Buttermilk bonanza: maple-buttermilk pie

The last recipe of the buttermilk bonanza was a maple-buttermilk pie from 101 cookbooks, and I think we definitely saved the best for last. This pie received a lot of praise from mathematicians in two cities because I made it right before going to UIUC to visit one of Jon's collaborators. I've never made a buttermilk pie before, and it worked perfectly. It's a little tangy, but mostly sweet, rich from the buttermilk and egg yolks, slightly mapley and slightly lemony, and the part-rye flour crust added a little something too. I didn't use either of Heidi's recommended crust methods, just my usual: use pastry cutter to incoroporate fat into flour, add liquid (in this case beer) a little bit at a time until dough comes together, roll our, and transfer to pie dish. Her suggestions are probably puffier and better, but mine is easy and more than acceptable.

I really enjoyed the buttermilk bonanza. It gave me the impetus to try some nice new recipes and get a little more familiar with buttermilk. Plus, I pinned a bunch more buttermilk recipes that I can try the next time I find myself with 8 cups of buttermilk and no plan.

Buttermilk use: 2 cups

Buttermilk bonanza total: 8 cups, and we're out of buttermilk.

Corn and red pepper quiche

We bought a couple ears of corn last week but didn't get around to using them for a while. Quiche was on the menu for the week. We were thinking about going with broccoli, but I thought a corn and red pepper quiche might be just crazy enough to work. I was thinking of the texture of corn pudding or very soft cornbread with whole-kernel corn in it, and what we ended up with was similar to that. The contrast between the crunchy kernels and the soft egg is a little strange, but we liked it. Fresh basil would be great in this, but we only had dried.

Corn and red pepper quiche

1 quiche shell

1/2 tbsp butter
2 ears corn, kernels cut off the cob
1 red pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, cut into thin slices
1/2 tsp dried basil

3 eggs
1 cup half-and-half or 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup cream
1/3 cup cheese (we used a combination of Gruyere and another Swiss we had), grated or finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt

Prebake the quiche shell in a 375 oven for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, melt the butter in a saute pan and saute the corn and red pepper, stirring occasionally, until they have some nice browning action going on. Let cool.

Combine the eggs, half-and-half, cheese, and salt in a mixing bowl. When the corn mixture has cooled, add it to the egg mixture and pour into the quiche shell. Bake at 375 until the quiche has set, about 30-40 minutes.

The best ever asparagus tart

My mom has made this tart (I would call it a quiche, but what do I know?) several times, most recently yesterday for lunch with some of her church lady friends and today for lunch with my grandparents. It's delicious and makes a great meal with fruit or a green salad. It comes from a cookbook written by former First Lady of Alabama Patsy Riley. One of my second cousins was the social secretary for the governor, Bob Riley, and one year she gave us the cookbook for Christmas. Her husband was the head of security for the governor, and he is even mentioned in the book on page 47! The cookbook has a more varied selection than you might expect. It has a lot of standard Southern recipes, but she also included a section with a recipe from the first family of every state (the Palins sent a salmon recipe and a black cod recipe, both of which look pretty good) and a section of recipes from a few of the first ladies of the nation. The one for Abigail Adams involves larding a salmon with a skinned eel. I don't think I'll be attempting that. My mom has had fun trying some of the recipes, and this one is definitely a keeper!

Best Ever Asparagus Tart
(from When the Dinner Bells Rings at the Governor's Mansion by Patsy Riley)

1 pie crust, store-bought or homemade
1 lb asparagus spears
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped red pepper
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup half and half
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 eggs
2 cups (about 8 oz) shredded Swiss cheese
1 cup (about 4 oz) grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Place the pie crust in a lightly greased 9-inch pie or tart pan and bake for 12 minutes. Let stand until cool, and leave the oven on.

Snap or cut off the bottom of the asparagus spears. Cut the spears into 3-inch pieces. Steam or blanch the asparagus, drain, and set aside.

Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and bell pepper and saute until tender, about 7 minutes.

Combine the cream cheese, mayonnaise, half and half, flour, and eggs in a mixing bowl and beat until blended. Stir in the onion mixture and Swiss cheese. Arrange the asparagus in the pie shell and pour the cream cheese mixture on top. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.

Peach pie

We're back! We were in France and Germany again for a month this year. Then we got back to Texas, almost immediately flew to San Francisco for Jon's brother's wedding, and just got back here on the fourth. We are still settling in and getting re-adjusted to Houston. I started a short summer teaching stint on Tuesday, so we will get a lot of Jon recipes in the next couple weeks. I hope to do a post soon about the good stuff we ate in France, but for now, here's a great American dessert.

When I was a kid, my family had two or three peach trees, two apple trees, and a pear tree that produced copious amounts of fruit in the summer. My mom would put up tons of applesauce and peach jam, but the pies were the best. She made dozens of them every summer and froze them. When a family moved into the neighborhood or a friend had a baby, got sick, or had a death in the family, she would take a pie over. We also ate a lot ourselves throughout the year.

This week, perfect, ripe peaches from Fairfield, Texas were only 0.88/pound, so I decided to make a pie. They had been pretty picked over and a lot of them were bruised or squished, but I knew they would make a great pie. So often, the peaches we get at the store are hard and flavorless, so I'll take a squishy, oozy, delicious one over those any day. I didn't get back from the store with my peaches until 9 pm, but they were so ripe I knew they wouldn't wait, so I whipped up a late-night pie.

The remains of the peaches we used plus some we didn't end up needing.

Peach pie
You can also make this with partially thawed frozen peaches. Let them sit in the sugar-flour mixture a little longer and add about 20 minutes to the baking time.

8 generous cups sliced ripe peaches (about 11 medium peaches), no need to peel unless you're picky or the skin is clearly damaged or undesirable
1/4 cup flour
Scant 1/2 cup sugar
2 pie crusts
1 tbsp almond milk
Sugar and cinnamon for dusting the top

Put sliced peaches into a large bowl. Sprinkle flour and sugar on top and stir together. Let sit while you run to the store because you realize you forgot the flour (or at least 20 minutes). Transfer one crust to the deepest pie dish you have. Spoon peaches into crust. Top with 2nd pie crust. Trim around edges and crimp if you're fancy like that. If you've got extra crust, you can roll it out and cut it into shapes. (I put "E+J" on the top, but I didn't realize how large the E had been when I cut out the J, so I look very egotistical.) Brush the top with almond milk and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Slash some vents in the top to let the hot air out. Here is the pie before baking.

Place pie on a baking sheet to catch any bubbling juices that might otherwise fall to the bottom of your oven and burn. This is very important because it will happen. Put foil around the edges of the pie, leaving a hole in the middle, so the edges won't burn. Bake at 375 for about 40 minutes. Remove foil and bake about 20 more minutes, until crust looks done. We were too tired to eat any pie when it came out, and it looked like there was no danger of it burning, so I turned the oven off and left the pie in it until the morning. It made a great breakfast!

Unresolved raspberry-rhubarb pie

This past Saturday was the annual Houston Sacred Harp singing. (You can read about Sacred Harp at this website.) It was snowy all day Friday, so I spent most of the day inside cooking in preparation. (Part of the Sacred Harp tradition is serving dinner on the ground to guests who have come from out of town.) This is one of the dishes I contributed. Since I had a little crust left over after putting it in the bottom of the pan, I made a treble clef and some shape notes (explained on the Sacred Harp website) out of the extra and put it on the top. I think of rhubarb as a spring or summer pie, but I had a bag of frozen rhubarb and remnants of a couple bags of frozen raspberries in my freezer, so I didn't have to go out and buy anything to make this pie. And I got a bonus of extra room in my freezer. This pie recipe won third place and "most creative" in a Pi Day pie contest last March. I made it up because one bag of rhubarb isn't quite enough fruit for the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook rhubarb pie recipe, and I happened to have just enough raspberries in the freezer to round out the volume the first time I made it.

I call this pie unresolved because the notes I have on it, "fa, sol, la, mi" are the equivalent of "F, G, A, B" in C major, hence an unresolved leading tone. For the record, I did made two fa's, but only one would fit on the pie, and if I went down to the next line, I'd have to make another clef for it to make any sense. I didn't think about the fact that I could put the fa at the end and get "G, A, B, C" and a lovely resolution. And yes, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about this. It's what I do.

Raspberry-rhubarb pie
1 pound frozen rhubarb (about 4 cups)
2 cups frozen raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 pie crust, made with either all-purpose or whole wheat pastry flour
splash of milk
tiny amount of sugar

Place fruit in a large bowl. Let stand for about 45 minutes, or until icy but not frozen. (During this time, you can make your pie crust if you haven't already.) Stir in sugar and flour.
Place pie crust in pie dish. Trim any overhanging edges and cut them into fun shapes if you want. Pour fruit mixture into pie crust. Arrange fun shapes on top. Brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar for extra beauty and crunch.
To prevent the edges from burning, place aluminum foil around the edges. Bake at 375 for about 50 minutes. (If using fresh fruit, only bake for 25 minutes.) Remove foil and bake for another 20-30 minutes, or until filling is bubbling at the edges and crust is golden. Cool on a wire rack.