recipes
Oil Pie Crust
Apple Orange Nut Pie
Fudge Pecan Pie
Apple Chicken Fajitas
Chai
Chai concentrate
Oil Pie Crust
9" pie dish
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp almond extract (optional)
Makes one thick bottom crust for 9" pie dish. For a covered pie with a top and bottom crust, double the recipe.
Mix flour and salt together with a whisk or fork. Measure oil and milk (and optional extract) and pour them together into the bowl of flour. Mix with a fork until the wet ingredients are evenly distributed, but don't overmix. In this case, that means you should still see flecks of dry flour all over the dough in the bowl.
If you've doubled the recipe, divide the dough into two parts for the two crusts. Form the crust into a thick patty between two sheets of waxed paper, and roll until big enough for dish.
There are a couple of ways to get the bottom crust in the dish. I usually peel off the top sheet of paper, and turn the dish upside-down on the crust. Then, slide one hand under the wax paper with the other hand on the bottom of the dish (which is now facing up), and gently, but quickly, flip the whole thing over. Carefully peel the paper off the crust, and fit the crust into place in the dish. If it tears or doesn't evenly line up around the edge, use excess dough from the bowl or other edges of the crust to repair any imperfections. This repair work will be invisible in the finished pie, but if the crust has a hole in the bottom you're in for some difficult cleaning afterwards. This crust recipe is particularly fragile, so you're almost certain to have a tear or two to fix. Not a big deal, it all tastes the same in the end.
Apple Orange Nut Pie
5 cups tart apples, chopped
1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup orange marmalade
2 tbs flour
1 tsp cinnamon
Put filling in an unbaked pie shell (in a 9" dish). Cover with the top half of the unbaked pie crust. Cut ventilation slits in top crust and bake at 375 for about 1 hour. Sometimes the marmalade bubbles out of the crust and drips, so you may want to put a piece of aluminum foil under the pie to prevent an oven mess.
Fudge Pecan Pie
1 heaping cup pecans (halves or coarsely chopped)
3 eggs
12 oz. package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 stick (8 tbs) butter or margarine
1/4 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp vanilla
And choose one of the two options below:
Version 1:
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup dark Karo corn syrup
1/3 cup honey
Version 2:
1/3 cup brown sugar (packed)
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup dark Karo corn syrup
1/3 cup honey
Beat eggs until frothy. Melt the stick of butter with about 2/3 of the package of chocolate chips and let stand to cool a bit. Mix the chocolate mixture in with the eggs, then mix all other ingredients in as well, saving the pecans and the remaining chocolate chips for last.
Pour mixture into an unbaked, 9" pie shell. Cook at 325 for 50 minutes, checking until done. When the top is crusting over and cracks, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out gooey, but the surface is firm, the pie is ready. The pie will set when it cools off.
Be sure to let pie cool off completely to room temperature before serving, or it will be too gooey to cut.
Apple Chicken Fajitas
Chicken Tenderloins (3 or so per person)
Rose's Lime Juice
Yellow Onion
1 Apple (any kind, crunchy is best)
Misc. vegetables, beans, etc.
The quantities are not specific, it all depends on how many people you're serving, and how hungry you are. For 4 people, use one medium yellow onion and about a dozen chicken tenderloins or equivalent of some other boneless chicken.
Chop chicken into convenient fajita-sized pieces. Cut them a little big, they'll shrink when you cook them. Put chicken in a bowl and pour Rose's lime juice over the chicken, add water if necessary so the liquid reaches all the chicken in the bowl. Let soak in refrigerator for one hour.
Coarsely chop lots of yellow onion and the apple. Put a little oil in a skillet, place the chicken in the skillet along with a little of the juice you were soaking the chicken in. There should be enough liquid in the skillet to cover the bottom so the chicken is still soaking in it at first. It will mostly boil away during cooking. Dump all the onion and apple on top of the chicken, cook at medium or a bit more until chicken is done, tossing and stirring frequently.
Serve with warm tortillas, grated cheese, peppers, black beans, rice, black olives, or whatever you'd like in the fajitas.
Chai
Serves: 2 cups or one extra-large mug
Total prep time: about 30 minutes
1 1/2 cups water
10 black peppercorns
1" cinnamon stick (about half of one stick from a typical spice jar)
10 green cardamom pods
10 cloves
2-4 tsp ground (or grated fresh) ginger
3 spoons sugar
2-4 tbs honey
2/3 cup milk
ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg
2 tbs (heaping) black Indian tea (loose leaf)
Measure water into a small saucepan. Measure out and set the milk aside now, to let it stand at room temperature and warm up a little while the mix is cooking.
The amount of ground (or grated fresh) ginger will also affect the spicy-ness of the drink, as will the peppercorns, so experiment with more or less until you're happy with the taste.
Put peppercorns, cinnamon stick, cardamom, and cloves into a small plastic bag (like a sandwich bag) and use something solid to give it all one hard crunch. Do not crush the whole mix to powder, just a single good mash is about right. Dump spices into the water. Add ginger and nutmeg (to taste), stir. Bring mix to boil. Reduce heat to a hot simmer (somewhere between Low and Medium Low), cover, let cook for 15 minutes.
Add sugar and honey, stir until dissolved. Add milk, stir, and bring heat to medium high or a bit more. Stir often, watching mix for signs that it's hot enough: You don't need a full boil, but close, so as not to scald the milk. As soon as you see the first bubble rise to the surface, that's hot enough. Measure out the tea while the mixture is heating - you'll want to add it in a hurry, so have it prepared.
When the temperature looks right, add some ground cinnamon and the loose leaf tea. Give it a once-around stir, then remove from heat and cover. Let sit for 3 minutes.
Pour through a strainer and serve immediately.
(note: don't use a little hot tea strainer, there's too much solid stuff
in the brew for that. Use a bigger strainer if you have one.)
Chai Concentrate
Based on the Chai recipe above, this version makes about 7 cups of chai, but without the milk. This way, you can store the spiced tea in a bottle in the refrigerator and use it to make hot or cold chai by adding milk whenever the mood strikes.
7 1/2 cups water
3 whole cinnamon sticks (about 2 inches each)
1 tbs whole cloves
3 tbs whole green cardamom pods
1 tbs whole black peppercorns
1 heaping tsp ground ginger
honey, sugar (optional)
3/4 cup black loose-leaf tea leaves
Pour the water into a large saucepan (6qt) and get it started heating up to boil. Crush each whole spice ingredient, then add it to a bowl. Don't crush to powder, just give each spice a good mash to help the flavors release during cooking. Dump all those crushed spices plus the ginger into the water and give the whole mix a quick stir. When the water reaches boiling, cover the saucepan and turn the heat down to simmer. Let stew for 15 minutes. Now would be a good time to measure out the tea you'll need later.
Add a healthy squirt of honey or a dose of sugar (to taste) and stir well. Bring water back to a boil and dump the tea leaves in. Give it one quick stir, then take the pot off the heat, and cover. Let stand for 5 minutes.
Pour out through a strainer into something that can handle the sudden heat. I use a big 8-cup Pyrex measuring pitcher. Put chai in the fridge, preferably on top of an oven mitt/hot pad, until it's cooled down enough to store in whatever carafe you have handy.
Notes:
This mix should be kept in the refrigerator. It should keep
for several days (a week or two?), though at my house it's
usually drunk quickly enough that I don't know the lifespan
for certain. When it's time to sweeten the chai during
cooking, keep in mind what you plan to do with it later. Chai
is supposed to be somewhat sweet, but if you're going to use
soy milk, for example, that's already sweetened, so you don't
need to add much sugar or honey to the chai. This mix does
well in icy chai lattés from the blender as well.