Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Empanadas

I stumbled across a recipe for butternut squash "hand pies" a while back, and with a few tweaks it turned out to be nice choice for a potluck this past weekend. Contributing a dish to the annual Nashville Food Blogger party is a bit nerve-wracking, given that our group includes food and food writing professionals as well as extremely talented amateurs. I was very pleased with how they turned out.

I detest the term "hand pie" so I call them empanadas, given the Latin American-inspired flavors. The combination of butternut squash, goat cheese, and the seasonings work well together. The crowning glory of the empanadas is the crust; this is a standard all-butter pie crust, which I discussed in this previous post.

The directions here are for creating mini empanadas; the perfect size to provide a few bites as a snack or appetizer. You can, of course, make a larger size for a more substantial treat.

How to Make a Perfect, Easy Pie Crust

OK, "perfect, easy pie crust" is a lie; really, what I'm trying to say is that pie crust is not as difficult as you may fear, and that perfection is overrated. I get it, I've been there. I did not grow up with much homemade pie crust, even though my mother was a great baker. Like everyone else we knew, we used frozen shells most of the time. Like a lot of things I now make from scratch, I didn't start experimenting with pie crust until I was in my 20's. Even then, I wasn't happy with the results. I felt like a failure and stuck with frozen or refrigerated pie shells from the grocery store.

As I've continued to branch out with cooking and baking, I've revisited pie crust every now and then. I've tried Cook's Illustrated method that uses vodka and a combination of butter and shortening. I've reviewed (but never made) Alton Brown's various crusts. I've used Ruth Levy Beranbaum's exacting method which includes baking powder, vinegar, and precisely-sized cuts of carefully timed, partially-frozen butter. Making the recipe from Beranbaum, who I generally like and trust, feels like amateur brain surgery, and in the end, I just didn't like the crust that much.

A good pie crust shouldn't be brain surgery

I wouldn't discourage you from trying any and all methods to find your best pie crust, and Mr. Google can help you find the above and more. For me, though, I figured out that keeping it simple was the key to getting me to stay away from the freezer case and and the long red boxes in favor of superior taste and quality.

Old-Fashioned Beef Stew

The arctic cold snap we've experienced this week, on top of the holiday season, has put most people in the mood for comfort food. When the weather is seriously cold -- with or without snow and ice -- you tend to want hearty, warm home-cooking. One-pot meals such as soups, stews, chili, and the like spring immediately to mind.

I have a few favorite dishes in this category, and today's post presents one near the top of the list. This Old-Fashioned Beef Stew is adapted from a recipe in my beloved The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. It is one of a dozen or so recipes from that book that I consider a core part of my repertoire. Naturally I've tweaked it a bit over the years, but the central idea is the same: A rich, somewhat thick broth studded with chunks of tender beef, potato, carrot, and onion. The beef is given a long, slow simmer to tenderize and develop the flavor of the broth, while the vegetables are added toward the end of cooking so that they don't get mushy.

That 70's Show: Quiche

I've been planning at least one post to discuss the Julia Child 100 promotion. August 15, 2012 would have been Child's 100th birthday, and Alfred A. Knopf is sponsoring a celebration which began on May 7, 100 days in advance of the big day. A group of her most popular, influential, and iconic recipes have been selected for a world-wide cook-along; each week one of the recipes is selected and cooks, writers, and bloggers of all stripes give that recipe a try.

I haven't yet participated with the recipe-of-the-week, but Julia and I are old friends. Details about that will come in a future post, but today I'm writing about a dish I learned from her:  Quiche. Given the Julia celebration, I'd been thinking about this and other recipes already. Then, lo and behold, fellow Nashville food blogger Lesley Eats recently confessed to the fact that quiche was a bit of a personal Waterloo. The convergence of the two events inspired me to brush the cobwebs off my recipe and make one.

Quiche has been around a long time, but it became popular in American restaurants and homes in the 70's, and was still going strong in the '80s. During that heyday I made it during my tenure at two different restaurants while in college. As with any dish that becomes popular, there are a million permutations, many of which are, well, bad. Quiche is a savory egg custard tart. It is not a fritatta in a crust, it is not scrambled-egg pie, it is not a metric ton of ingredients held together by some eggs and milk. The cheese (if used) and/or other filling ingredients shouldn't overpower the custard, which should be allowed to shine through. Another mistake many restaurants have always made is to serve it piping-hot with a limp crust, usually as a result of being reheated in a microwave. Freshly baked, warm from the oven after a rest is fine. Gently rewarmed in the oven is fine. It's even good at room temperature. But please, whatever you do, don't nuke the life out of it.

Below is my recipe, adapted from The French Chef Cookbook, the companion book to Child's first TV show. Some important tips:

• Julia's original recipe called for partially pre-baking the shell. I've come to prefer a fully baked shell, not only for quiche but for any pie that's going to be baked after filling. It's really the only way to get a good, flaky, crisp crust.
• I use half-and-half for quiche most of the time. Some of Julia's recipes use cream, some use milk; it depends on what other ingredients are included. You may use any combination of whole milk, half-and-half, or cream. I have even made it with part milk and part evaporated milk. For best results, though, don't use non-fat or 1% fat milk.
• Don't overbake -- Cooking a custard too long can cause it to separate and weep moisture.

Quiche

The Crust
1 unbaked, deep-dish pie shell

Preheat oven to 450. Make sure pie shell has no cracks or splits. Lightly poke the bottom all over with a fork. If you have pie weights, place those in the bottom of the crust. If not, line the bottom with paper coffee filters or parchment paper and add a layer of raw rice or dried beans. This weight will prevent the crust from humping up as it cooks. Bake for about 10 minutes, then remove the weights and/or paper. Continue baking another few minutes until the bottom starts to color. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

The Filling
While the crust is baking, prepare whatever flavorings you plan to use; if cooked, make sure they are cooled to at least lukewarm before combining with the custard. (See Variations, below.) In this particular case, I made something like a Quiche Florentine and used:

1/4 cup finely chopped onion & shallot mixture
3 large mushrooms, thinly sliced
A fat handful of spinach, larger stems removed, sliced into strips
olive oil
salt

Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add enough olive oil to thinly film the bottom of the pan (about 2 tsp). Add the mushrooms and saute a couple of minutes, stirring frequently. Add onion and a sprinkle of salt and saute another couple of minutes, stirring frequently. Add spinach and saute, until spinach wilts, just a minute or so. Remove from heat.

The Custard
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1/4 tsp salt
pinch each of nutmeg and white pepper

Put the eggs in a small mixing bowl and beat with a whisk until frothy. Add the half-and-half, nutmeg, salt, & pepper and mix well.

Assembly
Crust, Filling, Custard
3/4 cup grated Gruyere or Swiss cheese

Preheat the oven to 375. Put the filling in the cooled pie shell, then gently pour the custard over it. Bake for 45 minutes until the custard is set and the top is lightly browned. If the crust rim starts to get too brown, cover with a ring of foil paper or pie guard. Allow the quiche to cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting.

Variations

You don't want the total of cheese and other fillings to exceed about 1 1/4 cups.

Lorraine: Add several slices of crisply cooked, crumbled bacon to the custard mixture.

Vegetable: Add up to 1/2 cup of your favorite chopped, lightly sauteed or blanched vegetables. Be sure and squeeze to remove excess moisture first if needed.

Three Cheese: Reduce Gruyere/Swiss cheese to 1/4 cup and add 1/4 cup each of two other cheeses such as cheddar, parmesan, etc.

One small step for blogdom

In the spirit of, "Well, everybody else seems to be doing it, why not me?" here's my first stab at a blog. At this point the main focus is going to be on food and cooking (hence the title) but meandering is definitely a possibility. A lot of food blogs I've visited have lovely, high-quality pictures of dishes the authors prepared, and I'm not there yet. So for now, text will have to do. :D

To start, I'll launch right in and talk about today's menu. Last weekend I'd made some black bean soup, portioned into individual servings for the freezer. This morning I decided to have some for supper, but didn't want just "soup." I had pureed it and cooked it down to a pretty thick consistency, like thin refried beans, and thought it would be good over something. I made a pot of polenta, using fat-free half-and-half for part of the water, then poured it into a small loaf pan and put it in the refrigerator to chill. At dinner time I sliced off several slabs of the polenta, gave them a dusting of flour, and pan-fried until golden on both sides. I plated the polenta, then the warmed black bean soup was poured over. Topped with thinly sliced scallions and a dollop of sour cream made a hearty, warm, comforting entree. The side was a tomato-onion ragout, picked up on a rerun of Everyday Food today. Tomato-Onion Ragout (with Flounder).

I was pleased with the outcome, but next time I'd use polenta that was made with just water, and chilled for a longer period. It was cold but still a little soft. The ragout was excellent and I'll definitely be making that again as well!