Peach pie

I recently checked out the cookbook The Perfect Peach, written by a family who run a peach farm in California.  Not only does it have fantastic photos and great recipes, but it's also got a number of fascinating vignettes of life and work in the orchards.

Thankfully, the peaches at the store this week were in better condition than when I had shopped for the peach ginger scones, so before Dom had even gotten a shopping cart, I had already selected quite a few peaches for us.  I decided to try a peach pie even though Dom would be gone for the week; I honestly had wanted to wait until later in the week, but with the peaches ripening by the minute even in the fridge, I had to make the pie today.

Since butter (and dairy products in general) are far more expensive than on the mainland, I didn't have enough to make a 9" double-crust pie, so I figured I'd do a lattice top.  The crust took very little time to make, but that was just as well; time was very limited since it was already getting warm in the kitchen, and the oven wasn't even on yet.  I ended up using 1.5 recipes' worth of an all-butter recipe I had found before, and my tiny Cuisinart did the job admirably.

I would have woven the lattice, but the dough was warming up already and I had to really hustle to get the strips of dough laid out and back into the fridge before the butter melted.  I also discovered I need a better way to transfer the lattice to the pie, as the lattice defied my expectations by sticking to the parchment paper in places.

Quick notes

• Most recipes call for sliced peaches, apples, etc. when making fruit pies.  I find that chunks work better, both in terms of prep time and in terms of the texture of the finished product.  For whatever reason I find it easier to slice a pie of fruit chunks rather than a pie of thin fruit slices.
• Like many other instances, I used less sugar than called for; the recipe says to use 3/4 c. granulated sugar, while I used a little under 2/3 c.  Probably more of a case of having to adjust to the fruit's inherent sweetness.
• Lemon juice seems to be the acid of choice when making peach pies.  I substituted lime juice out of necessity, which I thought would lead to a better taste in the finished product, but this is 100% subjective.  In the end, the baking process seemed to have toned down the overt lime flavor, though I'm convinced that lime juice is a better choice than lemon juice.  Again, totally subjective!

Frankly, the peaches were tasty enough at this point that I could have eaten them without the crust.  Or without baking.

• I should take care to ensure that the pieces of peach lie flatter in the crust.  As you can see in the photos, I sort of just dumped the bowl of peaches and juice into the pie crust without much regard to orientation.  This causes the lattice to become sort of distorted.  It still tasted great; it simply wasn't as aesthetically pleasing.

Pie before baking.  I had a moment of panic when I flipped over the parchment paper with the lattice and some of the dough stuck, but it seems to look all right after all that.

• Many peach pie recipes, this one included, indicate that one should dot the top of the filling with butter before putting the top crust on.  I didn't have enough butter for this and I also had seen firsthand how much butter had gone into making the crust.  However, while the pie was baking, I noticed that the peaches on top of the filling started looking a little dried-out.  Maybe the butter helps prevent the filling from drying in the oven?  Ultimately, the pie tasted just fine, even if the peaches were a little wrinkly on top.  Much as I would have loved to put butter on top of the filling, it's probably ok that I couldn't.

Pie after baking!  I had not sprinkled sugar on top of the pie, though if I'd been making this for a dinner party or something, I probably would have.

• I baked the pie for about 55 minutes at 400°F.  I had put the pie in the oven without the crust protector at first, but then took the pie out at 20 minutes to fit the crust protector around, then baked for about 30 more minutes plus my "I'll stand in front of the oven and monitor until it looks done and/or I start to get impatient and/or concerned" phase.
• The juices in the filling were still a little runny, which would have made slicing and plating a bit problematic had I been serving this for other folks instead of just me.  I used about 3 1/2 Tbsp. of flour, which is right in the 3-4 Tbsp. range called for in the recipe.  Perhaps next time I should try using one of the recipe's other suggested thickeners instead (tapioca flour or instant tapioca), neither of which should be too difficult to find around here.

Tasty!

My next kitchen experiment is to freeze slices of this pie for when Dom gets back next week.  Though I could try to hold myself to one slice per day, I still probably shouldn't consume the entire pie on my own.

Addendum, 19 September: Thanks to Betty Crocker (and unfortunately, no thanks to our usually-trusty Joy of Cooking which only provided instructions on freezing unbaked pies), I was able to freeze roughly 4 slices of the pie.  I simply put the entire pie plate, obviously more than half empty, into the freezer; after several hours, I wrapped the pie in plastic wrap as best as I could.  We'll see in a couple of days whether or not it worked!

Addendum, 2 October: Apparently I had forgotten to update.  The thawed pie was, to me, just as tasty as it had been before freezing, with perhaps a slight decrease in texture.  Not a bad solution to the problem of how to preserve a baked pie, but of course the ideal would probably be to eat the entire thing before it would have to be frozen. :)

The Perfect Peach (2013): pages unknown as I was using an unpaginated ebook version.

Writeup background music: the soundtrack for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Since Dom is gone, I'm on a 6-day Star Wars marathon, which I started Monday.

Peach ginger scones

After having apparently had a Hawaii theme to our last post, we have now packed up wholesale and moved to the islands.  At a farmers' market we went to recently, a vendor was selling locally-grown ginger.  While I didn't get any at the market (I waffled on it, and settled for the fresh ginger at Don Quijote), it did inspire me to try making one of the pastries I'd often get at a farmers' market out east: peach ginger scones.

I adapted a recipe from King Arthur Flour.  As you can imagine, Gold Medal flour works just fine.  I omitted the nutmeg they called for and used a bit of vanilla extract in place of the almond extract.  To get my ginger, I initially wanted chunks like the scones I'd had back east.  Unfortunately, I somehow never learned that ginger can be nigh impossible to cut.  For me, it was like the single time I tried to peel a butternut squash.  I ended up using a Microplane zester to grate something like 1 tablespoon of the ginger into the mix, but I must not have grated enough for it to be a really noticeable flavour in the finished product.

This recipe called for yogurt or sour cream and not something like buttermilk, which was fantastic since I always have Greek yogurt for breakfast.  I ended up using the 1/3 cup called for (I used Fage 2%), plus a bit of milk since the dough was mixing up exceptionally dry.

We could have done a lot better with the peaches we bought; these had been sort of dry and not very flavorful, though they had smelled great at the store.  I think that's more on us knowing when the ripest peaches might show up at the store or farmers' market.

To shape the scones, I used the "create a large disk and divide it like a pie" method (using a bench scraper to make the cuts before baking).  I had to bake these for a full 28 minutes before they got any kind of tan, rather than the 15-to-20-minute range called for in the recipe.  Fortunately, one of the recipe reviews had noted this sort of thing as well, so I didn't get too concerned as I'm usually pretty apt to do.

Perhaps it was because I hadn't actually split the scones apart that I had to bake them for so much longer?  Regardless, they didn't end up as doorstops, for which we can all be thankful.

Despite my changes and adaptations to the recipe, the scones turned out remarkably well; I may have consumed....a few....before Dom even got home that day.  These were not dry, dense, or rock-hard; they almost had a biscuit or shortcake consistency.  Unfortunately, because they were so moist, and because our apartment doesn't have air conditioning, the last scone from the batch went bad.  The solution, it would appear, would be to eat these quicker.  Or simply to wrap individual scones and freeze them until wanted.

Only one of [multiple] that were consumed on baking day.

When Dom saw the remaining [x]/8 of the disk when he got home, he asked if it was pineapple.  I had to admit it was made with a less-than-perfect peach, but next time, I might have to try using fresh pineapple chunks along with way more ginger!




Writeup background music: New Super Mario Bros. soundtrack.  We just picked up a copy of the game from a shop inside one of our local department stores.

Vietnamese beef stew

A good thing about having Hawaiian health insurance is the Island Scene magazine that shows up every quarter, bringing a bit of paradise to this windswept corner of New England.  Each issue has two or three ostensibly healthy recipes; one issue from last winter had an intriguing Vietnamese beef stew recipe that we didn't get to try until today.  It turned out to be a fantastic comfort food, perfect no matter if your winter days are 58°F (Hawaii) or 28°F (here).

• The original recipe makes enough for 8, so we cut ours in half.  We still ended up using about a pound and a half of beef tri-tip, 3 star anise, and 2 stalks of lemongrass.
• We had half of a jalapeño in the fridge, so we used that instead of chili peppers.  Because I was the one slicing all of the ingredients, I only used about half of the seeds, but I'd probably just leave all the seeds in next time; it wasn't THAT spicy the way we did it today.
• Next time, I'd add less salt and cut down the amount of fish sauce: the sauce overpowered many of the other flavours.  I'd cut it back to maybe a tablespoon for the half recipe.  Or maybe I should get a better-quality fish sauce that doesn't taste like mostly salt.
• I thought the inclusion of tomato paste was kind of odd, and then when I actually added it in I was convinced it was a poor idea because my pot now resembled something Italian as opposed to something Vietnamese.  But after cooking for an hour, the pot no longer looked like a thin pasta sauce and since the final dish was so tasty, I figured the tomato paste was a worthwhile addition.  Possibly something to reduce a bit for the next time we make the stew so that it doesn't overpower other flavours.
• I have a bunch of candied ginger from some recent baking projects, so instead of buying fresh, I just sliced up some of the candied stuff and reduced the added sugar called for in the recipe. For what it's worth though, it was the kind of candied ginger that is not coated in sugar crystals.
• Homemade bread goes VERY WELL with this.

We had to buy star anise and lemongrass for this, but it was a great excuse to finally try some new spices.

The stew has some great flavour: so much so that I declared that I didn't need anything for dessert this evening, which is something incredibly rare for me to say (usually I'm all "Ice cream?  Macarons?  Pie?  Fruit?  Dried fruit?  Cereal?  Chocolate chips?  All of the above?").  We both agreed that this stew was definitely something to make again, especially since we'll probably have to put up with a couple more New England winters before we can move out to Honolulu. :)

Seriously: so tasty.

Banh mi

Just the other week Caroline had gotten a craving for some Vietnamese sandwiches known as banh mi (there are some diacritics that I have not added - see this Wikipedia article for an introduction).  We were going to go to a Vietnamese bakery/deli last Sunday to satisfy that craving, but sadly discovered the place is not open on Sundays.  So, we checked out some books from the library and tried (and I would say succeeded) on making them ourselves.

We used The Banh Mi Handbook as our basis.  In the book is a recipe for the mini baguettes these sandwiches are named for, as well as recipes for the fillings.  Our sandwiches had marinated chicken, pickled carrots, cucumber, cilantro, and (on mine) jalapeno rings.  Here are descriptions of the things we made.

Bread:
The recipe goes on for a couple of pages in the book, but only because the author is very descriptive and includes nice pictures on how to form the rolls.  The dough is pretty simple - flour, water, yeast, salt, and a small amount of butter.  The recipe called for extra wheat gluten to be added, but we did not have that, nor was I ready to buy some at the store.  It did mention that if you used King Arthur brand flour, you wouldn't need as much additional gluten.  So, I picked up a small bag of the King Arthur flour for these rolls, and kneaded the dough a few minutes longer than called for.

The forming went very well following the instructions in the book, though I will admit that the three that Caroline formed (the recipe made six rolls) looked much better than mine.

The recipe called for the steam method of filling a pan with water while preheating the oven, but we just spritzed some water on the rolls before baking.  Twenty-two minutes of baking later, we had these:

A finished roll ready to be filled with tasty stuff!

The result, in two and a half to three hours of work: some light and delicious bread for sandwiches.

Pickled Carrots:
Pickled vegetables are standard for banh mi, so we chose carrots.  The book called for a combination of carrots and daikon, but we didn't have the daikon readily available, so carrots alone it was.  It was a simple process that I did while the dough was rising. First I added some salt and sugar to the carrot sticks that were about 3 inches long and 1/4 inch wide.  A couple minutes of working the salt and sugar in and the carrots were getting floppy.  At this point I diverged from the book.  It said to rinse the vegetables and then put them in a water, vinegar, and sugar (1/3 cup) solution.  I thought that sounded sweet, so I left the salt and sugar in the original bowl and put the rinse carrots back in with the vinegar and water.  I was later told that I should probably have gone with the sweeter route.  Ooops...

Chicken:
For the chicken, I did not look at a recipe.  We had some chicken breast tenders, and I made a marinade of soy sauce, hoisin sauce, minced garlic, and a small amount of oyster sauce.  The chicken marinated in that for about 4-5 hours in the refrigerator.  Then, just simple pan frying - we don't have a grill yet... :(

Pan seared marinated chicken - turned out extremely well for guessing on the marinade.

The end result:

Caroline's sandwich.

My sandwich. I took out some of the jalapeno seeds so that they didn't overpower the other filling ingredients.

These sandwiches were delicious and flavorful.  The bread was light enough that with the overstuffing you see above it just deformed around the filling and nothing fell out.  The crust was also strong enough that the hinge didn't give out.  Definitely make again!

Stuffies

Since it appears that we will be living in Rhode Island for at least the next couple of years, I figured that we should make the best of it, and my philosophy is that there is no better way to get to know a place than by its food.  Accordingly, we decided to make "stuffies", or what the rest of the country would call "stuffed clams".  At least around here, these are typically made with the largish quahog clams, which we found at our local supermarket for the ludicrously low price of $0.99/pound.  I suppose much of the weight is taken up by the shell, and then the end user has to do all the prep work, but that's still a ridiculously low price for any kind of fresh (and live!) food.

The clams

We checked various recipes to figure out the best method of preparing the clams; in the end we put about an inch and a half of water into our pot, brought it to a boil, put our 4 clams in, and turned the heat down.  In theory, the water would have only simmered after putting the clams in, but we must not have turned the heat down enough, and the water started boiling again.  According to some recipes this is one way to make clams tough; in the future, we'd want to be a little more vigilant and a little more patient!   But all of the clams popped open when done, just as the recipes said they would.  So far, so good.

When the clams were done, they would pop open rather more violently than I would expect, enough that I didn't want to use the tongs to get the first clam out lest the next one decide it was done at that exact moment and splash boiling water onto my hand.

It was Dom's job to chop up the clams while I rinsed off the shells. Here's his take on it.

Chopping the clams turned out to be pretty easy.  If I had wanted to, I could have just chopped them all haphazardly and things would have been fine.  However, I noticed while I was chopping that the centers of the clams were a different consistency and a bit gritty.  (From later reading of Joy of Cooking, we determined that this part must be the stomach.)  I removed this part of the clam starting on the second one, and by the fourth, and last, I had devised the following strategy - and I apologize if it sounds gory.  If I was to slice the clam horizontally to open its stomach wide, and spill out the contents by scraping (actually not to hard to do).  This way, there should be no grit left, and all you should have is meat.  We don't want a repeat of the bit of grit that found its way into one of Caroline's clams.  I will have to report back on the strategy after take 2.

The filling

From our research, we determined that the stuffie is one of those kinds of foods where no two recipes are the same.  Even something like oven temperature is pretty variable; apparently you can bake stuffies at anywhere from 300°-425° and they'd still be good.  But the biggest differences are in the stuffing mixture; the most basic just use minced clams and breadcrumbs, while the more elaborate concoctions use celery, peppers, various herbs, and even bacon or chouriço.  We ended up using the clams, the rest of our panko breadcrumbs (about 2 Tbsp.), some Italian breadcrumbs (about 1 Tbsp.), an egg, and some sautéed celery, onions, and garlic.  I didn't want to cover up the taste of the clams, which I figured was a big part of the reason we wanted to make stuffies in the first place.

Stuffing mix, pre-mixing.

These got baked at 350° (mostly because the oven was still set to 350° after baking a loaf of bread) for about 13 minutes, after which I sprinkled a bit of pecorino cheese on top of 2 of the clams and popped them all back into the oven for another 4 minutes.  The stuffies were plenty hot and cooked through.

Stuffies before going into the oven.

Verdict

This was literally the first time either of us had eaten a stuffed clam.  We thought they were pretty tasty but that the actual clams were kind of tough; next time we'll know how to cook AND prepare the clams!  The stuffing was flavorful but the other ingredients didn't detract from the clams, and I don't feel the need to toss any other meats into the stuffing.  If we happen to have any fresh herbs around next time we make stuffies, I might throw some of those in, but otherwise, these tasted fine as they were.  Overall, we think this was a resounding success for first-timers like us!

A stuffie with pecorino in the front, one without in the back, and a slice of homemade bread.  Tasty!