The Friday before last, I signed into Twitter after not having been on for a few days. I kept seeing the hashtag #apieformikey throughout my Twitter stream. At first I thought it might be for a sick child, so naturally, I clicked on it. I still couldn’t figure out what it was about until I clicked on some of the tweets with @JenniferPerillo in them. Then I saw it; a tweet that simply said…
He’s gone. And my heart is shattered in a million pieces.
It was then I knew. I went to her site, In Jennie’s Kitchen, and saw a post with a video, entitled ‘One Last Dance’. I watched it, and it hit hard, bringing me to tears. I don’t know Jennifer, but I suddenly wanted to hug her, comfort her in some way. Jennifer lost her husband, Sunday, August 7th, 2011, to a sudden, massive heart attack while he was with one of their two daughters, who was riding her bike.
The next post, simply titled, ‘For Mikey’, asked everyone to make his favorite peanut butter pie on Friday, August 12th, and share it with ones we love, as this would help in her healing. She gave when she lost, and that’s incredible. Unfortunately, I saw this on the 12th, so when hundreds of food bloggers were putting up their pie posts, all coming together (such an amazing and beautiful thing to see) to honor Mikey’s memory and comfort Jennifer and their two little girls, I hadn’t a clue. My hands were tied for the weekend. There would be no pie until Monday.
I made it Monday, shared it with loved ones, and it was gone a few hours later. I hadn’t taken a photo, so I made another one and took photos, but suddenly, I didn’t know what to write. I sat staring at the empty post window; type, backspace, type again, backspace. This went on for two days. What could I say about such a heartbreaking tragedy that didn’t sound cliche or hadn’t been already said over and over?
Then I realized I really didn’t need to say anything. This pie, to be shared with loved ones, is all she wanted. Thank you, Jennifer, for giving us all such a wonderful pie recipe, thinking of others at a time when your world fell apart. I will make this pie forever because it’s the best peanut butter pie I’ve ever had. God Bless you and your little girls.
UPDATE:A fund has been set up to help Jennie and her two little girls, financially. You can donate at either Gluten Free Girl or Bloggers without Borders. Any little bit will help, so much!! Spread the word via Twitter by using the hashtag, #afundforJennie.
Add the cookies to the bowl of a food processor and pulse into fine crumbs. Drizzle melted butter through feed tube until moist and you can press clumps together easily. Press mixture into the bottom and about 1-inch up the sides of an 8-inch springform pan.
Melt the chocolate, butter and corn syrup in a double boiler or in the microwave. Pour over bottom of cookie crust and spread to the edges using an off-set spatula. Sprinkle chopped salted peanuts over the melted chocolate. Place pan in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.
Pour the heavy cream into a bowl and beat using a stand mixer or hand mixer until stiff peaks form. Transfer to a small bowl and store in refrigerator until ready to use. Place the cream cheese and peanut butter in a deep bowl. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and gradually beat in the confectioner's sugar. Add the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract and lemon juice. Increase speed to medium and beat until all the ingredients are uniform and filling is smooth.
Stir in ⅓ of the whipped cream into the filling mixture (helps lighten the batter, making it easier to fold in the remaining whipped cream). Fold in the remaining whipped cream. Pour the filling into the prepared springform pan. Drizzle the melted chocolate on top, if using, and refrigerate for three hours or overnight before serving.
To serve, I topped the pie with 1½ cups of heavy cream whipped with about ¼ cup confectioner's sugar, then drizzled on the thick milk chocolate ganache, homemade caramel, and chopped, salted peanuts. I also froze it for about a half hour prior to taking photos and serving, which is why it looks so smooth. Best NOT frozen - amazingly creamy.
Make the Thick Milk Chocolate Ganache Drizzle
Heat cream until boiling. Pour over chopped chocolate and let sit for one minute then stir until fully melted, shiny and uniform.
Stir in corn syrup and pour into a squeeze bottle or just drizzle over pie with a spoon. Pass around remaining ganache for extra drizzles on slices of pie.
notes:
Make this delightful a peanut butter crunch pie with crumbled peanut butter cookies on top!
Pay it forward; make this pie for someone you love and hug them as tight as you can. Tell them how much they mean to you. You never know what can happen in an instant; every day can be a last.
Something new came up, and it’s a secret..well, it won’t be a secret in another second.
It all started with bookmarks, 100’s of recipes bookmarked from so many fabulous food blogs. I have them sectioned off; Sweet – cakes, cookies, pies, candies, and the always needed miscellaneous. Savory is just one big mass of recipes, which makes sense, considering baking is structured and scientific, while cooking gives you unlimited leeway. So, all in all, when I leave a comment on your blog that ends with ‘Bookmarked’, I’m not just flattering you; it’s really bookmarked!
Because of these amazing recipes I want to try, I thought about adding a once a month or once every two-week ‘thing’ where I’d start digging into these bookmarks and celebrating the blog the bookmark came from, calling it ‘Blog Love’ or something to that effect. So, another blogger told me about this challenge where you’re assigned a blog to make a recipe from, but the blogger of said blog doesn’t know who’s making one of their recipes until reveal day, while someone else is making a recipe from your blog, and you’re also clueless to who it is until reveal day.
Well, there you go, a cool way to tackle some of my bookmarked recipes, since I had no doubt I’d be assigned the occasional blog that I had bookmarked a recipe from, with the added bonus of discovering even more blogs with recipes I would love to try, and probably would have bookmarked.
The name of this ‘secret’ is The Secret Recipe Club’, (which you can now see in my widgets, to your right, under Blog Challenges) founded by Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin”. It kind of reminds me of a bunch of us in a Little Rascals like mini-shack built from dilapidated, scrap wood, with a sign that reads ”No Girls Allowed” across the front door. I’ve never been in a secret club before, so this is kind of fun! It’s sort of like a food blog version of ‘Secret Santa’. If you’re a food blogger, please join us!
I didn’t get many holes in my Appams, most probably because I forgot about it during the ferment (the bubbly photo was after 12 hours of ferment, but I couldn’t make them at that time, so I let it sit, and sit, and…until I had the time to make them), and killed it, similar to what I did to my ‘late’ sourdough starter. RIP, Herbie.
However, there was only one minor caveat. The group I was assigned to had a reveal day 1 day after the Daring Cooks reveal day. You all know I’m not one to put up daily posts. I’m lucky to get one up once every two weeks. That will change in time, but for now, that’s just how my life is.
In any event, I really wanted to take part in Mary’s (from Mary Mary Culinary) Daring Cooks challenge, which was to make Appam, a thin fermented rice pancake usually served with a curry, plus optional sides. SO, why not kill two umm..stones with one bird? Yes, that was on purpose; I meant to reverse it. I don’t want to kill birds..even metaphorically.
Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.
I lucked out. My blog assignment for The Secret Recipe Club was a fabulous blog called Tea and Scones, and Margaret, the author/owner of this lovely blog, had a plethora of recipes to choose from. I scrolled through her categories, and BOOM, there it was, ‘Indian’; 9 yummy Indian recipes. Although I was hoping for a vegetable korma, I chose this chicken curry. After making the Appams, and feeling the texture, which was slightly noodle like (think Chow Fun) with crispy edges, Blintzes popped into my head immediately. I bet no one has ever had a chicken curry blintz before. Being of Russian ancestry, I grew up with blintzes, from sweet cheese with fruit toppings to savory potato with sour cream. The Appam, for these Chicken – Paneer Curry blintzes, would be my blintz crepe.
To make the curry filling more blintz like, I added some crumbled paneer cheese (the most common blintz is cheese, made with potted or cottage cheese). I also made a few minor changes to Margaret’s curry recipe. Since the Appams contain fermented rice, I used carrots instead of potatoes (I grew up with a weird ‘no 2 starches together in one meal’ ideology), and added some chopped red bell pepper for more color and flavor, along with a little cilantro. I also used ghee instead of butter. It’s absolutely delicious..just the right amount of curry, heat and spice, and apparently healthy, since Margaret’s recipe originates from Cooking Light, although I probably ratcheted that down a bit with the ghee.
Since I was going to fold and roll the Appams, I needed to soften the lovely, crispy edges. I know, I know, that’s the best part of an Appam. Well, these curry blintzes are definitely worth the sacrifice! To do that, I stacked each freshly made Appam between cut sheets of parchment paper, and covered the stack with a plate to steam them a bit. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t lose all the crispy, but this makes the blintz easier to fold in and roll with little, if any, cracking.
So, after eating a bit of this delicious chicken curry with the Appams, I didn’t soften, (see photo collage at beginning of post), I added the crumbled paneer to the remaining curry, chopped it up a bit to make for easier rolling, placed a few tablespoons of the curry on each Appam, rolled them up like blintzes, then fried them in ghee (clarified butter). Served by themselves or with a nice spoonful of yogurt, I now had chicken – paneer curry blintzes, or as I called them, ‘movable’ curry, since you can pick them up, maybe wrapped in some paper or napkins, and eat out of hand. Indian street/compact/movable food with a Russian twist!
By the way, if you really want to make these blintzes, but don’t want to make the Appams, just make or purchase a package of crepes!
For a vegetarian version of this curry, sub potatoes for the chicken. For a Vegan Potato curry, use oil instead of butter.
Recipe from Tea and Scones via Cooking Light, with my revisions
ingredients:
2 teaspoons ground red pepper {I used 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper)
2 teaspoons curry powder (I used 1½ teaspoons)
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons butter (I used ghee , but coconut oil or any light oil can be used in place of butter or ghee)
1 cup chopped onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb skinless, boneless chicken breasts or thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 8-ounce carton plain yogurt
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
4 cups, peeled, medium chopped, carrots (about 1½ lbs carrots)
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
directions:
Combine first 8 ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.
Melt butter or heat ghee in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook 5 minutes stirring frequently so neither burn. Stir in bowl of spice mixture, cook 5 minutes stirring frequently until aromatic.
Add chicken and cook 10 minutes, stirring on and off, (I like to get a sear first, so I let the chicken cubes sear on each side a minute or two)
Combine yogurt and tomato paste and whisk together well. Add yogurt mixture, carrots, and stock to pan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer 1 hour stirring occasionally.
Small frying pan/skillet (preferably non-stick) with a lid
Small heatproof spatula (I used a small offset frosting spatula and it worked great!)
Rice Pancakes
1½ cups (360 ml/300 gm/10½ oz) raw rice
1½ teaspoons (7½ ml/5 gm) active dry yeast
2 teaspoons (10 ml/9 gm) sugar
½ cup (120 ml) of coconut water or water, room temperature
1½ tablespoons (22½ ml/18 gm) cooked rice
½ teaspoon (2½ ml/3 gm) salt
About ½ cup (120 ml) thick coconut milk (from the top of an unshaken can)
directions:
Soak the raw rice in 4 to 5 cups of water for 3 hours. You can soak it overnight, although I did not try that.
Dissolve the sugar in the coconut water or plain water and add the yeast. Set aside in a warm area for 10-15 minutes, until very frothy.
Drain the rice and grind it in a blender with the yeast mixture to make a smooth batter. You can add a bit of extra water if needed, but I did not. Add the cooked rice, and grind/blend to combine well. You can see that it is not completely smooth, but very thick—that’s about right.
Pour into a large bowl, cover and leave in a warm place for 8-12 hours. You not only want the mixture to rise and collapse, but to ferment. When it is ready, it will have a slightly sour and distinctly yeasty smell. Don’t worry, they taste mild when cooked!
Add the coconut milk and salt, and a bit of water if necessary, so that you have a batter that is just a bit thicker than milk. Notice how it bubbles after you add the coconut milk. Mary recommends test-cooking one before thinning the batter.
Heat your pan over medium heat. Wipe a few drops of oil over it using a paper towel. Stir the batter and pour in 3-4 tablespoons, depending on the size of the pan. Working quickly, hold the handle(s) and give the pan a quick swirl so that the batter comes to the top edge. Swirl once only, as you want the edges to be thin and lacy.
Cover the pan and cook for about 2 minutes. Uncover and check. The center should have puffed up a bit, and will be shiny, but dry to the touch. When ready, loosen the edges with a small spatula and serve immediately. These need to be served hot out of the pan.
Keep making until you use up all the batter. I (Lisa) messed up the first few, so I only got 10. Can be refrigerated, wrapped tight, for two days.
If you're going to make my blintzes, stack each Appam pancake between cut sheets of parchment paper immediately after removing it from pan. Weigh down parchment stack of Appams with a plate for 10 minutes until edges are soft- then take out one Appam at a time, keeping others covered, to roll each curry blintz.
1. Crumble about 1/2 cup of crumbled paneer cheese (make it yourself or buy it) into warm curry, and mix well.
2. Place about 2 to 4 tablespoons (depending on size of Appam) of the chicken curry with paneer on the upper middle (towards you) of one Appam pancake. Fold top edge over curry, roll once fully, then fold each side over curry, and finish rolling, like you would an eggroll. (See my collage or watch the how to roll part of the blintz video linked above).
3. Place each rolled Chickem Curry Blintz on a parchment lined pan until ready to fry.
4. Melt some ghee (amount depends on how many you are frying at once. I’d say about 1 to 2 tablespoons per blintz) in a skillet or saute pan, until hot. Place blintze(s), seam side down, in the hot ghee – do not overcrowd pan, maybe two or three at a time depending on the size of the skillet or saute pan you use. Let cook until seam is sealed and it’s lightly golden. Flip over, and cook the other side until lightly golden.
NOTE: If you want larger blintzes with more curry filling, you need to make larger Appams. I used an 8-inch skillet for these. Use a 12-inch skillet to make the Appams, for bigger blintzes with more filling. Less Appams, but more to eat at once! Also, notice there is no specific amount of blintzes that can be made? The Appam recipe makes about 15, so the amount is entirely up to you. The curry recipe above is more than enough to fill 15 Appams – plus, most curry recipes may be substituted.
For some great Indian curry recipes and sides, click HERE.
Here’s the new click. See the little blue box to your left with the bug-eyed blue froggy looking thing, below? Click on it to see the round-up of all the amazing dishes each Secret Recipe Club member made from the blogs assigned to them!
I hope you try these Chicken- Paneer Curry-Appam blntzes! Thanks to Margaret of Tea and Scones for a great chicken curry recipe! Glad I discovered her blog via The Secret Recipe Club; check it out! Thanks to Mary of Mary Mary Culinary, for an awesome DC challenge!
Yes, that’s an equation, an equation for something that just might blow your mind. It definitely blew mine.
Sheer heaven = Double Berry Swirl Yogurt Cake
Before we moved from Manhattan to the town I grew up in, we spent a few years in another town while our new house was being renovated. We lived in a huge apartment complex surrounded by vast, beautiful meadows, streams filled with tadpoles, froggies, fish, and all things cool to a curious, young, nature loving girl. I won’t regale you with the huge highway overpass that roared above us over the parking lot, or the main roadway with a constant barrage of passing cars less than a mile away. Instead, I will keep us in the place where nature loomed and bloomed, with not much time left.
My fondest memory of this garden apartment complex of Eden nestled within the asphalt, was the wild blackberry and raspberry bushes hidden in one small area tucked between the pussy willows, cattails, and thick brush. We would sit in the middle of this circle of bushes and pick plump, juicy berries for hours, our lips, fingers and shirts stained purple and red, while we played Fiddlesticks. I totally took this for granted; surely there’s wild bushes like this everywhere, right? When we moved into our new house, I figured I’d have a whole backyard of them!
Unfortunately, the beautiful meadows and streams were eventually mowed down to build a modern, state-of-the-art high school, and more apartment complexes, but we were already moving out when this began. Once we moved into our new house, I forgot about wild berry bushes. I loved cooking and baking, but basic stuff since I was too young to think about or dabble in preparations calling for berries, outside of fresh berries topped with cream.
Cut to several years later. Once I hit the big 1-3, I’m baking and cooking on a pretty regular basis,thanks to a few cookbooks gifted to me by my grandmother. Within a year or two, I’m inhaling all cookbooks like oxygen, pouring through gourmet magazines, reading a few chapters of Larousse Gastronomique nightly, and watching hours upon hours of Jacques Pepin showing me every cooking technique known to man (at that time). I watched numerous cooking shows, but Jacques was the man.
I was falling madly in love with all things sweet and savory, all things plated and lovely, all things food.
This food exploration renewed my intense love of two berries with a deep fervor; two berries that I used to hang with and know very well, raspberries and blackberries. I wanted to bake with them, cook with them, make sauces with them, jam them, jelly them, you name it. However, no wild and free berry bushes to be found. My berry passion led to many trips to the market, which was soon diluted with pints of mediocre, somewhat squashed berries in plastic containers with holes. If I didn’t act quick, they’d morph into plastic containers of white, green or gray fuzz, forgotten in the back of my refrigerator fruit bin.
You never know how good you had it until you want to cook and bake with it.
Like snowflakes, no two berry swirl cakes are alike
Cut to present. A friend of mine attended a wedding in Seattle last summer. One morning he called at the end of his daily run. As he was walking through the parking lot of the hotel he was staying at, he let out an audible ‘wow’ type of gasp. He told me there were tons of wild blackberry bushes around the parking lot, loaded with some of the biggest blackberries he’d ever seen. He took a photo with his cell and sent it to me. I also let out an audible ‘wow’ type of gasp as I listened to him eat those gorgeous berries in the photos.
“Wow, theesh are the jooshiest blackberriesh I’fe ever tayshted in my life!” He exclaimed, his mouth full of berries, pissing me off jussst a little because I wanted a bush to pick off of!
This was one of the photos he sent me. Nice lookin’ Seattle wild blackberries!
The rest of his trip led to occasional phone calls and texts about how wherever he went, there were always blackberry bushes close by.
I contemplated a permanent move to Seattle, but only for a second. Although it’s an awesome city in a beautiful and bountiful state, I need a little more sunshine in my life. My ‘Seattle Me’ image contained tons of buckets in lieu of a purse, picking blackberries from every bush I saw, so much so that I would have to balance an extra bucket on my head, not unlike the Chiquita chick and her naners.
My history with yogurt is a bit different. Okay, a bit is an understatement.
I hated it.
Yogurt, to me, was a bunch of annoying, little plastic containers that dominated our fridge since my mother ate it every.single.day. They would come tumbling out and hit the floor while I was reaching for sandwich fixings or pudding cups, some cracking open on impact; white, fruity goo all over the floor. I hated, Hated, HATED how it smelled, and would sometimes gag while cleaning it up.
“How could she eat this crap?”, I’d mutter faintly under my breath while cleaning up the mess.
Don’t let these skinny swirls of berry fool you, because…..
During my freshman year of college, there was a little truck on campus one day that was just giving yogurt away; Dannon yogurt. One late night, craving something sweet, but nothing but our free Dannon haul in our mini-fridge, I had no choice but to confront my yogurt demons. I was so hungry, I didn’t care..I was going to eat it. One spoonful and BANG, a blast of creamy and tangy with sweet strawberries swirled throughout, sort of like a pudding or custard, and I love puddings and custards.
Yogurt, why did I hate you so for so long?
Well, now I’m obsessed, and I eat a container almost every day, and bake with it quite often. As mentioned above, it’s in this cake, the Greek style, which has been my new favorite for a while now.
When I decided to take advantage of an abundance of gorgeous, plump blackberries and raspberries I found at the farmer’s market, I started with a blackberry swirl pound cake recipe I’d bookmarked at Martha Stewart’s site (wow, Martha is making a lot of appearances on my blog as of late!).
Naturally, I wasn’t going to leave raspberries out and, of course, I was probably going to change something. That something was my former foe, yogurt, instead of the sour cream called for in the recipe. I had the urge to experiment, and I did, mixing each berry puree with some of the cake batter prior to swirling them in, hoping for the best. Wow, this gave me thick ribbons of berry instead of the usual thin strips of berry, within the cake, exactly what I was hoping for. Success!
Make this cake! I promise you will love it, even if you don’t like berries and/or yogurt. I converted someone who hated both, that’s how good it is.
….when you mix some of the batter into the berry purees before spooning it on and swirling it into the batter, then cut into a slice vertically, this is what you get. Thick ribbons of berry.
½ cup (1 stick - 4 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan (or ½ cup neutral oil, like canola or coconut, OR ¼ cup (4 tablespoons) butter plus ¼ cup oil)
3 ounces blackberries (about a scant ¾ cup)
3 ounces raspberries (about a scant ¾ cup)
1¼ cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup Greek Yogurt, room temperature
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan and line with parchment paper, leaving a 2-inch overhang on all sides; then butter parchment. In a food processor, puree blackberries with 1 tablespoon sugar. Wipe out processor and puree raspberries with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Pour/scrape into separate bowls and set aside (you can strain them into the bowls if you don't like the light bite of seeds that do not break down). In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together butter (or oil, or a combo of the two as mentioned in ingredient list) and 1¼ cups sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla and beat to combine, scraping down bowl as you go. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with Greek yogurt, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
Stir two to three tablespoons of the cake batter into the bowl with the blackberry puree until uniform. Stir two to three tablespoons of the cake batter into the bowl of raspberry puree, until uniform.
Pour half the plain batter into the pan and dot with ½ of the blackberry puree -batter and half the raspberry puree-batter. It will seem like it takes over all the plain cake batter, but don't worry, it all works out in the end. Swirl/marble lightly using a skewer or knife. Top with remaining plain batter and dot with remaning raspberry and blackberry batter as you did with the first layer. Again, swirl the puree-batter mixes into the plain batter - pushing a skewer or knife all the way to the bottom for a full marble.
Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, about 1¼ hours. Let cool in pan on a wire rack, 30 minutes. Lift cake out of pan and place on a serving plate; let cool completely before serving.
Don’t let these skinny swirls of berry fool you, because…..
