eG Foodblog: Nina C. - Around the World in Just One Borough

[caroled]

Oh, please do, continue your blog.

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I too, vote that you continue with the blog. I have been checking back periodically the last two weeks in the hopes that your computer would be up and running again .YEA!!

Hope the powers that be see things our way and let you continue.

I look forward to it (fingers crossed )

[Chufi]

I also hope that you'll be able to continue!

[Jamie Lee]

Please, continue! Your blog rocked!

[snowangel]

Nina and I have talked, and you'll see this blog continue in the very near future!

[racheld]

I'm SO glad---it was like getting a new playmate, and then her family moved away in the night.

Brooklyn grocery stores, please!!

[Nina C.]

Rachel - You got em! Right after LucyLou finishes her blog, which looks very interesting!

[milgwimper]

Yay Nina I am glad you will continue with your blog!

[Nina C.]

Hello, and welcome to part 2 of the most disjointed food blog ever. When we left off, our heroine was battling computer viruses, while trying to post gazillions of pictures about the Vermont Cheese trail, and taking you on a tour of Brooklyn. During the commercial break, she visited some of those neighborhoods, took a heck of a lot more pictures, made 61 pies for Pieathon, and ate Thanksgiving.

So now the question is, where will this episode go? Do I continue as though I had never stopped, including all of those pictures? Do I start totally anew?

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I don't want to leave you all hanging, but I also don't want to spend the week talking in the past tense. So I'll try to do my best to mash it together.

And we'll begin at the beginning. With breakfast.

Edited November 26, 2007 by Nina C. (log)

[Nina C.]

Breakfast this morning is hardly exciting, but necessary after the excesses of last week:

No coffee, just water. I never have been a regular coffee drinker. My mother drank so much, she would try to convince waitresses to leave the coffee pot on our table. I've always been much more of a soda drinker, but I learned to order coffee at the end of a great meal. Coffee is thus sensorally linked to lingering moments of great conversation, sipping slowly and prolonging the cold night. It doesn't make me want to get up and go.

On tap for today: I had family members who ordered pies for pieathon, but didn't want them for Thanksgiving. So I proposed that rather than freezing the pies, or otherwise compromising their quality, I'd make them this week. (For anyone who doesn't already know, I put together a 24-hour pie bakeathon which raised money for CancerCare. Donations are still coming in, and I'm hoping we'll cross the $5000 mark today!)

Six more pies are on tap, which I'm looking forward to. As I love to bake, it was so hard to cook exhausted, hurried, making mistakes, but I had to keep pressing on. The pies came out decently, but the entire 29.5 hour (!) bakeathon was fraught with self flagellation and doubt. This will be much more leisurely baking with recipes I know now like the back of my hand.

Then my sweetheart's mother is coming over to pick up the pies and will stay for dinner. We're having horseradish pork roast and balsamic-braised cabbage, appropriate for this rainy drippy day.

Edited November 26, 2007 by Nina C. (log)

[Nina C.]

Before I move on to pie progress, or lunch, or anything else, I couldn't resist posting this little montage of my cat Jackson. Earlier, I'd set out a bowl of olives to snack on while I worked, and forgotten them when I got up to work on my pies.

Olives just happen to be Jackson's favorite food that he has no idea how to eat. He is enticed by them, and no matter how many times you scold him, or how much trouble he gets in, he can't help returning to them again and again as long as they are out, and he is awake. This time was no different, except that thanks to the foodblog he got a photo shoot rather than a scolding.

You can see that he's managed to get one out of the bowl, and licked it a few times, but since he can't really chew it, he's resorted to loving it. He's purring and rubbing himself against it as if it were a female tabby in heat, and Barry White were playing on the stereo.

[Smithy]

That is too funny. We have a chowcat in the house, but as far as I can tell I'm the only resident who likes olives. I like the photomontage!

[Nina C.]

Today I'm making 3 sugar cream pies, 2 pecan pies, and a pumpkin (or two). Although these aren't my absolute favorite pies, when planning Pieathon, I knew that I needed to choose Thanksgiving appropriate pies whose ingredients weren't too expensive.

Why on earth I chose pecan, which has to be blind baked, I'll never know. I HATE blind baking with a passion, and blind baking is even harder in the disposable tins I used for Pieathon. But once you advertise something for sale, it's hard to go back on your word. I got a donation of the pecans from my father and his Costco card, and I still have a mountain left.

I have a pumpkin recipe that I like a lot. It started off as Ruth Levy Berenbaum's recipe, but I've played with the proportions and spices. It's got great flavor, a creamy texture, and best of all, no blind baking. I'll show you the filling for that in a little while.

But my favorite thing to come out of all of this is the sugar cream pie. When I first posted this crazy idea on eGullet, looking for advice, Gfron1 had the brilliant suggestion of this Midwestern custard pie. It's so easy, but better than that, it's a satisfying, comforting and new holiday dessert. (How often do you get to describe a holiday dessert as both comforting and new?)

Testing several different versions, all found online, landed me a winning combination. I have no idea how authentic it is, or if a Midwesterner would be pleased with the end result, but it doesn't matter; I'm pleased. I love this recipe so much I've put it in the sacred bible. This is the recipe book my great-grandmother made for my mom right before she married. It's titled "All the Good Things" and has recipes going back to my great-great-great-grandmother. My mother added many recipes to the back, and there are just a dozen blank pages of yellowed notebook paper left. I know I can add new pages, but I still feel as though I should be sparing. An entry in this book is a blue ribbon, a prize bestowed on a recipe saying it's perfection, and worth handing down.

Here's my sugar cream pie recipe:

(and an example of a recipe my mom added: )

(and one of my great-grandmother's recipes:

)

All my crusts are done - the pastry ones are resting, the graham cracker crusts are cooling. Time to make myself some lunch, then I'll get on with the baking.

[gfron1]

I'm very happy that you like the sugar creams. Those things are out of control unhealthy, but they are soooo good!

[Chufi]

Why on earth I chose pecan, which has to be blind baked, I'll never know. I HATE blind baking with a passion,

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I HATE blind baking too

Nina, I´ve been following your adventures on the pie-athon blog, and I have to say I really admire you for taking on such a project. And you still have energy left to do some more baking? That´s amazing!

(and one of my great-grandmother's recipes:

)

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I love that : 1 big looking spoon of butter

[Nina C.]

Why on earth I chose pecan, which has to be blind baked, I'll never know. I HATE blind baking with a passion,

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I HATE blind baking too

Nina, I´ve been following your adventures on the pie-athon blog, and I have to say I really admire you for taking on such a project. And you still have energy left to do some more baking? That´s amazing!

Thanks for the kind words! I do have lots more energy to bake. It's probably at least in part because I'm trying to eat healthy in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and baking allows me to vicariously enjoy some of my favorite things.

Edited November 26, 2007 by Nina C. (log)

[Nina C.]

Time for lunch:

I started off with a leftover fennel, orange, and mint salad.

But unfortunately, the fennel suffered the effects of refrigeration, and wasn't as crispy as I would have liked.

So I ate some, put it aside and made some bastardized carbonara.

WARNING: If you refuse to compromise taste for health, or get chills when someone messes around with a classic recipe, look away now. This won't be pretty.

It starts off similarly enough. Boil fettuccine (in this case garlic fettuccine), add peas during last minutes of cooking, toss with an egg. Except I don't add cheese. And instead of beautiful artisinal pancetta, I use turkey bacon.

Stop stoning me! I know, I know, I would never serve this to company, and it doesn't taste at all like the real thing, but it's a satisfying meal of creamy pasta with a smoky hint of something, and green vegetable vitamins. I think it covers the food pyramid, though not in the proportions that the FDA would like, but oh well.

[MarketStEl]

okay, vocabulary time:

"Blind baking" is when...?

[Nina C.]

okay, vocabulary time:

"Blind baking" is when...?

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For an apple pie, you roll out the dough, chill it, then add filling and bake.

But if you did that for any kind of custard pie, the wetness of the filling would stop the bottom crust from cooking properly. There are all kinds of tricks to combat this (bread crumbs on the bottom, baking on a hot sheet pan, freezing the crust) but the classic is blind baking.

You roll out the dough, chill it, then bake the empty crust for 15 minutes or so until light golden brown. Then you fill it, and bake again. The problem is that without a filling, it tends to shrink, or slump down the sides.

There are several topics on eG about this. It's just not my forte. But that's okay. I do other things well!

Edited November 26, 2007 by Nina C. (log)

[Nina C.]

Sugar cream goes really fast:

Into a graham cracker crust goes a mixture of heavy cream, milk, flour, and granulated sugar. You dot the top generously with butter, and sprinkly heavily with nutmeg. This gets baked at 450 for 10 minutes, then 350 for 30-35 minutes. When it comes out, the sugars have caramelized, the nutmeg is fragrant, and the custard is creamy.

[suzilightning]

You can see that he's managed to get one out of the bowl, and licked it a few times, but since he can't really chew it, he's resorted to loving it. He's purring and rubbing himself against it as if it were a female tabby in heat, and Barry White were playing on the stereo.

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why do i keep hearing "Let's get it on" in my head??!! Nna our part maine coon, yoda, used to eat the kernels of corn from a cob he held upright in his paws. great that your 'puter is up and running. next time remember to visit your local branch of the library and talk to the reference librarian. many times you can insert your photo chip in the computer and post - trust me - that's how i did my blog.

one of my co workers daughter just moved to brooklyn so i am passing this link on to her. blog on

[Nina C.]

Here's my version of a pumpkin pie. (This would have been better to show you all BEFORE you spent the weekend feasting, but oh well. Such things cannot be helped.)

After the pastry crust is rolled out, it gets coated with crushed gingersnaps. RLB calls for a mixture of gingersnaps and pecans, but I think this way is better. I'm always looking for big and deep flavors, and I think that while both give a subtle effect, the gingersnaps add more to the final flavor.

(Look Susan! hands! and earlier was my handwriting.)

That goes into the fridge, and then the freezer to chill.

Meanwhile, I make the filling.

I cook together a can of pumpkin puree, a cup of brown sugar, a couple of teaspoons each of ginger and cinnamon, a 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala, a grating of nutmeg, and a teaspoon of salt.

After a few minutes, the mixture is pureed. I then add milk, heavy cream, 3 eggs and vanilla, and puree again.

Then the pie crust is filled, and bakes at 375 for 50 or so minutes.

[Nina C.]

You can see that he's managed to get one out of the bowl, and licked it a few times, but since he can't really chew it, he's resorted to loving it. He's purring and rubbing himself against it as if it were a female tabby in heat, and Barry White were playing on the stereo.

why do i keep hearing "Let's get it on" in my head??!! Nna our part maine coon, yoda, used to eat the kernels of corn from a cob he held upright in his paws. great that your 'puter is up and running. next time remember to visit your local branch of the library and talk to the reference librarian. many times you can insert your photo chip in the computer and post - trust me - that's how i did my blog.

one of my co workers daughter just moved to brooklyn so i am passing this link on to her. blog on

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I would have loved to keep blogging last time but.... I spent several days trying to fight the virus on my own, trying everything I could think of to throw at it, without success. Once I determined that I was going to have to cough up the money to get it fixed, I was so behind on my work that I needed every second of library/internet cafe time to get that done before I had house guests for 8 days, and then the pieathon. When your work is all internet based, it's devastating to lose your computer. Next step is saving for a second laptop so that I don't fall into that trap again.

But at least this week was free so I could keep blogging!

[Nina C.]

Here's my version of a pumpkin pie. (This would have been better to show you all BEFORE you spent the weekend feasting, but oh well. Such things cannot be helped.)

After the pastry crust is rolled out, it gets coated with crushed gingersnaps. RLB calls for  a mixture of gingersnaps and pecans, but I think this way is better. I'm always looking for big and deep flavors, and I think that while both give a subtle effect, the gingersnaps add more to the final flavor.

(Look Susan! hands! and earlier was my handwriting.)

That goes into the fridge, and then the freezer to chill.

Meanwhile, I make the filling.

I cook together a can of pumpkin puree, a cup of brown sugar, a couple of teaspoons each of ginger and cinnamon, a 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala, a grating of nutmeg, and a teaspoon of salt.

After a few minutes, the mixture is pureed. I then add milk, heavy cream, 3 eggs and vanilla, and puree again.

Then the pie crust is filled, and bakes at 375 for 50 or so minutes.

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I forgot to add: in order to combat underbaked crust, RLB instructs you to bake your pie directly on the floor of the oven. I start it out there, but move it up to the bottom rack after about 15 minutes.

[suzilightning]

WARNING: If you refuse to compromise taste for health, or get chills when someone messes around with a classic recipe, look away now. This won't be pretty.

It starts off similarly enough. Boil fettuccine (in this case garlic fettuccine), add peas during last minutes of cooking, toss with an egg. Except I don't add cheese. And instead of beautiful artisinal pancetta, I use turkey bacon.

Stop stoning me! I know, I know, I would never serve this to company, and it doesn't taste at all like the real thing, but it's a satisfying meal of creamy pasta with a smoky hint of something, and green vegetable vitamins.  I think it covers the food pyramid, though not in the proportions that the FDA would like, but oh well.

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nina - eff 'em if they don't like it. a large part of cooking is being able to cook for someone you love(including you ) and sometimes the most interesting part is being able to satisfy the person's nutritional requirements and make it taste good, this is something john could actually eat and the turkey bacon is something we have in the house because it has less fat - which would bother him- than pork bacon.

blog on, sister girl.

[Nina C.]

Okay, so all my pies are done and cooling:

and dinner is in the oven.

I'm making a horseradish-crusted pork roast, with braised cabbage. Originally I had planned to make a simple spinach salad, but having company prompted me to upgrade to roasted green beans. In general, my entertaining philosophy is to make basically the same thing I'd make if there weren't guests. I think people want to feel comfortable and relaxed, not fussed over. I know my food tastes good; I don't need any fireworks.

But, without anything particularly interesting to put in the salad, the course changed slightly.

I thought I might have time to finish this before my guest arrived, but she is here! So more later.