Pecan Pie!

A very late post, sorry. Christmas is a great time to make pecan pie too though!

What you need:

FILLING:

1 1/2 - 2 cups of pecans (whole, chopped, pieces, any work)*

1 cup of clear Karo syrup

1 cup of brown sugar

3 eggs

2 tbsp vanilla

pinch of salt

1/3 cup melted (cooled) butter

*You can use any type of nuts really, walnuts or hazelnuts should also be nice.

CRUST:

1 3/4 cup Butter Flavored Crisco + 2 tbsp*

2 cups Flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp ice water

*you can substitute half and half butter and Crisco if you like.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F

First you make the crust.

Mix the flour and salt then start mixing in the Crisco and ice water until well mixed and resembling dough. Sometimes I add a little extra flour if needed. When everything is well mixed roll it up into a ball and wrap in plastic and put it in the fridge while you make the pie filling.

While you crust is getting cold melt your butter in the microwave or on the stove and let it sit until luke warm or cool. Mix the sugar, syrup, salt and vanilla with your melted butter in a bowl. In a separate bowl beat your eggs and then add them to the sugar mix. Set this aside and take your pie crust dough out of the fridge.

You need a big clean, clear counter space to roll out your dough. I usually put down cutting mats or wax paper. Use a lot of flour on your surface and on your rolling pin, you do not want your crust to stick to either. Place your ball of dough on your floured surface and pat it down a bit. Then use your rolling pin to roll it out to about 1/8 of an inch thinkness (about 1/3 cm). The easiest way to get your dough from the table to the pie pan in one piece is to wrap it around your rolling pin and roll it gently off onto your pan. Gently press it down into the pan and remove the excess crust leaving about an inch around the edge. Make sure any holes or perforations are covered well! The press this outer edge into a scallop pattern. (I'm not so great at that. :) )

Pour in your filling mix and add your nuts on top. OR mix your nuts into the filling and pour into the crust. Don't worry, either way the nuts will float to the top of the pie while it cooks. Place your pie in the oven for an hour. If you check your pie and see that the crust is becoming brown you can cover it (just the edge of the pie) with foil for the last portion of your cooking time. (Mine was fine w/o this step) Don't worry if your pie raises some in the middle, it will settle as it cools!

Serve cool. And this is what your pie should look like:

Lots of love and Happy Holidays. Весела Коледа! ~ Samantha

A Taste of the Balkans

On Sunday, I spent one of the most decadent days at home alone. After a day full of reading, taking a bath, and indulging in all sorts of hair and body masks and scented lotions, I felt like having a taste of home. A mere hour later, I was in full swing in the kitchen, with a dinner guest helping and inspiring me. We made a few very simple things, but infused with the unique taste of the Balkans. We made a cucumber-dill dip, pan fried meat patties, and my mom's "golden" home fries.




Served with a generously large bottle of Retsina wine - a traditional Greek wine, also known as wine of the Gods. It was a basic comfort meal, yet perfect for a cold night inside. Great when served with a generous side of TV shows, and even a little bit of ... American football.




Here are the recipes:

Cucumber Dill Dip

1 large cucumber, peeled and seeded
1 container of sour cream
2 tbs chopped dill (fresh or dried)
half a handful of finely chopped walnuts
a few cloves of freshly chopped garlic or garlic poweder (feel free to skip it if this is a romantic dinner, hehe)
1 tbs olive oil
salt to taste

Dice the cucumber in small cubes and mix it with the sour cream. Add all the herbs, spices, and condiments and let it chill in the fridge before serving. You can make it well ahead of time, but it might get a little watery, so drain the water out before serving.

Pan Fried Meat Patties

1 lbs meatloaf mix (veal, beef, and pork)
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
1 small head of onions, diced finely
1/3 cup clear seltzer
1 tbs cumin
1 tbs oregano
1 tbs thyme
summer savory, salt, pepper to taste

Mix the meat with all the other ingredients and knead for a few minutes with your hands until you have a homogenous mass. Add the seltzer - it will keep the meat juicy - and knead again. Form small patties with your hands and fry in a nonstick pan with a bit of oil. Make sure the patties are cooked through. It's best to use a medium high heat, as not to burn the surface.

Home Fries

2 lbs potatoes
1 large head onions
3 tbs olive oil
a few slivers of butter
paprika, rosemary, salt, and pepper to taste

Peel and cut potatoes in half, the slice each half in pieces of about 1/4 inch thickness. Heat the olive oil in a non stick pan and flash fry the potatoes for about 2 minutes, stir them and flash fry the other side. Then lower the heat to medium (6 out of 9 on my stove), cover, and let cook for about 15 minutes, stirring periodically. Add the sliced onions and let it cook for another 5-7 minutes. You can turn the heat up a bit to make sure the onions caramelize. Add the spices and herbs and top with a few thin slivers of butter.

We ate all this food on the coffee table, using mostly fingers. The meat patties were great served inside pita bread pockets, topped generously with the cucumber dill dip.




The Retsina wine was delicious, even if not the best I have had, but very good, considering we are in Central PA.

Meat Roll "Stephanie"

Today, it snowed for the first time in Central Pennsylvania. I guess it's winter. What better time for two of my all-time favorite comfort foods. Also, my all-time favorite soccer team is playing an important game this afternoon, so there will be soccer-watching and eating!

Soccer and meatloaf just go together. Especially when the club is Chelsea, a working-class team. I started eating red meat again about 5 years ago, and that's when I came up with an adaptation of a meat "roll" that my mom always made when I was a child. At home, this meat roll is commonly called "Stephanie." I have no idea who Stephanie is, really, but a google search for her meat roll confirms it's quite a popular recipe.

For my version of it, you will need:

2 lbs of ground beef, preferably not too fatty

4 eggs - one raw and 3 hard boiled 

1/2 cup bread crumbs. Mine were Italian flavored, you can use plain or any other flavor

1/2 head onion, chopped

4 small dill pickles, cut up in spears

1/2 cup thawed carrot/green peas mix

1/2 cup of grated cheese, any yellow firm variety will do. Today I used brick cheese from a local dairy farm

1 tbs salt

1 tbs oregano

1/2 tbs pepper

and my secret ingredient:

4 tbs of red pepper/tomato spread called Lutenitsa. You can get it online or ... in Bulgaria. If you don't have a way of finding it, you can use a paste mix of ketchup and paprika, or a mix of even parts Korean red pepper paste, kochujang (but careful, it's very spicy) and thick tomato puree. All these are decent substitutes, but I prefer lutenica by far!

Mix the meat, chopped onions, bread crumbs, raw egg, pepper spread, and spices together and let stand in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Then spread it out on aluminum foil and arrange the hard boiled eggs, carrots/green peas, and pickle spears on top. 

Start folding together by gradually lifting one edge of the foil (start at the wide side), and slowly and carefully roll into, well, a meat roll.Do make sure that the roll is tightly packed together, as it will prevent it from crumbling or falling apart when you serve. Transfer to a baking pan and bake at 450 degrees for about 35 minutes. Take out and sprinkle with the grated cheese and bake for another 5 minutes until the cheese is golden brown. Before serving, I transfered the roll to a cold pan, and of course managed to break it in half, with one half almost completely disintegrating into its components. I think I managed to more or less reconstruct it (pssst, noone saw that!). It's advisable that you apply more diligence and patience.

Inspired by Yana, I also decided to make a pot of my lentils-spinach-curry soup to serve with the meat roll. A very, very large pot of lentils soup, enough to feed a household of two for a while. It also freezes very well.

My ingredients:

1 package of dry lentils

1/2 large head of onions, diced

1/2 cup chopped carrots

1 red pepper, chopped

1 small frozen package of whole leaf spinach

1 can petite diced tomatoes

2 tbs summer savory (you can use thyme or oregano too, if you'd prefer)

2 tbs paprika

2 tbs olive oil

2 tbs salt

12 cups of water (it's a VERY large pot)

My secret ingredients:

1 small pack of curry

A handful of my grandfather's mystery garden herb pods that we've always used for lentils and never called anything other than "pods". I finally looked it up today and it is ... Trigonella foenum-graecum, or fenugreek. Who knew! A fascinating herb. I am not quite sure where to get it from, other than my grandfather's garden, but perhaps in a well-stocked spice aisle.

I did not sauté anything, just put all the ingredients together in my large pot. The different colors of the vegetables looked really pretty.



I added the water, lentils, and all the spices to this pretty pile. Then I brought it to a boil, and let it summer for about an hour on medium-low heat (4 out of 9). 

Serve the soup and meat roll with nice whole wheat bread, and a generous amount of soccer cheering.

BLUE IS THE COLOUR!

Amerikanska Banitza

Elena is kind enough to let me post in her food blog. I'm an American girl who is married to a Bulgarian. I will post many things, but I'd say for now it will predominantly be my attempts at recreating Bulgarian dishes my husband and I will miss here in America. :) I'm doing my best to learn to cook them for us, from memory and with some help from his mom and Elena. This is MY version of TIKVENIK or Pumpkin Banitza. This is NOT the traditional recipe, though the idea is similar.

Amerikanska Banitza (Tikvenik)

What you will need:

Small circular baking pan
1 package of phyllo dough (Make sure it is completely thawed before you unroll it or it will break!)
1 pie pumpkin
1-1.5 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 - 1 cup vegetable oil
cooking spray or melted butter
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice)

First you will want to take your phyllo dough out of the freezer. It takes 2 hours to thaw. In the mean-time you can peel and shred your pumpkin. Or you can bake the damn thing and save yourself an hour of shredding! If you bake it, cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds, and cover each side with foil. I bake at 350 for 1-1.5 hours. Then scoop out the cooked pumpkin with a spoon once it cools. If you shred it raw, you probably will not need to shred it all. A few cups will be more than enough for 2 small banitzas. I used the small side of the grater, which is fairly masochistic but I'll try it shredded larger next time and tell you how it does. When you have the pumpkin in one form or another then, you should mix the brown sugar and vegetable oil in a saucepan over low heat. Mix until the sugar is thoroughly wet but not melted, then add the pumpkin and mix well. Mostly the heat is just to help the sugar melt, you are not cooking the pumpkin. Then sprinkle in the pumpkin pie spice and pecans and mix again. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Then you can very slowly unwrap your phyllo. I messed this up and my phyllo ended up broken, so I used what I had. You take your first sheet and put it on a flat surface. You will need to cover your other sheets with plastic wrap with a moist towel on top like the package says or it will dry out and be useless. Spray your phyllo sheet thoroughly with cooking spray or brush carefully with melted butter according to the directions. Then use about 2 tablespoons of the pumpkin mixture and spread randomly around the sheet. Carefully roll up the sheet lengthwise so you have a long roll. Spray your pan with cooking spray and lay the sheet along the edge and work your way in with more rolls until you fill the pan.

Then just for good measure I brushed the top with more butter.

Bake until the top is golden brown. Then sprinkle with water and cover with a towel to cool.

Pictures from top to bottom:
*Cleaned pumpking waiting to be peeled and shredded
*Pumpkin, sugar, oil, pecan and spice filling for the banitza.
*Phyllo sheet with pumpkin filling spread on it, waiting to be rolled and placed in pan.
*Pan filled with phyllo rolls, ready to be baked (Notice that some of my rolls are breaking...this is because I did NOT let my phyllo dough thaw properly! Don't make my mistake, lol.)

Lentil Soup a la Elena

Being unemployed is most dreadful, rest assured, but just not today. Rain and looming snow, 46 degrees, but feels like 39, or so the Weather Channel tells me. Because I have not been outside, and I am determined not to go out at all today. Except we still have to eat. Luckily, I found a pack of Goya lentils, onions and carrots - enough for some traditional Bulgarian lentil soup.

Of course, I had never made lentil soup before. My mother made it for me and she passed this spring. And with her, I am afraid, the family has also lost the lentil soup recipe. So, this is for you, Mom: I don't have a job, but I make your favorite soup.


I googled for recipes and got a few, with and without sauteing the ingredients first. Then I asked my friend Elena, who shared a recipe for traditional Bulgarian lentil soup with a little spinach and curry. I then adapted it according to my tastes and the contents of my pantry:

Ingredients
1 onion, diced
1 big carrot, diced
1 fistful baby spinach
1/4 of a 28oz can of pureed tomatoes
3/4 of 16oz package of dry lentils
2 cloves garlic, whole
red pepper
salt
summer savory
2-3 tsp curry
olive oil
Briefly saute the onion, the carrot and the spinach in a little olive oil, until all ingredients soften a little. Add all spices.

In a pot combine with the lentils, the tomatoes and the garlic. Add 5-6 cups of water. Boil at medium heat for half hour - 40 minutes. If the soup gets too tick, add more water. Serve with lemon juice or a spoonful of vinegar.

Bulgarian strudel

On this rainy autumn morning, nothing sounded better than my mother's Bulgarian apple strudel. We just bought some golden delicious apples from the farmer's market yesterday and I had frozen phyllo dough. So, I got together the ingredients:

1 pack Athens phyllo dough (there are two packs inside the box, you will only need one)
3 large apples
1 cup chopped walnut
1 cup sugar
1/2 vegetable oil
2 tbs butter
cinnamon and lime juice to taste



Grate the apples and squeeze some of the juice out so that they are not too moist (makes a very yummy morning drink!), then mix with the rest of the ingredients. If you haven't thawed the phyllo dough ahead of time according to the package instructions, you can use your microwave on low for a few minutes. Then spread it out on a flat surface. Place about 1 spoonful of the mixture on top of the top pastry sheet, then roll up and place in the baking pan. Continue until you've used up all the apples. When placing the rolls in the pan, make sure they are tightly packed next to each other, leaving no air or space in the pan. It's OK to bend and twist them as necessary.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes or until golden brown.

Take out and sprinkle the surface with some of the juice from the apples or water and cover with a kitchen towel until it cools off, to make sure the pastry is soft. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.



Cut up in pieces, and eat!

Guacamole

The first recipe for this blog is for a favorite dip of mine, an amazing guacamole that I learned how to make from a Mexican friend of mine.For a generous serving for 4-5 guests, you will need:

4 ripe avocados, mashed (we like ours chunky)
1 large tomato, diced in small cubes
1/2 of one medium white onion (preferably sweet), chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
5 stalks cilantro, chopped
2 tbs. lime juice
salt and cumin to taste

We mixed all ingredients together, and left the avocado pits in the bowl while chilling it in the fridge. This prevents it from browning. Remember to remove the pits before serving.

In our house, we served this with Harry and David's Cherry Salsa. You can taste the cherry halves, but the salsa is also very pleasantly spicy and has a great kick!

Enjoy.