Pies across the pond:The British Grocery Store

Day 1 – Shipley

On our recent trip to northern England our host and good friend, Kendra, mentioned to me that we should take a trip to the grocery store. I was so excited. I love grocery stores in a slightly obsessive way. Every time I go in a new one I have to look for hard to find items and check out how all my favorites are arranged.

We went to her local ASDA which is owned by Wal-mart. It’s really a lot like a Wal-mart on the surface except everything is green instead of blue.

Kendra pointed out the cards section. She’s an all-around-terrific-card-guru.

The big trend in English food is local, and I mean that a little differently than you think. It’s all about the region it comes from not necessarily which chicken is closest to you (regional pride really). Each package is labeled proudly on the front with Yorkshire sausage or Gloucester cheese. 70% of the products are labeled that way when it comes to fresh goods.

We wandered up and down the aisle looking for things that were particularly English.

Yorkshire Pudding

We bought a lot of things to try, but I got really excited about their birthday cakes. Like their eggs, they don’t refridgerate them, they sit out like a loaf of bread. Not only are they covered in an intense plastic-like frosting, they were all white cake with a strawberry jam in the middle.

So we bought one…

When we got back to Kendra’s flat we happened to park next to an ice cream truck. I love ice cream trucks, I mean really love them. I chase them like the Beatles, so to see an English one was thrilling. We decided then and there we must have ice cream with our birthday cake.

Kendra fixed us a lovely dinner of  “h”erbed scrambled eggs and potatoes. It was truly yummy and hit the spot after all the airplane food.

and unfortunately the much-anticipated  Animal birthday cake was not so yummy…

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Pies across the pond…

Our dear friend Kendra moved to Shipley, a town in northern England,  just over a year ago. She told me something that was hard fathom: England does not have any canned pumpkin (or real edible pumpkins for that matter), thus no pumpkin pie.

I have to admit I was dumbfounded. Pumpkin is so apart of American culture, I just hadn’t considered not being part of everyone’s food world. Around late November, Kendra gets a hankering for pumpkin and  like other American’s living abroad, everyone around her isn’t aware of the most important food holiday of the year. Not only does this make it hard to celebrate Thanksgiving, it makes the need for pumpkin even stonger.

I could barely stand it. I had to remedy this pumpkin pie longing. So I shipped her some pumpkin…

… and eventually jumped on a plane to bake a beloved American Pie in the jolly old U.K.

The Youngs land. Our first tea in England! Manchester Airport

 

The plan: bake two pies so she had one for herself and one to take to work to introduce her British friends to sweet goodness of pumpkin pie. Then the baking began…

Ta-da!

Then everything went horribly wrong…

I want to blame the jet lag, but I can’t. I accidentally wrote down evaporated milk instead of sweet and condensed milk, thus making the worst testing pumpkin pies ever. It was like we cut the top off the beloved vegetable and ate it with a spoon– no sugar added.

Ah, grand plans have a way of biting back sometimes and not all cooking is perfect. I did leave Kendra with extra crust in the freezer, a can of pumpkin and a promise to make her as much pumpkin pie as she can eat the next time we’re together.

Sigh. Here’s to all good baking plans gone bad!

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My love is a heart-shaped pizza…

Tomato sauce is red, cheese is white…

Every year John and I order a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Johns to celebrate Valentines Day. This typically happens a couple of days before the holiday (we always go to our favorite restaurant Cascones on the actual day) and the past few years we’ve shared our cheesy valentine with friends.

This year Josh joined us for pizza-love and our current Friday night ritual, watching Twin Peaks.

Not the most Valentines Day themed show in the whole world, but Agent Cooper does love his pie!

What was your Valentine’s Day menu? Tell me about it! Comment or e-mail me at thepiesthatbind@gmail.com.

I

 

 

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Top Steph in Washington D.C.: So where’d you eat?

Meals in pictures and video:

The Smithsonian.

Most of the food was named after American states or cities. I did eat K.C. baked beans.

Chinese at the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show.

Wow, this pizza was good. So was the wine. That’s why I have no idea where I ate it.

The Good Stuff Eatery owned by Top Chef Contestant, but not winner, Spike.

Strange cheese-in-the-middle-veggie-burger at the Good Stuff.

At a restaurant owned by a Top Chef Master contestant and one of Oprah’s favorite chef’s I ate Oprah’s best friend Gayle’s favorite lemon pancakes.

(name drop, name drop, name drop)

We tend to eat in dark Italian restaurants when we travel.

At a well-known old restaurant and tourist trap.

Maryland Crab Cakes. They were worth the wait.

Bon Appetit from our nation’s capital!

 

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Top Steph in Washington D.C. Visiting the gals

Our visit to D.C. was mainly driven by the desire to visit some famous chefs and, well, take in other important sites.

Our first stop: The Smithsonian. I had to visit important artifacts from two of my favorite ladies.

One of the great things about visiting Julia Child’s kitchen was getting to “step” into it. They have these wonderful plastic windows that allow you to be in Julia’s Cambridge kitchen. It was fun to see other tourists peeking in the kitchen with you.

I love Julia for so many reasons. I could go on and on and maybe I will one day if the mood strikes. You know they could make a movie about how super she is…

My other favorite gal is Amelia Earhart, not important to the cookery-bloggery (as Julia would say), but still. I touched her favorite plane…I KNOW, rebel, rebel!

We saw other non-edible food inspired art while we were at the Smithsonian.

All in all a good trip to America’s archive.

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Dinner and a Movie: The Ghost of Julia Child

My friend Megan and I decided to watch Julie and Julia together, so why not make dinner too. We put on pearls and cooked up The Ghost of Julia Child Menu from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Veganomicon. How would Julia feel about vegan food? I know you may find this hard to believe, but I think she would love it. Why? Because it is fearless, challenging, and Julia loved a good adventure especially when it came to her taste buds.

The Ghost of Julia Child’s Dinner Menu:

Sautéed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach

Herb-Scalloped Potatoes

Salad

Homemade old world bread

Heart Shaped Apple Galettes

Herb-Scalloped Potatoes

Ingredients
Serves 4


2 lbs. white potatoes (3 average sized) scrubbed & sliced into 1/8″ thick disks
3/4 cup vegetable broth
1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk
1 tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp. nutritional yeast or flour (I highly recommend nutritional yeast for this)
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. dried rosemary
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. salt
Several pinches of freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400*. Lightly grease a 9 X 13-inch glass baking dish or ceramic casserole pan

2. Layer the potatoes in the pan, allowing them to slightly overlap. Lay them across the short way first, overlapping a little less than a half of each potato slice. In each subsequent row, overlap the potatoes by about one-quarter of each potato slice. It should look something like this:

3. Pour most of the vegetable broth over the potatoes, reserving about 3 tbsp. (no need to be exact). Pour the soymilk and drizzle the olive oil over potatoes, making sure to coat each one. If you need to use a little more than 1 tbsp., that’s ok.

4. Scatter the minced garlic over everything, then sprinkle 2 tbsp. of the nutritional yeast over all the potatoes. Drizzle the remaining vegetable broth- try not to wash all the nutritional yeast off the potatoes; you just want to get it moist, so drizzle slowly. Then sprinkle with the last tbsp. of nutritional yeast, the herbs, and the salt.

5. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Uncover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

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Taco Night!

Every Wednesday is taco night at our house. Here are some of weeknight fiesta’s from the past few months.

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Anne: Making an old tradtion new again!

Oh, fruitcake! It gets such a bad rap. I was delighted when Anne asked me over for dinner and to talk about her husband’s grandmother’s fruitcake recipe. Even more fun, she made it right in front of me!

Yes, we started the evening with a lovely dinner of wine and chicken ravioli in a walnut sauce. It was very yummy indeed.

Then it was on to the fruitcake. This recipe was passed down to Anne and she is the only person in the family who makes it. It requires some specific ingredients. She traditional buys boxed Nonesuch mincemeat, but this year, the stores in her area stopped stocking it. Anne had to go for a different brand and a jar version.

First, we had to open the jar…

And Anne’s story…

Finally into the pan!

I left before the cake was finished, but it turned out well, jarred mincemeat and all.

So many of our food traditions just find us and sharing them with others keeps us connected to the people who took the time to write the recipe card in the first place. Food is a perishable way of keeping memories alive, which is both wonderful and fleeting at the same time. I was so happy on the day before Christmas Eve, Anne knocked on my front door with a slice for me. It was gone before I could take a picture of it.

Grandma Lewandowski’s Holiday Fruitcake

9-oz. pkg. Nonesuch mincemeat
½ c. water
½ c. sifted flour
t. baking soda
eggs, lightly beaten
14-oz. can condensed milk
c. (1-lb. jar) mixed candied fruit
c. walnuts, coarsely chopped
c. raisins
c. dates
Break mincemeat into pieces in a medium saucepan. Add water. Stir over medium heat until lumps are broken. Boil 1 minute. Cool.
Butter a 10-12″ springform pan, line with waxed paper, and butter again.
Sift flour and baking soda together. Combine eggs, mincemeat, condensed milk, fruit, and nuts. Fold in dry ingredients. Pour into prepared pan. Bake in 300 degree oven for 2 hours or until center springs back when touched.
Cool and turn out. Remove paper.

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Fried Chicken Grandma-Style.

Here are my comfort foods: noodles, fried chicken, wonton soup, hot coco with saltines  and mint chip ice cream.

Two of these foods are because of my grandma (can you guess which?)

Because I am an old school cook I wanted to learn how to cut up a whole chicken and the best reference for this is the only woman I know who’s actually killed chickens, my grandma.

No, I did not end this chicken’s life, the farmers at Campo Lindo did that for me, but I did spend a whole morning learning the country art of carving a chicken and my grandma’s special recipe for frying it up! Not only was this good food for the soul, grandma time is just good for my heart (the fried parts included).

Cutting up the chicken…

Soaking it in buttermilk. Not for too long, 15-20 minutes maybe.

Double-battered.

Frying the chicken

I had totally forgotten about sorghum butter. It’s a thick molasses combined with butter that my grandma loves on her biscuits and perfect with fried chicken. I hadn’t tasted it since I was a kid.

Grandma gave our chicken a thumbs up…

…and so did my tummy!

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Ravioli in the New Year!

Prep:

After interviewing Julie about her family’s Christmas ravioli extravaganza I was inspired. I love dough and pasta, then heck, I should make some ravioli’s too!

So it began.

For 2 weeks I made ravioli’s by myself. I made pumpkin which turned out a little too pumpkin-y and chicken sausage, which was good, but I was wearing out. Yes, as I should have learned from the interview, making lots of ravioli might require more hands. I called SOS and my trusty help came running. Thank you family.

 

Cheese filling.

 

Dad picked his own apron fyi.

Ravioli Exhaustion. I owe her yet again.

 

Party:

This was a BYOB party (Bring your own bowl). I did this partly to save on late night dishwashing and mostly because it was kind of fun to tell people. The party started at 5pm and lasted until 9pm. I wanted people to feel like they could drop by and weren’t committed to midnight.

Menu:

Cheese Ravioli

Pumpkin Ravioli

Chicken Sausage Ravioli

Dad’s Spaghetti Sauce (with a little help from Paul Newman)

Dad’s meatballs

Garlic Butter Sauce

Bread

Garlic Butter

Plain Butter

Wine

Champagne

Beer

Sparkling Cider

Diet Coke

Fresca

Water

Desserts: (another bowl friendly item)

Ice cream: Chocolate Fudge, Vanilla, Cookie Dough, and Peppermint

Toasts and celebrating every hour on the hour!

The party was a smash, at least I think so. The best thing about this experience was that I got to talk to almost everyone! This is usually not the case when I’m hosting. Since I decided to serve each person to order from the stove, I had the chance to chat with my guests. Yes, it was busy night boiling for me, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

We had so much fun. The pumpkin ravioli’s turned out to be the big hit! Who knew? Certainly not this hearty eater.

And then there were the toasts. Every hour until all the guests left. I thought people might tire of the toasting, but no one did. In fact I think people liked it even more as the night went on.

Each guest took home one or two individually wrapped cinnamon rolls. I made 60 in total! I love the idea of celebrating the sweetness of a new year with something yummy. (I stole this idea from a children’s book author that I like). For the recipe see my blog about my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls.

With one guest left we invited her to participate in our New Year’s ritual.

That night we received a message that one of younger guests was still requesting dad’s meatballs when he was tucked into bed. People did scrape the bowl looking for more.

Here’s the recipe so you can enjoy them too!

Dad’s Meatballs:

1/2 pound of Italian sausage

1/2 pound hamburger

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

garlic salt and pepper to taste

2 eggs

(dad also tossed in some black olives and chopped tomatoes in some of the meatballs)

Butter for frying (2 to 3 tablespoons)

How to:

Mix all ingredients together (except butter) in a large bowl.

Form golf ball sized meatballs and set aside on a plate.

Melt butter in a deep frying pan. Add meatballs.

Fry in pan until cooked through and brown on the outside.

Serves 10

What an excellent way to start the new year. All that work was so worth it!

 

Thank you Kendra for the use her pictures, Jennifer for helping out at the stove and Roger for answering the front door!

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