Flavor Combinations

At work a couple of days ago, I was thinking about pie (because that's what I do) and I thought a peach/blueberry pie that had fresh mint and lime as its "spices" (instead of the more traditional cinnamon/nutmeg combo) would be nice and refreshing. I jotted my idea down on a post-it and stuck it to a friend's computer for her opinion. She suggested also adding ginger, which I don't generally cook with, but which she thought was a good flavor to match with lime and mint. So I gave it a try.

Since this was something I was just experimenting with, I had no clue how much of anything to put in - and since I don't cook with ginger but am generally turned off by too much of it in a dish, I erred on the side of a lot of mint and lime, and not so much ginger.

I took the pie to work the next day and asked for constructive criticism. I received a few suggestions to lessen the amount of mint (apparently not everyone loves it as much as I do), and a suggestion to perhaps add the ginger to the crust so it stood out a bit more, but everyone generally liked it and thought it was such an interesting and refreshing combination. I felt so proud!

Later that day, I had a nice long phone call with my oldest friend - we've been friends since the 7th grade, and although she lives far away and we only see each other every other year or so, we do a pretty good job of keeping in touch. She and I have been playing phone tag for the last three months, until finally I emailed her and asked if she would be available at 8pm her time for a chat. She was, and we talked for more than two hours. I told her all about my thoughts for the bakery, and was very grateful for her advice and suggestions, as she's a small business owner herself.

As we were winding down, we started talking about lunches we had when we were in high school together. She laughed as she reminded me how I used to take my sandwiches apart, so I could taste each individual ingredient - and then laughed harder as she remembered how I once created an interesting flavor combination during one of our lunches.

My dad made my lunch every day when I was in school, and he would generally make this sandwich that included the thickest slice of sharp cheddar cheese I have ever seen in a sandwich. Take out a ruler and measure half an inch - that's how thick these cheese slices were! On this particular day, I had taken apart my sandwich and just couldn't get through the cheese. I also had a Caramello chocolate bar (it's the one that's four squares of gooey caramel). We don't remember who suggested it or why I did it, but I took a hunk of cheese and a square of Caramello and popped them both into my mouth to see how they would taste together. And, surprisingly, the combination worked! The sweetness of the chocolate and carmel was perfectly matched by the sharp saltiness of the cheese, and I believe I ate the rest of the chocolate and cheese together.

All of this got me wondering - what are your favorite, perhaps unusual, flavor combinations?

Pie, Chocolate Cake, and Vanilla Cookies Coming Up

All my talk of pie from Friday made me crave it, so I made a lemon pie Friday night, and we ate it for dessert Friday, and then breakfast over the weekend.

Then, because I wanted to put off cleaning the bathroom, I decided to make my first-ever layered cake. I chose the Chocolate Fudge Cake from Nigella Lawson's Nigella Bites, which is one of my favorite cookbooks from my favorite cookbook author. It was a good first-ever layered cake - not too difficult, since it was only two cakes, one layer of chocolate frosting, and the whole thing was covered in the same chocolate frosting. I finished it at 10:30 on Sunday evening, and we cut slices as soon as it was frosted so that we could go to sleep as soon as we ate it (not the best plan for our digestive systems, but so be it). The rest of it came to work today, and it's been suggested that I need to add a layer of raspberries to take it over the edge, which, along with the Cointreau I plan on drenching the cake with next time, would be perfect.

I seem to be less liberal with my frosting application than Nigella, as I have about a cup of frosting left. I was mulling over what to do with it (other than stand at the fridge and stealthily eat it out of the Tupperware container with my finger) and decided that it should be sandwiched between vanilla cookies like a backwards Oreo. So that's on the horizon for later this week.

(Yes, I know my baking has revolved around sweets lately, so I'm planning some savory items, and will post those soon.)

Pie!

Pie always comes with an exclamation mark in my book - it's just so exciting! Pie, to me, signifies slowing down and taking time to bake something with love (MAKE IT WITH LOVE!). You have to wait for pie. It's a multiple part process - first the bottom crust, then the filling, then a top crust or a crumble topping or, if you're really adventurous, a lattice top. Pies are more complicated than a cake (which just goes in a pan, bakes up, and might get a bit of frosting) or a batch of cookies (which just get plopped on a cookie sheet), or even a fruit cobbler (which, I'm sorry to say, is my go-to dessert in the summer...when I really should be making fruit pies).

Pie is difficult to make with our crazy schedules. That multiple part process is time-consuming, and rolling out a crust is daunting for a lot of people. My crusts are usually somewhat of a patchwork mess - I can never roll a perfect circle, so end up with a crust with the outline of a blob. When I move it into the pie plate, I end up playing doctor and cutting off pieces from the part of the crust that's too big for the plate and using them to cover up the spots that don't completely come together.

One of my favorite "kitch lit" (that's short for "kitchen literature") books is called American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads. The author, Pascale Le Draoulec, needs to travel from San Francisco to New York, and is looking for something to tie her trip to - something that would give her journey "some sort of peg, a thread" to pull her from one city to another and to show her the "real" America - not the one that shows up on the news all the time. Her trip is amazing - she drives through small towns across the country and just leans her head out the window to ask a stranger where she can get the best pie in town. Whenever possible, she gets the recipes, many of which are tabbed with little Post-Its in my copy of the book.

My favorite recipe is for an apple-blueberry pie, which I make more often than any other pie. The combination of the tart green apples and the even more tart blueberries is perfect to me. Mountain Man prefers the lemon pie my mom has made since I was a kid - she would make it on the weekend and we'd eat it for breakfast with a cold glass of milk before school. Those were my favorite breakfasts, and Mountain Man and I do the same now, swapping the milk for a cup of coffee. My grandmother makes a flat apple pie in a large metal cake pan that is just amazing - when we visit her in Lebanon, she makes it for us, and when she was here last year, my brothers asked her for pie almost as soon as she arrived. I think everyone has a favorite pie. We just have to slow down long enough to enjoy it.

My favorite food podcast is hosting a pie contest here in LA in September and I'm considering entering it. See the entry form here.. I'm not sure what I would make, but it would be great to be a part of a community of pie-makers (and pie-eaters) for a day. I'll let you know if I do it - it would be great to share it with you!

Puff Pastry

This weekend, the question "Which came first - the empanada or the pasty?" popped into my head, as I've been thinking about puff pastry and how it's my new favorite thing.

It seems that one of the earliest mentions of a pasty was found in a 13th century charter granted by Henry III to the town of Great Yarmouth. It said, "The town is bound to send to the sheriffs of Norwich every year one hundred herrings, baked in twenty four pasties, which the sheriffs are to deliver to the lord of the manor of East Carlton who is then to convey them to the King".

The word "empanada" comes from the Spanish word "empanar", meaning to wrap or coat in bread. It's thought that empanadas developed in Spain or the Middle East (depending on who's telling the story), but the general consensus is that they were carried around the world by travelers. I'd need to dig a little deeper to find out who first traveled where (or who first invaded who) to make guesses on how such similar foods developed in such different areas of the world.

The great thing is that most cultures have some kind of filling-wrapped-in-dough dish, including kibbe from Lebanon (one of my favorite dishes), samosas from India and Pakistan, and calzones from Italy. You could also, perhaps, claim that Pop Tarts are the equivalent in the States. Which may be very mean and culturally insensitive (of my own culture) of me.

Pop Tarts are what I thought of when I made these yesterday and ate one for breakfast this morning. I stuffed puff pastry with a mixture of blackberry and apricots, mixed with lemon zest and brown sugar and baked them until they started to puff. Mountain Man and I tried to eat them with forks yesterday - but they were calling out to be eaten by hand.

I wrapped the leftovers in foil, and Mountain Man and I ate more for breakfast this morning. I noted that they reminded me of Pop Tarts, and MM replied "Yes, but with all organic material!"

Delicious. You're not getting a recipe just yet since I do think they'd benefit from the addition of a crunchy something - I'm leaning towards chopped walnuts. A project for this weekend, I think...