Grim Reaper Galette

I saw pictures of this in the spring and couldn't get it out of my head. I knew it would be a lot of work but had to try it anyway, and what better occasion to make it than Halloween?

Notes:

• I used store-bought raspberry jam instead of making the one in the recipe. (I want to be clear that this was a MISTAKE, a BAD MOVE.) It was too sweet and messed with the texture.
  
• I used a different raspberry liqueur from the one suggested because that's a lot of Chambord and I don't think I like it? Chambord would probably be best for intense color though. I went with Mathilde Framboise.
  
• If you don't want or can't have alcohol (though the great majority of it will likely cook off because you cook it for a long period of time), I did soak one of the pears in a dark red fruit juice mixed with some red food coloring. I used a cranberry-pomegranate blend. I successfully made syrup out of the soaking liquid. The pear skull did not get as intensely colored but it otherwise worked well. See the bottom right skull in the top photo for an idea of the difference.
• The amount of filling might have been too much or the pears too juicy. The filling was very liquid and it look much longer to cook than the recipe said and never quite completely set. The filling also leaked and caramelized on the pan and the bottom of the tart and negatively affected the taste (deeply caramelized raspberry jam is not a pleasant flavor).
  

Verdict: I probably won't make this again given the amount of time required. I wasn't happy with how mine turned out but I think it's probably mostly my fault for not making my own jam like the recipe said. I'm also finding that I'm not very fond of the combination of chocolate and pear. (I thought the raspberry and wine flavors might make it a little better.) The chocolate crust was tasty by itself, as was the raspberry liqueur and red wine syrup reduction. If I did make it again, I would absolutely make sure to make my own jam since it's likely softer set and less cloyingly sweet than the kind you can buy in a jar at the store.

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RECIPE: Grim Reaper Galette (Lori Castellon, Ghoul at Heart)

German Plum Cake with Streusel

It's prune plum season again and I was looking for something new to try with the small cache of fruit that my partner was able to get for me. I went back to the store to get more a few days later and they were GONE. The secret is getting out!

Notes:

• The recipe called for a 27 cm (10.5 in) diameter pan but I only had a 9 in/23 cm one so I used that.
  
• I didn't end up buying enough prune plums to make this (only enough for about half) and when I went back to get more they were gone, so I used red plums for the rest. They were firmer and crisper, and did not break down as much while cooking. They let out a lot less juice than I thought they would.
  
• This is best when left to stand for at least a few hours after cooking. We ate some right away and it was kind of dry, but when I had some the next day more of the liquid had seeped into the bottom part with the bread crumbs and it tasted better.
• I think we could have done with a little more almond extract in the crust. Apparently some people make this with a shortbread type crust and I think I'd like that better, though I like the bready aroma of the yeasted crust.
• The streusel crumbles seemed to have too much butter in them -- they were really soft when I made them and especially after the cake softened they were really soggy. Maybe if I used less melted butter, or if I used cold butter to make them they might turn out better.
• I think I may have overworked the crust dough but it was really hard to knead in the butter. Maybe I didn't knead it enough? I'm bad at bread.
  

Verdict: I would try this again but make some changes. I think I'd like to try it with all prune plums first before I make too many changes, though, because the prune plums seem to let out a lot more liquid and are more intensely flavored. This is a really delicious flavor combination, especially with the little hits of lemon and almond and vanilla in addition to the cinnamon. I feel like it's awakening ancient memories in my cells.

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RECIPE: German Plum Cake with Crumbles (Sabrina's Table)

Asparagus Galette

When Smitten Kitchen announced this springtime variant of the winter squash galette I love so much, I had to give it a try. The asparagus smelled faintly of green tea while I chopped it, which was weird but nice.

Notes:

• I used Artigiano Classico cheese because it was in my fridge already and it has a similar texture and flavor (slightly sweet and nutty) to the types suggested in the recipe.
• My bunch of asparagus yielded about 3.5 cups after trimming and chopping.
• I skipped the egg wash on the crust because I was lazy.
  

Verdict: I liked it a lot! It's kind of labor intensive (about an hour of active work) but worth it. I was a little skeptical of the lemon in the asparagus but I think it was just the right amount.

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RECIPE: Spring Asparagus Galette (Smitten Kitchen)

Dutch Apple Pie

I have been wanting to try my hand at a Dutch apple pie ever since a postdoc at my work (who is originally from the Netherlands) baked a very tasty one and brought it in to share for his birthday, and Thanksgiving at home with my partner seemed as good a time as any to try it out. (It's been really nice to just make whatever new and exciting things I want for holidays at home, instead of what needs to be made to please family members who have very specific tastes in their holiday dinner.) I made it exactly as written.

Verdict: I LOVED it. My partner is not really into pie but tried it because I made it (I will never get over how sweet that is) and he told me he genuinely enjoyed this, and he thinks it's because the crust is sweeter and more like a cookie than a traditional pie crust. It's kind of a lot of work, but not any more than a regular apple pie, and worth it. I would absolutely make this again.

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RECIPE: Dutch Apple Pie (Smitten Kitchen)

Key Lime Pie with Marshmallow Meringue

This is another recipe I bookmarked during early quarantine and finally got the ingredients to make. I was underwhelmed by all the key lime pies I tried in Florida a couple of years ago (ahhh, remember when we could ride planes to go on vacation?) and wanted to see if I could make it better at home.

Notes:

• My filling ended up more brown than most key lime pies I've seen or consumed, and darker than the recipe author's photos. Most recipes have you whip the filling with a hand mixer (a process which aerates it and tends to lighten the color) but this one does not. My sweetened condensed milk may have also been the cause -- it was past its best-by date (but tasted and smelled normal).
• I put an extra egg yolk in the filling (one of the yolks broke during separation). It does not appear that this significantly affected it, except maybe to make it more silky.
• I used the lime zest but not the green food coloring because I don't like the bluish tone of most green food colors (it doesn't match the shade of green that lime is!) plus it was already pretty brown and I didn't want to risk making the color look even weirder.
• Since I don't have a kitchen torch, I used the broiler set to high and put the pie on the second highest rack to toast the meringue. The recipe author is not kidding -- it browns FAST. Mine was very slightly burned after 30 seconds so I'd recommend about 20-25 seconds. Watch it very carefully.
• The meringue wept a LOT once I put it in the refrigerator. The liquid soaked the graham cracker crust and made it hard to get out of the pie plate.
• I ate the pie at room temperature and cold from the fridge, and this pie is decidedly better cold from the fridge. It tastes a little too bitter at room temperature.

Verdict: It's not quite what I was hoping for but it was definitely edible. I'd try it again but I would whip the filling with a hand mixer, and maybe put less sugar in the meringue because I think that's what made it so weepy. My search for a really delicious key lime pie continues, and next time I think I'll try the more traditional whipped cream topping instead of meringue.

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RECIPE: Key Lime Pie with Marshmallow Meringue (Jess Pryles)

Rhubarb Crumble Pie

It's been a while since I'd made any sort of pie, and I had a less than ideal strawberry rhubarb pie yesterday. I wanted to wash that memory away with a better pie. (I am still convinced strawberries should never go anywhere near a cooked pie -- why ruin perfectly good in-season strawberries? I'm really grossed out by cooked strawberries in general though. The texture is too much like rotten strawberries.)

I've made rhubarb pies a couple of times in the past, each one a little different. This time, I finally had my own home-grown rhubarb! However, the challenge this time was that I only had enough butter on hand for a single crust pie and the one I liked that I made before had two crusts, and I didn't want to run to the store, so I needed to look for something else. I stumbled upon Sarah Kate Gillingham's recipe for rhubarb crumble pie on The Kitchn and rather liked the idea of a crumb top. I share her opinion on pies with rhubarb -- you don't need to add anything crazy to them to make them taste good. Rhubarb is sour, yes, but also really quite nice on its own.

"Don't wait for strawberries. It's May and it's time to celebrate. Make pie now."

Notes and substitutions:

• I used rhubarb that I grew and cut from my own garden, and 1 3/4 lb ended up being 8-9 large stalks about 1 inch thick and ~15 inches long.
• I REALLY like the flavor of this pie crust. Normally I just replace any rolled pie dough in a recipe with Smitten Kitchen's because it's my go-to and I know I like it, but I am really glad I gave this one a try. I also liked how easy it was to work with and roll. Absolutely no problems with breaking or cracking.
• I chilled the pie shell in the freezer for about 20 minutes instead of in the fridge for 30 minutes because I hadn't realized that it needed to be chilled until I got to that step into the directions. Hooray not reading the recipe all the way through before starting!
• I used coconut oil instead of butter in the topping because I used all the butter I had for the crust. It worked fine and it tasted better than I expected it to. The texture probably would have been a little better and more varied if I'd used butter, but the coconut oil thankfully was still solid enough to do the job. If you go this route, try to get one that doesn't have a strong coconut taste, and work it into the mixture with a wooden spoon instead of your fingers because the heat from your hands is enough to melt it completely. It may work even better if you chilled the coconut oil in the fridge or freezer first (I did not have that foresight).
• It ended up pretty juicy on the inside, but the bottom crust was cooked and not soggy on the outside. Next time I will not mix together the filling ingredients until immediately before putting it in the shell and see if that helps. I also might have measured the corn starch incorrectly and ended up with too little, so make sure you measure it accurately. It definitely got hot enough in the oven to activate the corn starch because the filling did thicken some and didn't taste like uncooked cornstarch.

Verdict: I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this and I'd make it again. If I made it again I might try to sprinkle in some vanilla and cardamom next time to see what happens because I love how it tastes with rhubarb.

RECIPE: Rhubarb Crumble Pie

Winter Squash Galette with Caramelized Onions and Feta

This recipe, like a number of the ones on this site and in my regular rotation, comes from Smitten Kitchen (Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette) and to me via my friend Sarah. This is another thing that often pops up in tae kwon do dinners because it is vegetarian and it's easy to scale up to feed a crowd.

Though it is a bit time consuming and labor intensive, the result is well worth the effort. Any recipe that gets my husband to help me eat a winter squash is double good because they're pretty big for just one person. :)

Substitutions/variations

I have made it on my own maybe 3 or 4 times now.

• The recipe originally calls for butternut squash. I vastly prefer kabocha squash (also known as buttercup squash) so I use that instead. It is less stringy and has less of that weird cloying squashy flavor and a little more sweetness. I think I used red kuri squash once and that was also tasty.
• While a nice melty cheese in the filling is good, I think I like the saltiness of feta. A good mozzarella cheese would probably give the best of both worlds. I used hunks of goat cheese once, which was also good.
• I add some shredded Parmesan to keep some of the "stinky cheese" vibe Deb wanted to imbue.
• Plain Greek yogurt works really well in the crust.
• I don't chill the bowls for the crust for an hour. Just make sure your butter is really cold and you're fine. Pretty sure this was written before she had children when she had 3 hours to make pie dough.
• I also put the dough in the freezer to chill it faster if I'm in a hurry. Just don't leave it in there for too long or it will get too hard. I happen to have the world's largest home microwave and it has a gentle "soften" setting to defrost this dough without wrecking it, but if your microwave is more ham-handed with defrosting foods, you may just need to wait it out at room temperature if it gets too cold.

RECIPE: Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette

Quiche, Infinitely Adaptable

My mother-in-law does not cook from scratch very often but even she has influenced my cooking. She got me into making quiche. She made one on a Sunday morning while she was visiting. My attempts up to the point I had hers were really time consuming and didn't taste all that great, so I was convinced I didn't like quiche. Turns out I was just making it a lot harder than it needed to be. While she used store bought pie crust, hers didn't have boatloads of cream as I assumed quiche needed to have (a pleasant surprise since I don't like adding milk or cream to my scrambled eggs), and it came together quickly and tasted great, especially for how little time was spent on it.

Sure enough, a few weeks after her visit, I got a hankering for quiche. I still wanted to make my own crust but didn't want to make my standard pie crust. I found this quick one with ingredients I already had that you press into the pan instead of rolling it out, and added some ham, vegetables, and cheese I had kicking around my fridge. Again, it was easy and tasty. I make these regularly now because they're so adaptable and great for a meal any time of the day, and they're a great meal to clean out the fridge (especially during CSA season, haha). My recipe is below.

The quiche pictured above contains (cooked) bacon, chopped spinach  (frozen, thawed and drained well), sauteed yellow onion, scallions, and goat cheese.

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RECIPE:

Quiche, Infinitely Adaptable

Crust:
1 cup (115g) all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup (50g) olive oil or canola oil
1/4 cup (53g) very cold water

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place flour and salt in a bowl and mix briefly with a fork to combine. Make a well in the center of the flour. Pour oil and water into the well. Mix the oil and the water briefly, then gradually incorporate the flour and salt. Press into a 9-inch (23 cm) diameter pie plate. Bake for about 5-7 minutes until the surface begins to dry out a bit. Let cool while you prepare the filling.

Filling:
7-8 large eggs
A total of 4-5 cups fillings of your choice, chopped into bite size pieces*
Salt and black pepper to taste

*Suggested fillings: ham, cooked bacon, sausage, spinach, kale, broccoli, mushrooms, sauteed onions, scallions, bell peppers, tomatoes, grated/crumbled/cubed cheese that melts and isn't too strongly flavored (Swiss, cheddar, chevre, Gouda, feta), fresh herbs (parsley, chives), red pepper flakes. If you would usually cook the ingredient before adding it to your eggs, cook it before adding to the quiche filling mixture. If using frozen vegetables, thaw and squeeze as much water as you can out of them first (especially important with leafy vegetables like spinach). If the ingredients are especially salty (like feta cheese), you may not need to add any salt to the filling mixture. If using grated cheese, save some to sprinkle over the top of the filling so that it gets browned and crunchy, yum.

Crack eggs into a bowl and beat lightly, until just mixed. Add fillings, salt, and pepper to the bowl and mix gently to combine. Pour filling mixture into the parbaked crust and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the center is no longer wobbly and almost no liquid comes out when a knife is inserted and removed from the center. Let cool for 10-15 minutes. Serve warm, with a shake or two of hot sauce if desired. Leftovers can be refrigerated.

Raspberry Pie

Raspberries are one of my favorite fruits. Until I was about 20 years old, I had only ever had fresh raspberries from the grocery store in the little plastic clamshell boxes. Expensive, few, and precious, a special treat. But now they are even more special because for me, they are steeped in the generosity of others.

My life experience with raspberry pie began rocky. My mom made a raspberry pie one time when I was a child, thickened with tapioca. I distinctly remember this because the tapioca didn't get thoroughly cooked and it was grainy and had white flecks. Then I met my husband, and he told me his grandma's raspberry pie was one of his very favorite desserts, despite not liking fruit pie in general. Early in our relationship, he went to visit his grandmother in the summer, and in typical grandma fashion she sent him home with a huge pile of fresh raspberries that she grew, the largest amount of raspberries I had ever seen in one place, way more than one could possibly finish before getting tired of them or the fruit going bad. I made a pie for him with my mom's strawberry pie recipe (which I like) but with raspberry ingredients. Half of it rotted in the fridge and I was a little sad but I have to admit that even I thought it was just OK.

We were still dating the next summer, and that year he decided to bring me to the annual family reunion to meet his grandmother. I was nervous but everyone was kind, especially grandma. She had brought raspberry pie since the raspberries were in season. It was in a 9x13 pan, and the filling was about twice as thick as a regular pie. I loved it and I told her so. From then on, she'd be sure to bring frozen raspberries to reunions to give to me, and she wrote up her recipe for the pie and gave it to me because she knew I liked to cook and bake too. A couple of times, the reunion was not going to happen because she and her boyfriend were planning a long vacation but she invited us to their farm (her boyfriend's dairy farm, but they also grew fruit and vegetables for their own use) to pick the raspberries while they were away, so someone could enjoy them (I'm thankful I got to be the one to do that).

One summer, she invited us to visit and pick raspberries while they were there, on my birthday. We picked fruit for about an hour, and she had of course made a pie and lots and lots of other food. They also gave us furniture they didn't want, and we got to play with the farm kittens. She even dug up some rhubarb and raspberry plants for us to plant in our yard now that we had one. It was a beautiful, relaxing day.

Unfortunately, since then grandma has not hosted a reunion and has had to move away from the farm into assisted living due to her health, and there's no one to care for the raspberries. My raspberry patch had a rough, slow start (my own fault for planting it where I did initially) but has finally established itself, though it still doesn't produce anywhere near enough to bake with.

However, the thread of love and generosity through raspberries continues to grow longer. My neighbors across the street inherited a large raspberry patch that gives their family more than they care to eat, and they share with me.

In the spirit of all this generosity, I try to share this pie with as many people as I can. The year she moved to my city, my sister and I ate nearly a whole pie by ourselves in a weekend while she hunted for apartments. I have brought this pie to work potlucks a couple of times, to rave reviews. Another year I made one, and the next day the electricity went out. The pie has to stay cold because of the gelatin in it but it was 90 degrees and humid outside. Around the 24 hour mark, the neighbors without electricity got together in the evening to while away some time, and we shared this pie so it wouldn't go bad (nobody complained about getting to eat pie). Another summer, my dear friend visited me for lazy vacation time after her bachelorette weekend and we picked raspberries and made a pie together. Picking goes a lot faster with two people, and you have someone to curse the mosquitoes with too. ;)

Grandma C's recipe makes use of ingredients and techniques I wouldn't normally consider to be quality cooking (Jello mix and an oil-based no-roll crust, for example) but the result tastes so good that I can't mess with it. The contrast of textures (crumbly crust, smooth gelatin, soft fruit) and balance of sweet and tart is what really makes this pie good.

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RECIPE:

Fresh Raspberry Pie
from my husband's Grandma C (Sandy)

Crust:

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup (100 g) vegetable oil

½ tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix together flour, salt, 2 tbsp sugar, oil, and milk until combined. Pat into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch pie plate. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown, pricking any bubbles with a fork or knife to release air. Remove from oven and place pan on a rack to cool. When it is almost or completely cooled, prepare filling.

Filling:

1 cup sugar

1 ½ cups water

2 tbsp cornstarch
3 oz (1 small box) raspberry flavored gelatin
4 cups (about 1 lb/450 g) fresh raspberries, washed (or 4-5 cups / 20 oz frozen raspberries; see notes)

Place 1 cup sugar, water, and cornstarch in a saucepan. Whisk to combine. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking often so it doesn’t burn. Let boil for about 3 minutes until thickened. Remove from heat and whisk in dry gelatin until well combined; this usually takes about 2 minutes. Gently fold in raspberries and pour into pie shell. Refrigerate until set, about 3-4 hours.

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Notes:

• If you REALLY have a lot of raspberries to burn and a crowd to bake for, double the recipe and make it in a 9x13 inch pan a la Grandma C.
• One thing I have done to improve upon this recipe is making it work with frozen raspberries. Homegrown raspberries are best, of course, but frozen ones from the grocery store would likely work too since they're often harvested and immediately frozen at their freshest. Though the texture might not be as good, I think I may like the taste better than fresh raspberries (not to mention much less expensive...nothing like a $50 pie that also doesn't taste good). If using frozen berries, thaw overnight in refrigerator (or carefully defrost in the microwave) and reserve juice/liquid that comes out after thawing. Add 1 tbsp lemon juice to filling; decrease water in filling by 1 cup and use juice from thawed berries in its place.
• You can also make this with fresh strawberries and strawberry gelatin. I do not recommend using frozen strawberries.
• I usually end up with a little extra filling. You can pour it into small bowls or glasses, put it in the refrigerator to set, and eat