Pie Party Potluck - Piesplosion

So I figured there were going to be some pies at this event, but there was a full slip n slide's length of pies both savory and sweet. Some people made hand pies, which are awesome because you can pick them up without getting pie all over your fingers, and some people had drinks with theirs (Negronis and strawberry margaritas to name two).

The finger food that I neglected to take pictures of was great. Bacon-wrapped dates with cheese were my favorite.  Chef Tagere has an sweet kitchen that I wish I got to visit every day. 

As I prepared for this day... and I use the word prepared lightly, because, while I had all of my ingredients beforehand, I didn't really start cooking the pie parts till this morning. Plus I still had to all my codey code typey job stuff in between (more like most of the day I had to work and how these even came out of the oven at 5pm is a mystery to me). 

So I had this idea that I'd make a sweet potato pie, but then I saw someone else was making one so I had to add stuff to it. This stuff happened to be nuts... covered in maple, but still nuts and I'm assuming there were nut allergies all over the place, because I still have half of this pie. It also didn't seem to want to set for me, the crust decided it wanted to hide under the filling and I keep rocking myself and saying "at least it tastes good" to make the day ok. I was going to put a full on pecan pie on top of the sweet potato pie, but ran out of time. Instead I toasted the pecans in a cast iron pan with butter and added them to a pan of reduced maple syrup + butter and cream. 

por pot pie... yeah I did it. 

The pie I agonized over because I couldn't seem to get the filling to taste right to me was a big hit though. I ran out of everything I normally use so I ended up throwing a whole combination of things I've never put together in a dish. Notice how I forgot to add the K in Pork and didn't notice until after I took all my pictures. I grabbed a sharpie and corrected my mistake before people started to chow down because, God forbid, I have a mis-spelling and someone throws a pie pan at my head (This is what I imagine happening when I screw up something. Replace pie pan with any painful kitchen thing). 

Anyhoo... there were a metric ton of pies and I didn't get a lot of pictures, but here's one savory and one sweet:

savory

sweet

Recipes:

Sweet Potato Pie w/ Maple Pecans.

I've done my sweet potato pie before (but I can't remember if I put the recipe down). Anyway it's reallllly simple. 

I bake a bunch of garnet yams from Whole Foods because they're delicious. Then I put the hot yams in my blender with a stick or more of butter and cream, and I make a drinkable-right-there-if you're-a-fat-kid-like-me puree. 

Then I add sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, a dash of cayenne, some pumpkin pie spice, salt, and enough eggs to set it. Sometimes I throw in flour too. 

Dump this into your crust and bake till it sets and the middle loses its jiggle.  Don't top it if you like, I normally eat it as-is.  

Braised Pork Pot Pie

• 8lb bone in pork roast (you'll have a bunch of leftovers for stuff n things)
• seasonings to taste
• 1 large or 2 small Yukon Gold potatoes
• I large onion chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic smashed
• 2 bell peppers (whatever color you like)
• 4 medium carrots chopped
• butter
• cream
• salt & pepper to taste
• cornbread batter (see below)
• cheese (I used sharp and extra sharp cheddar)

So there's this cut of meat at Fresh Direct. It's called, um, "Bone in Boston Butt Pork Roast" This is an awesome cut of meat because you can really do anything to it for hours, it still likes you in the morning, and won't call the cops. 

Last time I braised this pork I had some of the amazing fennel pollen salt from Porchetta to smother all over it. This time I stuck with some adobo, Berbere seasoning from Spices and Tease, cracked pepper, cayenne,  two cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and garlic powder for the dry ingredients. I halved a large sweet onion, dropped a dozen garlic cloves, threw in a few sprigs of thyme in and poured an Aranciata over top the whole thing (warning if you have a smaller pan this makes the dry stuff fizzy bubble all over the place. Also I did this because last time I used tangerine juice and I was out).

Then I set my oven to 300 and stuck that sucker in there till it begged for mercy. You'll know it's done when you try to take it out of the pot and it starts to fall off the bone. This should be in about 3-6+ hours depending on how big the roast is. 

I took the meat out of the pot and set it aside to cool, then placed it in the fridge. All that swishy liquid left over got poured into a small saucepan that I stuck in the freezer to separate the fat from the good stuff. Once this was done I reduced the jellied liquid to almost a smear at the bottom of the pan and added butter + cream to it. 

In the pan I  roasted the pork in, I sauteed a bunch of onions, garlic, carrots, red/yellow bell pepper, and one big yukon gold potato. I added over half the meat from the roast after shredding/chopping, and let that bubble for a while. I kept adding things in my pantry until it tasted "ok" to me, so I have no idea how to describe that other than it included salt, some chili powder, two drops of liquid smoke, the last drop of Worcestershire sauce out of my empty bottle, and a pinch of Mighty Edible's jerk seasoning. Once the potatoes were cooked almost through I added the reduction to it and spread the mixture in a pan. 

Then the cheese shredding began and ended in about 2 minutes. I bought a large bag of shredded cheddar cheese because I knew I wouldn't have time to shred the full block of extra sharp I'd bought for the purpose. I sprinkled a bit of cheese on top of the meat mixture and reserved the rest for the cornbread.

Sweet Cornbread 

The cornbread recipe is pretty simple.

• 1 1/3 cup cornmeal
• 1 1/3 cup corn flour (I sort of combined the two, could have left out the APF completely)
• handful of all purpose flour
• 1 package of super sweet corn kernels thawed
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1/8th teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• a dash of sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 1/4th cup cream/milk (approximately)
• 1-2 cups shredded cheese depending on how naughty you're feeling.

Mix the dry stuff, mix the wet stuff, smash em together then add the corn kernels and cheddar cheese. Pour this over the pot pie filling and bake till it bubbles and the cornbread is golden brown. 

pasteis de bacalhau - or how I got over my fear of using salt cod

So you think to yourself, "Self, salt preserved foods and you could go very, very wrong." Then you never get around to making your favorite appetizer from the churrascaria across from your office. Then you has major sads. 

srs sads

Anyway, you happen upon a box of salt cod while you're being productive and pre-ordering food for the week from Fresh Direct. I also like to call it over-ordering food from Fresh Direct because I always manage to stuff my fridge full of things that all need to be cooked around the same time so I end up with two dishes per day (one for now and one for the next day). Don't do it. 

You say to yourself, "Self, this is the time, we will make these codfish cakes." Then you leave the parsley in the fridge until it's slightly dry, but luckily you just set out the fish to soak the day before so you're all good. 

You gently simmer the fish in water until it flakes.  You put the potatoes in the same pot and wonder if potatoes always take so long to cook. You sauté onion and garlic in a pan with butter. Then you dump the whole lot into the largest sized glass bowl of the umpteen piece set you got from WIlliams-Sonoma and finally found a use for.  You skip the whole cloth-squeezy thing because it appears to be mostly boneless. You take a hand blender to it all because, yay, power tools! vroomvroom

You taste the cod and realize you probably soaked it too long (even though that's what the directions said) so you add some salt to it.

You put two eggs in and think, "Hey, I put more potatoes, I'd better add more eggs." Then you realize the third egg turned your perfect mixture into a soupy mush so you stick the bowl in the freezer after taking out half the things on the top shelf. You wait.

You use two teaspoons to attempt to form the oval-y pasteis shape. Sometimes it sticks to the spoons so you get little crunchies that you'll enjoy later.

You realize this make a whole lot of fish cakes.

You finish and you eat.

recipe

• box o salted cod (I used the one that needed to be refrigerated, Trawler brand)
• 3-4 Yukon gold potatoes
• one small onion chopped
• 5+ garlic cloves 
• butter
• handful or more parsley chopped
• salt & pepper to taste
• 2 eggs

Soak the cod according to instructions till it's just salty enough for flavor not to suck the moisture out of your body like that W&P bottle in Tank Girl. Place the cod in a 3-4 qt pot and cover with water. Heat until just at a simmer then remove from the water and set aside. 

Cook the potatoes whichever way you like and mash them. Add butter if you're feeling frisky. 

Sauté the onion in butter until almost translucent. Add the garlic and cook for a minute or two more.

Pull off any skin left on your cod and discard. Check for bones. Break up your cod into little flaky strings. You can do this by hand, by hand & cloth, or by a food processor/hand blender. Check again to see that there are no bones. 

Once everything's about room temperature mix it all together in a big bowl. Add salt (if necessary) and pepper to taste.

Using 2 teaspoons of about the same size shape the mixture into a pasteis and drop into a hot pan of oil. Cook until golden brown. 

salt-baked hamachi kama for breakfast

So I fricken love hamachi kama. I used to always look for it on the menu at sushi restaurants because nothing can beat a nice grilled piece of yellowtail collar with a lot of lemon on the side. The flesh is succulent, falls apart at slight pressure, and any salt you add to it only enhances the flavor. Sunday morning, after Mike had already gotten our weekend ritual of Dunkin'* for breakfast, I jumped out of my seat and ran to the kitchen.  You see, I'd bought the hamachi kama at the Lobster Place in Chelsea Market before the weekend and was worried it had gone bad. 

Fear not, (I did), the fish was fresh and smelled like... mostly nothing. I like that in a fish that I'm about to consume. 

My normal dealie with the kama is to place it in a cast iron pan with olive oil and butter in the bottom so the skin gets extra crisp and fabulous. Then I dump it unceremoniously into a bowl so that I can eat in front of my keyboard and pour the rendered oils over the entire lot. 

Notice the tots made a one time only appearance. I normally eat this plain with a whole lemon to squeeze on every bite. 

recipe if you can call it that

• one piece hamachi kama (yellowtail collar)
• plenty of salt
• olive oil/butter

Heat the oven to 350ish degrees and place your hamachi kama, skin side down, into a pan just large enough to hold it. Pour a splash or three of olive oil over the top and into the pan and add a pat of butter in the bottom because I said so. Get your tastiest, flakiest, semi coarse salt and sprinkle it liberally over the whole thing.

Place in the oven and cook till it sizzles that it's done at you. 

*I do tots and an iced tea/coffee, he does an everything bagel with cream cheese and two donuts.

pork cheeks braised in a coconut-tomato-wine sauce with pasta

So I was walking up from a paper supply store and decided to stop by Eataly. At the meat counter they had pork cheeks in the spot I was hoping to find boar sausage, but whatever. Pork cheeks! I didn't know what I wanted to do with them, but I knew that I wanted them. The butcher behind the counter asked me what you do with pork cheeks and I said well... braise mostly.  

So that's what I did.  1.5 pounds of pork cheeks got braised in my le creuset purple dutch oven of awesomness then got smothered with wine, tomato paste, tomato concentrate, coconut milk, berbere spices, salt, pepper and a small can of anchovies. 

This was placed into a 300ish oven for 3ish hours. Then I decided I didn't want to eat them that day because we'd had italian sausage earlier while the cheeks were cooking. So into the fridge they went.  The next day, I got Mike to heat them up (funny how guys can make a big deal out of heating up the food you did all of the prep work for because they might break/drop/set-fire-to something) and cook the fresh pasta from the noodle case at Eataly. 

He was... hesitant... but not everyone can be excited about pork cheeks without trying them! Once he got over that he liked them enough to clean his bowl (win!). 

I had them later that night with some more pasta and a sprinkle or two of Parmesan cheese. The cheeks are so easy and really flavorful. Plus, the meat just falls apart after all that cooking.

recipe

• 1.5-2 lbs pork cheeks
• 1 tube of tomato paste
• 1 small bottle of tomato concentrate
• 1 can of coconut milk (the creamier the better)
• 1/2 a bottle of red wine
• one small can of anchovies
• Berbere spice mix (I get mine from spices and tease)
• few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

thanksgiving small plates - un-pumpkin pie & maple vanilla whipped cream

So I dislike pumpkin pie as much as I dislike turkey. Luckily I normally don't have to make them ever. I saw a recipe in the NYTimes about a pumpkin pie that used butternut squash, cream and brandy to make a mousse-like filling and figured I'd give it a try. They recommend roasting the butternut squash in butter to give it a nice caramelized flavor. This is where I got the idea of blending my sweet potato pie as well since they suggested pureeing the squash in a food processor I don't have. I put a lot more spices in this one (too much, in my opinion), but the whipped cream kind of tempers the flavor of the pumpkin pie seasoning.  I also used rum since that was all I had. I'd probably always use something other than pumpkin if I had to make pie with it, but I still prefer sweet potato.  The frozen pie crust is also different on this one.