Category: Baking

Whiskey and Rye Blondies

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile….

Why I am I quoting that bit of pop perfection and rock and roll enigma that is American Pie?  Because today, 15 January, way back in 1972, American Pie reached number one on the Billboard charts.  And we are celebrating that event not with an American Pie (because that would be waaay too obvious…and we want options for the 50th  Anniversary next year!) but with some good ol’ Whiskey and Rye Blondies!Whiskey and Rye Brownies 1

Whiskey and Rye Blondies

The recipe for these Whiskey and Rye Blondies comes from Ella Risbridger and her wonderful book Midnight Chicken. I can heartily recommend this book – it was my choice for a Tasty Reads book last year but if you don’t want to buy the whole book, you can get the recipe for these blondies here!

The Blondies are very rich – a little really does go a long way with these.  But they are also delightfully fudgy and more-ish so if you are tempted by a second helping I won’t blame you!

Why not whip up a batch now as we delve into the 8-minute 33-second opus that is  American Pie?

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American Pie – The Song

American Pie is the titular track on the Don McLean album American Pie. The album with its absolutely iconic cover was in my parent’s record collection for as long as I can remember.  I am sure they played other songs but the only ones I can ever remember hearing are American Pie and Vincent.  And I remember hearing a LOT of American Pie and Vincent when I was growing up.

I also occasionally like to torture my friends by choosing American Pie as a karaoke song. By which  I mean I did it once and was politely asked to never repeat the performance.  By management.  And my friends.

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American Pie references many people and events – the recurring theme of the “day the music died” is about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper in February 1959. It also mentions The Beatles, The Byrds Bob Dylan, Karl Marx, Charles Manson, the Rolling Stones, James Dean, the Kennedy’s and good lord…so much more!  There are multitudes of explanations about the lyrics of American Pie on the internet.  You can find one of them here.  This is an absolutely fascinating rabbit hole to go down if you have a few hours / days to spare.

But before you do that, let’s all join together and sing…

Bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good ol’ boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, “This’ll be the day that I die

Have a great weekend!

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And if you have another 8.5 this parody is also worth a watch!

Savoury Impossible Pie

This past week saw the 155th anniversary of the publication of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of my favourite books so I celebrated with a savoury impossible pie!

Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Savoury Impossible Pie

This recipe comes from my vast collection of clipped recipes.  I think that this one came from the wrapping of the deviled egg plate that my friend Ali gave me for my birthday a few years ago.

Impossible Pie?

“Why it’s simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don’t you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible.

(chuckles)

Nothing’s impossible!”

The  Impossible Pie was invented by Bis-quick in the 1970s.  The idea was that instead of making a filling and a crust you could mix everything together and magically, in the oven, the ingredients would separate out so you end up with a crusted pie.

The OG impossible pie was coconut but since then pretty much every flavour imaginable has been made.  Yinzerella over at Dinner is Served 1972 has made a number of them both sweet and savoury so if you want a primer in them, head over there pronto!  Then come back here for my try at Savoury Impossible Pie!

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My pie had peeled tomatoes, bacon, parsley, corn, spring onions and cheese – someone cue Blink 182 singing “All the good things” please!

It also looked like some sort of Klimptesque art when I started to mix it through.  So pretty!

However, the success of an impossible pie surely has to lie in whether or not that magical crust appears.  So was this recipe a success?

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Was there a crust?  There was something.  But a proper pie crust? No. So technically…cooking fail.

 

Having said that, it was absolutely delicious.  It may not have turned out exactly as planned but it was still worth making and definitely one to put on the rotation list!

You know what?  If it bugs you like it bugged me that it wasn’t impossible, leave out the flour and call it a Klimt Garden Frittata.  I promise I won’t tell anyone and believe me, you and your friends will love it!

Savoury Impossible Pie

Savoury Impossible Pie – The Recipe

“I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great question is ‘What?’”


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And we’re done!

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end:

Then stop.”

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Asparagus and Bacon Tartlets

I’m not exactly sure where this recipe for Asparagus and Bacon Tartlets came from.  It has obviously been clipped from a magazine and sticky taped to a  piece of paper. But when?  And by whom?  It has been floating around in my collection of “Recipes to Cook” for as long as I can remember.

The recipe gives both imperial and metric measurements which would indicate it comes from some time after 1970 which is when Australia went metric but not too far after because people still understood imperial measures.  So it likely was not me who clipped it but whether it was my mum or my nana or a complete stranger I do not know!

Asparagus and Bacon Tartlets

Well, whoever clipped it so it could fall into my hands deserves a round of applause because I thought these were really delicious.  Emphasis on the” I” there.  The fussiest eater in the world was not convinced.  “What’s in these?  It is cream?  It’s not like the usual quiche you make.”

“I used cream cheese”

“It’s too much”

“Well…you did eat six of them….”

Both sides make a fair point here.  The Asparagus and Bacon Tartlets are richer than a normal quiche, primarily due to the cream cheese filling.  But you also don’t have to eat half a dozen of them in one sitting.

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I made these twice recently which is something I rarely do with recipes for the blog.  Usually, I make something, eat it, blog it and move on.   However, the first time I made the tartlets I used fresh asparagus.  I was going to post that version.  But it felt like cheating.  Of course a fresh asparagus and bacon tart was going to be amazing.  It’s asparagus!  And bacon!  And for those of us who like a little bit of rich – cream cheese!.  Would these taste as good using tinned asparagus?

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They weren’t quite as good as the fresh version but they were still really good.  And I am not being an asparagus snob here.  I grew up on tinned asparagus.  My nana’s asparagus rolls which only ever used tinned asparagus are one of my top ten things to eat ever!  The only reason I have not posted that recipe here is that I honestly think I could not do nana’s memory justice as my version would never live up to hers!

Anyway…that’s given me some food for thought…maybe I will post that recipe one day.  But as for the Asparagus and Bacon Tartlets?  They’re really good.  And if you find them too rich?  Stop at four, or two or one.

These also reheat up well and I thought they were also quite nice to eat cold.

They are also perfect fare for a socially distanced picnic in the park!

The Recipe

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Have a wonderful week!

Hasta Luego Cantina!

Hola amigos!!!!  It’s done!!!  It’s taken me SIX years but have finally finished cooking my way through Cantina by Paul Wilson.  Not every recipe mind you, just the ones I wanted to cook.  Sixty-one recipes.  Which is more than enough I feel to pass judgement on this as a book.  But first, let’s celebrate with some cake!

 

This was my birthday cake this year, a cake spent in the middle of lockdown when we were allowed no visitors.  So a very solitary birthday.  But we’re not here to talk about that.  We’re here to talk about Cantina as exemplified by this recipe. Because everything that is wrong with this book is in this recipe.  As is everything that is right.  So let’s get to it.

A Rose is A Rose is A Rose

A rose may be a rose.  And a rose by any other name may smell as sweet.  (Ooh la la – look at me, with the Gertrude Stein and the Shakespeare refs in the one post!!!)  But, apart from me showing off my fancy book learning, seriously, Cantina bandies about terms that have one meaning to mean something different.

(I have already waxed lyrical about how annoying this book on this point ere.  So if you want to see my earlier rant click here.)

This is quite clearly a cake.

Except in Cantina where it is called a Lemon Aspen and lime Slice with Mescal Roasted Pineapple. Maybe I’m being really pedantic here but I’ve been cooking out of this book for 6 years. Believe me, I need to vent!

But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece…

You may have noticed my slice..erm cake is missing the Mescal Roasted Pineapple. The cheapest mezcal I could find was $55 a bottle.  Most were in the range of $90-100.  Of which I would use 80ml of a 750 ml bottle.  I’m sure that over time I would be able to find other uses for the remaining 89% of that bottle.

This seems likely given the general state of the world

 

Seriously dropping that much money to use less than a tenth of the bottle for is frivolous at the best of times.  Let alone during  a global pandemic / economic crisis etc.  Fair enough the book was published in 2014 so way before covid but the cost equation still stands.  It’s a lot of money to drop on one recipe.  And you know it’s not like you can use the remainder on the recipe for Chorizo with Apricot and Mezcal Aioli (again, not an aioli).  Because when you read that recipe it contains no goddamn mezcal at all.  None.  Nyet. Cero.

I was so incensed at this the first time round I tweeted the publisher.

They responded that it was a typo.

Eerrrrrrmmmmmm … no. 

Speaking from embarrassing experience, a typo is when you work for an accounting firm and you hand your boss a report that leaves the o out of the word accounting.

Twice.

 

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Why’d you have to make things so complicated?

This slice is made up  of a  lemon cake, a lemon syrup, a mousse, a lime curd glaze and the mezcal roasted pineapple.  Five components.  Thirty-two ingredients if you make your own lime curd (I did not) and the pineapple (which as per above, I also did not make).

Included in these thirty two ingredients is 100g of lemon aspen.  Do you know what lemon aspen is?  Nope, me either.  According to Cantina’s glossary, it is

“A small, pale yellow fruit, with a lemon flavour and aroma and spongy flesh…it is available from bush food specialists and gourmet greengrocers”.

Let’s just put aside the fact that it was neither available from gourmet greengrocers or bush food specialists when I was looking for it.

Because you know what else is a small pale yellow fruit with a lemon flavour and aroma?

A  lemon.

Readily available all over the damn place.

I also made the soft shell crab tacos with guacamole, shaved fennel and sweetcorn salad  for my birthday dinner.  Softshell crabs weren’t available for love or money so I made these with lobster tails. Because you know, it was my birthday and dammit if I wasn’t going to get fancy!!!

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It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely

You know the absolute worst thing about Cantina?  It’s cheffy, it’s pretentious, it’s fiddly, pretty much everything was a pain in the arse to cook.  But when they worked, which was most of the time?  They were so damn tasty that they almost made all the effort worthwhile.  So, whilst I part of me really wants to consign this book to the second-hand shop pronto, I am going to hang onto it for a little while longer!

Both the cake/slice and the tacos were mouthwateringly delicious, even if they were also a lot of work to prepare!

The standout recipe for me from Cantina was the Heirloom tomato escabeche.  It was so good!!!!!

I have a challenge with myself that I will reduce either through binning or donating 1000 things in the next 12 months.  Twenty days in I am up to 190 so it is going well.  But there’s a long way to go I may need to put Cantina on the donation pile later in the year!  

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Next up on my Tasty Reads book cook though  Silvia Colloca’s Made in Italy.  I only have about ten recipes left to cook from it so I should easily be done by the end of the year.  And based on everything I have already cooked it is pretty down to earth which is exactly what I needed after the high-end madness that was Cantina!

So tell me, do you have a cookbook you find infuriating?  What was frustrating about it? Did you keep it or give it away?

And have a great week!

 

Chicken Salad Pie – Pieathalon 7

Hello friends and pie eaters!!!  Welcome to Pieathalon 7 – that very special time of year when bloggers from all over the world get together and celebrate the weird and wonderful world of vintage pies.  And oh boy did it get weird this year!  Surly over from at Vintage Recipe Cards sent me a hybrid concoction which much like my detested chocolate cheesecake takes two things that separately are wonderful and combines them into a Franken-monster Chicken Salad Pie!

Are you ready, are you ready for this?  Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

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Glorious is it not?

Before we even get to the eating of it, let me tell you that Chicken Salad Pie was an absolute BASTARD of a thing to make!  Even before that though, let’s start with possibly the only positive to come out of this which is the perfect late ’60’s styling of the original recipe!  Perfection! I want that leaf plate so, so much.  And those gold glasses!

Easy as Pie Chicken Salad

So, you’ll notice that my pies are a lot more round that those in the recipe.  Let me tell you why.

Chicken Salad Pie: Hours 1-3

I finished work at around 6 and started cooking.  Given that I now mostly work from the dining table, I probably started making the Chicken Salad Pie at around…6:01.  Put the chicken on to poach.  Start cutting the pastry into the right size of rounds.  Oh, yeah, did I mention I was doing this on the Tuesday night before we posted today?

6:30: Everything on track.  The chicken was poached and was cooling. The pastry had been blind-baked and was also cooling.

6:45 The broth, salad dressing, onion, lemon juice and salt were in the bowl waiting for the pimentos.  Oh.  That’s right.  We don’t have pimentos here.  So, in order to get pimentos, I bought a jar of stuffed olives and picked them out of the olives using a kitchen skewer.

How long does it take to pick out a peck of pickled pimentos?

Too damn long.

Especially if you eat half the olives you are meant to be picking.

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7:15:  Pimentos were picked.  Gelatine was added.  Mixture was beaten and left to chill.

8:15: Has the mixture thickened?  I don’t think it’s thickened.  Better give it another half hour.

8:45:  The mixture has definitely not thickened.

8:50: Research what do to if gelatine does not set.

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Chicken Salad Pie: Hours 3-6

9:00.  Tip the mixture into a saucepan and heat it.  Add more gelatin.

9:20: Place mixture back into the fridge.  Wonder why you chose this week of all weeks to be alcohol-free.

9:45: Mixture shows no sign of thickening.  But it was warm so it will probably take longer right?

10:15 Still not thickening.  Realise you have not had dinner.  Eat some olives.

10:45 It’s like water.  Pour runny gelatine back into the saucepan.

11:15 Add more gelatine to the rewarmed mixture.  Have a glass of wine.  This is not the week to quit drinking.

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11:30 Put the mixture back into the fridge.  Curse the non-specificity of vintage recipes.  How much gelatine was in an envelope of gelatine in 1968?  And how does that translate to spoonfuls which is how I am measuring mine.  Wonder why you leave everything to the last minute.  Vow to change. Eat more olives.

Midnight:  The mixture is thickening!!!!  REEEEE-SULT!  Add the chicken and celery

12:15:  Still thickening but still too runny to pour into the pie shells.  Because as they keep telling you on The Great British Bake-off, no one likes a soggy bottom!  Decide to pour the mixture into teacups, allow it to set inside them and turn them out the following day….later that same day.

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CHICKEN SALAD PIE – THE VERDICT

Cutting into the chicken salad pie was reminiscent of cutting into that jellied loaf style of dog food which was a real hurdle to overcome when tasting it.  I did have a tiny bit and it wasn’t….awful.  It tasted and smelled mostly of the dressing.  But the association with dogfood was enough to prevent me from eating any more.

So in summary, no sleep, no dinner and a pie that looked like Pedigree Chum.   It was certainly no winner, winner chicken dinner.  I can’t even feed it to the dogs, who would love it due to the onions!  This one, sadly, is going straight into the trash.

Chicken Salad Pie

Pieathalon 7

Thanks as ever to Yinzerella for organising Pieathalon 7! You’re the best!

Thanks  / Curses to Surly for the recipe.  It was very fun to make despite it taking forever and being the closest thing to dogfood I have ever eaten.

I really hope Wendy from A Day In The Life on The Farm fared better with my recipe for Cherry Blossom Pie!

To see how Wendy went and to check out all the other pies, please click on the links below.  If they are not all up at the time of posting, I will update during the course of the day.

Okay friends, stay safe and most importantly…eat pie!

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