Besotted Gourmet » Fall Recipes

Baked Pear Pie

Jessica — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:40:09 +0000

Ufff… Finally home and back to a regular schedule. Thanksgiving down on the Cape and a few relaxing days up in the New Hampshire White Mountains made for a lovely Thanksgiving weekend, which included my final recipe for the Gourmet-only month of November.

I have to say that my intention for this homage to Gourmet was to be just that, a homage, but I feel like I’m griping about it more than praising it. Here’s the thing about Gourmet… it’s spectacular to look at, day-dream about all of the wonderful urban restaurants and cozy, convivial bed and breakfasts that cure their own bacon, but I’ve found it a touch challenging (and disappointing – I’m sorry!) to cook from.

For Thanksgiving, I was excited to make the recipe for Pear Butterscotch Pie featured in the September issue. I may have mentioned this before, but PT and I are the dessert-lovers’ yin and yang… I opt for anything with fruit or a grandmotherly touch (plum tart, bread puddings, strawberry rhubarb pie, pistachio ice cream), whereas PT would prefer sugar-crusted, chocolate-dipped, caramel-swirled just about anything. I thought that this Pear Butterscotch Pie recipe would be a nice compromise.

Honest, my heart was in the right place, but the recipe only called for ½ cup of brown sugar, actually mentioning that it would bubble and boil into butterscotch while the pie baked. Well, I was skeptical, but, this is Gourmet after all – they should know whether or not brown sugar will bubble and boil into butterscotch in their own recipe.

I envisioned gooey ribbons of buttery, sugary butterscotch enveloping baked, spiced pears in a butter crust. Sadly, everything went according to plan except for the butterscotch; the brown sugar sweetened the pears, but there was nothing that even the most forgiving dessert-lover could claim was butterscotch.

It was a lovely pear pie, nonetheless, and I’ve included the recipe here for those of you whose tastes favor the less sugary dessert, but if you’re trying to sweet-talk someone, you’ll do much better with something like the Salted Peanut Butter Toffee Cookies, Toffee-covered Cheesecake, or Celebration Cake with sugarey, chocolatey frosting.

Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Baked Pear Pie, Serves 8

Adapted from Gourmet

Prep Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes

Bake & Rest Time: 4 Hours

Total Prep Time: 5 Hours 15 Minutes

Ingredients:

For the filling:

3 Tbls. Flour

1 Tsp. Cinnamon

½ Tsp. Nutmeg

1/8 Tsp. Salt

½ Cup Packed Brown Sugar

5 Pears, Bosc and Anjou mix

1 Tbsp. Lemon Juice

1 Tsp. Pure Vanilla

1 Tbls. Butter, cut into bits

1 Egg, beaten with a splash of water

1 Tbsp. Raw Sugar

For the pie crust:

2 ½ Cups Flour

1 Cup (2 Sticks) Butter, cut into ½ inch pieces and kept very cold in the refrigerator

½ Tsp. Salt

6-10 Tbls. Ice Water

Preparation:

Start out by making the pie crusts, as they’ll need to rest for just over an hour.

In the bowl of a processor, pulse the flour, butter pieces, and salt until the mixture is sandy. Drizzle in 8 Tbls. of the ice water and pulse 3-5 more times.

The dough will still be sandy. Turn it out onto a well-floured surface, apply some pressure to it, and push the dough away from you with the heel of your hand; gather any of the sandy bits, mound on top of the dough, add a couple more tablespoons of the ice water, and apply pressure and push the dough away again. Repeat the process until the dough has all come together (but don’t add any more water).

Divide the dough into two pieces and flatten into discs. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

While the dough is chilling, get on with your pie filling.

Peel, core, and cut the pears into 6 sections and place in a large bowl.

Put a cookie or baking sheet on the middle rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425°.

Whisk together the cinnamon, flour, nutmeg, salt, and brown sugar until the mixture is uniform in consistency. Cover the pears with the spice mixture and distribute evenly. Sprinkle with the lemon juice and vanilla, mix well, and let sit for 15-30 minutes to soak.

Once the hour is up on the pie crusts, remove one of them from the refrigerator, unwrap, and turn out onto a well-floured surface. Using a rolling pin, roll out to 12-14 inches in diameter and drape into a 9-inch pie dish.

Add the pear filling to the pie crust and dot with the bits of butter.

Roll out the second pie crust according to the same method and drape over the pie filling, allowing the excess to drape over the side. Using kitchen scissors, cut the excess dough that falls beyond ½ inch past the pie plate and set aside.

Brush the top of the pie crust with the egg wash and sprinkle with half of the sugar.

Combine all of the excess dough and roll out until it is ½ inch thick. Using cookie cutters, cut snowflakes, leaves, candy canes, or any other shape and place them on the pie.

Cut 3 one-inch long pie vents in the top crust and pop into the oven, on top of the cookie/baking sheet for 20 minutes. Open the oven door for 30 seconds, turn the heat down to 375°, and bake for 40-45 more minutes.

Cool for 2-3 hours, cut carefully, serve with whipped cream or ice cream and enjoy!

Red Wine Caramel Apples from Gourmet

Jessica — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:01:05 +0000

PT and I went apple picking last weekend and for the price of a dinner for two, were allowed to roam through a local orchard in Ipswich, chomping on apples, and occasionally dropping the most perfect red, round orbs into a peck-sized bag.

It was a gorgeous day, bright and crisp, and the orchard was helpfully marked with signs indicating where the various tree varieties – fuji, macoun, macintosh, golden delicious – were located. After a visit with the farm’s miniature horse, Possum, who was delightfully sweet and gentle, and a satisfying afternoon snack of fried whole belly clams and clam chowder, PT and I were headed home with more apples than I knew what to do.

Rewind a few days, and, in my grief, I impulsively promised to post recipes exclusively from Gourmet, before realizing that one of the issues I swore to use had very few recipes, and the ones it did have, largely consisted of exotic ingredients that didn’t jive with my peck of apples and final farm share haul.

That was, until I luckily and serendipitously came across (okay, okay, it was on the front cover), one of Ruth Reichl’s favorite recipes for Red Wine Caramel Apples. This would do just fine.

I planned a Fall-themed dinner of pan-roasted chicken with cranberries, cranberry pecan salad, and red wine caramel apples for dessert. The best part of this recipe is the fun that you can have with your dinner companions, in this case, PT and dear CS, swirling caramel and dipping apples in pools of lovely, sweet goodness.

Enjoy these apples before Fall is ushered out to make room for Winter.

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

Red Wine Caramel Apples, Serves 6

Adapted from Gourmet

Prep Time: 30 Minutes

Cooling Time: 30 Minutes

Total Prep Time: 1 Hour

Ingredients:

6 Apples

2 Cups Sugar

½ Cup Water

1 ½ Cups Pinot Noir

6 Tbls. Heavy Cream

Preparation:

Bring the sugar and water to boil in a medium-sized sauce pan over medium-high heat, stirring just until the sugar is dissolved, but be sure to let the pan be as the mixture begins to boil.

Meanwhile, set the wine to boil in another small sauce pan over medium-high heat for 10 minutes, until the volume is reduced by half.

While both sauce pans are boiling, get the apples apparatus ready. Stick popsicle sticks, or, in my case, freaky finger forks into cleaned and dried apples and set aside.

Set waxed or parchment paper over a cookie sheet and set aside.

After the wine has boiled for 10 minutes, turn the heat down to low to keep warm. Tend to the boiling sugar, swirling the pan, and watching for caramelization – it happens quickly, so keep your eye on it. Once it starts to caramelize, watch for the color to go a deep amber. Once that happens, pour your reduced wine into the pan CAREFULLY – it will bubble up, hiss, and generally make a mess of your stove top, but won’t do any real harm.

Stir the cream into the mixture in well, and put a candy thermometer inthe pot. Once the mixture reaches 238°, remove from the heat and let cool until it’s reached 200°.

With your apples on one side and the lined cookie sheet on the other, take each apple and swirl in the warm, liquidy caramel, and set on the lined cookie sheet to harden. Repeat with the rest of the apples, let them cool for 30 minutes, and then pass around to your friends and enjoy!

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Cognac Mustard Sauce

Jessica — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:51:54 +0000

Every food blogger has their own reasons for engaging in the odd behaviors, rituals, and self-disciplines that go into maintaining an active food blog – apologizing to loved ones for consistently serving cold food because you needed time to photograph it, rarely cooking the same thing twice because you want to be able to make a post out of something new, timing each part of a recipe’s preparation, in order to give an accurate estimate of the preparation time – it’s all a bit nutty.

Some of us do it because it’s an escape – a place that is our own, but that we share with the thousands (millions?) of food blog readers, some hope to become famous food writers, and some, like me, enjoy the idea of keeping a flexible, updatable library of our favorite recipes (and, yes, I secretly dream of being a famous food writer, as well – with realistic expectations, of course.)

Until I started Besotted, my ‘library’ and its ‘notes’ were a handful of dog-earred pages that had been photocopied out of borrowed cookbooks, and Post-It Notes on the pages of my favorite recipes, reminding me to turn down the temperature of the oven, add an additional ingredient, or cook for a different amount of time. It was scattered at best, and not a very effective compendium of my cooking history.

This Pan-Roasted Chicken with Cognac Mustard Sauce was one of those recipes that I had photocopied out of a book, Second Helpings from Union Square Cafe. It has multiple updates to the ingredient list and quantities, and I took less than stringent notes on my updates to its preparation, so I was forever trying to remember what went right and wrong the last time. It was not a successful strategy. Posting here is a much more effective recipe library system and has the happy benefit of allowing me to share some of my favorite recipes. Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Cognac Sauce, Serves 4

Adapted from Second Helpings from Union Square Cafe

Prep Time: 40 Minutes

Roasting Time: 20 Minutes

Total Prep Time: 1 Hour

Ingredients:

2lbs. Chicken parts, preferably thighs and legs

1 Tsp. Salt

½ Tsp. Pepper

2 Tbls. Vegetable Oil

3 Cloves Garlic, chopped

2 Shallots, chopped

2 Tbls. Fresh Oregano, chopped

3 Bay Leaves

10 Peppercorns

¼ Cup Cognac

¼ Cup White Wine

1 Cup Chicken Stock

2 Tsp. Dijon Mustard

1 Tbls. Butter

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Season the chicken parts with the salt and pepper.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat until the oil starts smoking. Add the seasoned chicken pieces to the pan, turn the heat down slightly, and cook on each side for 2 minutes, for a total of 6-8 minutes.

Position the chicken pieces so that the skin side is down, transfer the pan to the oven, and cook the chicken for 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and add the garlic, shallots, oregano, bay leaves, and peppercorns to the pan, mixing well. Return the pan to the oven and cook the chicken for an additional 5 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven again, transfer the chicken to a serving plate and cover with aluminum foil to keep warm.

Place the pan over medium-high heat for 1-2 minutes, stirring the sauce constantly. Remove the pan from the heat to add the cognac; return to the heat and allow the sauce to reduce until syrupy, about 3 minutes. Add the wine and, again, reduce until syrupy, another 3-5 minutes. Add the stock and reduce slightly – about 5-10 minutes – until the sauce is rich and thick.

Whisk in the butter and mustard. Taste the sauce for seasoning – add salt and pepper as necessary. Return the chicken pieces to the pan to cover and warm with the sauce. Serve and enjoy!

Cod Fillet in Clam Chowder with Smoked Oyster Panzanella and Lemon Thyme Butter

Jessica — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:02:52 +0000

I know I’ve been bad about posting lately, but, it’s been with good reason. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking – I have – I’ve just been cooking some of my favorite, comforting, familiar dishes. I love those dishes that I’ve cooked a couple dozen times, don’t need to look at a recipe, don’t need to make a grocery list before heading to the store, and can cook lazily and absent-mindedly, while letting my mind ponder other things.

Unfortunately, repetition and familiarity don’t produce any new Besotted posts…. So, I thumbed through my cookbooks and magazines until I found the dish that would snap me out of my culinary lethargy and back into the exciting world of experimentation, and this recipe was it.

Originally billed in Bon Appetit, and provided by Spring Hill in Seattle, as Black Cod with Fennel Chowder and Smoked Oyster Panzanella, this recipe had everything that I was looking for – creative use of fresh ingredients, loads of butter and cream, and a healthy dose of artful presentation that can really make an hour’s cooking worthwhile.

I made a few adjustments to the original ingredient list (mainly to use more of my CSA veggies and not have to buy additional ones), and I would encourage you to both check out the original recipe at BonAppetit.com and take your own creative license with the dish – there is enough variety here to really make it your own.

Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Cod Fillet in Clam Chowder with Smoked Oyster Panzanella and Lemon Thyme Butter, Serves 4

Adapted from Spring Hill, Seattle Washington and Bon Appetit

Prep Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes

Total Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes

Ingredients:

For the Chowder

3 Tbls. Butter

¾ Cup Fennel, cut into cubes

¾ Cup Potatoes, cut into cubes

½ Cup Onion, chopped

¼ Cup Leek, chopped (white and pale green end only)

1 Tbls. Flour

2 Bay Leaves

1 ½ Tsp. Thyme, chopped

8oz. Bottled Clam Juice

¾ Cup Heavy Cream

¾ Cup Whole Milk

1 Tsp. Grated Lemon Peel

For the Panzanella

¼ Cup Carrot, finely chopped

¼ Cup Onion, finely chopped

2 Tbls. Parsley, chopped

Juice from ½ Lemon

½ Tsp. Grated Lemon Peel

¼ Cup Smoked Canned Oysters

¼ Cup Panko Bread Crumbs

For the Fish

4 1/3 Pound Cod Fillets, skin on

Salt & Pepper to season

4 Tbls. Butter

2 Tsp. Thyme, chopped

Juice from ½ Lemon

Preparation:

Prepare yourself with many pots and pans – this recipes takes only just over an hour, but you will be using 3 burners at once to keep it all moving along. Also, there is plenty of time while the chowder cooks to prepare the vegetables in the Panzanella, so no need to fully prepare the mise en place.

To make the chowder, melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium-low heat. Add the fennel, onion, leeks, and potatoes, cover, and cook for 8-10 minutes.

Add the flour, bay leaves, and thyme and stir until the flour is incorporated into the melted butter. Add the clam juice, heavy cream, and milk; stir well and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, get on preparing the vegetables for the panzanella. Toss all of the ingredients except for the panko breadcrumbs into a medium bowl. Set aside.

Once the panzanella is finished, add the lemon peel to the chowder and turn the heat down to the lowest setting, just to keep warm while you cook the fish.

Set a large non-stick skillet over high heat and melt 2 Tbls. of the butter. Season the cod liberally on both sides with salt and pepper and set 2 pieces at a time, skin-side down, onto the skillet and cook for 6-7 minutes.

While the first batch is cooking, heat the remaining 2 Tbls. of butter, thyme, and lemon juice in a small sauce pan over medium-low heat.

Remove the first batch of fish to a plate and cover with tin foil. Add a bit more butter, if necessary, to the skillet, and cook the second batch of cod, skin-side down, for 6-7 minutes.

Once finished, the dish is ready to plate. Ladle some of the chowder into a shallow bowl. Place a piece of fish in the middle of the chowder, spoon some of the melted butter, thyme, lemon sauce atop each piece of fish. Top with the panzanella and sprinkle with the panko breadcrumbs.

Serve and enjoy!