Steak and Blue Cheese Hand Pies

A hand pie, I will have you know, is when you put fillings in little circles of pie crust, fold it over, and then bake it like a turnover.  In Michigan, we call these pasties (that’s pronounced PAHS-ties, as opposed to PAYS-ties, and you are all filthy if you thought the other thing).

Oh wait. First I want to address the fact that neither Sue nor I have written a blog post since July.  Well, we have the following to say for ourselves: we were busy, and apologize for the long delay. I CAN say that we cooked many interesting things while we’ve been away, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with potato chips on it, a Christmas yule log, crab jambalaya WITH CRABS THAT I MYSELF CAUGHT FROM THE OCEAN, KILLED* AND CLEANED, a turducken and a devil’s food cake, but we didn’t blog about any of it. (Hint on the PB&J: you put the chips right on the sandwich!!!)

*I didn’t kill them, my boyfriend did. Crabs are a lot harder to kill than you’d think, and also if, say, you try to kill one and just piss it off instead, it gets verrrrry fighty.

So, hand pies/pasties, which are basically the same thing. Pasties originated in Cornwall, and arrived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with Cornish immigrants who came for the UP copper mining.  They can be filled with savory or sweet things, though traditionally it would be beef and root vegetables.  The crust is a traditional shortcrust pastry, a basic pie crust with a 1:2 fat to flour ratio. We filled ours with some leftover jerk chicken, and made some with steak, blue cheese and caramelized onion. That’s the recipe I’ll post, because it’s going to make you cry, it’s so good. This recipe makes about 7 hand pies.

Crust:

2 cups flour

1 cup cold butter, diced

3/4 cup very cold vodka

1 tsp salt

Egg wash (whisk together one egg with 2 tsp of cold water and set aside)

Filling:

1 lb or so of sirloin steak, salted and peppered on both sides

1 yellow onion, diced

2 tbsp butter

1/4 cup wine, any kind will do

salt and pepper

blue cheese

Method:  In a food processor, pulse the flour, salt and butter until the mixture is grainy like sand. Drop in the cold vodka about a teaspoon at a time until the mixture JUST holds together. DO NOT OVERMIX. Remove the dough from the food processor, shape it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This resting process is extremely important and I think has something to do with gluten but I forget, so just do it, or else watch this video.  Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees.

While the dough is resting in the fridge and the oven is pre-heating, make the filling.  In a cast iron pan on medium-high heat, melt 1 tbsp of butter and sear the steak for 2-3 minutes per side, then remove to a plate and let rest. In the same pan but heat reduced to medium, melt the remaining tbsp of butter and cook the onions until browned and even lightly charred, scraping up all the delicious beef bits.

After maybe 6 or 7 minutes, deglaze the pan with whatever wine you have and cook until the liquid is absorbed, then turn off the heat. Dice the steak into cute little bite sized pieces.

good luck not eating this before you put it in the hand pies.

After resting and preparing the filling, unwrap the dough, separate it into as many balls as you want to have hand pies (we  made 7 with this amount of dough), and on a lightly floured work surface, roll each dough ball out into a  little circle.

my boyfriend ends up doing most of the gnarly jobs. rolling out dough, killing crabs, etc.

Pile a little steak, a little onions and some blue cheese bits onto the circles, fold them over into a half moon shape, pinch the ends together with your fingers (or use the tines of a fork to crimp them) and lay them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush them with egg wash and bake them for 20-25 minutes or until browned.

egg wash SEEMS stupid and pointless, but it gets the crust all brown and delicious. a good idea would be to feed the leftover egg wash to your dog. i bet he would like it.

You can reheat these in the oven as long as they last, which will be zero days. I took these to work for lunch and I didn’t heat them up, I just kept it on my desk so when I ate it it was room temperature and the crust was crisp and fantastic and I wish I still had some of these but I don’t because we ate them all. Also, MAY I SUGGEST eating the steak ones with a little dollop of raspberry jam. Good GOD they’re delicious.

– Cat

Strawberry & Balsamic Galette

You  know when you were a kid, and every day at dinner your mom would be trying to feed you meatloaf or tuna casserole* or some other real horror, and you’d say “when I’m an adult I’m going to eat candy for dinner and stay up all night playing Sonic the Hedgehog, and instead of going to school I’m going to found a pirate colony in the backyard”?  It’s a shame that now, as an adult, I have evenings where I eat a sensible dinner made up of vegetables and lean protein followed by a piece of dark chocolate (Antioxidants! Moderation! PHOOEY!), then fold laundry and go to bed early.  My child-self would be appalled, not to mention seriously bored.

*I would like to issue an apology to my mother because she was right about meatloaf being good, but also demand one from her because she was NOT RIGHT about tuna casserole being good.  When is hot mayonnaise a good idea?  Oh!  Maybe when you put peas in it.  Blech.

*Note from Sue-I love tuna noodle casserole AND hot mayo, I think it’s fair to say we all just hate the cream of whatever soup. Mmmm hot mayo dips.

So, I made a strawberry galette for dinner.  BECAUSE I CAN.

For the crust:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tbsp powdered sugar

pinch of salt

1/2 cup cold butter, diced

1-3 tbsp ice cold water

Method: Pulse the dry ingredients in a food processor until combined.  Add the butter and pulse until the dough forms a thick crumbly mess.

any recipe where the butter can be cold is a recipe i can get behind.

this was much sandier and finer than the recipe led me to believe.

Add the water a tablespoon at a time, pulsing very briefly between, until the dough JUST holds together.  Smush the dough into a big disc, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for an hour.

don’t smush it too much, though, because it’ll get chewy instead of flaky.

For the filling:

2 cups  fresh strawberries, quartered

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp honey

1 tsp brown sugar

1 tsp corn starch

Method: Mix strawberries with vinegar and honey and let sit for an hour or so.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick circle.

someday maybe i’ll get a rolling pin. until then, there’s metal waterbottles!

Lay the dough on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.  Sprinkle the brown sugar/cornstarch mixture around the whole circle, about 1/2 inch from the edges.  Strain the strawberries, reserving the liquid. Arrange the strawberries, artfully, this isn’t a hoedown, and fold over the edges of the galette.

ARTFULLY.

Bake the galette until golden brown and bubbly, about 40-45 minutes.  Let it REALLY cool until you cut it, or the strawberries won’t have had a chance to solidify and you’ll have a runny, sad mess.   In the meantime, pop the reserved strawberry liquid into a small saucepan and reduce it by half or so, until it’s thick.  To serve the galette, cut it into pretty slices and drizzle it with the sauce. I didn’t photograph the sauce, because I took this picture at 7am.  But I did eat it for dinner and it was fantastic.  The strawberries cook down into concentrated strawberry perfection.  You know when you eat a strawberry, and it’s sublime and transcends the way that normal strawberries taste to become a sort of strawberry archetype, informing your opinion forever on what a strawberry SHOULD taste like?  This is like that.  Also, the crust baked perfectly- crispy on the bottom and flaky and buttery. Plus, look how attractive it is.  This is the kind of thing that people who live in Italian villas whip up when they have visitors and then eat while drinking chilled wine from the estate on a stone patio at sunset.

And let me say: DO NOT SKIP the sauce.  You want the sauce.  Really.  Trust me.

– Cat

pretty, huh.

Gluten Free Blueberry Pie Bars

Last weekend, I went berry picking with some friends.  I have never done so in Oregon, which is idiotic, because everyone knows Oregon has the best berries anywhere.  It is strawberry season in Oregon, and is starting to be blueberry and raspberry season.  Blueberries are easy to pick, because they are on trees at a normal, human height.  Strawberries, however, are low to the ground and apparently enjoy hiding in thickets of thorny nonsense.  You kind of squat down and scuttle along the rows looking for berries.  Collecting a big bucket of berries made me feel satisfied to have come from a long line of peasants on both sides of my family, which is contrary to my childhood feelings about the same subject, during which time I was sure I was descended from royalty.  Not so, I’m told.

In any case, I picked a shitload of berries.  Far more than one person can consume.  So, I froze a bunch of them, in that Martha Stewart-y method where you lay out the berries on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then gather them up into ziploc bags individually when they’re frozen, so you have pretty, individually frozen berries instead of a frozen gloppy mess.  It worked perfectly.

In the interest of using up some of my berries AND of making a gluten free dessert for a buddy, I landed on Gluten Free Blueberry Pie Bars.  (I wanted to make a blueberry tart, but I don’t have a tart pan and seeing as I DO have a bundt pan AND a springform pan, that seems like enough pans I use once per decade.)  If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know anything about celiac disease, wheat allergies or the general gluten free food thing, I’d like to introduce you to the internet.

I’ve never made anything gluten free on purpose.  You know, like roasted asparagus.  That is gluten free.  But something normally made with wheat not made with wheat?  No.  Turns out, though, that there is a plethora of gluten free choices.  Almond flour, amaranth flour (?  This seems like what lembas bread is probably made from, and if you get that reference, you’re a dork and we would get along famously), rice flour, oat flour, arrowroot flour, fava bean flour, chickpea flour, etc.  I opted for rice flour, because a dessert made out of fava beans is weird, and oat flour, because that is something I could make myself.

These bars were so easy.  So so easy and so very delicious.  I think with nuts in them, these bars would be easily good enough for you to have for breakfast, or you could have them for dessert with ice cream and they’d still be wonderful.

Gluten Free Blueberry Pie Bars

Crust:

1 cup rice flour

1 1/4 cups oat flour (you can make your own by pulsing oats in a food processor until more or less fine, but they make a nice base when they’re a little rough)

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup (1/2 a stick)  butter, softened

1 egg

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Blueberry compote:

2 cups fresh blueberries

1/4 cup sugar

3 tbsp corn starch

juice of half a lemon

Method:  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  In a small saucepan, cook the blueberries, sugar, lemon juice and cornstarch on medium heat for 15-20 minutes, then let it cool until you can touch it.  It should be relatively thick, like jam.

For the crust, mix together all the dry ingredients, then smush in the butter, egg and oil with your fingers until the crust is sandy but mostly holds together.  Into a greased square baking pan, press 3/4 of the dough into the bottom, pretty firmly and be sure to cover the pan completely, not leaving any holes.

tamara doing the actual work.

Pour the blueberry compote onto the dough, then drop the remaining 1/4 of dough onto the top of the berries.

notice in this picture that i have some extra Thai chiles from when i made stir fry last week.  they’ll just sit there.  forever, probably.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top dough is lightly browned.  Let cool completely before cutting.

These turned out perfectly. Taking the extra step of cooking the blueberries was my way of ensuring that they didn’t get too runny and create a cobbler instead of bars.  They turned out beautifully.  I even took them to the beach.  And!  No gluten!

– Cat

CSA Week 2

I finished up week one of my CSA and it was everything I hoped for and then some. I was able to eat tons of fresh produce, and it encouraged me to think outside the box. I added beet greens to my spanakopita and I used blueberry and rhubarb together with delicious results (recipe coming soon!). I will admit I let ½ of the bag of spinach wilt but it was truly on accident as it was over 100 degrees in Denver for 5 days straight. I was able to use everything else with the only leftover being parsley- which I will combine with this week’s parsley to make a big batch of tabbouleh.

Below I have listed what I got in my CSA this week and what I plan to do with it. As I make and post recipes I will link back to this page.

7 spring/green onions- I am going to use these in the black beans (from last week’s CSA!) with onion, jalapeno, cilantro and lime. I am also going to use them in pico de gallo I am making to go with tonight’s mexi-feast.

3 beets- pickled and canned, my mom’s favorite preparation and a good way to preserve them. For the greens I am going to sauté them with fresh garlic and lemon juice and serve it with grilled swordfish (one of the boyfriend’s favorites).

1 pint bag rhubarb- blueberry rhubarb tart- I made one last week and it was so good I’m making it again and this time I’ll blog about it.

1 bag snow peas- it was a small bag this week, and I already ate most of them fresh!

2 garlic scapes– my basil plant is doing quite well so I think I will make a basil/ garlic scape pesto this week.

1 bunch spinach- I am going to use this in a strawberry caprese spinach salad, which will also be using my basil, served with balsamic vinaigrette and maybe with grilled chicken depending if we eat it for dinner or lunch.

1 head garlic- to be used in normal garlic places, specifically in the black beans and also in the balsamic dressing for the salad(s).

1 head butter lettuce- this is quite possibly my favorite sandwich lettuce. So, sandwiches. I also love it to use it as a lettuce cup for tuna salad (the kind of lettuce cup you eat instead of bread, not the kind that is just for plate decoration).

1 bunch curly parsley- I won’t  lie,  I’m not a huge fan of curly parsley, I think flat leaf is much more flavorful.  I still have the parsley from last week in the fridge in a mason jar with a little water (FYI- this is the best way to store herbs) so I think I will use both of them together to make the tabbouleh this week.

1 bunch cilantro- will be used today in black beans and pico de gallo I am one of those people who LOVES cilantro, I could eat it every day.

1 bag dried white navy beans- saved for later use.

I hope everyone else is enjoying the fresh seasonal produce as much as I am!

-Sue

Roasted Marinated Beets with Beet Green Spanakopita Cups

I used to hate beets. I mean, there are a lot of things about them to hate. They dye everything red, they sometimes taste like dirt, and frankly they are a little too good for you. I think all of us out there can say that the stuff that is really really good for you sometimes doesn’t taste that delicious. But this is like kale, maybe you didn’t like it at first, maybe you don’t like it in every preparation, but I guarantee you there is a recipe out there that you will love (like Cat’s kale salad). I like my beets with a fair amount of vinegar to balance out their earthy flavor. I like to roast them to bring out the sweetness and then marinate them in vinegar.

If you haven’t tried roasted beets you are not allowed to say you hate beets. Because you probably don’t actually hate beets- these taste nothing like the canned beets that were popular when our parents were growing up and were probably the kind you ate as a kid. THESE ARE NOTHING LIKE THOSE. Roasting, as a general rule, brings out the sweetness in root vegetables. It knocks down that earthy (read: dirt) flavor and brings out a deep rich sweetness in them. With the addition of a bit of vinegar this is a super food I can get on board with.

For this meal I was using CSA items and so I deviated a bit from my usual spanakopita recipe. Spanakopita traditionally has feta cheese, spinach, and dill and it is sandwiched in between layers and layers of flaky buttery phylo dough. It’s quite possibly one of my favorite things ever. However, this time I had these beautiful beet greens that I wanted to use and so I changed it up a little. Beet greens have quite a bit of natural bitterness to them, but paired with sweet roasted beets it is a welcome bitterness. They also have a natural lightly salty flavor from the beets sending up their nutrients into the leaves (something I learned from my CSA newsletter!). Feta is a salty cheese which is a delicious balance to good ol’ spinach, but with the addition of the beet greens I decided to use goat cheese (plus I had some on hand).  I made a few other minor tweaks and I put the filling into phyllo cups. Between the roasted marinated beets and the beet green spanakopita – this might be my new favorite “Greek” dinner!

Did I mention beet greens are also insanely healthy for you? Shhh don’t tell anyone- besides a little bit of phyllo this whole meal is border line too healthy to be as good as it tastes.

Roasted Marinated Beets:

3 medium beets

Olive oil for roasting

1 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt

Cut off the beet greens (leaving a small end of the stems attached) and reserve for spanakopita. Wash beets and scrub off any residual dirt. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and wrap in aluminum foil. Roast at 350 for about an hour or until easily pierced with a paring knife.

When the beets are cool enough to handle slice off the leaf end and rub off the skin with your fingers, or a towel that you want to be permanently dyed red. The skin should slip off easily, if not they need to be roasted longer. Once the beets are clean, slice them into your desired shape- I went with triangles.

Toss the sliced beets in olive oil and vinegar and a pinch of salt and let marinate for 20 minutes or up to a few hours. Sprinkle lightly with salt before serving.

Beet Green and Spinach Spanakopita Cups- makes 6

Phyllo Cups:

5 sheets of phyllo dough

½ stick of butter melted

Filling:

1 Tbs butter or olive oil*

3 green onions, thinly sliced white and light green parts

2 cups fresh spinach -whole if it is baby, otherwise chopped

Greens from 3-4 beets, washed and chopped

1 Tbs fresh dill, chopped

3 oz goat cheese

Juice of one lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Preheat oven to 350.

For the cups- brush one layer of thawed phyllo dough with butter and top with another sheet until you have 5 sheets layered. Slice into 6 equal portions. Press phyllo dough into 6 muffin tin spaces and bake until golden, about 18 minutes.

For the filling- melt one Tbs butter or olive oil in a large pot (before spinach is wilted it takes up a lot of room). Add green onions and sauté until soft and fragrant. Add spinach and beet greens and cook until wilted, stirring occasionally- about 10 minutes. Add dill and lemon juice and cook for one minute. Add the goat cheese and stir until melted and evenly distributed. Salt and Pepper to taste.

Spoon the filling into the phyllo cups and serve warm.

A few notes:

*Butter is always better when it comes to onions. Olive oil is an absolutely fine substitute but butter brings out a sweetness in onions that I happen to love. Is a tablespoon of butter really going to kill you? I hope to God not or I’m screwed.

– In case this is your first adventure with beets…I’m not joking when I say it will dye everything red. I recommend using a plastic cutting board for beets. The color will eventually wash out of wood but consider yourself warned. It will also probably dye your fingers- it’s like a battle scar- I eat beets and I’m proud!

-Sue