pacemazz

How about Pumpkin ravioli with sage butter?

Like another poster - this is EXACTLY the same recipe I use for my Sour Cream Coffee Cake (an old family favorite). Risking being redundant, and overly simplified, I think the issue is the mixing. The butter and sugar are creamed ONLY until blended. Sour cream and eggs are added, again only until blended. Then the flour, salt and leaveners - sifted together, added in stages. I do this in my kitchen-aid (fondly named Kermit cause he's green) and once the butter and sugar are creamed, I never raise the speed past 2 and come out with a VERY thick batter. This results in a very dense, silky. moist cake, not airy or light at all. I am curious to see if this is the answer as Claire's mystery unfolds.

I've been on this quest for years... On this particular day, my findings are: Crisco and Butter (1 c crisco, .5c butter) is the way to go. Lard works well too, but for heavier pies (like pecan) and pot-pies. I add crisco to the flour first, than the butter so that the butter are the large pieces and don't get warm. Refrigerate, Refrigerate, Refrigerate, Refrigerate! (the dough, the pie plate - glass only kids, the pin - preferably marble, and the rolled crust before filling.) Don't over-roll Prick and egg-white-wash the bottom before filling or blind baking. Both Martha's recipe and the ones for various crusts in the California Culinary Academy Volume are good, much as I love Rose Levy-B, no pie should be that hard. Tomorrow I may change my mind.

Bleu cheese and coke. For some strange reason the fizzy, sweet acidity cuts through the tangy mouth-coating creaminess in a way I find totally appealing. I know, it's utterly disgusting.

I read that article and was truly dissapointed that one of the best (or to my mind THE best) cheesesteak experience was overlooked. PUDGE'S 1530 Dekalb Pike Blue Bell (used to be in Norristown till Blue Bell expanded). There, cradled in a run-down stripmall, bravely weathering the oncoming tide of gated communities and million-dollar McMansions which are spreading through the area, rolling over colonial homesteads and picturesque wooded glades is the cheesesteak lover's eden. For those who remember what a cheesesteak in South Philly used to be like before Pat's became a tourist trap and some fool decided that cheese whiz was a food, this is a truly religious experience. Pudge's is the real deal, it's hard to believe that you have to go so far from the 9th st. cradle of the cheesesteak to find the genuine article, but there it is. Several years ago the founder and owner "Pudge" merged with the infinite, but his legacy has been proudly carried on by his loving family. He is memorialized in a caracture framed behind the counter. Pudge's puts a real serving of thinly-sliced, chopped-on-the-grill steak on a spongy Philly roll. No seeds (who wants seeds on a cheesteak?) no broccoli rabe, no crap. The meat is tender, melt in your mouth rib eye piled high with just the right ammount of cheese. The sandwich is just large enough to make my jaw ache trying to stuff the thing in my mouth without being ridiculous. (If you want ridiculous order a "large" it's enough food for two very hungry people.) The onions are diced, sweet and oily. In the bottom of the wax paper-lined plastic basket is always a puddle of grease mingled with melted cheese, as there should be. No dry, sitting-on-the-grill-for-a-half-an-hour-in-a-pile-waiting-for-the-next-customer bits of charred used-to-be-beef will be found in a Pudge's cheesesteak. This is the cheesesteak of lore, the holy grail of greasy artery-clogging Philadelphia culinary tradition, and is well worth the trip.