In Praise of Porridge

A good morning indeed.
A good morning, indeed.

It’s currently 9 degrees in Chicago.

Of course, after the Polar Vortex of Doom last year, 9 degrees doesn’t sound so horrible, but it’s still cold enough that I think everything should be cancelled except snuggling and cups of tea. Failing that, I decided to start my day off cozily, with porridge.

There’s nothing like a warm bowl of hot cereal to make you feel like a pioneer. And since we all know how much I enjoy feeling like a pioneer (minus the scarlet fever and back breaking labor involved with actual pioneering), I am a fan. Porridge of various sorts is usually pretty inexpensive, nutritious, and doesn’t require any fancy equipment (I’m looking at you, waffle irons). It’s simple to prepare, doesn’t take up much room in your pantry, and makes you feel super healthy, even if you just covered it with brown sugar. Continue reading “In Praise of Porridge” →

A Dinner Pie–Royal Eggplant Pie

Eggplant HamburgerThis pie is a great addition to your holiday table, or just for lunch on a Wednesday. It’s a single crust pie with an Italian vibe–the cookbook notes that teens might be fans, due to it’s pizza flavors. The original calls for ground beef and regular cheese, but we substituted vegan ingredients, to great success. We used a white whole wheat crust, which was especially tasty.

 

Ingredients:

2 cups cubed eggplant, unpeeled
.25 cup margarine
.75 cup “Gimme Lean” hamburger flavor (TVP or lentils might be good here, too)
.5 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic
1 TBSP chopped parsley
.25 cup chopped celery tops
1 tsp salt
.25 tsp oregano
solid shake of pepper
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
.5 cup shredded cheese (we used “Follow Your Heart” mozzarella

 

Directions

  1. Melt the margarine in a deep skillet, and add the eggplant. Cover and cook over medium heat for five minutes. Then remove eggplant, set aside.
  2. Saute the onion and garlic in the skillet, add the ground “beef” and brown. Add parsley, celery tops, seasonings and tomato sauce. Cook over medium for about five minutes, stirring frequently. Add the eggplant, turn off heat.
  3. When the mixture is partially cool, spoon it into a single pie crust.
  4. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes.
  5. Sprinkle with “cheese” bake until melted.

Queen of Pies: Butterscotch Peach

Peach Butterscotch, for real.
Peach Butterscotch, for real.

Confession–I made this pie again for Thanksgiving with my family, along with a thickened up Apple-Cranberry, and I left the recipe at home. I messed up the butterscotch, because I left out the flour, and it still was delicious.

The major discoveries of this pie included: The fact that butterscotch is made of ingredients, a thing we had never really thought about, and that none of those ingredients were scotch. Made of canned peaches, and with the butter scotch factor, this is not a summery peach pie.

If you are trying to seduce someone, impress your in-laws, or apologize for doing something really awful, this is the pie you want.

 

Ingredients:

2 piecrusts
One large can peaches (28 ounces)
half a cup brown sugar
2 TBSP flour
1/8 tsp salt
half a cup of syrup from the peaches
quarter cup of margarine
2  TBSP lemon juice
1/4- 1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp sugar

Directions

  1. Drain the peaches, reserving half a cup of syrup. Place them in the piecrust.
  2. Mix the sugars, flour, syrup and margarine together. Cook on the stovetop until thick, over medium heat.
  3. When gooey and thick, add the almond extract and lemon juice. Stir.
  4. Pour over the peaches.
  5. Place top crust on pie. Seal and vent.
  6. Bake for 45 minutes at 425 degrees.
  7. Accept all the accolades graciously.

 

Double the Cranberries, Double the Fun: Two Cranberry Pies

Cranberries are a Thanksgiving classic, so A and I were delighted to make not one, but two cranberry pies. One sweet, and one savory, we liked them both a lot!

First, the savory. Originally, this recipe was for pork and cranberries, but we did a vegan switch and subbed seitan for the piggy, and liquid smoke and some smoked salt for the bacon. The result was delicious. Even meat and potatoes people liked it!

An excellent vegan main course for Thanksgiving.
An excellent vegan main course for Thanksgiving.

Here’s how it went down:

Ingredients:

Enough seitan to fill a pie dish. I used the Viva la Vegan recipe for white seitan, which is steamed. I think I used about four loaves of seitan, chopped up, probably about  3 cups.

1 tsp of sage, or meat rub, or thyme, or anything tasty.

quarter cup flour

A solid shake of liquid smoke.

A solid shake of smoked salt.

1 cup ground cranberries

one third cup sugar

1 cup hot water

1 biscuit crust: 1 cup flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder, .5 tsp salt, .25 cup margarine, one third cup almond milk

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

  1. Mix the herbs, flour and salt together. Toss seitan to coat. Pan fry in a little margarine, until browned and delicious. Place in a casserole dish, or a deep pie pan.
  2. Combine the cranberries and sugar, and sprinkle over the seitan. Pour cup of hot water over all, and stick it in the oven.
  3. While that’s baking, mix up your biscuit crust. Combine the dry crust ingredients, and cut margarine into it until crumbly. Add milk, stir. Knead it a few times, then roll it out, ideally between sheets of parchment paper. Cut into strips, or circles, or whatever seems cool to you.
  4. Take the seitan cranberry mix out of the oven, place biscuits on top, return to oven.
  5. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

 

Our sweet cranberry venture was a Harvest Apple-Cranberry Pie. Of all our pies, this is the only recipe I’d tweak for recipe, rather than vegan reasons. It just didn’t set, and while delicious, I think it would be improved by more cooking, which is reflected here. However, the flavor was fantastic.

I mean, look at that thing.
I mean, look at that thing.

Ingredients:

2 piecrusts (bonus recipe for peanut pie crust below!)

.75 cup sugar

3 TBSP cornstarch

.25 tsp salt

.75 cup corn syrup

.25 cup water

1.5 cups raw cranberries

2 tsp. grated orange peel

1.5 cups chopped apples

2 TBSP margarine.

Directions:

  1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
  2. Mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a saucepan. Add corn syrup and water slowly. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens to a filling-like consistancy.
  3. Add cranberries and continue to cook until their skins pop, add orange peel. Cool mixture.
  4. Add apples to the mixture, pour into piecrust. Dot the top with margarine, add top crust and seal and vent the pie.
  5. Bake for 40-50 minutes.

 

For this pie, we branched out, and made a Peanut Pie Shell. It was delicious. Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup flour (you should probably sift it)

.5 tsp baking powder

.5 tsp salt

one third cup vegetable shortening

one quarter cup crushed salted peanuts

3 to 4 TBSP cold water

Directions:

  1. Crush the peanuts by putting them in a plastic bag, and banging on them with your rolling pin.
  2. Sift dry ingredients together.
  3. Cut in shortening.
  4. Add peanuts.
  5. Sprinkle cold water over mixture, a little at a time, until dough holds together in a ball.
  6. Roll it out. Put it in a pie pan.
  7. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes before filling.

This crust would be fantastic with a chocolate filling, or a regular apple pie filling.

Moving so quickly her hands blurred, A crushes the peanuts with her rolling pin of might.
Moving so quickly her hands blurred, A crushes the peanuts with her rolling pin of might.

 

 

 

Mincemeat (Vegan)

This pie would even make Ebenezer Scrooge happy.
This pie would even make Ebenezer Scrooge happy.

You really can’t get more holiday traditional than mincemeat pie. At least, you can’t in England. I think pumpkin eclipsed mincemeat in the States long ago. Mincemeat goes back to the Middle Ages–when Crusaders kindly brought back spices after wreaking havoc on the Middle East, setting up conflicts and issues that we’re still dealing with today, but hey, spices! At that time, it did contain meat– often mutton, or beef tongue. It was banned under Cromwell, since it was associated with pagan (read: Catholic) Christmas celebrations, and in America Puritans banned it along with Christmas celebrations, too. In the 19th century it gained more popularity in the United States, only to fall by the wayside in the 20th century.

Meat proper hasn’t been prominent in most mincemeat for quite awhile. Usually it is a mixture of fruit, spices, and sometimes suet. Making it just “mince”, I suppose.

Our recipe was called “Old-Time Pear Mincemeat, and was originally intended for canning, yielding nine pints. Not really having a need for nine pints of mincemeat, we slightly less than halved the recipe, using a very precise technique known as “Eyeballing It and Hoping It Works Out.”  And work out it did! It was delicious, and smelled like Christmas. More accurately, it smelled like what the final happy scene of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol would smell like, had it a smell.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

2 pie crusts.

3lbs pears, peeled and chopped small. Minced, if you like.
1 box raisins, chopped slightly. A will laugh at you.
One third of a lemon, peel included, chopped small. (I was very skeptical about this, but it was delicious).
3 cups sugar (i.e. why the lemon is delicious)
half cup vinegar
Half a TBSP of cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg
Half a tsp. of ginger

  1.  Technically, you’re supposed to grind the pears, raisins and lemon together. We did not, because we couldn’t be bothered. We settled for mixing them together.
  2. Combine the remaining ingredients in a pot on the stovetop.
  3. Toss in the fruit mixture.
  4. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and cook until pears are soft and everything smells Dickensian (in a Christmassy way, not a despair way).
  5. Realize there is nothing in this pie to make it set, ponder for a moment.
  6. Use slotted spoon to strain fruit into the piecrust, add one to two cups syrup, whatever looks right to you.
  7. Place top crust, seal edges, vent the crust.
  8. Bake at 425 degrees for 40 minutes or until golden brown.
  9. God bless us, everyone, etc.

 

Pro Tip: We had a lot of apples leftover from other pies, so we cooked them in water until soft, strained them, put them through a food mill  and combined them with the leftover mince syrup. Voila, Christmas Applesauce.

This is the face you make when you're chopping raisins and your friend is laughing at you. As a bonus, my long underwear are riding up over my girdle, making me appear pregnant. I am not pregnant, don't get excited.
This is the face you make when you’re chopping raisins and your friend is laughing at you. As a bonus, my long underwear are riding up over my girdle, making me appear pregnant. I am not pregnant, don’t get excited.