Bacon-Maple-Bourbon Walnut Pie

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This twist on a classic pie comes from our realtor’s monthly magazine, American Lifestyle. We decided to add the bourbon to kick it up a notch. It’s the holiday season, so why not take it over the top! The bacon is really the cool element and it really adds an interesting flavor to this pie. In our recipe, we used a light maple syrup instead of the dark. I think the dark will be better but it did taste great. We also over chopped the walnuts and it probably would be better to have the larger pieces of a courser chop for some texture in the pie.

Bacon-Maple-Bourbon Walnut Pie

Bacon-Maple-Bourbon Walnut Pie

Ingredients

For the crust:

  • 4 ounces of thin-cut bacon slices
  • 5 tablespoons of solid vegetable shortening
  • 1 cup of all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons of very cold water
  • 1/2 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar

For the filling:

  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 cup of dark maple syrup
  • 1/2 cup of granulated white sugar
  • 1/2 cup of packed dark brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons bourbon
  • 2 cups of coarse chopped walnuts

Instructions

Preheat your over to 350 degrees.

First, make the crust. It’s a simple process similar to the patte brise, except you add BACON! Start by frying the bacon in a skillet on medium heat until they crisp. This should take about 3 to 4 minutes. Once crisp, transfer the cooked bacon slices to a paper towel. Now, save the bacon fat from the pan. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat and then put the rest of the leftover bacon fat into a heat-safe measuring cup. Let it cool for 10 minutes and then add in enough shortening so the total volume is 6 tablespoons (1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons).

Now that the bacon fat and shortening are ready, pour your flour into a bowl and add the fat from your measuring cup.  Cut this in with a pastry cutter or fork until it resembles coarse cornmeal.

Mix 2 tablespoons of cold water and the vinegar together and then add to the flour mixture until a soft, non-sticky dough forms. Form the dough into a ball, dust it with flour and roll into an 11 inch circle. Place a pie plate in the center and trim the edges.

Now that the pie dough is ready, start on your filling. Beat the eggs together with maple syrup, sugars and vanilla extract into a bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed. Mix in the reserved 2 tablespoons of bacon fat and the bourbon.

Crumble the bacon into small pieces in the bowl. Stir in the walnuts and then pour the filling into the pie crust.

Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes, until puffy and brown. There should only be a slight jiggle in the center. Let cool before slicing.

Fennel, Onion & Sausage with Penne

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This post is long over due. We fell in love with fennel over this past summer. We were at the farmer’s market and went to the booth of our favorite farmer. We always get peppers from him because he has the best variety, especially the shishito peppers. He talked us into getting a couple really large pieces of fennel. We didn’t know what to do with it but said “OK” and took some home with us. As luck would have it, later that weekend we saw an episode of Lidia’s Italy using fennel in a sauce with sausage and serving it with ziti pasta. It’s actually a pretty easy recipe so we tried it, and really liked it. It’s amazing how much the fennel changes when you saute it.

We’ve adjusted this recipe from Lidia’s, just because we can. You can find the original recipe on Lidia’s website. The original recipe calls for a pound of pasta but we find that 1/2 pound is plenty and allows the fennel and sausage to be the stars of the dish. Plus, it gives plenty of pasta for 2 grown men to have dinner and have some left overs for lunch on a later day. We also like using the sliced link sausage instead of ground sausage for the same reason. We usually get the best sausage we can get. This time we’re using Hot Chicken Italian Sausage. We served this with steamed summer squash with red pepper flakes.

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Fennel Sausage Pasta

Ingredients

  • Salt for the pasta water
  • 1/2 pound penne
  • 1 pound hot Italian sausage, we use linked sausage
  • 1 large fennel bulb
  • 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 medium onions, cut into half-moon slices
  • 3 cloves minced garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1/2 cup tomato paste
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped fennel fronds
  • 1 cup freshly grated Grana Padano or pecorino cheese

Directions

Heat a pot of water to a boil and add the sausage. Parboil the sausage for 5 minutes and then put it in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes to finish cooking it. It would be just as tasty grilling the sausage.

Save the water and use it for the pasta. Skim the water to remove the fat floating at the top and add some fresh water to get enough for your pasta. Heat the water back to a boil and then cook your penne following the directions on your package. Reserve 3 cups of the pasta water to add later for the sauce.

To prepare the fennel, trim the bulb and remove any tough outer parts. Reserve the fronds. Slice the bulb in half lengthwise, remove the core and then slice each half in 1/4 inch thick lengthwise slices. Separate the slivers of fennel if they are attached at the bottom and then cut the long slivers in half, so you have about 3 cups of 2 inch long slices of fennel.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook for a few minutes until they sizzle and wilt. Next, add the fennel and cook for another minute or two. Once the fennel has started to soften, add the garlic. Sprinkle on 1/4 teaspoon if salt and the red pepper flakes and stir to combine. Now, push the onion & fennel to the side of the pan and add the tomato paste. Stir the tomato paste in the spot you added it to for a minute or two until it is sizzling, then stir it in with everything else.

By  now your sausage should be finished cooking. Slice your sausage links into 1/4 inch slices and then add it to the mixture in your skillet.

Ladle in the reserved pasta water and stir well. Bring the liquid to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Let the mixture cook until the flavors meld and the sauce is thickened, about 6 minutes. Add more water if the sauce reduces too rapidly.

Add the cooked penne into the sauce and gently fold it into the sauce. Allow it to meld for few minutes. Now add the fennel fronds and mix it into the sauce.

Once it is ready, sprinkle on the cheese and allow it to melt. Then serve into warm pasta bowls.

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Our pasta cooking in the pot

Thanksgiving dinner

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Let’s state the obvious, I love Thanksgiving, especially the foods associated with this holiday. Just to be clear, I’m talking about the US Thanksgiving holiday on the 4th Thursday of November. In Texas, it’s usually just starting to get cool enough to feel like autumn and really start enjoying the hearty cold-weather foods. Plus, you’ve got the flavors that start showing up in autumn. Pumpkin. Butternut squash.

Basically, the whole idea of this blog came about because of Thanksgiving recipes. We went to visit Curt’s family in California and he couldn’t find the recipe for the stuffing that we liked and I got the idea of saving it online. This was way before social media or online storage so I created a personal website on Time Warner Cable’s system where they let you create a little personal site. When they killed that program, I brought it to WordPress.

Here is our a list of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes and we do most of them every year.

TURKEY – we used to brine and roast the turkey every year. However, last year we bought an electric smoker and we smoked a turkey (OK, 3 of them) last year. We’re going to smoke some more this year.

DRESSING – this cornbread dressing is our favorite. In fact, all other normal, traditional ones taste so bland after this cornbread, chorizo, butternut squash recipe.

Green bean casserole – this one is best when made with all fresh ingredients. Yes, it OK with canned green beans but it’s so much better with fresh bean like in this Green Bean Casserole.

DESSERT – Neither of us are big dessert fans but one of my favorites is pecan pie. However, it’s so sweet, I can only eat a small piece. Curt found a recipe for 1/2 pecan pie and 1/2 pumpkin pie. It’s a great mix of the two pies and kind of the best of both. I’ve never posted that recipe so once I do, I’ll add a link to it here.

The whole point of this post is that I hope everyone who reads this has a great Thanksgiving with great food, but more importantly, with great family and friends to share it with. The best part of spending so much time in the kitchen making great food is sharing it with people who are important to you.

Happy Thanksgiving from our table to yours!

Spicy Garlic Aioli

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A lot of the cooking shows have someone preparing an aioli and it always seems risky. I know there are only a few ingredients but they frequently separate and it seems intimating to home cooks like us. This recipe comes from a necessity in that we ran out of mayo and I wanted a sauce to go with roasted brussel sprouts and grilled asparagus. I found a bunch of recipes online but the “simple” aioli recipes used mayonnaise as a base. I found a recipe that said it is a simple 2 minute aioli, so I went for it. I did spice it up with Sriracha sauce but everything else is the same. I always thought making an aioli was complicated and risky but doing it this way makes it so easy.

The original recipe states that you shouldn’t use the immersion blender with the extra virgin olive oil because it can become bitter. The other note is that for the 1/2 cup of lighter oil, you can use light olive oil, vegetable oil, or canola oil. We chose to use vegetable oil because that’s what we have most at hand and it turned out great.

For this recipe, you will need an immersion blender with a cup attachment in order for this to turn out right. The original recipe has instructions for using a blender but I haven’t tried that method so I can’t endorse it.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole egg
  • 5 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 tsp of lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup of light oil – use light olive oil, vegetable oil or canola oil
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon  Sriracha pepper sauce
  • Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

Put the egg, garlic and lemon juice in the mixing cup and let it settle for a few seconds. Then, add the light oil. Put the immersion blender in the cup at the bottom and turn it on. As the cream forms, tilt the cup to make sure all the oil gets emulsified. This happened a lot faster than I was expecting.

Transfer the aioli to a medium bowl. Start whisking the aioli and slowly drizzle in the exra virgin olive oil and then the Sriracha. This should just take a few seconds. Add the salt and pepper to taste.

We drizzled the aioli over grilled asparagus and then the next day, used it as a spread for sandwiches. You can cut back or completely eliminate the Sriracha sauce depending on how you’ll be using it.

 

Fusion Hot Pepper Sauce

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Here’s an interesting hot sauce from one of the bloggers I follow in Italy. I can’t wait to try this one out.

Being Britalian

Each year I grow hot Italian chillies and as I harvest them I sun-dry them in batches for use throughout the year. Once dried they store in an airtight jar for a year or so. Just make sure when you pick some out that your fingers are dry, a tiny drop of water in the jar will spoil them. As my chillies in the orto are almost ready to harvest I decide to use up some of last years to make way for the new crop.

I’ve also been growing some Jamaican Scotch Bonnets, the plant is in its second year and after a not so good season last year, I took advice and potted it up to restrict the roots and it’s bearing lots of bright orange fruits this year. So using these two varieties I thought I’d create a Caribbean-Italian fusion hot pepper sauce.

The ingredients I used…

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Smoked Doña Sauce – a Texas twist on a jalapeño sauce

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A couple years ago I posted a jalapeño sauce called the Doña Sauce.  It’s a local favorite and can be found in some variation at most of the Mexican food restaurants in Austin. Once we got our smoker last summer we started smoking the ingredients, and wow does this twist make a difference. We ALWAYS have at least one container of this sauce in our refrigerator! The smoke flavor is a great addition to this sauce.

This recipe makes about 1 liter of sauce and takes about 2 and one-half hours to complete. The majority of the time is in the smoker so the active preparation is only about 30 minutes. If you don’t have a smoker, you can grill the peppers or use our original Doña Sauce recipe.

For our wood chips, we use a 50/50 ratio of mesquite and hickory. When we use the smoker, we take advantage of it and add vegetables. For example, today we’re smoking a chicken to take over to my cousin’s for dinner in his backyard. We just added a tray of the peppers and garlic above the chicken to the smoker.

Here’s a tip for variations: you can use any pepper you want or have available. In our original recipe, we only used jalapeño peppers. In this recipe, we substituted some of the jalapeño peppers with 2 poblano peppers. This reduces the heat somewhat and gives it a slightly sweeter flavor. You can also substitute hatch chili peppers, Anaheim peppers or even sweet bell peppers to reduce the heat and make it sweeter. Austin’s HEB grocery store hosts an annual Hatch Chili Pepper Festival in mid-August so we’ll be preparing some hatch pepper sauce as soon as the pepper start showing up in the stores.

Ingredients

  • 10 medium jalapeño peppers
  • 2 medium poblano peppers
  • 1 head of garlic
  • 1/2 cup of olive oil
  • 2 teaspoons of salt, divided

Directions

Heat your smoker to 250 F and get your wood chips ready. Once your smoker is hot and the chips are putting off smoke, place your whole jalapeño peppers, whole poblano peppers and garlic haed on a tray and put in your smoker. Smoke the peppers and garlic for one and one-half hour. After the 1.5 hours, the pepper skin will have started pulling away from the pepper and they’ll have a duller green color, kind of like an olive green color. This is what you’re looking for. Put them in a container to cool until they are able to be handled, about 15 minutes.

Smoked peppers and garlic.

Smoked peppers and garlic right out of the smoker.

Once the peppers and garlic have cooled, prepare the vegetables. For the jalapeño peppers, cut in half and then pull out the seeds and inner membrane. To make it spicier, leave some of the inner membrane and seeds. We usually leave about half of the seeds and membrane, but we like it hot. For the poblano peppers, cut them in half and remove the seeds. Finally, break the garlic head apart and separate out the garlic cloves. I know it seems like a lot of garlic, but trust me, it’s not too much. When you smoke them, they get a sweet, creamy flavor and lose the bitterness of raw garlic. The skins should come off the garlic cloves very easily. You don’t need to cut up the cloves of garlic.

 

Peppers and Garlic ready to be blanched.

Peppers and garlic after they have been prepared.

Put the peppers and garlic in a large pot like in the picture below.

Peppers and garlic in pot

These are the peppers and garlic before the water is added.

Add enough water to cover the peppers and garlic and add 1 teaspoon of salt. Bring the water to a boil and then simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

Peppers and garlic covered in water.

These are the peppers and garlic covered in water.

Now, use tongs to move the peppers and garlic to your blender. Add the 1/2 cup olive oil and the remaining teaspoon of salt to the blender . Add about 1/2 cup of the water that you used for the peppers to boil in. Keep the rest of the water to use to get the consistency you are looking for.

Peppers, garlic & olive oil in blender.

The peppers, garlic and olive oil have been added to the blender.

Use the food processor mode to blend the ingredients into a creamy smooth sauce. At this point, taste the sauce and check for flavor and consistency. we usually add the rest of the salt and another 1/2 cup of water. Depending on your peppers and how thin you want your sauce, you can adjust the flavor with additional salt and water to your preference. Use the blender to mix the additional salt and water until smooth and creamy.

Here is the final stage of the Smoked Doña Sauce. If you look close, we are almost exactly at 1 liter of sauce. Put the sauce in a non-reactive container (we use glass) and store it in the refrigerator. You can use this as a sauce for chips or add it to anything you want.

Blended Doña Sauce

This is the blended Doña Sauce.

Chipotle Pasta Salad

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I’ll be honest, this is my FAVORITE pasta salad. I think of this salad as the perfect summer pasta salad, but to be honest, we make it year round because we like it so much. I posted the recipe for the chipotle paste that is used in this salad in a post yesterday. This is the punch that gives this pasta salad a great flavor.

You can use any type of pasta that you like this. We used to get a big bag of multi-colored garden rotini from Sam’s Club but we haven’t seen it at our location lately. This was a great noodle for this salad because it holds up great and the color makes it fun. The Sam’s  website shows it should be in stock at our location so we’ll have to look for it again. In the pictures, we’re using a fusilli pasta from Trader Joe’s. We’ve also used farfalla pasta in the past but it broke apart so I’d stick with a thicker pasta with more grooves on it.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound dried pasta of your choice
  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/4 cup chipotle paste (see recipe)
  • 2 roma tomatoes, diced
  • 2 carrots, julienned
  • 1 medium red onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped (can substitute parsley)
  • 1 jalapeño, finely diced (optional)
  • 1 tsp  sea salt, or to your preference

Directions

To start, cook your pasta noodles according to the directions on the package. Definitely pay attention to the time and don’t over cook this pasta or it will fall apart while you’re mixing it. Read the next step before you finish. You’re going to put the hot pasta water into a bowl with the red onions and carrots to soften them.

While the pasta is cooking, get your vegetables ready. Once they’re cut, put the red onions and carrots into a small glass bowl. When the pasta is finished cooking, pour the hot water into the bowl with your red onion and carrots. Let this soak for about 10 minutes. Then, drain the carrots and onions and rinse well.

Now, mix the mayonnaise with the chipotle paste until it’s well mixed. It should turn a pinkish color.

Pre-mixed Pasta Salad

Pre-mixed pasta salad with the onions, carrots, parsley and jalapenos and noodles

Add the pasta noodles, tomatoes, carrots, red onion, cilantro, jalapeño, and the mayonnaise chipotle paste mixture into a large bowl and gently fold the ingredients together.

If you look close, you’ll see that the picture actually uses parsley instead of cilantro. It gives the salad a different flavor but it’s just as good. If you have family members who don’t like cilantro, just substitute the cilantro for parsley and it will turn out great.

Once the noodles are well coated with the mayonnaise chipotle mixture, you are good to go. You can eat it right away or “sample” it just to make sure 😉 – however it’s best if you put it in the refrigerator and let it cool for at least an hour.

Chipotle Pasta Salad after it's been mixed.

Chipotle Pasta Salad after it’s been mixed.

Obviously, this makes a bunch of pasta salad and way more than 2 people can eat in one meal. It’s a perfect side to take with you to a BBQ or summer cookout. It also likely means leftovers! This salad will last a week or so in the refrigerator. When we serve it, we’ll sometimes put it over a bed of lettuce which adds a nice texture to it. For lunch, I’ll sometimes take a small bowl of this pasta salad and mix in some tuna for a tuna salad – this is so great and easy for a lunch at work.