Relish the Thought: Tomatillo Relish/Salsa

Its a salsa – it's a relish – it's… a relsa? Salish?

Well, whatever it is, I like noshing on it on a hot afternoon, on tortilla chips, on chicken tacos, on bratwurst, or in a salad. It's a little labor-intensive if you don't have a food processor, but it's worth the effort.

And it's a swell way to do something with the spare tomatillos you have in your garden…unless you don't have a kind and obliging gardener like my pop. Under those circumstances, you want to go buy fresh tomatillos from the store. You want to get them while they're firm – if you're unfamiliar with tomatillos, they're also referred to as "husk cherries" or "husk tomatoes".   On the vine, they look a little like a tomato wrapped in a papery leaf envelope, but they're actually closer to the gooseberry than to the tomato, and their flavor really shows it. Most tomatillos are strongly citrusy, but not overly juicy, and, when fresh, are on the crisp side.

I'm told they make awesome pickles, but I never seem to be able to make them last long enough to get to the point of pickling. I keep tossing them into my chili, or into this relish.

There are variations to be made, such as leaving the seeds & white pulpy ribs in the peppers to raise the heat, or substituting vinegar for the lime juice and raising the amount of salt, to make it a little more pickly, but, somehow, I came to really appreciate the combination of flavors as they are here.

I suppose this could be canned, as well, if I didn't keep eating it as I chop…

Anyway, as I said, it's simple enough:

Tomatillo Relish (or is it a Salsa?)

Ingredients:

8-10 medium tomatillos (about 4 cups), husks removed, washed*, and finely chopped
2 medium jalapeño peppers, white ribs & seeds removed & fruit very finely minced
1/2 medium onion (about 2/3 cups) sweet onion, minced
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro (or 3 Tablespoons high-quality dried cilantro)
juice from 1 medium lime (about 2 Tablespoons)
1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

In a medium mixing bowl, combine all ingredients, mix well. With a spoon or a small bowl, press down to lightly crush. Stir again. Store in refrigerator. Chill well before serving.

*Tomatillos have a very sticky surface beneath their papery husks. It may take several tries rinsing them, because you want all the stickiness gone.

Gluten-Free, Low-Carb Pizza Crust

I have a little trouble with some allergies and sensitivities. They're not always the usual ones people get, either (yes, I'm violently allergic to anything containing grape origins – including cream of tartar and many of those unidentified "natural sweeteners" and "natural flavors" you find in so many sweet/diet snack foods. I dare you to match that).

Nevertheless, one of the foods I've recently learned is a problem for me is wheat. I haven't been tested for celiac, or other such, because my insurance doesn't cover…well, anything, since I have none. But I have discovered that, when I skipped eating wheat for more than a few days, I failed to have my regular morning migraine the next day, my digestive problems lessened, and my breathing issues around the cats were not so severe. So, at least I can say that I've marked something in my life which I can change in order to make my life just a little less sucky. (Here is where I do a little happy dance.)

Needless to say, this has left me searching for recipes I can fix for everybody in the household, which will satisfy their old fogey taste buds without causing me undue discomfort. This is why I got excited when one of my social media connections brought to my attention a simple, no-flour pizza crust recipe.

It was touted as low-carb, as well, piling on the pepperoni and sausage, but I have a bad habit of tossing peppers, onions, olives, and the like onto my own, instead of lots of meat. Tonight, it was broccoli, olives, and onions, with grilled peppers and mushrooms added into the sauce. But, hey, it's a pizza crust, and you can top it any way you want. 

The one thing I can say about this crust is, it's a very tender thing, and will likely stick to (a) the pan, if it's not greased very well, and (b) to the spatula if it's not a good non-stick silicone one. That's because the crust is, essentially, a crustless savory cheesecake. And, in my humble opinion, it kicks hindquarters.

this is a double-recipe, cooked in a standard 13x18" jelly-roll pan

Gluten-Free, Low-Carb Pizza Crust

Ingredients:

1 package (8 oz) cream cheese (you can use the low-fat, but not the nonfat)

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground pepper

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350º F. 

Grease 12-inch circular pizza pan or 9x13-inch cookie sheet.

Have cream cheese brought to room temperature, either by letting stand for a half hour in advance, or by warming slightly to soften in microwave oven.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine cream cheese and egg until thoroughly smooth. Beat in garlic powder, parmesan, and pepper.  Use spatula to pour batter into pan. 

Bake on middle rack about 10-12 minutes, until beginning to turn golden-brown in spots (like a flour tortilla or lefse, depending upon your own cultural references). Remove from oven, allow to cool at least 12-15 minutes. 

Meanwhile, raise temperature of oven to 375º F.

Apply your favorite sauce, cheeses, and toppings, and bake again until cheese begins to bubble up and lightly brown. 

Allow to cool about 5 minutes before serving.

Also great served cold for breakfast.

Cheesy Bacon Quick Bread

This recipe is easily doubled, as long as you have a pound of bacon to toss into the mix. Fortunately, we tend to cook up lots of the stuff in advance, during the summer, so that, whenever we want, we can assemble a quick BLT using the lettuce and tomatoes from Pop's garden.

If you don't have all of that lying about, though, you can probably substitute the pre-cooked bacon bits from the store. For that, you'll need to adjust and adapt according to your own tastes. I'd estimate approximately one ounce of the pre-cooked stuff per slice in the recipe, and add about 1/8 tsp more oil to the recipe.

Also, as this is a chunky batter, I recommend leaving your whisk in its drawer, or wherever you store it. This is a job for a spoon or a heavy-duty spatula.


Cheesy Bacon Quick Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
3/4 cup quick-cooking oats
6 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup nonfat buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cheese, oats and bacon in a large bowl. Set aside. 

Combine the eggs, milk and oil in another bowl and add to the first mixture, stirring just enough to moisten the dry ingredients (do not overmix. This is like a muffin or pancake batter, so you don't ant to over-activate the gluten, or it will become dense and rubbery). Spoon the batter into a greased and floured 8-1/2" x 4-1/2" x 3" loaf pan. 

Bake at 350°F for 35 to 40 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove from oven, then remove from loaf pans. Let cool on rack for 10 minutes before slicing.

Birthday SOS! We're eating sand!

Seriously. We had a message in a bottle, and it read in large, splotchy letters, "S.O.S.*", and below, the parchment read, "*She's Older Still!"

It was the party for Asteroidea's eleventh birthday. 

For her and her brother, I've been building entertaining little cakes each year on their birthdays. If you go back through this blog, you'll find a TARDIS (with Dalek cupcakes), A sailbook with Swedish Fish-filled Jell-O seas, a marshmallow-robot-infested spaceship, a giant cheeseburger and fries, with cherry ketchup, and a circus tent filled with candies. Before I started this blog, I'd built a chocolate locomotive and coal car… and a couple more. 

I try to leave them guessing what I have planned, and then to give them something a little absurd and yet tasty. Sometimes I cheat. I use mixes and store-bought tubs of frosting when I know nobody with serious taste buds will be eating the thing (i.e, if it's for the kids' party, and I'm fixing another for the grownups of the family).

With this one, I really didn't cheat. The cake was a from-scratch banana cake, with cream cheese frosting, the "sand" was a special blend of crumbs, the shells were homemade candies, and the pebbles in the sand… okay, I cheated on those. I ordered them from Amazon. 

But I did make the punch from scratch, too. See that watermelon half? Scooped out, and all that stuff put through a blender, then mixed 2:1 with seltzer. No sugar added, and the kids gulped it down. So did most of the adults (my parents are not fans of watermelon, & I'm allergic, but everybody else had multiple cups of the stuff.)

But the cake.

The cake.

I stumbled across one of my mother's old chocolate molds, and started plotting to make seashells and a starfish cake, but somehow every way I looked at my plan, it wasn't coming together.

I had been teasing Asteroidae that planning this party was driving me bananas. Then there was this make-ahead recipe for banana cake. And then, there was this lovely post on Cake Wrecks…OY! the gears started moving.

Granted, I'm no professional. I do this stuff strictly for the romp in the kitchen, and to make a couple of kids' faces light up.  But I do try. I don't expect my cakes to look anything like the Sunday Sweets, and am happy if they look slightly better than the other things featured on Cake Wrecks' regular pages.  And eventually I accomplish what I was hoping to do.

Five little girls and one little boy consumed just about every last grain of sand. Three women and two men nibbled rocks all evening. And they all had a load of fun.

I made the candy shells and the sand well ahead. The pink sugar shells were made using the "extra strong sugar molds" recipe at the bottom of this page, but substituting strained lemon juice for the water, and, once they were hardened, they were stored in the fridge until serving. The sand, however, took finesse. I learned long ago that sand isn't really "sandy" when you look at it closely. So you can't just use plain old Nilla Wafer crumbs and think you're making realistic beach scenes. You have to add texture, color, and, mmmm flavor. So I'm including my sand recipe, below.

The structure of the cake, by the way, was built by baking two 4x9" loaves and eight cupcakes – the cupcakes being four large (Texas Muffin sized) and four small (well, standard) cups filled to just above the halfway mark, and then, after baking, stacked small upon large to form the truncated cone "towers". The loaves were sliced lengthwise and crosswise, then their corners trimmed at an angle so they could nest around the cupcake "towers". When you do your own version, you'll find this initially requires improvisation.

Once you have all the components gathered and ready to assemble, frost them, build the castle, and cover with pebbles, shells, and, finally, the sand. Lots and lots of sand.

Edible sand

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon almond bark (or, if you prefer, white chocolate)
2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 or 3 dark chocolate wafer cookies (like Oreos w/o the cream filling), ground to fine crumbs (but NOT to dust)
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
3-5 Tablespoons yellow-colored decorating sugar
1-2 Tablespoon red-colored decorating sugar
1 Tablespoon green-colored decorating sugar
1 teaspoon blue-colored decorating sugar
5 Tablespoons regular granulated sugar

Directions:

In a microwave oven, melt the almond bark on a notebook-sized sheet of waxed paper or parchment. Using a butter knife or spreading spatula, spread the almond bark as thinly as possible. Put into freezer.

Combine other ingredients, either in a blender or using a medium bowl and a whisk.

Remove almond bark from freezer and, while still very cold, break or chop into fine chunks and crumbs. Mix into bowl with other ingredients. Put in storage container, seal, and refrigerate until you need to use it.

Quick Oatmeal Molasses Bread

As I played with this, I realized how much it reminds me of Mom's Anadama bread recipe, but slightly quicker and simpler, and with the addition of dried fruit such as raisins or dried cranberries, it's more like a luncheon bread than a hearty sandwich loaf. Nevertheless, it's tasty as all getout. Plus, it's less than an hour from raw ingredients to ready-to-eat. It's kind of hard to beat that!

Quick Oatmeal Molasses Bread 

Ingredients:

2 cups nonfat buttermilk
1/2 cup quick oats (not instant oatmeal)
1/4 cup unsulphured molasses
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup raisins or dried cranberries (optional)*

 Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Heavily grease and flour two standard 8x4 loaf pans

Combine first 4 ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Sift or lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture.

Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist; stir in raisins. Stir with a wooden spoon until dough pulls together in a shaggy mass. Let rest 2 minutes.

Butter or oil your hands well and gently knead in bowl or on lightly floured surface (dough will be so sticky you will almost mistake it for thick batter); shape dough in loaf and place in loaf pan. Repeat procedure with remaining dough.

Make 3 diagonal cuts 1/4-inch deep across top of each loaf using a VERY sharp and lightly oiled knife.

Bake at 400° for 20 minutes. Leaving loaves in oven, reduce temperature to 375°; bake an additional 15 minutes.  Remove from oven, place on cooling rack, brush lightly with butter. Let stand at least 15 minutes before slicing.



*I made this without raisins, and on a cornmeal-coated cookie sheet instead of greased loaf pans, so I had to adjust the amount of flour to use, in order for the loaf to even remotely hold its shape. I probably could have added more, plus another 1/4 cup of oats or so, as well. Either way, the dough is still very sticky, and I will consider lining the bottoms of my loaf pans with parchment, next time I make this.

Button, Button, Who's Baked the Buttons?

My young friend Asteroidea came over, with her younger brother, for the afternoon.  And, while the boy wanted nothing but peanut butter and honey sandwiches, of which he ate copiously, she was inclined to cook a plateful of her new favorite easy treat, banana pancake buttons.

These are astonishingly simple to prepare: mash a very ripe  medium banana until it becomes a smooth paste, thoroughly mix in one medium to large egg, and fry in lightly-buttered nonstick pan over medium heat, turning once when bubbles start to appear along the edges.  (They're very tender, and flipping is sometimes tricky, so always keep them "button-sized," about 2 - 3 inches across, by dropping them onto the pan using a tablespoon or soup spoon). They're very sweet on their own, so they need no topping, but Asteroidea indicated they were very tasty with a tiny bit of cinnamon sugar sprinkled on them, if you want a little extra kick.

Still, I'd promised that today would be a day for baking, so when she finished with the pancakes, we started in on the spice buttons (a variation on a German holiday cookie, the Speculatius – spiced windmill cookies – of which my father is deeply fond). These are freezer cookies, so you don't just mix them up and throw them into the oven. It took a whole afternoon of waiting, first.

In the end, they are similar to ginger snaps, and, if you want, you can boost the amount of ginger and chili powder to make them more zippy, but these are quite addictive enough. Also, when the holidays roll around, these are durable enough to ship, as well as to poke a hole or two in them before baking, so you can string them up with ribbons or licorice strings/red vine candy, as decorations on a Christmas tree.

This is a small sample of what she took home with her, so nobody in our house would be too tempted (toothpick included for scale).

Spice Buttons

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly-grated nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/8 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg white

sanding or decorative sugar

Directions:

In a medium bowl, sift or whisk flour, salt, and spices. Set aside.

In a separate medium mixing bowl, mix butter on medium speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add both sugars, beat at medium speed until creamy, about 3 minutes, then add vanilla and egg, mixing until slightly fluffy. Reduce the speed to low, gradually add in dry ingredients and mix well.

Scrape dough from the bowl, divide into thirds. 

Roll each portion of dough out to an average diameter of about 1 to 1 1/2 inches (it will make a roll about a foot long). Wrap tightly in plastic and place in freezer. If you want to prevent it from getting a flat bottom, slide each dough roll into a cardboard tube (an old, clean paper towel roll will do) before you put it into the freezer.

Allow to chill at least three hours.

Once the dough is chilled stiff, place oven racks near top and bottom of oven, and preheat to 375º F.  When the oven is nearly hot, prepare egg white by lightly beating it in a small bowl. Have ready a large cookie sheet covered with either a prepared silicone non-stick sheet or a sheet of cooking parchment.  

Remove a roll of cookie dough from the freezer and carefully unwrap it from the plastic (if you want the edges of the cookie to be precise and smooth, you may want to roll it again just a little). Brush lightly with egg white, then sprinkle on decorative sugar, all the way around.* 

With a thin, sharp knife or a wire cheese slicer, cut dough off in 1/4 inch (or slightly thinner) slices, place close together on the cookie sheets (they will not grow much bigger, since the only leavening is the egg). 

Bake 8 - 12 minutes, until the cookies are browned to your preference in crispness. Cool on rack, if you can stand to wait that long before eating them all.** 

Makes over 100.

 *This step is optional. Pop likes his cookies plain and simple, without extra sugars or icings, because you can eat them almost immediately out of the oven without worrying about the hot sugar burning the roof of your mouth. 

** If, on the other hand, you like lots of sugar, you can make a thick, stiff icing for these, using 2 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar and 7 teaspoons of warm water (you can bump it up a notch with 1/8 tsp. or so of cinnamon, but don't get crazy).  Mix completely, put into a zippered bag, cut a small piece off a corner off the bag, and pipe the icing onto each cookie, starting by drawing a perimeter, then filling in the circle. Once you have it iced, you can further decorate with colored sugars, sprinkles, or dragees, if that's your style.  Allow at least a half hour for the icing to set up before serving these.

The Short Cut Cobbler

There was this bag of peaches, you see.

We bought a bag of fresh ones, but I'm pretty sure they were not exactly local produce. They were a little bruised, and their fuzzy skins were beginning to show some of the same signs of time passing that the human skin does -sagging and getting a little wrinkly. 

With that sort of thing, one really can't make a fresh compote, can one? Even if one has a cup of golden raspberries and a half cup of big red raspberries to add to it, the peaches needed to be cooked, to get the juices from them. It just wasn't going to do.

And then, there was this can of what the Bat and I like to think of as emergency supplies: buttermilk biscuits from ALDI. Pop really likes them, so, when the weather cools off, and we fix stew, we generally toss a batch of those in the oven for him. Sadly, we haven't had a cool enough day this past couple of months, so the container in the fridge was fast approaching its expiration date, and, well, things started coming together in my mind.

After that, it wasn't too long before it started coming together in the kitchen.

Thus was a short cut cobbler born.  Fair notice: it's not an overly sweet version. If you want more sweetness, you can adjust the amount of sugar, honey, etc., to your own tastes - you might put more honey on the biscuit tops, or even dunk them in honey before placing them on top. On the other hand, if you serve this with a good ice cream, any extra sweetness will probably knock you into a sugar coma.

Try it this way first.

Short Cut Cobbler 

Ingredients:

(all these are approximations, according to taste)

about 8 medium fresh peaches
3/4 cup to 1 full cup fresh golden raspberries (or if you have frozen, thaw them)
1/2 cup red raspberries, fresh or thawed
1/4 cup corn starch (or your preferred thickener)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons wild honey (divided)
2 Tablespoons warm water
4 Tablespoons brown sugar (divided)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
pinch nutmeg
1 refrigerated pop-open can of 8 ALDI buttermilk biscuits (okay, you can use another brand, if you must)

Directions:

Blanch peaches by first filling a large pot with enough water to cover the peaches (but leave the peaches out, for now). Prepare a large bowl or sink to hold more than enough cold water to cover the peaches.  Bring pot of water to full boil. Carefully place the peaches in the hot water, allow to simmer about 2 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon or tongs, drop hot peaches into cold water and let swiftly cool down (you can add ice, if you're in a hurry).

When the peaches are cooled, use a paring knife to help remove the skins from the peaches, then slice the peaches, a small section at a time, off the stone and into a medium or large mixing bowl. You should have between 3 and 4 cups of fresh peaches to work with, now.

Add starch, granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon honey, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and the spices. Stir until everything is mixed well and the peaches are thoroughly covered.

Gently toss in the raspberries. Allow to stand at least 10 minutes, to draw up the juices as the sugar and fruits combine.

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Meanwhile, butter an 8x13x2-inch baking dish (or a 9-inch deep pie dish).

Gently stir the fruit mix and pour into the baking dish.

Open the canister of biscuits (carefully! don't put your eye out with that thing!) and arrange the biscuits over the top of the fruit.

Mix the remaining tablespoon of honey with the warm water, and brush it over the tops of the biscuits with a pastry brush.

Sprinkle the remaining 2 tablespoons of brown sugar generously over the tops of the biscuits.

Bake at 375º F for 20 -25 minutes, or until the top is rich brown and crispy.

Serve hot in bowls, topped with your favorite ice cream.

No Radio Sope!*

Quite some time ago, I had the pleasure of dining out with friends, at a Mexican restaurant other than Taco Bell (in the middle of the Midwest cornfields, that used to be a lot less common than it is today). At that time, I had a dish I'd truly enjoyed – sopes – which I have had some trouble finding at restaurants today. Maybe it's the extra effort required for making the tortilla "bowls", over simple flat tortillas one can run through a press, but there's only one place in a fifty mile radius of my home which even offers the darned things, and their fillings often lack freshness (a common problem with small-town eateries). And I have frequent, unbearable cravings, made worse by the fact that I have little money for dining out, even when the ingredients are up to snuff at the local place.

Thus left with a taste for something, I was left to try to figure out how to make my own. The above-linked recipe was useful, to a point. But it's pretty vague about measurements for making the tortillas, and I did a bit more research before discovering that everybody and his brother has a different way to do these things - including one where there is cooking, halving, shaping, and then deep frying them, as in this video (and my Spanish is abysmally bad, so I was just grateful for the visual instruction). Today, I went as simple as I could.

It helps to have started your meat and frijoles in advance, by the way. Fudging with canned frijoles is acceptable, as long as they're a decently tasty brand and they're pre-warmed for prep.  But the meat, you can't cheat. It needs to be finely shredded. If you like spicy versions, simmer (do NOT boil! Boiling toughens meat) your chicken, beef, or pork in a pot with onion, garlic, and a cup or so of your favorite salsa picante.  If you don't like heat, skip the salsa. Either way, you can save the liquid for soup or sauce for a later recipe. All you need is for the meat to cook up so tender you can easily shred it with a fork (or, if you cook it long enough, you can take a potato masher & make it right shreddy).

Other toppings necessary for this would be finely shredded lettuce, sour cream, queso fresco (or whatever is your preferred soft white cheese, shredded or crumbled)…heck, some folks, I'm told, put the same stuff on these that they put on their tacos! For me, I like simplicity. Beans, meat, Mexican sour cream, and a little Co-Jack cheese, finely grated. And, if you're lucky,  fresh, diced tomatoes.

And the tortillas. Tender-crispy tortilla bowls. Especially the "tender" part. You can start them a little ahead of time, but don't go more than an hour or so, and don't try to freeze them. If you have to toss them in the fridge before the final stage, warm them in the oven or the nuke, under a moist cloth or paper towel, before loading them with the beans and giving their bottoms the heat.  Just get out your griddle and get to work.

 As you can see, the ingredient list is very long and complex…



Tortilla-Bowls for Sopes (or picadas or garnachas, or…)

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups corn flour (not corn meal)
About 2 cups water

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl or on a clean counter, heap flour, make a well, and add 1 cup of water. Mix by hand, continuing to add small amounts of water until you can knead it into a soft, smooth, tender dough.

With moistened hands, take some dough and form it into a ball about the size of a medium egg. Pat into a disc about 3 1/2 to 4 inches across (you don't want it anywhere near as thin as a standard corn tortilla). Place on un-oiled non-stick griddle at medium heat. Repeat with more dough until all the dough is used up and the tortillas are cooking.

When each has become lightly golden on the bottom, remove from heat and, cooked side up, carefully press down flatly from center to push some dough outward. Pull soft dough upward from uncooked side to make a rim for your tortilla-bowl. Place back on griddle long enough to seal the bottom.  Remove from heat.

Fill each bowl with about a tablespoon of heated frijoles.

Generously butter or oil your griddle, fry the bottoms of the tortilla-bowls until lightly golden and crisp. Top with hot meat, cheese, lettuce, sour cream, and other preferred toppings.

Serve hot and fresh†.

Makes 9.




*For those who wonder about my choice of header for this entry, see here.

† Bragging rights: the tomato & lettuce on these little babies came from Pop's garden. With the current temps & forecasts, this is probably the last of the lettuce, but only the second and third 'maters, at the start of a nice, long season of real (not cardboard) love apples.

Liver Treats For Dogs

Not everything I do in the kitchen is for my own tummy. Sometimes, I get all radical and decide to make something as a gift… and then there's the occasional day slaving over a hot stove just to make a quadruped happy. Usually it's for the dog. Cats… they're too difficult to please, except with stuff they're not supposed to have, like salty canned tuna and other such sins. But dogs… well, dogs are usually just happy to eat something they think was people -food. We've made a habit of dehydrating sweet potato slices for our Labrador retriever, because he seems to think they pass for sinful. But sometimes he craves something supremely stinky. That's when we break out the liver.

I was given this recipe by a member of the extended family, last winter. The Bat made a single batch of it, using beef liver, & the dog went nuts for the treats. They're really great if cut into very small (1 cm or smaller cubes), especially if you need training treats! 

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the kitchen – indeed, the entire house – will smell like liver for several hours after you finish baking them, so, if you aren't fond of that aroma, be sure to set all fans blowing out! And bar the doors, because stray dogs might find it too enticing…

Liver Treats

Ingredients:

1 pound raw liver (any kind), pureed

1 Tablespoon garlic powder (or less – amount optional)

1 Tablespoon oil

1 cup flour (any kind)

1 cup corn meal

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350⁰

In a blender or food processor, puree liver (you may have to do this in stages, to make sure all chunks are gone). Add garlic powder (if desired) and oil.  Blend thoroughly.  Pour into mixing bowl. Add flour and corn meal.  Mix all ingredients completely. Spread on a cookie sheet or jellyroll pan. (I line a pan with foil and oil it.)*

Bake at 350⁰ for about 25 minutes. Cool and cut into pieces. I divide into bags and freeze.* The pieces 

thaw very quickly or the dogs will eat them still frozen. They care not!

HINT: In order to divide the “bread” into small pieces, use a pizza cutter shortly after removing from the oven.

*In this case, the "I" is Bat's BFF, Jackie, who gave me the recipe which I then copied nearly verbatim. 

Rum-Craisin Sour Cream Pie

The Bat occasionally talks about the raisin pies her aunt used to make, back in the day.  Sadly, I am allergic to grapes, so this legendary treat will never be mine to enjoy. Nevertheless, I was determined to come up with my own variation on this theme – minus the old aunt's methodist aversion to a little "kick" in the fruit.

Granted, raisins tend toward sweetness, and I've never been that much of a fan of excessively sweet foods, so I'd likely not have been fond of old auntie's pie, and have asked for a lemon, instead. I'd eventually have had to compromise.

Tonight, I believe I have found that compromise.  Not overly sweet, and fairly simple, it substitutes dried cranberries for the raisins, which adds a nice tart bite to the otherwise sweet custardy treat.

It takes more than a little prep-time, because the fruit needs to soak in rum for several hours, and the pie is best served chilled. Plus, the custard tends to expand, then resettle a bit, so it needs large ventilation of some fashion, not mere piercing. Since I, personally, hate lattice crusts because they're a lot of work for half the crust, I heartily recommend taking your favorite tiny cookie cutter and making the pie yet a little merrier…

and you can get little cookies out of this, then, too! (see footnote)

Rum-Craisin Sour Cream Pie

Ingredients:

2 cups dried cranberries

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup rum (use any variety you like - either light or dark is fine)

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 crusts for 8-inch pie (top and bottom)

1 pint whipping cream

1 Tablespoon wild honey

Directions:

(If you want the cranberries to be chewier, and/or if you have no interest in making them slightly rummy, this first stage may be skipped. I recommend "plumping" the fruit, however, as dried cranberries tend to bake up tougher than raisins do.)

To "plump" and tenderize the dried cranberries, in a small microwave-safe mixing bowl or small saucepan on stovetop, combine water and dried cranberries. Bring to nearly boiling, stirring once (in microwave oven, about 1 minute on High). Remove from heat, drain liquids away. Add rum and refrigerate several hours (overnight is best).

When the cranberries have absorbed most of the rum, remove from refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 450º F.

Lay in bottom crust in 8-inch pie pan.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat eggs thoroughly. Add in sour cream, mix well. Add brown sugar, spices. Finally, stir in cranberries, making sure any remaining liquid does not get into the mixture. Pour into pie shell. Top with lattice crust, or, using a cookie cutter*, make sure the crust has plenty of openings for ventilation and expansion.

Bake 10 minutes at 450º F., then reduce oven temperature to 350º F. Continue to bake another 25 minutes.

Remove from oven, allow to cool completely (refrigeration for at least an hour before serving is advised, if possible). 

Before serving pie, in a chilled bowl combine whipping cream and honey, and mix at high speed. If you wish, slowly add in 1 teaspoonful of rum while mixing (very slowly, in small stream! Dumping the rum in will curdle the cream!). Continue mixing until semi-stiff peaks form (do not overmix, or you will have butter).

Serve cold.

*If you use a cookie cutter to ventilate the top crust, save the cut-outs, lay them on an ungreased cookie sheet, and, using a pastry brush, brush them with a little cream, cranberry juice, or milk, then sprinkle them very lightly with sugar and nutmeg. Or, if you have a little pie filling left in the mixing bowl because you didn't use a rubber spatula to thoroughly empty the bowl,  brush on a little of the custard mixture. Bake in middle of 450º F. oven for 4 minutes. Voilá! cookies! (For the record, I nibbled two before my phone camera setting started up. They're simple, yet nummy.)