Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Texas Caviar

Recipe Source: Robertson, Robin. Vegan Fire & Spice. Vegan Heritage Press, Woodstock, 2008 p. 5

Okay, I will be the first to admit that this stuff looks a little like cat food. Or maybe a lot like cat food. If you spread it on a cracker and eat it, you will forget all about that, because this is a really tasty treat. I made it for our Fourth of July party and it was pretty universally declared a winner. No one cared that it was vegan, although I guess most people wouldn't care much if a dip is vegan. The funny thing is that I was in my local large box warehouse store recently – you know, where they have the samples – and they were offering samples of what they were calling "cowboy caviar." I like mine better.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe. I increased the garlic, as usual, and I increased the vinegar as well. I played around a little with the proportions of some of the spices and increased the cumin significantly. (Cumin is one of my favorite flavors.) While I thought that I had canned chipotles lurking in the recesses of my cabinets, what I actually had was canned chipotle sauce. I threw half of the can in, using the rest for scrambled eggs another day.

Texas Caviar (makes about 28 oz; approx. $0.15/oz)

3 cups cooked black-eyed peas

¼ cup minced onion

6 garlic cloves, crushed

½ can chipotle sauce

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

½ teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried oregano

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Equipment:

• Food processor

1. Combine all ingredients in the food processor and process to a paste.
2. Let sit at least 1 hour.
3. Serve at room temperature.

Recipe: Almond Butter Pie

Recipe Source: Day, Martha. Baking. Anness Publishing, London, 2009 p. 194

My friend's daughter Penny, who is two and a half, was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease. This has got all of us kind of becoming more aware of the gluten in our lives. It is just amazing what has gluten in it. Who knew, for example, that hoisin sauce has gluten? The diagnosis came just before our Fourth of July party. While Penny's mom told us not to worry about feeding Penny, she'd bring food for her, I thought it would be a fun challenge to see if I could come up with a few things at least that Penny could eat. Finding this recipe was great – the crust was a cookie-crumb crust. I decided to use gluten-free shortbreads for the crust. In order to accommodate my own peanut allergy, I switched to almond butter as well.

Penny did not eat the pie. Penny has always been an extremely picky eater and I am never offended when she doesn't eat my cooking. There were also lots of desserts that were much better than mine on offer, so there was some almond butter pie left over. That said, I really liked this. It was extremely sweet and if I make it again I might experiment with reducing the sugar, but on the whole I liked this.

Almond Butter Pie (serves 16; approx. $1.48/serving)

8 ounces gluten-free shortbreads, ground to fine crumbs

4 ounces light brown sugar, packed

6 ounces melted butter

6 egg yolks

7 ounces sugar

4 ounces packed light brown sugar

4 ounces cornstarch

¼ teaspoon salt

2 pints evaporated milk

2 ounces butter

3 teaspoons almond extract

8 ounces almond butter

6 ounces confectioner's sugar

Equipment:

• 2 bowls
• 2 pie plates
• Heavy saucepan
• Whisk

1. Preheat your oven to 350 ̊.
2. Combine the cookie crumbs, 6 ounces brown sugar and melted butter in a bowl. Mix very well.
3. Spread the mixture into two pie plates and press to cover the bottom and sides of both plates.
4. Bake 10 minutes and let cool, but leave the oven on.
5. Combine the egg yolks, remaining brown sugar, regular sugar, cornstarch and salt in the saucepan.
6. Whisk in the milk slowly.
7. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, about 8 or 10 minutes.
8. Reduce the heat and cook until very thick, maybe 4 more minutes.
9. Beat in the remaining butter and almond extract. Remove from heat. Cover with plastic wrap very closely and leave to cool.
10. In the other bowl, combine the almond butter and confectioner's sugar. Use your hands for this – you're trying to get the consistency of fine crumbs here.
11. Reserve 6 tablespoons of this mixture and sprinkle the remaining on the bottom of the crumb crusts.
12. Pour the filling from the saucepan into the crusts, then sprinkle the remaining almond butter mixture over the top.
13. Bake 15 minutes.
14. Cool at least 1 hour before serving.

Recipe: Mango and Fennel Slaw

My husband was looking at his favorite website (the Green Egg forum) one day and gave a mighty sigh. "I want ribs," he groused.

"So make some," I told him.

He gave another sigh. "You can't eat them and ribs for one are a waste," he mourned.

"Well," I said after a moment's thought, "your birthday is next week. Why not invite some people over to share your ribs with you?"

And this is what happened. I made this dish as a side dish. Slaw is a traditional barbeque side dish, but I have a deep-seated loathing for cabbage. I know I've seen non-cabbage slaw in a few restaurants recently; what would be the harm in trying a non-cabbage slaw of my own? I decided on fennel and mango with red onion and I used the same dressing as I used for the Celery Root Slaw I posted in January 2009. The slaw went over quite well, if I do say so. People really seemed to enjoy it and there were no complaints about it being slightly non-traditional.

Mango and Fennel Slaw (serves 10; approx. $1.18/serving)

2 mangoes, peeled and sliced into matchsticks

3 fennel bulbs, very thinly sliced

1 red onion, very thinly sliced

2 ounces cider vinegar

½ ounce sugar

¼ teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon ground cubeb

2/3 cup olive oil

¼ cup fat-free Greek yogurt

¼ cup buttermilk

Equipment:

• Large bowl
• Small bowl

1. Combine the vegetables in the large bowl.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients in the small bowl and whisk well.
3. Pour the dressing over the vegetables, cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours.
4. Serve.

Recipe: Blackberry Pie

My parents grew up about half a block away from each other. The place where they grew up looks pretty much like any other suburb now, and it was just starting to evolve into the suburb it became when my folks' families found their way out there. Back then, it was pretty rural and wild. My dad could run off and play in the swamp (now it's a subdivision – and they wonder why they get mosquitoes!) and he could fish. By the time I came along the woods were rapidly disappearing, but there was one place that still had a bit of the wild left in it: the park across the street from my maternal grandmother's house, now my parents' house. Not only were there all sorts of little groves and such for us kids to play in, there were fresh wild blackberries that us kids could pick and eat.

My dad told me that when he was a kid the whole area was peppered with blackberry bushes, and he could pick them by the bucketful. He would then bring them back to his mother, who would make a pie with whatever he hadn't already eaten. Now, of course, none of that could happen. Kids aren't permitted unstructured play anymore, and they certainly wouldn't be allowed to run around in the woods without six layers of safety equipment. The blackberries still grow in the park, but the whole area gets sprayed for mosquitoes on a regular basis. This makes me, for one, leery of foraging in the park.

Anyway, my parents came to visit the weekend before Father's Day. I happened to see some very nice-looking (if cultivated) blackberries in the store, and they brought to mind my dad's stories of growing up with wild blackberries and pie. I don't know that this pie tasted at all like my grandmother's pie. I did use her pie crust recipe, which I can't publish because I'm not sure of its provenance. I tried not to use too much sugar because I know she didn't like sweet fruit pies (a trait we share, quite frankly, although I didn't know that until she was gone.) I added the nutmeg because there's nutmeg in the pastry and I wanted to match the two. It's a very easy pie to make. Try it sometime, when you want to remember a time before subdivisions when you could still gather blackberries wild.

Blackberry Pie (serves 8; approx. $0.99/serving)

1 double-crust pie crust recipe (you can use frozen if you need to)

1 pint blackberries

½ cup raw sugar

1 teaspoon nutmeg (it's okay to be a little generous, but don't go overboard)

¼ cup cornstarch

Equipment

• Mixing bowl
• Potato masher (I would not use a food processor for this. You want this mixture to be chunky.)
• Rolling pin
• 9" pie plate.
• A baking sheet under the pie plate will make it less likely that the pie crust will boil over and cause a mess in your oven. The choice is yours.

1. Preheat your oven to 375 ̊.
2. Line the bottom of your pie plate with one of the pastry crusts.
3. Combine the remaining ingredients in the mixing bowl and mash with the potato masher. You don't want to see any of the white from the cornstarch.
4. Pour the filling into the pie.
5. Roll out the top crust. Cut a hole in the center of the crust to vent steam.
6. Top the pie with the crust and seal the edges. If you wish, you can paint the top of the pie with milk. I did it; it helps the crust develop a pleasing appearance, but it isn't strictly necessary.
7. Bake 20 – 30 minutes, until the crust is golden and cooked.
8. Serve warm or cold.

Recipe: Watercress and Artichoke Heart Salad

Gonzales, John R.  The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook.  Clarkson Potter Publishers, New York, 2001 p. 53

Salads are a great way to get more vegetables into the diet.  They're easy to whip up, scale up (or down) easily, and are easy to adapt to the tastes and needs of your particular diners.  Being (usually) raw, they also convey the full nutritional value of the whatever greens you're using.  Eventually, though, even the endless possibilities of salad start to run together and I at least start to get very, very bored with them.  Sometimes I don't even bother posting them.  This one is a pretty simple salad, but using the artichoke hearts makes it a little different.  I omitted the sugar on general principles, reduced the amount of olive oil, used black instead of white pepper, and used canned artichoke hearts for convenience.  The result was a pretty darned tasty salad that certainly refreshed the palate when combined with the main course that night. 

Watercress and Artichoke Heart Salad (serves 4; approx. 1.74/serving)

1 10-oz can artichoke hearts, drained

1 bunch watercress, thick stems trimmed

Grated peel of one lemon

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

Equipment:

• Small bowl
• Whisk

1. Put the watercress in your serving bowl.
2. Arrange the artichoke hearts on top.
3. Combine the remaining ingredients in the small bowl and whisk to combine.
4. Drizzle the bowl mixture over the vegetables.  Serve. 

Recipe: Red Bean Soup with Avocados

Recipe Source: Sheasby, Anne. 400 Soups. Anness Publishing, London, 2008 p 211

I made this with the intention of using more legumes from the Legume/Barbeque cabinet, but I was thwarted. It looks as if red beans were the only kind of legume that I don't have squirreled away in there, or if I do I can't find them. I did however have the requisite two 14 ounce cans of red beans, which were taking up space in another overcrowded and badly arranged cabinet, so I used them. Beans are a great source of fiber and complex carbohydrates, and they pack a decent amount of protein as well. I'm not going all vegan on you, but I don't have a problem skipping meat once in a while if I'm getting a decent amount of the right nutrients from other sources. (Of course, those "other sources" have to taste good too. We do have Standards, you know.)

Anyway, as usual, I did make a few changes to the original recipe. I increased the amount of garlic, the amount of cayenne, and the amount of oregano. I forgot about the Tabasco sauce, but for once my husband didn't seem to think it was necessary. I also skipped the guacamole. You may wonder why I skipped the guacamole. Well, I had mis-counted my inventory, and I didn't have the red onion I needed. I decided that just having some chopped avocados on top was perfectly adequate. The soup was delicious, and it was surprisingly filling. Served with bread, it was more than enough food for both of us for dinner.

Red Bean Soup with Avocados (serves 6; approx. $1.62/serving)

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions, chopped

8 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 28-ounce can tomatoes (I used Muir Glen Fire Roasted tomatoes; they gave this a really delicious flavor.)

2 14-oz cans red beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed

3 ¾ cups water

Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

2 avocados

Equipment:

• Large saucepan
• Immersion blender
• Bowl of acidulated water

1. Heat the oil in the saucepan. Add the onions and garlic and cook 5 minutes, until softened.
2. Add the spices. Cook another minute.
3. Add the tomato paste, the beans, the tomatoes, and the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer 20 minutes.
4. Use the immersion blender and carefully puree the soup. It's okay if it's still a little chunky in spots.
5. Add the salt and pepper.
6. Chop the avocados. Drop each piece into the bowl of acidulated water as you cut it; this will prevent discoloration.
7. Scatter the avocado bits on top of the soup and serve.

Recipe: King's Arms Tavern Pecan Pie

Recipe Source: Gonzales, John R.  The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook.  Clarkson Potter Publishers, New York, 2001 pp. 188

First of all, let me apologize for the photo in this post.  It is not pretty.  The floors in our kitchen - in our house - are not level.  This is to be expected in a farmhouse that is over 200 years old (not that there are any farms left in Braintree, but I digress.)  Unfortunately this means that our oven is not perfectly level.  It has caused a few problems in the past, notably in the quiche that expanded over one side of the crust and out onto the baking sheet with most of its filling.  This time, when I opened the oven door to check on the pie, the pie slid out and landed face-down on the oven door.  Most of the pie survived, but it did not survive in an attractive manner.

Right.  So onto the pie itself.  My husband adores pecan pie - which is funny to me, because he's not even remotely of Southern extraction and even pronounces "pecan" wrong.  (He tries, but keeps slipping.)  Personally, I'm not a huge pecan pie fan most of the time.  It is far too sweet for my tender tastebuds.  I do remember it making appearances on the table, particularly at Thanksgiving, and to be honest it was never overly sweet then.  I know I've become less tolerant of sweet flavors over the years, but only this year did I figure out the reason.

My dad's mother, who passed away in April, was the family pie maker.  Her pies were always the best, everyone always agreed, and while I was never much of a fan of pies that didn't have chocolate I could always tolerate the fruit and pecan pies.  When I went away and had to eat other people's pies, that was not the case.  Anyway, I was talking about this with my aunt (or was it my dad?) recently, and I mentioned how little I liked non-chocolate pies because they were always too sweet.  My source said, "Your grandma was the same way.  She always halved the sugar in any pie recipe.  She couldn't stand food that was too sweet."

I'm finding more and more similarities between myself and my father's mother, which is really odd because I never spent the kind of one-on-one time with her that I spent with my mother's mother.  At any rate, this is not Grandma's pecan pie recipe.  It comes from the King's Arms Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg, and if you haven't been to Williamsburg you should absolutely go there before you die.  (Hit Jamestown too, while you're in the area.  It's not nearly as fancy, but we had a fantastic time there.)  What attracted me about this recipe was that it was a lot less sweet than other recipes I've seen for pecan pie.  Don't get me wrong - it's still sweet.  But the amount of sweeteners, especially the corn syrup, seems much reduced.  I didn't make a lot of changes, although I did add more pecans.  I also used the family Super Secret Pie Crust recipe, which I suspect came from Southern Living magazine but can't cite properly and so can't share here.  Use whatever pie crust recipe seems appropriate to you, or even store-bought. 

King's Arms Tavern Pecan Pie (Serves 10; approx. $0.77/serving)

1 single-crust pie crust

4 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup light corn syrup

4 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups pecan halves

Equipment:

• Pie plate
• Rolling pin
• Bowl

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Roll out your pie crust with whatever method works for you.  Personally, I like the plastic bag method.  Center your dough ball (or disc) in a gallon-size zip top plastic bag.  (For me, this is the same bag that held the dough in the refrigeration stage.)  Roll it out to fill the bag, leaving the top unzipped.  Cut away the sides and it will fit perfectly in your 9" pie plate.  I can't take credit for this one, I saw it on Good Eats, but it has saved me a LOT of cursing over the years.
3. Lay out the crust in your pie plate, neaten the sides and dock with a fork or other tool. 
4. Combine the eggs, sugar, salt, corn syrup, butter and vanilla in the bowl and mix very well. 
5. Stir in the pecan halves.
6. Fill the crust. 
7. Transfer to the oven, reduce temperature to 350, and bake 40 - 50 minutes.  The filling should be firm in the center. 
8. Cool and serve. 

Recipe: Vermont Oatmeal Maple Honey Bread

Recipe Source: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion.  Countryman Press, Woodstock, 2003 p. 203

I've been craving one thing for months, and that's toast.  Actually, I've been craving two things: toast and grilled cheese.  I don't know why.  Toast has its place, but it's not something to get all excited about.  At least, it wasn't something to get all excited about.  And grilled cheese is all well and good in its place, but it's not something to seek out and hunt down like some sort of lunatic stalking the celebrity du jour.  Anyway, these two things are related because they share a common ingredient: bread. 

We make a lot of bread in the Fearless household, but it is generally made into relatively free-form loaves and is not usually very good for either sandwiches or toast.  I could use store-bought bread, but I'm trying to cut down on store-bought products lately.  I'm sure that there are some sandwich breads sold at my market that do contain ingredients I can pronounce, but they're expensive.  If I were pressed for time I would probably use them, but I'm not, so I'd rather make my own right now. 

I made this bread as my first toast-and-grilled-cheese bread.  I liked it.  I liked it a lot, actually.  I never got to make the grilled cheese with it, because the Spouse didn't think the flavor would "go," but I made a lot of toast and I can assure you that the flavor went quite nicely with honey, almond butter, cashew butter and even Nutella.  So there. 

Vermont Oatmeal Maple Honey Bread (makes 2 loaves, approx. 10 slices/loaf; approx. cost per slice $0.21)

2 1/4 cups boiling water

1/4 cup lukewarm water

3 1/2 ounces rolled oats

2 3/4 ounces maple sugar

1 1/2 tablespoon honey

4 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

7 3/4 ounces whole wheat flour

17 ounces all purpose flour

Equipment:

• Stand mixer with the dough hook attachment
• Small bowl
• Two loaf pans

1. Combine 1/2 tablespoon honey, 1/4 cup lukewarm water and the yeast in the small bowl.  Let stand until the mixture is very frothy.  You won't have to ask when that is, trust me, but it should take 5 - 10 minutes.
2. Combine the boiling water, the oats, the maple sugar, the 1 tablespoon honey, the butter, the salt and the cinnamon in the mixer bowl.  Let it cool to lukewarm or thereabouts. 
3. Add the proofed yeast and the flours to the bowl.  Stir to form a rough dough.
4. Knead (in the mixer) on low speed 5 - 7 minutes.  Cover and let rise 1 hour.
5. Grease your loaf pans using whatever cooking lubricant you see fit.  Divide the dough in half and put one half in each pan.  Cover and let rise another hour, until they've crowned about an inch over the rim of the pan. 
6. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. 
7. Bake 35 - 40 minutes.  They're done when they're golden brown.  If you have an instant-read thermometer, they should reach 190 degrees. 

Recipe: Creole Fish Stew

Recipe Source: Jollands, Beverly.  500 Hot & Spicy Recipes.  Anness Publishing, London, 2008 p. 87

I think fish is probably my favorite protein source.  It always has been.  When I was a kid, fish was a rare treat for me.  My mother and sister hated fish (Mom still does, sister is a little more adventurous but still not what you'd call a fan.)  Mom never bought it when she did the food shopping, so my fish consumption was limited to what my father caught (trout) and restaurants.  (What my father caught was best.  We would bring the fish over to my grandmother's, where she would do... something simple but delicious and we would eat it, pitying the clearly deformed taste buds that kept Mom and Sister from enjoying the treat.)  Nowadays I can get very high-quality frozen fish at Whole Foods and sometimes even Costco, and my husband loves fish almost as much as I do.  On Fridays, when I do the food shopping, I can also get fresh fish. 

This was a Friday dish.  I made a few changes, as I do.  My husband will not eat a whole fish - boneless fillets only, so while the recipe called for two whole red snapper I substituted haddock fillets, squid and some mussels.  I skipped the step where the fish sits in vinegar, since I couldn't find malt vinegar and I didn't think that would be a good way to treat these particular types of fish.  I increased the tomatoes and chiles to use up some of the bounty from our garden, and I increased the garlic because I wanted to increase the garlic.  The result was a delicious treat, satisfying and filling and reasonably light. 

Creole Fish Stew (serves 4 generously; approx. $6.52/serving)

1 lb haddock fillets, cut into 1" pieces

1 lb squid (tubes and tentacles), cut into pieces

2 lb mussels, scrubbed and debearded

Flour for dredging

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

8 garlic cloves, crushed

1 onion, finely chopped

10 fresh plum tomatoes, chopped

2 tablespoons thyme

2 1/2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3 cayenne chiles, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 pinch kosher salt

Equipment:

• Large pot with a lid
• Plate

1. Dredge the haddock pieces in the flour and set aside. 
2. Heat the oil and butter in the pan.
3. Fry the fish until it is golden brown.  This should only take about 5 minutes; it shouldn't be cooked through.  Set it aside on the plate. 
4. Add the garlic and onion to the pan and saute until softened, about 5 minutes.
5. Add the tomatoes and thyme.  Stir well and simmer another 5 minutes.
6. Add the water, cinnamon and chiles. 
7. Add the fish, squid and peppers to the pan.  Top with the mussels, cover, and simmer until the mussels are all opened. 
8. Season to taste with kosher salt and serve. 

Recipe: Apple Pie

I feel like I am going to turn into a pastry.  I made a bunch of savory pies over the last few weeks, and I've also made some sweet pies and tarts.  However, once apple season starts, as any American baker can tell you, the demand for apple pie starts up and does not slacken until well past Thanksgiving.  I've made this five times - no joke - since September 1.  If my husband's plaintive sighing and eyelash-batting are any indication, I'm nowhere near done yet.  The funny thing is, I don't actually like apple pie.

Okay, before someone reports me to Homeland Security for un-American sentiment, let me point out that I don't like any pie that doesn't have chocolate in it.  I never have.  I don't hate apple pie.  It's not like, say, cabbage pie.  Or carrot pie.  Or sweet potato pie.  I just don't see what all the fuss is about.  Other people do, though.  It makes people really, really happy for some reason.  So happy that I had to make this five times before I could take a picture of it for the website. 

The first time I made this I made it using Roxbury Russet apples, an heirloom variety from right here in Eastern Massachusetts.  It works fine with other baking apples or Macintosh.  I used an old family recipe for the crusts; you can use your favorite double-crust recipe or even buy them pre-made (I've finally seen pre-made double-crusts in the store.  I'd heard rumors for years.)  The key here, at least for me, is the maple sugar instead of granulated.  If what you have is granulated by all means use it, but the maple gives it a certain something extra, a slightly more rustic and regional flavor.  It also cuts out some more processed sugars, which I'm told is a good thing.

Reviews on this have been pretty stellar.  Like I mentioned, I'm no judge, but allow me to  point out that I've never been able to get a picture of a whole pie for you. 

Apple Pie (serves 10; approx. $0.43/serving)

1 double-crust pie crust recipe

5 - 6 apples (be creative here - find a fun varietal if you can.  Granny Smith still work fine if you can't!)

1/3 cup maple sugar, plus more for dusting

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional - I left it out of the last round I made)

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/2 cup apple cider

Milk or egg wash, for brushing

Equipment:

• 9" pie plate
• Pastry brush
• Rolling pin
• Large mixing bowl

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
2. Roll out your pie dough.  I find it easiest to roll it out in a zip-top plastic bag - this gets it to the perfect size for a 9" pie plate. 
3. Peel and slice your apples.  Put them in the mixing bowl.
4. Sprinkle the spices, cornstarch and maple sugar over the apples.  Mix well.
5. Pour the cider over the apple mixture.  Mix well again.
6. Line the bottom of the pie plate with one of the crusts.  Fill with the apple mixture and top with the second crust. 
7. Ventilate the top crust however you see fit.  Crimp to seal the edges.
8. Brush the top of your pie with the milk or egg wash, then sprinkle with a little more maple sugar. 
9. Bake 30 - 40 minutes, or until the crust is clearly done. 
10. Serve hot, warm or cold, plain or with ice cream.  New England tradition encourages cheddar cheese with apple pie, so there's an option for you too.