The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Mini Blueberry Pies

My kids have been, well, clamoring for blueberry pie.  Not because I make such a fabulous blueberry pie, mind you, but because they watch Noggin.  And on Noggin, when the main program of the half hour time slot is finished (about 7 minutes before the half hour is actually up) the rest of the time is filled by the songs and antics of Mr. Moose A Moose and his sidekick, Zee, a sort of Harpo Marx in blue feathers.  One of the little filler bits involves a search for the right number of blueberries to make someone's (Moose's aunt?  I don't remember.  Or I've blocked it out.) famous blueberry pie.  And, since this is geared toward preschoolers, the number of blueberries the recipe calls for is...four. 

While that may seem a rather skimpy amount of fruit for any size pie, Moose sells it so well that any time they see that little bit, my kids develop an overwhelming desire for blueberry pie.

So when Julia and I were at the grocery store on Monday, we got a bunch of frozen blueberries - I use Wyman's frozen wild blueberries pretty much exclusively, unless I'm buying (or picking) fresh, local berries.  Wyman's are the wild berries - tiny and bursting with flavor.  And I know I sound like a commercial, but I just really like them.  And so do my kids.

I decided it would be more fun and cute (yes, that's influential at times) to make mini pies.  Initially I was going to use very mini tart pans - each little bitty pie a perfect mouthful of crust and fruit.  But then I decided to go with standard sized muffin tins instead.  Not a perfect mouthful, but a very nice little serving size.  And cute.

So here's what I did.

First of all, I made it quite clear that if they wanted pie, my kids would have to help.

Sorry, kiddo, but you gotta earn your blueberries.

She saw my point and set to work with a better attitude.

Alex helped, too.

 

We measured out ingredients for the pie crust.  Again, I used the "American Pie Dough for Fruit Pies" from Cook's Illustrated Magazine's book The Best Recipe.

2  1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

2 T sugar

12 T unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/4 inch pieces

8 T vegetable shortening, chilled, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

6-8 T ice water.

I put the flour, salt and sugar in the food processor and pulsed a few times to combine.  Then I added the pieces of butter and pulsed 5-6 times.  Then I added in the shortening...

And then my kids were singing and dancing on their chairs.

Must have been the anticipation of pie.

Yeah, that was it.

Despite the distraction, I managed to finish the dough.

I wrapped it in plastic and put it in the fridge to chill, and then we started in on the filling.

I used 4 cups of blueberries, 1/4 cup of tapioca, 1 cup of sugar, and a little lemon zest.

While Alex combined the blueberries and lemon zest...

Julia whisked the sugar and tapioca together.

Then they took turns blending the sugar mixture with the blueberry mixture.

The blueberries needed to sit for about fifteen minutes - to allow the tapioca to soften.  So while things were sitting in that bowl, we got the dough out and made our little pie crusts.

I used a 4" round cookie cutter - it's the largest circle I have -

and the circles of dough fit nicely in the muffin tins.

I also cut out little scalloped-edge circles to use as tops.

By this time, the children were exhausted from all the hard work, and they had gone downstairs to rest their weary bones.

I filled up the little pie shells (20 of them) with the blueberry filling and topped each with a little bit of butter.

And because I thought the little round tops would cook faster than the rest of the pies, I didn't put them on the pies initially.  Instead, while the mini pies started out in a 400 degree oven, I put all the smaller dough circles on a cookie sheet, brushed them with a wash of egg yolk, and sprinkled them with sugar.

I put this tray in the fridge while the pies cooked.

After 20 minutes, I turned the oven down to 350 and cooked the pies for another 30 minutes.

I took the pies out, then baked off the little lids, and then set them on the pies.

And I'll admit it - these aren't the prettiest things I've ever made.

A few changes I'd make next time around (and as long as Moose A Moose is counting blueberries, there'll definitely be a next time) would be these:

I would drain the juice from the blueberries before mixing them in with the sugar and everything else.  If this was for a standard sized pie, it wouldn't have mattered so much, but with these, I think there was just too much liquid.

I would also just go ahead and put the little lids on from the start. 

I'd also make the bottom crusts larger, so they'd come up higher than the rim of the muffin tin. 

However.

All those mistakes acknowledged, I will say, these were pretty yummy little pies.  Julia ate one.  And Alex ate two of 'em that night - warm, not long out of the oven.  He polished the first one off, a look of bliss on his little purple-stained face.  "Mom?"  He asked.  "Could I have another one?"   

And that was really the whole reason for baking them in the first place. 

Off Course

I still stay in touch with a bunch of people I used to work with, before the emploment ended back in December.  Some of them also read this site. 

Yesterday morning I got a call from one of them.  It was early, on a Sunday, and the news was shocking.  A woman who had also worked there - for the past 10 years - she'd started less than a year after I did - this woman had died.  On Friday.

I knew she'd been out on an extended medical leave since some time after I left.  But no one I asked seemed to know why.  Apparently she kept it to herself, or swore people to secrecy.

I liked her.  She was upper management, and hers was not always the easiest position to hold in a company.  But she was always kind and pleasant.

Over the years I learned tiny bits about her - little tiny things she'd share in conversation, but to the best of my knowledge, she pretty much kept her personal life personal.  Which is fine.  Some people share way too much of their lives with their coworkers.  Less, I think, is more.

I know she and her husband were foster parents for many years, and she adopted her teenage son right around the same time I gave birth to my biological son.  She mentioned this to me when we were going over my maternity leave paperwork, and she told me she was eligible for it as well, because of the adoption.  Just a little thing, just a little peek in the window, but in some way it was more personal than all the other pregnancy and childbirth stories I'd previously heard from friends and family.  She didn't have to tell me anything.  But she did.

To borrow a commonly used phrase, cancer sucks.  It's a gross understatement, especially for those who battle cancer and the loved ones who watch and pray and hold close and hold their breath every minute of every day. 

This woman died of cancer.  Another one of those many instances where your heart just screams out "She was too young!  It's not fair!"  Too many instances.

So since yesterday morning, my brain has been turning this news around and around, checking it out from all angles, like it's a Rubik's cube, trying to line up the images of a fit and healthy person I last saw three months ago, a woman not young, but not old by any stretch of the imagination, with the phone call I received and the obituary I read online.  The squares aren't matching up.  I can't get the colors in the right places.  I can't solve the puzzle.  It doesn't make sense.

Cancer, as everyone knows, doesn't make sense.  Not a sense that you can reluctantly nod and say, yeah, okay, I see why.  I understand.  It's not like, oh, a car accident.  A car slams into a tree, okay, yeah, you can see the car is wrecked, you can see why, even if the driver was wearing a seatbelt, they could not have survived.  Maybe.  It's not a nice comparison, but, you know, there's an "if A then B" bit of logic to it.  Not emotionally, no, but cause-and-effect-ly.

Not so now.  I'm having trouble with this. 

Of course, I was not a part of her family.  Not a close friend or anything.  Perhaps she had been battling this for some time.  So maybe her passing came at the end of a much longer battle.  Like my late sister-in-law, who had been fighting cancer for 4 years before it attacked her brain and put an end to the fighting. 

This one was - at least from my view on the sidelines - so sudden. 

I am saddened by it.  I am so sorry for her family and close friends.  Her son.  Her husband.  This line from her obituary lingers in my thoughts.  "She was the wife, lover, best friend and partner..." of her husband of 25 years.  There is such poignant beauty in that line.  Such love.  Such loss. 

I am so sorry.

It's not fair. 

The Thunderous Threes

I don't remember if the twos were this hard.  I don't think they were. 

Yesterday while I was making dinner, the kids were playing upstairs, as I mentioned in last night's post (below). 

One of the fun things they did was bring a whole bunch of stuffed animals into my bedroom and pile them on the bed.  On the cat.  They thought this was hysterically funny.  The cat was tolerant, but not thrilled.

Well, later on, after dinner, I told them they needed to get all their stuff off the bed and put it back in their rooms.  They had also added other, non-stuffed-animal things like the two ukeleles we have...a box of crayons...and a couple of baseball hats from where they usually hang in the kitchen.

Julia said she would do it "all by mySELF!" so I left her to it.

A bit later, when nothing had been brought back downstairs, I asked Julia if she was done.  I thought maybe she'd just put everything in her bedroom.

She said no...hadn't done it yet.  And I told her to get to it.  NOW.  So she went upstairs again and stayed there for a while.

A bit later, she came back down to the kitchen.  I asked if she was done, and she said no.  So I escorted her back upstairs and started to point out (like she didn't already know) what I wanted her to put away.

And then I saw what she had been doing earlier. 

She had brought magic markers upstairs along with the crayons.

There's a big blue blob - around the size of a quarter on the sheet...and this on one of my pillows:

And how did I know Julia did it?  That Alex hadn't done it earlier?

Because she signed her work:

Princess of the Damned

Earlier this afternoon.

I'm in the kitchen prepping a chicken for dinner.

Julia and Alex have been playing upstairs - wonderful child-play - with lots of shrieking and gurgly laughter.

Julia comes into the kitchen.  The way her heels hit the floor is very businesslike, no-nonsense, and could be intimidating if she wasn't so short.

"Mom."  She stated.  "I gotta tell you something."  Something that cannot wait, by the tone.

"What is it, Julia?"  I ask, still busy with the chicken.

"Mom, look, I got blood."

When she speaks the word, blood has about three syllables.

I look down to see what's bleeding.  She's not crying, so it can't be too bad.

She holds up one tiny finger; her other hand squeezes the finger tightly so that a tiny line of blood appears just beneath the nail.

"How did that happen?"  I ask, turning back to my chicken.

"I don't know" she says, unconcerned now.  Her shoulders shrug in this new tone of voice.

She pauses a bit.

"But it's good to lick!"

Cornish Pasties

Comfort food at its finest.  Cornish Pasties (pronounced "PASS-tees") are simply meat pies you can hold in your hand to eat.  As I understand it, they probably originated in Cornwall, in the south of England, as something miners could bring with them for lunch, as they could not come out of the mine shaft mid-day.  The pasties were portable, and the filling would stay warm for hours.  And they can be made with other fillings, but traditionally it's cubed beef, potatoes and onions. 

My Dad's mother was from Cornwall, and came here when she was - if I'm remembering this correctly - sixteen, to live with her married sister.  Anyway, fast forward to after she was married and a mother, she would make these for my dad and his younger sister.

And then when my parents were married, she taught my mother to make them.  I use the word "taught" in a rather loose sense.  In the "For Days of Auld Lang Syne" compilation of recipes that my mother put together for me when I was engages, here's the story:

"Leek Pasties"

(my mother writes) - "This recipe was sent May 3, 1970 to us from...Grandmother Wilke, after they moved out west.  Their first intention was to locate in California but then opted for Arizona, where they stayed for a number of years.  This pasty was not the more readily made beef and potato one, but a variation from Cornwall."

In her (my grandmother's) words:  "Thought I'd start off and tell you about the leek pasty - You make that in one big one, so roll out pastry as big as you want.  (Usually a 9-10 inch pie plate).  Slice up a bunch of leeks into 1/4 inch slices (3-4 leeks).  Lay pastry into pie plate and add sliced leeks.  Beat together 2 eggs, some chopped ham or bacon then pour over leeks.  Cover with top layer of pastry.  Bake at 325 degrees for 30-40 minutes until nicely browned.  May be served hot or at room temperature."

That's the recipe.

Oddly enough, I don't remember having the leek version as a child - I remember the meat ones.  I remember my mother rolling out the dough, standing at her floating work island in the kitchen (actually it was the dishwasher - it had a thick cutting board on top and she used it for most of her baking projects- and it was on wheels, so when she needed it she could roll it into place closer to the sink and stove and fridge).  I also remember her chipping the potatoes - cutting them into little pieces as she made each pasty.  She made one for each of us, and cut slits in the top crust to form our initials.  This was also so that no one would get hers - she liked a bit of turnip in there besides the meat and potatoes. 

Pasties were often specifically dinner for Dad's birthday.  And the way I remember eating them was this - you'd slice open the top of the pasty, right around the curved part, just above the crimped edge.  Then you'd put some butter on each side, and pour a little milk on it.

Yeah, I can see some of you cringing.  Huh?  Pour milk on it?  No, it's not traditional.  But according to my father, when he was a boy, his mom did that to cool it down for him.  So that's how HE ate them, and that's kind of how we learned to.   But it's not required. 

To my horror, my husband puts ketchup on his.  I can't watch that.  Although I'm sure people put all sorts of things on them - HP sauce comes to mind.

The first time I made them on my own was for my father's birthday.  My mother wasn't available to do it that year, so I decided to do it myself.  And for some reason I was a nervous wreck about it.  But I was often a nervous wreck back then, so I guess it's not all that surprising.  But pasties are pretty forgiving things - and mine came out fine.

I made them last night for part of our dinner, and I must say they were the best ones I've ever made.  I don't know how that happened, but I'm not complaining.

Here's what you do:

Make the pastry dough.  Now, you can use any pastry dough recipe you want to use - whatever you're comfortable with. 

I wanted to make a lot of them, so I used the following:

4 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

1   1/2 cups chilled vegetable shortening, cut into approximately 1/2 inch cubes

8-12 (or more) T ice water (it will vary depending on the humidity in your kitchen, the time of year, the hour of the day, whether you part your hair on the right or the left, and so forth.)

Combine the flour and salt and either put them in a food processor (my new favorite way) or in a large bowl. 

Add the cubed shortening

and either pulse about 5 times in the processor or cut the shortening in with a pastry cutter or two knives or your hands.  You want the dough to have some lumps of shortening around the size of peas, and the rest to look look like coarse sand.

Next - add the water a little at a time.  If using the food processor, pour in a few tablespoons, then pulse.  Add another tablespoon or two, then pulse.  If you're working in a bowl, then drizzle in some water, and toss the flour/shortening mixture with a fork.  Then more water, then toss again.  The idea is to GENTLY incorporate JUST ENOUGH water to bind the flour/shortening mixture.  You don't want it soggy, you don't want it too dry, and you definitely don't want to overwork the dough because it will activate the glutens in the flour and the final product - the pie shell or pasty shell - will be tough.  For pies and so forth, and pasties, you want flaky and tender.

Once the dough JUST comes together, pat it into a ball, press down into a disk, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least half an hour.  While the dough is chilling, you can prepare the filling ingredients.

You will need:

About a pound of stew beef, either  cut in chunks or not.

   

4-5 medium red potatoes, or any other kind of potato you want.  You want about the same amount of potatoes as meat, once it's all cut up.

1 small onion

Salt and pepper

two egg yolks mixed with a tiny bit of water (to glaze the pasties with)

Cut the beef into small pieces - about 1/4 inch thick and about 1/2 inch to an inch wide.

Cut the potatoes into pieces about the same size as the beef, except you want them about 1/8 of an inch thick.

Dice up the onion into 1/4 inch pieces

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. 

Get out a couple of baking sheets and line them with parchment or foil.

Okay, now take the dough out of the fridge, unwrap it, and cut it into eight equal pieces.  (They don't have to be perfect - just eyeball it.)

Roll out four of them into rough circles about 1/8" thick.

Place some potatoes on one half of each dough circle, leaving about 3/4 inch of an edge for sealing the pasty. 

Next, place some meat on top of that, and then a healthy sprinkling of onions.  Do all 4 this way, then sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

Now, carefully, fold the other half of the dough over the filling and press down along the edges to seal. 

Curl the dough over on itself to keep it sealed, or press with the tines of a fork, or crimp it - whatever you want to do to make it pretty. 

Place on one of the baking sheets.  Cut a few holes in the top with the tip of a knife to allow the steam to escape, and the brush with the egg wash.  Do the same with the other three you just made.

And now repeat the entire procedure with the other 4 pieces of dough and the rest of the filling ingredients and place on a second baking sheet.

Place sheets in the oven and set your timer for 15 minutes.  When the timer goes off, rotate the pans so all the pasties bake evenly.  Set for another 15 minutes, and then check again every five minutes or so if they still aren't done.  Pasties should be golden brown and steaming hot.

Serve with a salad if you want to.  Do the butter and milk thing - or not.  They're fine without that.  I added just a bit of butter because hey, it tastes good, it adds a bit more moisture to the crust, and because I'm a creature of habit.  But mostly because it tastes good.

Enjoy!

Family Portrait

I know I post a lot of pictures of my kids, and some of my husband.  Not much of myself.  I don't really like having my picture taken - probably that's part of the reason I like TAKING pictures - I can hide behind the camera.

But still, my kids and husband don't see my through my own hypercritical lens, and there should, from time to time, be pictures of all four of us as we go through the years.

So, much as I'm reluctant to have my face out there for all to critique see, for my children, I'm posting a recent picture of the four of us.

Subdividing

Hi.  For a while now I've wanted to better organize all the recipes and things that were originally just grouped under "You Look Hungry" for the most part.

So that's what I've spent the past couple hours doing, more or less.  I'm not done with it - there are other sub-categories I want to include, and some of the recipes belong in a couple different headings...but for now, this is what I've done.

Have to put the laptop away.  The kids and I are making miniature blueberry pies.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Egg in a Nest

Had your breakfast yet?  You should - most important meal of the day, they say. 

Weekday mornings it's usually a quick affair for the kids and Bill - oatmeal or cereal, or sometimes scrambled eggs or even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

But it doesn't really take that long to do something a bit more fun with the eggs, and my kids love them this way.

Egg in a nest - goes by other names as well.  The fun part about this is if you've got cookie cutters (and we all know I do) you can vary the theme from time to time.  Trust me - it's a little thing, but it's a big deal to the almost-4 to almost-6 year old set. 

This morning I decided to cut out bunny shapes.

All you do, is get a piece of bread and a cookie cutter that will cut out a shape and still leave a sturdy outline of bread all the way around.

Cut out your shapes, being careful to get all the little corners and crevices if you can, so the cut-out looks like what it's supposed to.

Heat up a griddle or frying pan and melt some butter in it (butter adds flavor)...then lay all your bread pieces down (if they all fit - you can also work in batches.  If you are, do the inner shapes first.)

Once they start to brown a bit on the underside, pour in your eggs.

Once the bread starts to brown...

Flip them all over - use care when you're flipping the egg-filled bread so nothing falls out and breaks.

Cook just enough to set the white on the other side (we're an over-easy family here) and then serve.  When you plate them, you want to flip them back over so the "prettier" side is face-up.

(You'll note the darker bunny on the left, the lighter bunny on the right - I sometimes forget to lower the setting on the power burner in the front part of my stove - things above it cook faster.)

Anyway - success this morning - happy, breakfast-eating children!

Breakfast can be fun!  (Okay, yeah, I sound like a nut.)

Observation

You know, I love my kids. 

They are beautiful and fascinating and funny and smart and fun. 

But they're kids, and they can wear on a person. 

And that person would be me. 

And there are days when I think if I hear another ridiculous shrieky squabbly "he - no, she - no, he - no, she"-fest I will just gouge my ear drums with sharpened popsicle sticks. 

And I make this known. 

And for a while, there is silence, peace, and harmony. 

And then I hear the soft but intense tones of a dispute over something - who had that book first...who gets to play with spiderman...who gets to hold the remote...who gets to sit on the couch. 

And then it builds...and builds...and soon I hear it - a high-pitched, primal, animal-with-its-leg-in-a-trap screechy, eye-popping scream that threatens to weave into my head through one ear, chew up what's left of my brain and then scoot out the other ear. 

And I take a breath so I can holler effectively at the kids --

And then I realize that this horrible sound is actually coming from me.

Who is this crazy lady I see in my mirror? 

And why do her eyes spin in opposite directions like that?

And when was the last time she had her eyebrows waxed? 

Too long ago.

Mutton Kari (Lamb Curry)

What do you do when you have leftover lamb?  You make curry.

Actually, you really should buy lamb SOLELY for the purpose of making curry.  I know I should.  That's how this recipe is written, actually - it's to be made with raw lamb.  But.  We had about 3 pounds of lamb meat left, and we wanted to make a curry with some or all of it.  Bill took a look through a few cookbooks, and he liked the sound of this one, so this is what I made.

It's from Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook - and it's incredibly comprehensive.  She covers India, China, Cambodia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesian, Korean, and more. 

This recipe for Mutton Kari, or Lamb Curry, calls for Garam Masala, a blend of toasted spices.  You can find the recipe I used here.

And though we used cooked lamb, I plan to make this again with raw.  The cook time in the recipe is for raw lamb - you cook the mixture for over an hour - and I think the flavors need all that time to blend together and soak into the lamb.  Just my two cents.

Here we go.  First - what you'll need:

2 T ghee or oil

2 large onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 T finely chopped fresh ginger

2 T curry powder

3 tsp salt

2 T vinegar or lemon juice

3 large tomatoes, chopped

2 fresh chilies

2 T chopped fresh mint leaves

1 tsp garam masala (see here) 

3 lb boned shoulder of lamb

1 T chopped fresh coriander or mint leaves

Cut lamb into cubes.

(Okay, she's not cutting the lamb herself.  But she was most definitely helping.)   

Heat ghee (or oil) in a saucepan and gently fry onion, garlic and ginger until soft and golden.

Add curry powder, salt and vinegar, stir thoroughly.

   

Add lamb and cook, stirring constantly, until lamb is coated with the spice mixture.

Add tomato, chilies and mint.

(Okay, here's where I took a little detour.  Since the lamb was already cooked, I didn't want to put it in this early in the game.  So I just added the tomatoes and mint.  Also, I left the chilies out for now.  I made a separate curry sauce with the peppers, just for Bill and me, because they were too hot for the kids to eat.)

So this is the tomatoes and mint going into the onion and seasonings...

Cover and cook over low heat for 1  1/4 hours or until lamb is tender, stirring occasionally.  The tomatoes should provide enough liquid for the meat to cook in but, if necessary, add a little hot water, approximately half a cup, just enough to prevent meat from sticking to pan. 

(I cooked the mixture with the tomatoes and mint added for about 20-30 minutes, simmering with the lid on.  At that point, I ladled out some of it and put it in a small saucepan and added one of the chiles, seeds removed, and sliced thinly, to the mix. 

I let that simmer while I finished up the rest of the meal.)

Here's how the original onion mixture looked after simmering a while...

Add garam masala (and the lamb!!) and chopped coriander leaves for the last 5 minutes of cooking time.  (and I didn't get coriander - I'd planned to use the rest of the fresh mint - and then I forgot.  Sometimes I do that.)

I stirred all of that together and heated it gently until the lamb was warmed through.

I also added some coconut milk to the separate onion mixture that I'd added the chile pepper to.

I served the lamb over a blend of whole grain and wild rices, with some of the hotter curry sauce for Bill and me.

We both agreed that it was very good - but would be WAY better done without using leftover, already-been-cooked lamb.  So I will definitely be trying that some time.  And I'll let you know.