Recipe: Very Quick Cranberry Sauce

Thanksgiving morning had me pulling this recipe out and in about fifteen minutes I had a beautiful sauce cooling on my counter. This recipe is fun to make and very simple. Put it all in a pot, turn on the heat, stir, and magic happens once the berries start to softly pop, spilling their juices. The color develops into a bright rich red and then thickens all on its own. Marvelous!

Best Ever Cranberry Sauce - with credit to Mom On Timeout.

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 cup water
• 12 oz fresh cranberries (look through them and toss any bruised or damaged ones)
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of orange peel 
• ( I used dried peel because I always have a jar in my fridge)

Combine sugar, orange juice, and water, in a medium pan over medium heat. Once the mix begins to simmer add everything else and bring it back to a simmer stirring often. Keep on the heat for 10-12 minutes, until most of the berries have popped.  If you leave a few berries un-popped. it gives a more interesting texture. Remove from heat and let it cool about a half  hour. Then refrigerate. 

The sauce should be good for 3 or 4 days, so you can make it ahead of time.  You can serve it as a relish, sitting next to nearly anything but people usually only see cranberry sauce at the holidays. This recipe works well with oatmeal, or to counterpoint a steak in summer. So get creative.

So what will you do with the leftover cranberry sauce (if you have any)? 

Quick Cranberry Turnovers

Get yourself a package of frozen puff pastry sheets from the grocery store. Each package has 2 sheets and each sheet makes 4 turnovers.  Simply thaw the pastry sheets and cut each sheet into 4 squares. Put about a tablespoon in the center of each. wet your fingers and run them along the edges to get them wet then fold over to make a triangle with all the goodness inside.  Pinch the edge to seal it up tight and pop into a 400 degree preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until they are puffed and golden.

While they bake stir together about a cup and half of powdered sugar with enough milk drizzled in to make a glaze about the consistency of molasses.

Cool the turnovers a few minutes then drizzle the glaze over them and serve!

I'm working on other things to do with the sauce and I will keep you updated!

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Recipe: Easy as Pie Fillings: Chocolate

Lemon Meringue is certainly one of our favorites, but a girl needs chocolate!

I've tried several chocolate cream pies, some with whipped cream and some with a meringue topping. All of them have been fine. Everything you would expect: chocolaty, smooth, creamy. Until I found this recipe nothing had really wowed me. Then I found Ladd's Chocolate Pie from Ree Drummond of Food Network Magazine.

This pie had the “WOW” factor all the others had been lacking. Supremely chocolate. Rich and succulent. It beckons from the pie-tin, just sitting the refridgerator, calling me . . . You probably should not eat the entire slice you cut . . . I dare you not too!

Top it how like,but my favorite is with fresh whipped cream, barely sweetened.

Ladd's Chocolate Pie

As with the Lemon Meringue pie recipe, you will need to pre-bake the crust. This time it needs to cool before filling it. Aside from the crust here's what you will need:

• 1½ Cup granulated sugar (stick with cane sugars)
• ¼ Cup cornstarch
• 3 Cups whole milk
• 4 egg yolks, beaten with a fork
• If you want a meringue topping set the whites aside and I'll cover making meringue again at the bottom of this recipe.
• 6½ ounces of bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

In a large saucepan, over medium heat, stir together the sugar and cornstarch. Pour in the milk, then the egg yolks. Cook to a boil stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add the chocolate, the butter and the vanilla. Stir it well, until the chocolate is completely melted. Pour into the baked shell and chill at least 4 hours.

Serve this alone or top it with whipped cream or meringue.

This filling makes a nice pudding, but it is a bit rich so make the portions small. Adding whipped cream can reduce the richness too.

Enjoy!

Meringue Re-stated

The critical thing to remember when making meringue is that your bowl, whisp, egg beater. or whatever utensil you use have, must be completely grease and fat free. Any oily stuff will stop the meringue from stiffening and this includes any trace of yoke that might have snuck through when they we separated. Here's all you will need:

• The four egg whites left over from making the chocolate filling
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form when you lift the beater. While continuing to beat the  egg whites gradually add 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice. Continue beating and add 3 Tablespoons of granulated sugar. Continue beating until stiff peaks form when you rise the beaters.

Spread quickly over the pie, don't over work the mixture but do seal the edges of the meringue mixture to the pie crust. Bake at 400 degrees until the meringue browns slightly or sweats. Remove from the oven and cool well before serving.

Recipe: Easy as Pie Fillings: Lemon Meringue

My Mom was a really good home cook and baker and I still use a lot of her recipes. I have no idea where my Mom got her Lemon Meringue Pie recipe. Many of her recipes were so old they would ask for ingredients we don't use so readily these days (like using lard in the cookies). Some updates to these have been made.

Since the first time I remember her using the recipe card, it was hand-written, stained and yellowed. My own recipe card for the same recipe is also hand-written, stained and become just as yellowed through the years. But let's face it, the really messed up cards in your recipe file are the ones you truly love and use. 

Mom's Lemon Meringue Pie

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

You will use one pie crust, baked and cooled. Fit the crust into the pie-tin , pierce it with a fork to keep the bubbles down and bake the crust about twenty minutes in at 400 degrees. Let it cool until warm to the touch. While it is cooling you can make the filling.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1¼ Cup of granulated sugar 
• (C&H is still better than most because it doesn't have corn or beet sugars.) 
• 6 Tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 cups of boiling water
• The rind of one lemon
• 4 Tablespoons butter (the original wanted margarine. Blecch!)
• 3 egg yolks (reserve the egg whites in a separate bowl)
• ½ Cup lemon juice 
• Depending on the time of the year you might have to use what you have handy. Some bottled juices have a high acid content, and if you like a bit of bite these are fine all year around.  
• Fresh is usually better. Buy your lemon if it feels heavy for its size. This usually tells you whether the lemon is fresh or not. Scraping the peal with your thumbnail and smelling it can also tell you how long that lemon might have been around.

Whisk sugar and cornstarch in a medium saucepan. Add the water and rind (just as it is) to the pan and cook over medium heat (stirring all of the time so it doesn't lump) until nice and thick. Add the butter and stir it in. 

Mix the lemon juice and the egg yolks in a bowl. Add about one half cup of of the hot sugar mixture in this bowl and it stir it in well. Then pour the egg mixture into the sugar mixture and blend it all together well. Pour the mixture into the pie shell and bake for ten minutes. 

While it is baking you can make your meringue.

The critical thing to remember when making meringue is that your bowl, whisp, egg beater. or whatever utensil you use, must be completely grease and fat free. Any oily stuff will stop the meringue from stiffening and this includes any trace of yoke that might have snuck through when they we separated. Here's all you will need:

• 3 Egg whites (no joke - no yoke)
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar

Beat the three egg whites until soft peaks form when you lift the beater. While continuing to beat the  egg whites gradually add 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice. Continue beating and add 3 Tablespoons of granulated sugar. Continue beating until stiff peaks form when you rise the beaters.

Note: If you wish to you can double the meringue recipe to get a taller pie, but it isn't at all necessary.

Now we put the pie together.

Remove the pie from the oven, then lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees. 

Quickly spread the meringue on top of the cooked pie without over working it.  Pile it high as you can and swirl your spoon to make pretty swoops and swirls. Make sure to seal the meringue and the edge of the crust or it will shrink away from the edges and the pie won't serve well. 

Pop it back into the oven and bake for another 18 minutes.

You can serve it warm, and some people do, or you can serve it cold, as is the proper thing to do. But store the pie in the refrigerator.

The filling it very versatile. You can use it as a stand alone item, something of a lemon custard (but not a custard), or you might put it over vanilla wafers and use whipped cream to make a quick parfait. I have used it as a cake filling as well. One of our favorite summer cakes uses this filling and a whipped cream frosting. A nice light summer treat.

Enjoy!

Yams, the right way

I receive several cooking magazines in the mail and belong to several more sites online. The result of this is my favorite cookbook. It is a large photo album, the kind with the clear coatings you peel back then put your photos in and reseal the page. Mine has recipes that looked good enough to save. David has asked me why I don't organize it into categories so I can find things easier. What he doesn't realize is that the scattered-mish-mash makes me look at each one again.

About 3 times a year I go through the book carefully and figure out which things I havn't looked at for a long time. They get replaced with whatever is currently making me excited. Every time I do this it's like a brand new cook book to look through and decide what I want to try next.

Sometimes you run into a recipe that you just know you have try and it doesn't even make it into the book! That happened over the last few days finishing up tonight with the most decadent yam dish ever.

Over the weekend I was checking out a bunch of sites that were highlighting holiday dishes.  This dish was so simple I didn't even write it down. I knew I had all the ingredients to make them but other dinner plans kept getting used until tonight.  We both wanted more and were pretty bummed to realize there weren't any.  It is my new favorite.

YAMS

Select yams that are about the size you would want to serve, 1 per person. Think the size of a large regular baker. Poke them good along the top with a small knife or fork,put them in a shallow dish  and pop em in a 350 degree oven. Bake them til they are tender when you stab them with a fork, again using the amount of time you use when baking potatoes as a guide.

When they are just about ready,mix together some butter and brown sugar, Mix equal parts butter and brown sugar using a couple tablespoons or more per potato depending how sweet you prefer.  Take potatoes out of the oven ans cut a slit across the top and fluff the flesh with a fork.

Add the brown sugar/butter and then stuff the opening with little marshmallows. Put it back in the oven for about 5 minutes until the marshmallow puffs and browns.

The result is sweet and rich with a crunch from the toasted marshmallow. This could be dessert.  Or a late night snack.  Or a lunch.  Really I can't wait to go get some more yams!

Recipe: Easy as Pie Crust (requires a food processor)

Through my life I have heard it said over and over: "pie crust is so easy!" Not so for me, not a good basic crust, no matter what I tried. So I learned to rely on store bought sheets of crust for many years. Occasionally I would try tried some new  "fool proof" pie crust tricks:

• pre-chilled all my tools and ingredients; 
• used vodka or vinegar instead of water; 
• barely tossed the ingredients together and kneaded them into horrible little ball of dough. 

At best the results were always dismal and this was disheartening to a girl who thought she could bake anything!

I consider myself a pretty good cook, and a very fine baker. Anyone who has ever worked with me has reaped the benefits of my successful baking experiments. When I bring in a cake or a box of cookies people know it is something to try and their tightly-adhered-to diets go right out the window. Cakes,cookies, tarts and tortes, it is all very easy for me. Even complicated stuff doesn't intimidate me. But pie?  Not so much. I never was able to get the hang of the crust, so pie from scratch, it wasn't something I made much of.

When Food Network Magazine published a Pie Crust 101 several months ago I thought I would give myself one more chance at failure because my son had given me a food processor last Christmas and this article was an opportunity for its maiden voyage. To my delight it worked, and I simply love to find a recipe which is easy to do (magnificently).

Here's the recipe from the article:

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 Teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup cold shortening
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter (cut into small pieces)
• 6 Tablespoons ice water

Pulse the flour, sugar and salt in your food processor til combined. Add the shortening and pulse til it disappears into the flour, about 30 seconds. Then add the butter and pulse until it looks like cornmeal with some bean sized lumps. Drizzle in the ice water and pulse til it starts coming together but stop before it all goes together in a ball.  The dough should just hold together when you pinch a bit in your hand. Divide into two equal sized balls and wrap each in plastic wrap. Use the wrap to help you pat the balls into discs and then chill very well (at least 1 hour but up to 24 hours). Then roll it out. 

Notes: This recipe has specific amounts of liquids and I like that there is no guesswork. It seems all the other recipes I tried said to "add enough liquid to get the right consistency", and this was a tricky bit for me. I followed the directions as written, but found that with the cold butter it took more pulses. I learned to cut the butter into smaller pieces and keep pulsing until it gets better distributed in the mix. This is a simple recipe which works well, but it doesn't tell you all you need to know when it says "Then roll it out". Rolling out the dough is not as simple as it sounds.

To those who have not rolled out pie crust, here's my advice: Go slow!  Rolling out chilled dough, either cookie or crust, is not something that can be rushed or you will end up with cracked or torn  dough. Start with an evenly floured surface (I use a wand) and work the dough from the center out in all directions to form a round crust. Once the dough is rolled out to (about 1/4 inch thick), wrap the crust around the rolling pin. This makes it easier to transport it over your pie pan where you can simply roll it off and gently press the crust into the contours of the pan. Fold any loose edges under or cut them off and pinch (or press with a fork) to make a nice edge. Now it's ready to either fill and bake or bake and fill depending on the pie you are making.

If you don't use it all you can freeze the shells by wrapping the pie dish in plastic wrap then again using in 2 layers of foil. And for all those little scraps that are left over on the counter? Make pie crust cookies!

• Smoosh whatever bits and pieces you have into a ball and roll it out like you did for the pie crust. Spread with butter and cinnamon sugar. Cut into squares and put them on an un-greased cookie sheet. And pop in a preheated oven at 400 degrees until light brown.

Yummy deliciousness.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Camp Creekside Chili

This makes about 2 1/2 quarts, but first things first get the parts together. You are going to need three strips of a good, thick sliced, bacon. I suggest you buy a big package and keep it one hand for breakfast nearly every day, but you do as you like. You can get just three slices at most grocery store's butcher counter. While you're back there get a pound of ground chuck steak too. You can use regular hamburger, but the fat content will go up a bit and the flavor down a bit. Also, you'll need half pound of Italian sausage. You are going to have to choose between hot and mild sausage, and the amount of heat in the chili is going to rely heavily on which you choose. I like the mild in this recipe.

Here's the entire shopping list of ingredients:

• 3 Strips of  thick cut bacon
• 1 pound of ground chuck
• 1/2 pound of bulk Italian sausage 
• 1 -14 oz can pinto beans
• 1/2 - 14 oz can black beans 
• 1 - 14 oz can chili beans in spicy sauce
• 1 - 14 oz can diced tomato 
• 1 - 14 oz can fire roasted tomato
• 3 - 6 oz Cans of tomato paste
• 1 - fourteen ounce can of Beef Broth
• 1 - Large yellow onion
• 2 - Stalks of Celery
• 1 Poblano Pepper
• 1 Anaheim Pepper
• 1 Jallapeno Pepper
• 2 Cloves of Garlic
• "Better Than Boullion" (Beef)
• This is the one "secret ingredient" which you might not have is a little jar of  and which everyone ought to add to the spice cabinet, because it is much better than bullion and I use it in a whole lot of recipes. For this recipe I use the beef flavor ("Liquid Cow"); but it also comes in chicken flavor as well, and you should keep both of them handy. 
• 2 Tablespoons of chili powder
• 1/2 Tablespoon of Worcestershire Suace
• 2 Teaspoons of Oregano
• 1 Teaspoon of Ground Cumin
• 1 Teaspoon of Tabasco
• 1/2 Teaspoon of Basil
• 1/2 Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper
• 1/2 Teaspoon of Paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon of Sugar
• A healthy dash of Salt 
• A healthy dash of Pepper

Before lighting the stove, open all of the cans (but don't drain the liquid from any of them). Core and scrape the seeds from the chilies and chop them fine along with the onion and celery. Have all of the spices measured into one small bowl. . . And you are ready to cook.

Chop the bacon up fine and fry it up in a large stock pot, on a medium high heat. Stir it often and cook until it is a nice deep brown. Add the ground chuck and Italian sausage into the pot and brown everything well.  Carefully drain off the grease and return the pot to the heat. (But never put it down the sink drain.)

Pour the canned goods into the pot and stir in the onions, celery, and peppers. Then add two heaping tablespoons of the Better than Bullion (liquid cow), along with the beef broth. Then add the spices and stir the heck out of it.

Reduce the heat to simmer. then cover the pot and let it cook for three to five hours, stirring occasionally so things don't get burned at the bottom. It is done when the mixture is nice and thick, and the house smells really nice.

You can serve this chili nearly any way you wish:

• A simple bowl with cheese and onions is perhaps the best way to start off. 
• I like to add a drop of sour cream for color and a little new flavor. But you will find that the stuff goes well with nearly anything. 
• Hollow out a loaf of sour dough bread and fill it with chili, cheese, and onions. 
• Pour the chili over tortilla or corn chips (cheese and onions, and maybe some re-fried beans) and you get a nice nacho snack. 
• Ladle it over some fried or grilled corn polenta and you get something of a tamale flavored entre. 
• And Creekside Camp Chili is just a fine chili-dog or chili-burger sauce, with cheese and onions of course. 

None of these serving ideas need the extra cheese, or onions, but you should live a little.

Camp Creekside Chili stores is any air tight container either in the refrigerator for a week or so, or you might freeze it in serving sized containers to make a nice quick lunch or supper. Two and a half quarts can go a long way, but this stuff usually doesn't sit around for long. It gets eaten.

Enjoy!