Lentils and Pie Oh My!

No, its not a lentil pie. Although that is an intriguing idea to file away.
Last weekend I went to visit a friend in New Haven and we made a curried red lentil recipe that she had from a friend and it was fantastic.

Of course no weekend would be complete without making a pie. We didn't have a lot of time so went with a store bought crust and instant pudding but added a layer of melted peanut butter before putting the pudding in the crust and letting it set in the refrigerator. The lesson of the day however was that if you are going to melt peanut butter in the microwave make sure to do it in stages and mix it up. Otherwise the peanut butter will burn on the inside. Burnt peanut butter strangely smells almost exactly like burnt popcorn and that is a smell I could do without in my life.




Curried Lentils
Florence Minnis

9oz split red lentils (about 1 cup)
2 medium onions chopped
3oz butter (very important for flavour)
6 cloves garlic sliced
1 medium carrot grated (though I just slice mine)
2 teasp. whole cumin seeds
1 and a half teasp. whole black or yellow mustard seeds
3 teasp. ground tumeric
1 can coconut milk
4-5 slices fresh ginger
140z chopped ripe tomatoes (or a can but some fresh tomato good for texture)
juice of one large lime or 2 small ones
handful chopped fresh coriander
salt and pepper to taste

Fry onions in half the butter, add half the garlic, carrot and whole spices and cook for 5 mins. Stir in tumeric. Cool slightly. Tip in lentils, 10fl oz water, coconut milk, ginger, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Simmer for 30-40 mins. In separate pan, melt the rest of the butter and add the rest of the garlic, fry for a minute or two, and then tip into the lentil mixture. Add lime juice and coriander and leave to mellow for ten minutes. Remove the ginger slices. Serve warm, not hot, with rice and/or naan bread.

How do you like them apples?

I invited folks over this weekend to do an apple pie tasting. I had seen a recipe on Serious Eats for Apple Peanut Butter Pie and wanted to try it. It may actually be the richest pie I've ever made. I think if I did it again I would not add extra sugar to the peanut butter, it was a bit too sweet for me. I bought three different kinds of apples. I paired the peanut butter pie with Red Delicious.

In addition I thought I would do a regular apple pie with a crumb topping. The apples for this were Fuji apples. This is actually the first crumb topping I've ever made:
The third pie turned out to be my favorite. An apple cheddar pie. I used the regular butter to flour ratio (2 cups flour/10 tablespoons butter) and mixed in 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar and used milk instead of water to form the dough. The filling is granny smith apples, a tiny bit of cinnamon, sugar and another 1/2 cup or so of the cheddar just layered on top. It melted between the crust and the apples, and I love how it made the final look. I also got to play with the fondant cutters I picked up at Michael's last week. This is currently winning the prize for prettiest pie I've ever made:


And since no party would be complete without drink I made an apple cider rum punch. The rum was barely noticeable and I'm not sure it actually added anything to the taste. I got to serve it in one of my tea sets and that always makes me happy. Punch recipe is here, though mine had a bit more cinnamon and cloves. I warmed it up in the crock pot.

The lengths you go to bake...

My apartment continues to be all packed up due to the bed bug extermination process, and let me tell you three weeks of living out of ziploc bags is a bit stressful. Since baking helps de-stress me I decided to descend on a friend's kitchen and bake piles of cookies to take in to the crew that's working on an enormous show right now at the theater. I decided on three different kind of cookies. A gourmet double chocolate chunk that I've made before, and two new recipes - peanut butter chocolate chip and strawberry pie bars.

The double chocolate cookies come from a recipe from one of my favorite places in the world...the bakery at Disneyworld. The recipe can be found here. In the past I've made them with peanut butter chocolate chips or caramel chocolate chips. This time I used semi-sweet instead of chocolate chunks. I like the combination of flavors better than the straight chocolate.

The peanut butter chocolate chip were the first batch I did. Sadly they suffered a bit for that. It's the first time I've made a peanut butter cookie, and it was also the first time this oven had probably been turned on in at least two years. After the dust burned off (setting off the fire alarm...sorry about that!) I was mistrustful that they had cooked all the way through, so the bottoms ended up burned. The top was crunchy and while still tasty I prefer my peanut butter chocolate chip cookies a bit chewier. The recipe came from the first hit on google for them.

The last cookies turned out the best I think. The recipe came from one of my favorite baking blogs Baking and Mistaking and she adapted it from an Anita Chu recipe. I altered it a bit further because I had two small jars of seedless jelly in my fridge. One was actually strawberry and the othe blackbeerry. So half the bars are one and half the other. Though a few in the middle are a mix. I'm not sure there's all that much difference between making these and making a pie though. But they sure were good.