Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble Pie

Rhubarb is something new that I've gotten into since moving to Minnesota. I'm not sure why I never tried it before, but I think it was people constantly saying how sour it was. My mother-in-law made some great dishes, however, so this year when the rhubarb was ripe behind our our 'country' house, Chris picked some for me to experiment with. For my first baking experiment with rhubarb, I wanted something that was a classic, and what's more classic than strawberry-rhubarb pie? Unfortunately, pie is not totally my thing. I don't have the knack for the crust like my Aunt Lori does, and I don't have the talent at lattice work like my mother-in-law. Luckily, though, I came across this recipe by Joy the Baker, and was brave enough to try it. The crust (amazingly!) turned out really flaky and the filling was sweet but not overpowering. Plus, who doesn't love a great oaty crumble on top? (I particularly liked it because it saved me from having to roll out a top!) I decided to bring the finished product into work with me, and let's just say, it was gone by lunchtime. So, if you have some time on an afternoon to bake and putter, then give this recipe a try!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Adapted slightly from Joy the Baker 

Ingredients:

For the Crust:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounce) COLD unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
juice of 1/3 lemon
1/4 cup milk 

For the Filling:
3 cups rhubarb sliced into 0.5cm chunk (sorry, we measure skin lesions in millimeters, so that's what I'm used to....) 
1 pound (1 box) strawberries with the green part cut off and then cut in half
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
large pinch of salt 
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

For the Topping:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup granulated sugar
large pinch of salt 
large pinch of cinnamon 
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

Directions:

Make the crust:
1.) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar and salt. Add the cold butter chunks and either using your fingers or a pastry cutter, work the butter into the flour mixture until the butter pieces are the size of small peas or oat flakes. Pour in the lemon and the milk and use your hands or a fork to bring together coarsely. Don't over do it. You're not kneading dough here. Just try to moisten all of the flour bits. 
2.) Flour a work-surface and dump the pie crust mixture onto the work surface, shape it into a small disk (can be quite coarse), and then wrap that in plastic wrap and put into the fridge for 1 hour. 
3.) When ready, roll out the pie crust on a well floured surface until it's about 1/8 inch thick and 12 inches across. Transfer to a pie plate. Trim the edges and fold with your fingers to make a pretty design. Place in the fridge. 

Make the Filling:
4.) In a medium bowl, toss together the rhubarb, strawberries, sugars, cornstarch, lemon, and salt. Mix until all the fruit/rhubarb is covered with the sugars and cornstarch. Allow to rest as you make the crumble topping. 

Make the Topping:
5.) In another bowl, mix together the flour, oats, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Add the cold butter chunks and work them into the flour mixture by hand until the butter is the size of peas. 

Assemble the Pie:
6.) Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
7.) Remove the pie crust from the fridge.
8.) Take a big handful of the topping mixture and put it into the fruit mixture. Stir. 
9.) Pour the fruit mixture into the pie crust. Sprinkle the crumble evenly on top of the fruit mixture. 
10.) Place parchment paper on a baking sheet and place it on the bottom rack of the oven (this will catch any drippings and prevent them from burning and stinking up your oven). Place the pie on the middle rack of the oven (v. important that it's the middle rack). 
11.) Bake the pie at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 and bake for 35-40 minutes longer, or until the pie is juicy, bubbling, and golden brown. 
12.) Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 2 hours before serving. This will help congeal the juices and allow them to mellow. 
13.) Serve with vanilla ice cream or store in the fridge. 

This will seriously make your house smell wonderful. 

Homemade Pasta

Maybe the cooking / baking slump is over? Today, I decided for Sunday dinner (by myself since the hubs is up camping with his high school friends) to make pasta from scratch. I had tried in the past to make pasta and always horribly failed or never got it thin enough. Then last year, one of my co-interns, Dr. Erin, kindly invited me over to her house and went through the ins and outs of how to make a great pasta. It took me a little time to get down all the steps again, but once I got my muscle memory going, the pasta turned out great. It's actually quite easy and doesn't take that long once you get the hang of it. The results are so worth it. Homemade pasta tastes so much better than the boxed stuff. Plus, you can throw in any herb or even finely chopped sundried tomatoes to make an exquisite dish. Here's the recipe and the steps: 

Homemade Pasta (basic)

Ingredients:

4 eggs 

4 cups of all-purpose flour 

4-6 Tablespoons of water. 

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients into a bowl or mixer affixed with a dough hook and mix until the ingredients just start to come together into little clumps. It should be VERY crumbly. 

2. Take a about a baseball sized amount of crumbly dough and pack it together into a little flat-topped mound:

3. Squish this mound through your dough machine at the widest setting (mine is 7). It should come out like a really coarse, fat piece of pasta dough:

3. Fold this piece of dough into halves or thirds to make another little packet of dough:

Run this through the pasta machine at the same wide setting. 

4. Now you should have a smoother, but still thick piece of pasta dough. If you don't, keep folding and running the packet through the dough machine at the widest setting until there are no "runs" or other major imperfections in the dough. (It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, but shouldn't have any holes, etc.) It should look something like this: 

5. Now, once you have a piece of pasta like this, you WILL NOT fold it any more before putting it through the pasta maker. You'll just put one end in and glide it through. So, put the pasta through the maker, again (one more time) on the widest setting to smoothen it out. Then, adjust the setting to the next narrowest and run the pasta through end-to-end (no folding). Keep doing this with one or two passes per each narrowing of settings until you get down a thickeness that you like. (I don't like to use the smallest setting. I usually stop a little before that). It often helps to have two sets of hands helping as the pasta sheet gets longer:  One to crank the machine and one to feed the dough / catch the dough on the other end to ensure that it goes through smoothly. Eventually, you will end up with a REALLY long piece of thin perfect pasta dough! 

6. Now, you can use this piece of pasta to make raviloli or lasagna, or you can run it through the "chopper" part of the pasta maker and make it into strands of spaghetti or linguine. 

7. Once you have your pasta, cut it to the desired length and either boil it right away for 3-4 minutes or hang it on hangers to dry and then store in the fridge for another day. 

Enjoy!! 

Clarence House Bread Pudding

Woah woah. It has been a long time since I last posted. I went through a dry period without much baking - and more working - but now, the tides have turned and I'm baking some old tried and true recipes as well as some new ones. 

This weekend, I just wanted a little something sweet, so I started looking through my recipe book to see if anything caught my eye. A high school friend turned pastry chef gave me her fabulous recipe for bread pudding that I used to absolutely adore when I was home and would visit the restaurant where shed used to bake. She kindly shared the recipe, although it was definitely scaled up for mass production. I just wanted a small taste of bread pudding without making enough for a party, so I tried to scale it waaay down, and to my surprise it worked quite nicely. I ended up with two ramekins of bread pudding:  One for a tasty afternoon snack and one for after dinner. Mmmm. The small sprinkling of chocolate chips on top gives it just enough chocolate to make my taste buds happy, but not enough to take away from the delicious pure nature of the custard. 

It didn't take more than 10 minutes to put together and make. Don't be discouraged if you don't have ramekins either. You could make them in oven-proof tea cups or other small dishes and then place them in a brownie pan with an inch or so of water for the water bath. 

Be creative and enjoy!

Clarence House Bread Pudding - Small Scale Style
From Carla

Makes enough for 2 ramekins. 

2 pieces of toast, toasted until golden brown, crusts cut off, cut into 2cm cubes
3/4 cup heavy cream 
2 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
1/4 cup chocolate chips 
1/2 - 1 teaspoon cinnamon 

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. In a teapot on the stove, start boiling some water. 
2. Place the pieces of cut up toast into 2 ramekins until almost filled to the top. 
3. In a small or medium sized pan over medium heat, scald the cream (until its bubbly). Add the sugar and whisk until dissolved. Don't let it burn / brown. 
4. In a separate small bowl, place the egg yolk. Add spoonfuls of the warm and bubbly cream to the egg yolk while mixing with a fork constantly until the eggs are warmed. Then, quickly, transfer the eggs into the main pan of bubbly cream and whisk whisk whisk to prevent the eggs from clumping. Add the vanilla extract and whisk some more.
5. Remove egg-cream mixture from heat and pour over the toast in the ramekins. Over the top, sprinkle chocolate chips and then cinnamon. 
6. Place the ramekins in a larger, deeper dish. Add an inch or so of boiling water into the pan around the ramekin dishes. Place the whole apparatus in the oven and cook for about 15-20 minutes or until the chocolate chips are melted and the custard is thicker and not runny. 
7. Serve warm. 

PS - I'm sure you could double / triple this very easily to fill more ramekins. Could also try 1/2 2% or whole milk with 1/2 heavy cream. 

Chicken NOODLE Soup

It's been so cloudy in New York recently - and rainy. I guess that's typical for this time of year, but I hate the perma-cloud as I've come to call it. It just drains all my energy and makes me want to sleep all winter: hibernate like a bear. On these dark and damp days, though, nothing warms me up inside and brings a smile to my face quite like homemade chicken noodle soup. While some people really focus on the chicken in the chicken noodle soup, I'm all about the noodles. I find them to be the best part. Chicken, I'm plus or minus on. If I made it, I'll grill it, fry it, or boil it and then shred it and throw it into the soup. There's no right or wrong way to cook the chicken in my mind. Whatever you're in the mood for. It's imperative to have excellent noodles and excellent chicken broth. I buy organic chicken broth. Even if you don't get organic, make sure you get low sodium, otherwise your whole soup just tastes like salt. I personally like the soup overflowing with noodles, but you may or may not like that approach to your soup, so add as many or as few noodles as you like and as many or as few different veggies as you like to mix it up.

While I normally post the recipe below, I'm going to throw a shout out to my favorite recipe-collecting website, cookingfriend.com. You can catch my treasured go-to chicken NOODLE soup recipe there. Enjoy!


Chicken NOODLE Soup

Recipe can be found at CookingFriend.

Seriously Good and Seriously Easy Tomato Sauce

For a long time, I made my own tomato sauce. It was never anything like what the little Italian ladies in my hometown ever made, but it was better than the sugared-up stuff that comes out of a jar from the store. My go-to recipe generally consisted of heating onions and garlic in olive oil, adding quality crushed canned tomatoes plus some seasonings, heating until warm, and then dumping it on pasta.

I was about half-way there, but there were some errors in my ways. First off, I've found that while canned tomatoes are okay to use - especially Italian ones - they have to be canned whole tomatoes, not crushed. Homemade canned tomatoes are the best alternative to ones in the stores, while fresh in-season tomatoes set the gold standard for making great sauce.



Additionally, I hadn't yet found this genius recipe that adds butter to tomato sauce. Olive oil, sure. But butter? I was skeptical until I tried it, but I found it to be supremely delicious.

This will probably be my go-to sauce for awhile - at least until I have to cook for my vegan hubby again. I'm excited to try it as a base with other veggies for a fabulous pasta primavera!


Seriously Good Tomato Sauce
My version of Marcella Hazan's genius recipe - the most popular tomato sauce recipe on the internet

1 1/2 cups homemade canned tomatoes
3 large in season tomatoes (about 1 pound)
(or you could use entirely canned whole Italian tomatoes, about 2 cups worth, instead of homemade or fresh tomatoes)
1 yellow onion, halved
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 + teaspoon salt

1.) Cut the stems off of the fresh tomatoes. Fill a medium saucepan 2/3 with water and bring to a boil. Plunge the fresh tomatoes into the water and allow them to boil for about 5 minutes or until their skins start to separate from their flesh. Strain the tomatoes then and rinse with cool water. Remove and discard the skins.
2.) In another (or the same now) medium saucepan, place the onion, butter, canned tomatoes, and tomatoes with their recently removed skins. Allow it to come to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes, breaking up the fresh tomatoes every once in awhile with some stirring and mashing with the back of the spoon. Cook down until the sauce is your desired consistency. Remove the onion before enjoying.

You-Can't-Believe-It's-This-Good-Kale-Salad

I hate kale. Or, at least I thought I did until my husband made me this salad. I also thought that I'd never be able to eat salad without salad dressing, but his simplified tossing with lemon juice and olive oil really allows you to fall in love with all the veggie flavors. The key to this salad is having homegrown - or close to it - veggies. Marginal produce is going to result in a marginal salad.

Hubby's Kale Salad

4-6 leaves of kale, cut into strips.
1 artisan carrot, cut into narrow rounds
10-12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/5 of a red onion, cut into fine/thin smiles
1/4 cup walnuts
juice of 1/2 a lemon (fresh!)
3-4 Tablespoons quality olive oil
1/4 teaspoon fine salt (more if you're a salt lover)
pinch of finishing salt to garnish

1.) Mix all together in a big bowl!

Double Dipped Breaded Chicken Parmesan and Creamy Mashed Potatoes

Sometimes I just can't resist it: There's nothing as delicious as juicy chicken covered in a coating of fried breadcrumbs. As a kid, my sister and I used to request 'crumby' chicken all. the. time. It's just so satisfying. The first time I tried to re-create the dish myself, though, was in college, and right as I started to gather all the ingredients, I realized I lacked breadcrumbs! How can you make breaded chicken without breadcrumbs?! Well, in a pinch, I decided to substitute crushed Ritz crackers, and I never went back - that is until I met panko bread crumbs recently, an excellent alternative. The buttery crackers were so flavorful and locked the moisture right in the chicken. The other tip to get the best coating on the chicken is to double dip it. Otherwise, all of the breading - the best part! - just falls off the chicken once it gets cooking. Then, you're left scraping the tasty bits out of the pan instead of slicing through them on the way to the tender meat. Plus, if the breadcrumbs fall off, the chicken is more at risk of drying while baking.



A note about the panko bread crumbs, I find them to be an excellent alternative. They are finer than crushed Ritz crackers, which allows them to coat the chicken more evenly and gives it a better look, but I think that I still prefer the taste of the buttery-salty crackers coating the chicken. They both work excellently to lock the moisture in and create a super juicy chicken Parmesan or breaded chicken entree!

Double Dipped Chicken Parmesan
My own version of a BBC recipe years ago and Food52

2 chicken breasts - organic preferably - cut to the size you like for serving
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
2 whole sleeves of Ritz crackers finely crushed (as fine as you can get them) or 2 cups Panko bread crumbs
1 tablespoon garlic powder
3 Tablespoons Italian seasonings
1/3 cup Parmesean cheese (if you like, I don't always use it)
1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if using Ritz crackers as they are salty)
pepper if you like
3 Tablespoons canola oil
1 Tablespoon butter

1.) Heat oven to 400 degrees.
2.) Pound down the chicken breasts, if you're into that.
3.) In a shallow bowl, mix together the eggs and milk. Place the flour in a different shallow dish/plate, and in yet another bowl, mix the crackers or breadcrumbs, garlic, Italian seasonings, (cheese), and salt.
4.) Take take a chicken breast and dip both sides in the flour. Then, dip both sides in the egg mixture. Then, dip it into the seasoned crackers/breadcrumbs, pressing the crumbs into the chicken as best you can. This is the first dip. Now, do the double dip: Place the breaded chicken breast into the egg mixture again quickly, then back into the flour, back into the egg, and then lastly, back into the breadcrumbs. Pack on as many breadcrumbs as possible. Set aside on a plate. Repeat step 4 with the rest of the chicken breasts.
5.) In a flat bottomed, fairly large pan or wok, start to heat the olive oil and butter together over medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to get golden and froth a little bit, place in as many chicken breasts as will comfortably fit. Fry on one side for 2-3 minutes, then flip and fry on the other side. The bread crumbs should be nice and golden but not burnt. If burning, turn down the heat.
6.) Once the breading is fried and golden, remove the chicken breasts from the oil and place on a baking sheet and then immediately into the oven. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the center of the chicken breast is white and no longer pink.
7.) Serve with tomato sauce and pasta or with a side of potatoes and greens.



Creamy Mashed Potatoes

4 golden potatoes, medium sized (don't buy crappy potatoes and expect to have excelled mashed potatoes)
1/2 cup milk (whole preferably)
1-2 Tablespoons butter
salt to taste

1.) Peel - or don't peel - the potatoes and then cut them into 1/2 to 1 inch chunks. Once cut, place them in a saucepan and cover with water. Put them on the stove and turn the heat to medium-high. Once water comes to a boil, turn it to low and place the cover on the pot. Boil the potatoes for 20-30 minutes until a fork can be inserted easily and the potato starts to fall apart some. Strain the potatoes in a colander and then place the potatoes back in the pot.
2.) Pour in 1/4 cup of the milk and use a masher to grossly mash the potatoes. Then, pour in the other 1/4 cup of milk and whip the potatoes with a whisk until they are just smooth. Don't over whip. If the potatoes seem dry, add more milk and whip some more. Once done whipping, put in the butter and salt and gently stir to incorporate.
3.) Serve warm.