our 'home village' that had been brought back. You just can't leave some experiences behind.

Fortunately, the prized victuals were not more cold sea creature bits, but roast goose and the ugliest tangerines I have ever seen. The goose was savory and the tangerine sweet, just like they were supposed to be, which led me to a new theory about food from Chaozhou. Foodstuffs must cross border in order to fully develop their proper flavor. In China, we had simply expected too much too soon from our meals. That being said, I think I'll stick to dining on the island for now.

Tomorrow? The quest for the best mango dessert place in Hong Kong!

tasting the armpit of the rooster

Chaozhou is an area located in the easternmost part of the Guangdong province in southern China not renowned for their food. I'd like to think that I have an accepting palate, especially for Asian flavors, but this trip was truly a challenge to stomach.

After schlepping up and down a slick, jungly Chaozhou mountainside in the rain with forty people I am apparently related to for the burial ceremony I was ironically not allowed to attend due to my "astral sign karma" (more on that later), it was feeding time. Thus, we descended upon what I could only guess was the single restaurant in town with seating capacity for our party.

Allow me to regale you with some of the culinary delights served in the Chaozhou style:

• Small clams in an odd, intensely flavored broth
• An unidentified, armored relative of the shrimp: equipped with extra exoskeleton and a thick orange-red vein likening to overcooked egg yolk
• Stir-fried lily bulbs: the onion/potato hybrid. It looks like a garlic bulb, slices like an onion, but has the mouthfeel of a mealy starch. And tastes somewhere in between.
• Fried yam. Period. Not to be confused with delicious, orange sweet potatoes. (Yam fufu, anyone?)
• Cold cod innards and other fish bits. I was informed the swim bladder is a delicacy.
• Ginseng abalone soup. This was actually one of the better courses, but there's something about prehistoric mollusks with a furry yet chewy texture that gets me every time.
• Cherry tomatoes. For dessert.

These and handful of other lackluster, poorly seasoned dishes rounded out the night. The grade? Points for diversity, but fail on execution. Judging by the fact that nobody insisted the fish bits be polished off, or that I needed another yam left me to believe that the restaurant was at fault and not the cuisine. At least till morning.

(Side note: There was a 911 Carrera 4 out front when we left the restaurant. What? How? Why?)

Morning was greeted with oversalted congee mixed to a disproportionate ratio of water to rice, and shoddy dim sum. Being with family from the region, I was starting to doubt that we just happened upon subpar places, but that Chaozhou was simply a gastronomically underwhelming place.

Lunch confirmed this suspicion as we became the only patrons of another nondescript restaurant. Having been told that a number of relatives had dined at this restaurant before kindled false hope that maybe Chaozhou cuisine wasn’t so bad after all.

Dish #1: Shady clams with chopped chilies. At first I thought they weren’t fresh because none of the shells were open. The fact was they were just still alive. Next came a series of dishes similar to the ones we had regarded last night as well as a few new friends. Highlights include:

• Braised lettuce with membranous clam bits and other chewy sea creatures.
• The lovechild of a fiddlehead fern precursor and a soba noodle. I was told it was a mushroom, but I have my doubts. Taste: inoffensive.
• ‘Lotus seed’ in a fishy broth. This seed was more like a large great northern bean, but really firm and waxy.

Overall, this led me to believe that the previous night’s dinner really was bad, but that it was also time to head for the border back to Hong Kong.