Sweet Potato Pie recipe

The sweet potato pie I have developed since moving here has gone over a treat with Jackie’s coworkers. Here’ ‘s the recipe, since I promised it to them.

Start with the pastry. I do it by hand, lately, but it is essentially what I have in my Black Book in the kitchen.

Mix together: 80 g ground almonds, 60 g rice flour (go to Chinatown for this), 40 g strong bread flour, 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. I briefly had a food processor and it worked well to mix in 70 g solid coconut oil, 15 g butter, and 3 tablespoons of water with ice cubes floating around it, but nowadays I use a pair of butter knives to cut the butter and oil into the flour mixture as quickly as possible. Once the fats and dry mix forms sunflower-seed-sized pellets I quickly mix in the cold water and, after plunging my hands into the ice bath to cool them* then drying them with a towel, the dough is quickly pressed into a 9 inch pie pan and baked at 200°C for 5 minutes then left to cool. Usually, any holes/spaces or thin regions in the crust will fill in as the leavening in the dough rises.

(*My hands are generally too warm for making pastry. You may not need the unpleasant ice water step.)

The filling is modified from a pumpkin pie recipe but finding sweet potatoes is easier than pie pumpkins on this side of the Atlantic. It is essentially a set custard but it is easier than that sounds.

Cook a fairly large sweet potato or enough smaller ones to yield two US cups mashed (about 475 mL). You can bake them but I find it easier to peel them, cut them into billiard ball sized chunks, then steam them. Set them aside to cool once a spoon cuts through easily.

Meanwhile, leave 80 g butter out in a mixing bowl for a few hours to soften. Mix with the sugar (1/2 cup or 120 mL) until creamy then beat in two large eggs until fluffy. Add 3/4 cup (175 mL) evaporated milk (NOT sweetened condensed milk), the sweet potatoes, 1 teaspoon of vanilla (or more, I usually guess), 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Stir until uniform and pour into the pie crust. It will be very full so it would be prudent to line the bottom of your oven, just in case….

Bake for 15 minutes in an oven preheated to 450°F (235°C) then turn the oven down to 350°F (175°C) and continue baking for at least another 35 minutes. If a knife stuck in the centre comes out clean, it is finished (but may need another 5 minutes if not).

Allow it to cool for a while. It will collapse a little, which is normal. You can top it with whipped or clotted cream or ice cream if you serve it warm but we almost always have the first slices room temperature and the rest refrigerated over the course of the next two or three days…it would probably be inadvisable to eat on day 4 but we don’t have the restraint to test that.

Beverage Recipe: Respite From Jimi

Jim can be stressfull…where does all that energy come from? {Note, we have already scheduled to have his balls removed}.

This may already exist but I have Horlicks around as a component of my liquid nutrition for a planned long run. Essentially, it has a really good calories:carb:protein:trace nutrient ratio especially combined with salt replacement and vitamin C & B12 tablets, crushed.

So, essentially it is 50 g (three spoons) Horlicks in a mug with two shots of bourbon and boiling water to suspend the solids. Ready for bed even if the kitty is tearing the house down around us!

What I Wanted Was @HendoRelish: Secret Santa 2020 and Recipe for a “Kentucky Grandma”

A “Kentucky Grandma,” unless there is another name for 2 parts Bailey’s + 1 part CHEAP bourbon

I shouldn’t whinge…it’s booze of a sort. And, it was pretty palatable as served above, with a couple ice cubes, 2 shots (100 mL) of the offending Bailey’s, a and a shot of the cheapest bourbon or other straight whiskey in your dominion.

Our principal investigator got a short bottle of tequila, for which she has at least once declared her undying affection, from her Secret Santa. I specifically asked for Henderson’s Relish on the app our organiser was using and wound up with Bailey’s, fer fuck’s sake. I wish I commanded respect, but anything is better than Oxford.

Or, as the soon-to-be-deported First Lady would say in these festive days, “who geeve fock abowt kreesmoose?”

The recipe:

Two shots (100 mL) of Bailey’s Irish Cream, one shot (50 mL) of bourbon … or Canadian whiskey or rye or Bushmill’s anything else without malt. Swirl in some ice (and some milk if it is a school night…if that is an issue). For a warm version, heat a couple of shots of milk and put boiled water in the glass first, then add the milk with the alcohol bits. Better than you might think, and you need to pay close attention to the units (if morning after is an issue). They sneak up on you.

Tērvete Senču — Neighbourhood Beer Tour #52

Friday was Pizza Night.

• 14 g yeast
• a spoon of flour to start
• 118 — or so — mL of liquids (warm water with about 30 mL of Tērvete Senču)
• two good grinds of sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of sugar

Set that aside to start bubbling. Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of the beer while prepping the sauce:

• thinly slice a cup of small, sweet tomatoes
• crush a bullion cube on top and mix
• put “too much oregano” (dry or fresh) on top and mix
• two good grinds of black pepper
• hefty pinch of crushed red chillies
• a good squirt of tomato puree (US = 1/2 can of tomato paste)
• mix and set aside

Finish the beer. Open the first bottle of wine. Pour a glass and return to the dough, kneading in enough strong flour (0000 is best but a good whole wheat brown can also work if you let it prove longer). When the ball has the texture of a young woman’s un-enhanced breast (ah, memories…or, that of a middle-aged man who used to be athletic…ah, regrets), put it back in the bowl to double in size (or a little more for the wheaty version).

Heat your oven to about 175C/350F/middle range of gas marks, stretch the dough to a reasonably good size on some foil or oven paper, and slide that onto a warm cookie sheet to prove a second time. When puffy, slide the dough and substrate onto the top rack in your oven and let it blanch but not brown. Pull this out and, after it cools about 2-3 minutes, flip it over (the top comes out of the oven more done than the bottom).

Now or a day from now or anywhere in between, spread the sauce, top with cheese, add the toppings*, top with a little more cheese including some parmesan, and shove it back in the oven until done. Let it rest 5 minutes — no longer — and drain if necessary before cutting.

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*You’ve probably put too many toppings on like we always do. Since this is for dining, not a photograph, put the least in need for cooking on first building up to those that most benefit from heat. Last night, this meant counterintuitively from first cheese to top

• black olives
• pepperoni
• mushrooms
• raw red onions

Recipe: Cannabutter

We’re all doomed (remember the coronavirus?) but, on the bright side, visits to other people’s houses — which are now allowed — to do some cooking can be a real joy.  One close friend has grown a very agreeable herb garden but, having harvested and manicured his bounty, was left with a large bin liner full of dross and shake.  “Set that aside and I’ll show you how to make use of that.”  This is also good for higher quality (medicinal grade) product, so if you live in one of the States where cannabis is in some form or another legal, here’s your path to home cooked edibles.

Note: the stepwise photos are too incriminating.  We may have been high at the time.

In step 1, you decarboxylate the weed (especially important when the material is low grade like this stuff).  This involves heating to about 105ºC for about 20 minutes in an oven; doing that, however, makes the entire flat smell like a Reggae festival so, as an alternative, put it in a large glass bowl floating on a couple of inches of water in an even larger pressure cooker.  The dross stays dry despite the high relative humidity, at this stage.  If you have any idea what the cannabinoid content is, it would be useful to know the weight of starting material — a quarter ounce of good bud is enough for a half pound of butter, but we weighed up 8 full ounces (225 g) of leaf, shake, and trimmings for 750 g of butter.

Bring the cooker to pressure and let it rattle away for 45 minutes then, to stop the conversion process continuing on past THC to less useful CBD, cool the device under cold running water until the pressure is low enough to open the lid.  Also, open some window (it still smells like a party in there).

Step 2 is the extraction step.  Grind/crush the material to about the consistency of dried oregano in the bowl then, for this batch, drop in 750 g of butter and — in the bowl — ¾ liter of boiling water.  The water helps keep the butter from frothing as the pressure lowers at the end and, additionally, extracts a lot of hydrophilic and at this point useless chemicals from the materials.

The bowl is now probably sitting on the bottom of the pressure cooker, so add water to float it (or use a silicone mat or a trivet to keep the bowl from directly heating).

The pressure cooker will take a little longer to get to pressure but, once it does, keep it steaming for 20 minutes then remove from heat and let it cool at its own pace for the next 3 or 4 hours.  If you pop the lid or otherwise release pressure too quickly, the butter will foam up all over the cooker and the smell will be intense.

When it is time, the stuff will still be really hot.  Pour it through a fine collander lined with cheesecloth (we didn’t have cheesecloth) and squeeze out the vegetation.

Step 3 is to store this liquid in the fridge for a couple of days.  The cannabutter freezes out at the top and can be lifted out and packed for storage.  The black soup at the bottom was poured into a bucket of comfrey tea to fertilize the publicly viewable garden.

Step 4 is cooking with it.  I have my 200 g wedge earmarked for some brownies because I can adjust the dose size and they freeze well.  Toll House Cookies are another option.  The 1/4 teaspoon I “test drove” is quite potent after an hour, though, and I may just melt a tablespoon into sauces every now and again.  Anything that calls for or tolerates butter is a worthy adversary.

The Fourth of July: Three Cheers To Lafayette and Pulaski!

When in the course of human events….

Thus was born The Great Experiment which, today, lays gasping its final breaths from Coronavirus and the knee of The State on its neck (and, just ahead of taking the rest of The World down with it).  It had a good run, the American Republic.  This particular day, known alternatively as The Fourth and as Independence Day, is when we — yes, even we rats who have long since fled the sinking ship that is The States — celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence with cookouts and potato salad.

This year, I think I nailed both…

The potato salad honours the French contribution to the Revolutionary War effort and, in particular, General LaFayette.  Fayette County and the towns of Fayetteville and LaFayette, and a square in Savannah (all in my home state of Georgia) are named for this hero of the Revolution and statues to him still stand — at least, as of this writing they do — all over the country.  Revolutionary to the end, he was buried in France in 1834 (57 years after he was a Major General in the Continental Army in 1777 at 19-years-old) under soil from Bunker Hill next to his son, Georges Washington de LaFayette, while the United States mourned his passing by draping both Houses of Congress in black bunting. and enduring a 3 hour eulogy from John Quincy Adams.

The potato salad is a French number we don’t use often, but the German version seems inappropriate (bloody Hessians).  Small potatoes sliced ¼ inch (6 mm) thick are boiled to almost soft and plunged in ice water to halt the cooking.  Drained dry for about 10 minutes, season them with salt, pepper, and apple vinegar.  The dressing is 2½ Tbs spicy brown French mustard, 3 minced cloves of garlic, ¼ tsp each freshly ground black pepper and sea salt, 3 Tbs red wine vinegar, 1 Tbs apple cider vinegar, 3 Tbs EV olive oil, and ¼ cup (60 mL) chopped fresh dill.  Mix this with the potatoes and top with 1 cup (240 mL) green/spring onions and ¼ parsley.

We also remembered the Polish contribution of Casimir Pulaski for whom, also in Georgia, a county, city, a square in Savannah under which he* is buried, and Fort Pulaski National Monument are named.  I went for Budweiser so that something American would be on the table but could easily have had Warka which is brewed near the Pulaski Museum.

Carrying on…nothing says the Fourth like hot dogs with pickles, mustard, and kraut.  Blessed with a Polish shop about every 50 metres in West Brom, I managed to score some grand ingredients.

The pickles are of the traditionally soured type: lacto fermentation of them using only salt and the bacteria native to the cukes, dill, and garlic in the jar, then Pasteurised (another French nod) for export.  You’re looking for Ogórki Kiszone on the shelves.

The sauerkraut — kiszona kapusta — is quite moreish and likewise traditional.  The jar I grabbed also contains carrot for sweetness.

The crowning glory is the wieners.  Parowki look like, and are labelled in English as, traditional hot dogs but they are firmer and cut with a lot less filler than even the best of the kosher dogs back home.  Steaming would be good enough but Jackie, whose idea this wee celebration was, wanted them on the barbecue with black charred bits and all.

However you are celebrating the birth or death (or both) of America, be sure to wash it all down with copious quantities of beer.

#GVRAT 1000K: 270.9 miles after a rest day for the new eye decoration

It is a good recipe.  In fact, it is a countdown…3…2…1.  Three shots of tequila, 2 shots of Cointreau, 1 of fresh lime juice.  Shake with lots of ice in a Boston shaker and strain into a salt-rimmed cocktail glass.  Repeat until you fall over in the garden.

More work than there has been in months today.  Very busy, so it was easy to take the time off the running.  I did get out for a little more than a half hour walk bringing the GVRAT mileage up slightly to  270.9.  I am, therefore, virtually next to a big, windowless metal building with approximately 20 parking spaces.  Horrifyingly similar to what I imagine the afterlife might be.

 

Baltika 7 Premium Export Lager — Neighbourhood Beer Tour #16

With the daily schedules all topsy-turvy, I returned from the morning run and fixed a traditional breakfast sandwich of Cuban-spiced pulled pork topped with industrial chilli sauce and some leftover Vietnamese slaw chased with a Russian lager … a Cold War cold sarnie with a cold brew.    My fourth Baltika in the NBT, this one went very well with the repast.

Recipe for the Vietnamese Slaw (highly recommended with grilled or pulled flesh):

In a LARGE bowl, finely shred:
1 sweet cabbage of some sort
1 large or several small carrots
Enough celery to compete with the amount of carrot

To this, add:
A finely diced red chilli. Neuter it, first, by removing the seeds and membrane if you don’t like it hot.
A chopped sweet pepper
My recipe calls for 1 minced clove of garlic, but we generally put in half a head
A couple of minced shallots (substitute a shitload of spring onions if necessary)
1/2 cup each of chopped cilantro (coriander) and parsley
A couple of healthy grinds of sea or kosher salt (go easy, there are salty ingredients to come).

Make a sauce of:
3/8 cup of rice vinegar
1/4 cup dark sesame oil
An ounce-and-a-half of fish sauce
A couple spoons of dark brown sugar
About a quarter cup of Greek yoghurt (or something else active like kefir)

Mix everything together with a massive spoon for about 5 minutes then cover the bowl with a plate and stick it in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Everything will still be crunchy for a couple of days if you haven’t already finished it. The flavours continue to improve despite the degradation in texture for up to a week later … your gut microbiome will thank you everytime you open the leftovers.

Tuesday and Wednesday Runs and Scones and Fresh Pasta

Working from home I’m getting out for an hour or so per day for runs.  Tuesday I went to the Sheepwash Nature Reserve where hoards collect on the main pavements to flaunt the social distancing orders but the wooded trails are largely empty:

John Prine died overnight.  I didn’t know about him at all in 1985 when, tripping and on my first visit to Jackie’s apartment near Piedmont Park, I reached into her record shelf without looking and pulled out the album from which the you-tube linked song, above, is gleaned.  It was like all the planets aligned over the course of the album and I was absolutely smitten (with her, with him, and with the new supply of LSD I had gotten from some of the Dead Family).  RIP, Mr Prine, and apologies for paraphrasing the song:

“Your spray-on tan won’t get you
Into heaven anymore.
It’s already Covid crowded
You orange, dumb-assed, media whore.”

With Prine on my mp3 player, I headed out Wednesday noon for a lunch time jog.  I picked up two more pretty good segments of canal furniture (bridges, a gauging island, and a lock which have been added to the map with a separate post for the gallery of 30 or so photos to follow, shortly) and a little more than 8½ miles — and some desperately needed vitamin D:

There have been no food shortages yet but I am taking it on myself to empty the cupboard of some bits and bobs that have accumulated to make room for some focused hoarding.

100g buckwheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 TBSP sugar
25g coconut oil (or butter)
50g raisins
100mL whole milk (or kefir)

Mix the first three and chop in the coconut oil to rice sized grains. Stir in the raisins to coat and mix in the liquid to barely moisten. Form into 6 round patty like things about 2 inches wide on baking paper greased lightly with coconut oil or butter — the batter should be firm enough to work with cold hands but for early morning batches (when I don’t want to hold my hands under the cold tap for 5 minutes…my blood runs hot) use a silicone muffin pan. Bake 20-22 minutes at 180C (350F). Good with clotted cream or just by themselves.

 

John Prine wasn’t the only devasting loss to our wee family Tuesday night as the gears driving the rollers in my past machine shattered.  I’ve had the hand cranked device for 25 years and only last year gave away the long rolling pin I used to make pasta in the olden days.  Reduced to using a smaller and sub-optimal pastry roller, the results were still fantastic.  But, sweet songs never last too long which can also be said of this homemade pasta (almost as moreish as Sam Stone’s heroin).

 

Post-Skype Bread Run and Salmon/Leek/Kale Lasagne

This culvert under Black Country New Road is to the other bridges as working from home is to work…satisfying the loosest definition while remaining unsatisfying.

Watched lectures on MaxQuant on YouTube all morning and some of the afternoon as part of my ‘working from home’ duties.  Group meeting on Skype followed a chat with the boss at 3 then I knocked off for the day, making some pasta sheets before heading out for bread and a couple of newspapers on what turned into a 4½ mile loop.  Lost on part of it, I managed to add a couple of bridges to the Canal Furniture map.  Not a bad day, in general.

The pasta was quite nice.  While I was out, Jackie baked some leeks for 10 minutes then added salmon for another 5 whilst wilting some kale with garlic in another pan and blitzing some basil in a pint of yoghurt with a couple of eggs.  These layered into something like a British lasagne and was topped with parmesan.  Baked for 35 minutes at Gas 7, the only thing we might add would be some black olives…yummy.