Start by making a pie crust or use store bought. Grease a 9 inch pie pan or use individual pie tins as seen below. Lay the pie crust in pan by gently folding it in half and siding it over the top, then unfolding it. Gently press into place. If it breaks you can repair it by wetting your finger with water and “gluing” the pieces together.
To make the filling. In a medium sauce pan add the sugar, corn starch, butter and water. heat over medium high heat until the sugar mixture just begins to thicken. Add two pints of blueberries. Continue to stir gently, trying not to break up all the blueberries. Keep cooking until the mixture no longer thickens any further. Pour cooked blueberries into pie shell. Top off with the remaining pint of blueberries. Moisten the bottom crust using your index finger and water around the rim of the pie plate.
Place second crust on top. Using a fork press crusts together where they meet on the pie dish (around the edge). Cut a 1 inch slit in the top to let out steam.
Brush the top crust with milk to make for a browner crust.
Bake for 30 minutes until done in a 425 degree oven.
Notes: Allow pie to cool and serve with vanilla ice cream and homemade whip cream. You can also warm up cold pie a few seconds in the microwave. Caution the filling can become extremely hot, so do not over heat the pie in the microwave.
This recipe can be used for the majority dessert pie crusts and shells and makes 2 Flaky Pie Crusts (top and bottom).
INGREDIENTS
3 cups sifted flour
1 1/8 tsp. salt
1 cup shortening (Crisco)
8 to 10 tablespoons water with ice
DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl add sifted flour and 1 and 1/8 teaspoons salt. Using a pastry cutter or knife and fork cut shorting into flour. You can also use a stand mixer with a dough hook. Cut shorning in until you have pea sized piesece or flour around shortnigh. Using a wooden spoon, mix in ice cold water one tablespoon at a timeuntil all the flour is incorperated and doung is a little sticky.
Separate dough into two balls of dough . Using a floured rolling pin. Roll out dough on floured counter top or table. Always starting in the center and rolling outward until the circle of dough is slightly larger then the pie dish. 10 to 11 inches depending on how deep you pie dish is. You can always trim off the extra.
Fill with your favorite filling or bake in a 425 degree oven for until golden brown for chocolate cream pie (recipe coming soon).
Last night I made fish. Which is something I rarely get to do. Jennifer rarely eats fish. I had some frozen flounder filets in my freezer that needed to be cooked because I was tired of moving them around to get to other stuff.
I started by using my Pyrex loaf pan for this. To that, I added ½ cup of wine and ½ cup of water. Then I added 4 flounder filets and 4 tablespoons of butter and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice. I added a pinch of black pepper. Next time I will use white pepper because, I dont like to see the black specks. I then put it in a hot oven (400 degrees). The tricky part was waiting for it to start cooking. Again, next time I will heat the pouching liquid up bringing to a simmer first in a saucepot then pour it over the fish and then place it in the oven.
I made Basmati rice while I was waiting and drank some of the wine. I should have used a Chardonnay wine but had none on hand so I substituted Pinot Grigio. I don’t think I could tell in the end but someone else might.
When the fish was done I removed the pouching liquid to a pan and reduced it down so there was only about a ¼ cup left. I made a Hollandaise sauce next but instead of the lemon juice; I used the reduced pouching liquid.
I meted butter into the rice and placed it on the plate. On top of the rice, I placed the pouched fish filet. Then I poured the sauce over the top and served it with a glass of the pinot I used to cook the fish. I was too lazy to make a vegetable. Asparagus would have been my choice.
YES! Thursday! So quick, catch up. The month of October has been October – “Feast”. I have been trying to make Oktoberfest type foods for lunch all month. Next up is Sausage, peppers and onions. Now traditionally this dish is BEST when the sausage is grilled over charcoal and the green bell peppers and Spanish or yellow onions are sautéed in a pan with olive oil and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Since, I grilled sausages over the summer (with peppers and onions) I decided to go the red sauce route this time.
This is a dish that can be made all winter when the weather outside gets too cold to grill. This is also a fast and easy dish that is made in the oven, which helps heat the house up.
Once it is done, I am throwing it inn a pot and heating it up at work for the hungry masses (on Friday). I will also serve it with rice as a dish and offer Italian bread (garlic bread /w mozzarella cheese) to make a sandwich….
The Drunken Chef (Russ)
I will post a picture of my lunch sandwich on Instagram:
Sausage, Peppers and Onions (in red sauce)
Serves 6
SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS
9 x 13 Pyrex dish or metal baking dish
INGREDIENTS
6 Sweet Italian Sausages
6 Hot Italian Sausages
1 large can of tomato sauce
3 Onions halved and sliced
3 Green Peppers cut into large bite pieces or slices
1 Tbsp. Olive oil
½ tsp. Garlic powder
½ tsp. Crushed red pepper (optional)
Salt and black pepper to taste
DIRECTIONS
Coat the Sausages with olive oil in a Pyrex baking pan or for better results 1 inch deep metal baking pan. Place the pan in a preheated 375 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove pan a flip sausage to brown the other side (10 minutes). The glass bakeware does not brown the sausage as nicely as the metal.
Cover the sausage with onions and peppers. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with garlic powder, crushed red pepper, salt and black pepper (preferably freshly ground). Return pan to oven and continue cooking for 10 to 15 more minutes until the peppers begin to soften.
Pour tomato sauce over the top and cover lightly with aluminum foil to stop sauce from splattering all over your oven. Carful when doing this, the pan is hot! Lower heat to 350 and cook 15 to 30 more minutes until the onions and pepper are soft when poked with a fork.
Serve on Italian bread for a hero and for and an extra surprise melt mozzarella on top.
Good morning, Happy Wednesday. It is Wednesday, right? Last night I made Lentil soup for lunch today. If you follow me on Instagram, I posted pictures there.
I don’t know if you remember me telling you, but the first time I had this amazing soup was at my friends Frank’s house when I was in elementary school. His mother made it and offered me some as we ate lunch. I had never had lentil soup before (which she could not believe) but I am always willing to try new stuff, even way back then. Frank did not like this soup evidently and tried to get me not to eat it. Well long story short I have been eating it ever since. Thank you Mrs. Carola.
Below is my recipe, I’m afraid I never did get Mrs. Carola’s. This recipe is a beef lentil soup where you can omit the beef if it seems too redundant. I will also be making (in the very near future) a vegetable lentil soup for Jennifer’s class. She has at least four other adults in her classroom as she works with children with special needs. So today is beef for everyone in my office and tonight, I will be making vegetable lentil soup for Jennifer to take to work. I will post that recipe as soon as I have a picture of it (Thursday).
Thursday’s lunch (for my office) will be Italian sausage, peppers and onions over rice so that will be made tonight as well.
Also coming soon – Red Lentil Soup
The Drunken Chef (Russ)
LENTIL SOUP (beef)
Serves 6 – 8
SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS
Large Pot
INGREDIENTS
1 pound stew meat cut into ½ inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic minced
¼ cup finely carrots
¼ cup finely chopped celery
4 cups beef broth (I use I box of Swanson’s beef broth)
1 cup dry lentils, rinsed
1/4 cup tomato sauce (or one heaping tablespoon of tomato paste)
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Black Pepper to taste
Salt or 1 to 4 beef bouillon cubes (depending on taste)
1 tsp. Gravy Master (if you have it)
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce (if you have it)
DIRECTIONS
In a large stockpot over medium heat, combine the oil and onions and meat. Sauté until the meat is browed and onions are tender. Next add garlic and sauté for 1 minute longer. Add the broth, carrots, celery and bring mixture to a boil. Add the lentils, sauce and seasoning. Add Gravy Master and/or the Worcestershire sauce only if you have it. Return to boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 45 minutes, or until lentils are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. I use beef bouillon cubes instead of salt for a richer flavor. Again The Gravy Master and Worcestershire sauce just make the soup taste richer.
NOTES This is Yummy (double or triple the recipe if you want leftovers and leave the amount of beef the same as I did to feed a big crowd)
As promised, I made Cuban Black Bean Soup for the first time ever.
Everyone at work loved it! Therefore, I am posting the recipe not having to make any changes in what we ate and what you can now enjoy. I hope you do get to enjoy this rich tasting treat maybe with a Cuban sandwich.
The Drunken Chef (Russ)
Cuban Black Bean Soup
Serves 6 – 8
SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS
Large Pot
Food Processor or blender
INGREDIENTS
3 large green peppers
2 large red peppers
1 small yellow onion
1 large Spanish onion
1 head of garlic (10 cloves)
2 plum tomatoes (Diced)
16 ounces of black beans,
1 can of black beans
1 smoked ham hock
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon salt, or to taste
1 tablespoon Better then Bouillon
¼ cup olive oil
4 slices thick bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 jalapeño, stemmed and finely chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 bunch fresh Cilantro
1/ 2 bunch Italian parsley
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
DIRECTIONS
1. Slice and dice the thick cut bacon. Fry in the bottom of a Dutch oven or heavy stock pot. Cook, on medium as not to burn any of it, stirring occasionally. Cook just until it starts to brown, about 5 minutes.
2. While the bacon slowly renders make a sofrito. Cut red and green peppers into 1 inch pieces. Dice one small yellow onion. Peel and chop all but 6 cloves of the garlic. Dice 1 jalapeño pepper (seeds removed). Dice the two tomatoes. You only have to chop the ingredients small enough sizes to fit into a food processor or blender. You don’t have to dice them finely, as you will be processing them. Focus more on removing the seeds from the peppers and any stems from the parsley and cilantro that might become grit in the finished sofrito. Place the chopped ingredients into a food processor or blender. You can process in this batches if your food processor isn’t big enough to accommodate everything at once. Pulse food processor until to resembles a thick pesto. Add salt and black pepper to taste.
3. Once the bacon is brown and the safrito in made add olive oil to your pot. Add the remaining diced green and red pepper and Spanish onion. Cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes. Pour in the vinegar and scrape any browned bits from bottom of pan with a wooden spoon.
4. Smash and peel the remaining 4 cloves of the garlic cloves. Put the rest of green pepper and garlic into a large pot with the beans, ham hock, bay leaves and 1-tablespoon salt. Add 2 quarts of chicken stock (or water and Better the Bouillon)and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and simmer until the beans are tender, an hour or more.
When the beans are cooked, discard both bay leafs. Remove and set aside the ham hock and let it cool. open can of black beans, mash 1/2 of them into a paste and return all of then to the pot. Add the sofrito, then the sugar. Pull the meat from the ham hock, leaving behind any white sinew or gristle. Chop the ham into ½-inch or smaller pieces and return it to the bean pot (I just took mine out and discarded it).
4. Stir the beans well and bring to a boil over medium heat, then lower to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes or so, skimming any foam from the top. Taste for salt and serve with white rice.
The Drunken Chef (Russ)
I also made these small friendship breads for Jennifer class. The small ceramic loaf pans were purchased at The Christmas Tree Store with he help of a very lovey woman. Thank you again!
Good morning. Coffee is on. Happy Saturday. I myself have a long “To Do” list this weekend along with a problem I am trying to resolve at work. So if I can I will be working on that. Not to mention I need to do some cooking and some baking! Here in New York it has been in the seventies. Lovely weather for a picnic and a bottle of wine. Terrible for baking and eating soup. It is so nice I might be forced outside to the barbeque grill somthing. Whatever I do you will here about. For instance, I had this great idea for “Oktoberfest Month” at work, so I made a loin of pork, plus Kielbasa with Sauerkraut cooked in a bit of apple juice. Do to the lack of time to cook pork it needed to be done in the Insta-pot. The loin of pork turned out amazing. Yum, but the kielbasa burst open and although it tasted okay was not very appetizing looking. So this recipe needs to be tweaked a bit but for going into the cookbook.
I am planning on making a big pot of soup Sunday for Monday’s lunch crowd at work. The spooking, the spicy, the famous Cuban Black Bean Soup. Tuesday, I want to do a Cuban Panini. So today I will be shopping and running around to other errands before hitting the grill and the beers later.
Sunday, I am also hopping to be cooking a birthday dinner for someone special if she does not already have plans. Jennifer will be texting her today to find out if she would like to come over and celebrate her birthday with us. I don’t even know what I making yet. I will have Jennifer ask what her favorite meal is and cook that.
That’s all for now. As usual, I will post what I cook and eat what can or is it drink what I can? Either way stay tuned for more “American Cookery” and drunken debauchery coming your way!
Here is an easy and quick dessert I whipped up the other night. Enjoy.
Serves two
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
10 oz. Ceramic Ramekins
INGREDIENTS:
2 Granny Smith Apples peeled and diced.
¾ cup Brown sugar
½ cup All-purpose Flour
½ cup Quaker Old Fashioned Oats
4 Tablespoons Melted Butter
½ tsp Cinnamon
Sliced almonds (Optional)
1 tsp. granulated sugar
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Peel and chop the apples. Fill each of the ramekins ¾ full with the apples. Mix together sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle up to a tablespoon of the cinnamon sugar over the apples. For the topping: Mix the rest of the cinnamon sugar into the flour and oats in a bowl. Add sliced almonds if desired. Add the melted butter and stir it in. Put half of the topping on top of each filled ramekin’s. Sprinkle the top with just a bit of granulated sugar. Bake in preheated oven until the top just begins to brown.
Let cool on a plate for about 5 minutes. Top with ice cream, homemade whipped cream and serve warm.
Some of you may be wondering where I have been for the past 4 days. Well, I took a trip up to Boston (from Long Island). I love this city and now is one of the best times of year to go. However, I didn’t know the Boston Marathon was going to be going on. It turned out to be okay as it was only one day and it didn’t get in our way at all of having fun.
I will not bore you with all the details of the trip but I have to say I did have some pretty good food while I was there. The first location was a breakfast place we stopped at on our way to Salem. Salem is so cool in October. I will have to go back again but when it is a little less crowded. Before we got to Salem we stopped at a place called North Avenue Diner in Wakefield Massachusetts. There I asked our waitress what she recommended I eat. She said that the eggs benedict is her favorite. It just also happened to be the weekend special and since it was Saturday, it was perfect timing. It was like Karma.
The coffee came out first. This too was gooood so I asked what brand it was. As it turned out it was called, Boston coffee, who knew. I should have gotten some to bring home. Then, out came the eggs benedict and the eggs were pouched perfectly. This was so good. I could tell the chef was proud of his hollandaise sauce as he told me how he makes it from scratch. The diner has several different varieties of eggs benedict but I went with the traditional Canadian bacon. Sam had the corned beef hash and he loved every bite of it. Whereas Jennifer, just had eggs over medium with bacon and toast. It was all so very good and I would so like to go back there come December maybe.
The next restaurant stop was a chain that I had never been too before, this was a place called Restaurant 99. We ordered the typical chain type food. Not as exciting as being at the diner but it would do. I had sirloin steak tips and chicken. It was okay and Jennifer had French onion soup. Also good. Sam enjoyed his meal as well but for the life of me I can’t remember what he had. The service was good and the place was nice looking and clean. I like a nice clean restaurant. This restaurant was a nice surprise from the usual chain restaurant experiences that often make me feel ill after leaving.
Now I’m back in New York (hence the fire above last night) and I’m headed back to work today. We took the Port Jefferson ferry back and forth, which was great! I highly recommend it. Do not forget to try the coffee while you’re on board.
Last night, after dinner, I made Jennifer and myself, two personal apple crisps (pictured below). I will post this recipe as soon as I can. Tonight, I will be cooking something. I just do not know what yet.
After three days is Boston, Jennifer is in some major back pain. Its been the long car ride and walking around that has done her in. Not to mention, it has been a few weeks since she had any pain injections in her lower back. She had a doctor appointment scheduled yesterday we came back too and another one scheduled for Thursday. She will be getting five more shots along her spine to ease the pain then. At least it helps her get some sleep for a couple of weeks. I am hoping for a long lasting solution to come fourth soon.
Enjoy your day and enjoy your own lunch and keep an eye out for my apple crisp recipe!
Use ricer and rice potatoes. The cover and refrigerate overnight.
The next day mix potatoes with the, corn starch, eggs, salt and pepper.
Using your hands. Form into roughly 2 inch balls. Place one ball in simmering chicken stock using a slotted spoon. If the first ball falls apart add more cornstarch. Make the rest of the potato stuff into balls and simmer in stock for 20 minutes. Turn off stock and let cool in stock for ten minutes, serve hot .
The Magic of a Perfect Pairing 