In which I have been promising recipes and it is time to deliver
Last week, I started craving pecan pie. Now, it is very hard to get real pecan pie - by which I mean one that actually has pecans throughout rather than a scant few on the top - out here in California, so I went with the philosophy that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. In short, it was high time I learned to make pecan pie.
So, I did. I made the dough Friday night and let it chill, then spent Saturday making the pie. It is delicious. I still have a slice or two down in the kitchen, but I've had two pieces myself and have been enjoying feeding it to people. As my mentioning of the pie on Facebook have prompted several recipe requests and I have several other recipe requests pending, here you guys are.
Welcome to Aasa/Kiria's Recipe Post of Doom and Deliciousness!
Pecan Pie with Bourbon and Molasses
This recipe is a composite of several others: the ingredients for the filling are based heavily on this recipe and informed by America's Test Kitchen's The New Best Recipe and The Joy of Cooking (75th Anniversary Edition), while the baking directions are slightly modified out of the Test Kitchen book. The crust is a half-recipe of the pâte brisée, minus the vegetable shortening, from the Joy.
You will be pouring hot filling into a partially pre-baked shell.
Crust
1 1/4 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c butter (1 stick), chilled and cut in 1" pieces
6 Tbsp ice water, plus extra as needed (I ended up using ~7 Tbsp + 2 tsp)
I'm going to assume y'all know how to do pie crust. I'll just note that I do this by hand with a pastry blender because I like the control it gives me, and I've had very good results cutting in half the butter to cornmeal-size and then the other half to pea-size.
Also, partially pre-bake the shell for best results, about 10-12 minutes at 425 deg.
Filling
5-6 Tbsp butter (~3/4 stick)
3/4 c dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
1/2 c light corn syrup
1/2 c molasses ("dark" or "full flavor")
1 Tbsp bourbon
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 c pecan pieces, toasted
When pie crust comes out of oven, turn down to 275 deg.
Melt butter in a medium bowl set in a skillet of water maintained at just below a simmer. Remove bowl from skillet; stir in brown sugar and salt until butter is absorbed. Beat in the eggs, then corn syrup, molasses, bourbon and vanilla. Return bowl to hot water; stir until mixture is shiny and hot to touch (~130 deg on instant-read thermometer). Remove from heat and stir in pecans. Pour hot filling into hot shell and bake on middle rack until pie looks set but soft, like gelatin, when pressed gently with the back of a spoon, or about 50-60 minutes. Transfer to rack and let cool completely; filling will continue to cook and set as it cools.
Serve with vanilla ice cream; to serve warm pie, place in oven for ~15 minutes at 250 deg.
Hattes: 15th Century English Meat Pies
These little meat pies are what our modern mincemeat vaguely remembers being in its glory days: sweet with currants/raisins and dates and highly spiced. The original recipe can be found at the Boke of Gode Cookery here with a transcription of the original text, a translation to modern English, and an interpretation. I have been completely unable to figure out the "hat" shaping, so I use regular pie dough in little 3"x3" squares folded on the diagonal for pasties or lining a muffin tin for tiny pies.
As the recipe is extremely flexible and I make it differently every time, I will leave you to your experimentation with these notes:
- I usually try for about a 1:1 meat-to-dried-fruit ratio by volume
- I do nearly half-and-half veal and pork, using slightly more pork
- marrow is a bit of a pain, but worth it if you can get good marrow
- be assertive with your spices: for a pound and a half of meat, I use about five teaspoons all together of sugar, salt, pepper and assorted spices
More later!
So, I did. I made the dough Friday night and let it chill, then spent Saturday making the pie. It is delicious. I still have a slice or two down in the kitchen, but I've had two pieces myself and have been enjoying feeding it to people. As my mentioning of the pie on Facebook have prompted several recipe requests and I have several other recipe requests pending, here you guys are.
Welcome to Aasa/Kiria's Recipe Post of Doom and Deliciousness!
Pecan Pie with Bourbon and Molasses
This recipe is a composite of several others: the ingredients for the filling are based heavily on this recipe and informed by America's Test Kitchen's The New Best Recipe and The Joy of Cooking (75th Anniversary Edition), while the baking directions are slightly modified out of the Test Kitchen book. The crust is a half-recipe of the pâte brisée, minus the vegetable shortening, from the Joy.
You will be pouring hot filling into a partially pre-baked shell.
Crust
1 1/4 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c butter (1 stick), chilled and cut in 1" pieces
6 Tbsp ice water, plus extra as needed (I ended up using ~7 Tbsp + 2 tsp)
I'm going to assume y'all know how to do pie crust. I'll just note that I do this by hand with a pastry blender because I like the control it gives me, and I've had very good results cutting in half the butter to cornmeal-size and then the other half to pea-size.
Also, partially pre-bake the shell for best results, about 10-12 minutes at 425 deg.
Filling
5-6 Tbsp butter (~3/4 stick)
3/4 c dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
1/2 c light corn syrup
1/2 c molasses ("dark" or "full flavor")
1 Tbsp bourbon
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 c pecan pieces, toasted
When pie crust comes out of oven, turn down to 275 deg.
Melt butter in a medium bowl set in a skillet of water maintained at just below a simmer. Remove bowl from skillet; stir in brown sugar and salt until butter is absorbed. Beat in the eggs, then corn syrup, molasses, bourbon and vanilla. Return bowl to hot water; stir until mixture is shiny and hot to touch (~130 deg on instant-read thermometer). Remove from heat and stir in pecans. Pour hot filling into hot shell and bake on middle rack until pie looks set but soft, like gelatin, when pressed gently with the back of a spoon, or about 50-60 minutes. Transfer to rack and let cool completely; filling will continue to cook and set as it cools.
Serve with vanilla ice cream; to serve warm pie, place in oven for ~15 minutes at 250 deg.
Hattes: 15th Century English Meat Pies
These little meat pies are what our modern mincemeat vaguely remembers being in its glory days: sweet with currants/raisins and dates and highly spiced. The original recipe can be found at the Boke of Gode Cookery here with a transcription of the original text, a translation to modern English, and an interpretation. I have been completely unable to figure out the "hat" shaping, so I use regular pie dough in little 3"x3" squares folded on the diagonal for pasties or lining a muffin tin for tiny pies.
As the recipe is extremely flexible and I make it differently every time, I will leave you to your experimentation with these notes:
- I usually try for about a 1:1 meat-to-dried-fruit ratio by volume
- I do nearly half-and-half veal and pork, using slightly more pork
- marrow is a bit of a pain, but worth it if you can get good marrow
- be assertive with your spices: for a pound and a half of meat, I use about five teaspoons all together of sugar, salt, pepper and assorted spices
More later!