Cooking in Cambridge

So again, I'm spending the summer in Cambridge, visiting Benson. Both of us very much enjoy cooking, and I've been eating better here then I usually do at home, since usually at least *one* of us feels like cooking, and it's a  lot more fun to cook for two then to cook for one. So, the result of this is that Benson and I have made breakfast (or brunch) at least once every weekend since I've arrived, which has been pretty awesome. I actually brought to England with me a small bottle of maple syrup which I bought in New Hampshire last week as a gift to Benson -- it's already over half gone!
We've done pancakes, omelets, Dutch Baby, the world's best scrambled eggs, Challah french toast (from scratch -- with my friend Zahava's amazing homemade Challah recipe), and this weekend we made Oeufs en Cocotte (eggs in a pot). I'd never heard of these before (and thus had never made them before), but while we were browsing in a kitchenware store (looking for a cheese grater, amongst other things) we stumbled across these little ceramic mini-casserole dishes which were just too cute for me to pass up (my one true weakness: kitchenware). So, while commenting to Benson, waiting in line, that I had no idea what we would make with them but I had to have them anyway, the lady in front of us suggested making Cocette - a french dish she knew, with eggs and ham all made in a tiny ramekin - perfect for the little crockery we were purchasing. So, with help from Google, we had this for brunch this morning.



Oeufs en Cocotte
4 eggs
150 grams (5.5 oz) créme fraiche
nutmeg (a pinch)
salt and pepper (to taste)
handful of fresh chopped dill
butter
Optional additions: chopped up ham, bacon bits, asparagus, smoked salmon, cheese, anything else that might go in a delicious eggy breakfast dish!




This dish was quite easy to make - first, preheat the oven to 180C/350F (switching units of measurements for temperature and cooking in England has been a tad aggravating, I admit, but I'm getting used to it). Mix the créme fraiche with dill, salt and pepper, and a dash of nutmeg in a small bowl. Then, butter 4 ramekins (we just did this in the 2 little dishes, but ramekins are usually smaller) completely, and put  a generous spoonful of the creamy mix in the bottom of each one. If you are adding ham, cheese, or other things, put those in next (we just used ham, which was a nice addition), and crack an egg on top of that (in our crockeries we put 2 eggs, since they were large enough). Finally, put a dallop of the créme fraiche mix on top of all of this, and put another sprinkle of salt and pepper and a dash of dill to garnish. Put your ramekins in a baking pan, and fill the pan with warm to hot water until it comes halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the eggs have set nicely.

These are great. I particularly like the taste that the dill gives to the recipe - dill is something I really like but don't actually go out and get very often (it doesn't dry well in my opinion, fresh is the way to go, and I usually don't buy a lot fresh herbs because they only come in huge packs at the store and they go bad before I can use them all). I also associate the taste and smell of dill with my grandmother (on my dad's side) -- she was a fantastic cook, and I don't think I encountered dill very often anywhere other than her house when I was little, so it's a pretty strong sensory memory associated with her. Can't have it without thinking about her. Anyway, so yes, a delicious brunch, and pretty easy to do, if you have ramekins.

Dinner is also a thing Benson and I have been making, obviously. So we also recently made the *best* chicken wings I've ever made in my life. We combined two recipes for the task -- first, Korean chicken wings are amazing, so we found a recipe for the sauce used in San Tung Fried chicken wings (here). We lack a deep fryer, however, so instead we decided to bake our chicken wings. However, the best thing about Korean chicken wings is how deliciously crispy they are. Which means we managed to discover a recipe which crispifies chicken wings in the oven extremely well instead (here)! We modified the crispy bit a little.


Crispy, Oven-baked San Tung Chicken Wings
Wings:
4 lbs chicken wings
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour

Sauce:
2-3 scallions
10-15 cilantro sprigs
2-3 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup water
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs rice vinegar (we substituted apple cider vinegar mixed with white wine)
1 tsp chili garlic sauce or red peppers (AKA - Sriracha sauce!)

Preheat the oven to 250F (yes, two hundred fifty, not a typo). Pat the chicken wings dry. Mix baking powder, flour, and salt and sprinkle/coat the chicken wings with the mix -- you don't want to heavily coat your wings, because then they taste like baking powder, but you want to cover them well. This is the agent which is going to make your chicken wings crispy! You can add the flour mix through a sifter or a mesh strainer to sprinkle it lightly over the wings if you would like, rather than rolling it in the flour mix to coat it.

You are going to bake the wings on a wire rack -- so you want to put the rack on a cookie sheet, with aluminum foil covering the sheet (for easier cleaning). Then evenly arrange the wings, skin side up, in a single layer on the rack and bake at 250F for 30 minutes (this dries out the skin). Then, increase the temperature of the wings to 425F for 40-50 minutes more, rotating the sheet halfway through. The wings should be lovely and crispy and brown at this point, so take them out and let sit for 5 minutes. Then, simply toss in the sauce until they're all coated and delicious.

Ah yes, the sauce. Also an important thing you should make. The sauce is quite easy though -- just mix all the ingredients in a sauce pan, put on low-medium heat, and simmer (stirring frequently) for 5-10 minutes until it has thickened. We found that starting the sauce right after you rotate the chicken wings is about the right amount of time, giving you 20 minutes or so.

These are AMAZING. We served them over rice -- we actually made a half recipe, which was plenty for two with the rice. But for a larger group, make more!

So, all in all, having a lovely time in Cambridge. I've also gone into London 3 times now -- once as described in the last post, once for a live show of a comedy radio program I really like, and once to go to the Victoria and Albert museum as well as to track down the *best scotch egg* in London. We succeeded in this second task, finding ourselves in a really great Michelin star pub for lunch which served game and had *perfect* venison sausage covered scotch eggs. That was a good day!

Until next time!

Cleaning out the Freezer

This summer I'm going to be spending three months in the UK, where my boyfriend, Benson, is working his post-doc position. So prior to leaving (in two weeks!), I've been trying to eat all the consumables in my apartment that are sitting in my pantry, my fridge, my freezer. This has resulted in me eating and making some interesting dishes lately, just to get rid of various ingredients. This past week, this resulted in me making Matzah Ball soup (getting rid of a bunch of soup stock), pan-fried chicken hearts (getting rid of chicken hearts), and dark chocolate beet brownies (getting rid of both some frozen leftover beets AND my chocolate chips). I got the recipe for the beets from here, altering the recipe slightly by removing an egg, adding a bit of extra salt, and swapping butter in for oil, so if you compare to the website I got the recipe from, you'll see a few changes. The chicken hearts, I improvised after looking at a bunch of different recipes, none of which I liked completely. (And I'll leave the Matzah Ball recipe, recipe from my friend Abe but with bacon fat substituted in for chicken fat because I didn't have any chicken fat -- the most unkosher matzah ball soup ever -- for another time.)

Dark Chocolate Beet Brownies
2 large beets, peeled (~1 lb)
2 large eggs
2/3 c. brown sugar
2/3 c. white sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
1.25 c. cocoa powder
3/4 c. flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher or sea salt
1 c. chocolate chips

So as I said, I had some beets in my freezer (see "Death of a Lobster" - yes they were a year old - but you can freeze that kind of thing for ages and they're still just fine) -- basically extremely finely chopped beets, which had been through a blender, and which came from roughly 1lb of beets. Now, if you have your own beets not yet pureed, chop them up into a smallish dice, boil them in water until they're soft, drain well, then puree in a blender. If it doesn't blend well, add some melted butter from your butter reserve (as the butter is going to go in your brownies anyway!) so that it purees! You want the puree NOT to be hot (warm is ok, but NOT hot) so let that sit and cool a bit. In a separate bowl, mix flour, any remaining butter (melted), vanilla and sugars. Then add the beets and blend until homogenous. Next add the dry ingredients, mix again, then finally stir in the chocolate chips. Pour everything into a WELL GREASED, 9x13 baking pan, and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool, then consume these delicious, rich and uniquely flavorful brownies at your will!


Pan-fried chicken hearts with garlic and rosemary
chicken hearts
a few cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
rosemary
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper
chili powder (for an optional KICK)
flour
bacon fat (or other oil/fat to cook them in! Butter, chicken grease, or even more oil would work fine)

So as you can see, this recipe doesn't really have... proportions. I had a container of chicken hearts, and just kind of scaled accordingly. I sliced them up into strips (like 4 slices/heart - not quartered, but flattened slivers) rinsed and drained them thoroughly, then tossed with olive oil and the various spices to taste until they were well covered, then let them sit in the fridge for a couple hours (though honestly, 30 minutes would probably be fine). After that, I simply tossed the heart slices in flour and pan fried them in bacon fat (because everything improves with bacon fat!) for maybe 10 minutes, until they were cooked through. Then I popped them in a bowl and ate them as is. These turned out REALLY well - I tend to be ...non-discriminating when it comes to what types of food I'm willing to consume, so eating hearts doesn't bother me. Especially considering that my family always eats the chicken innards when we roast a chicken (or turkey, or other fowl beast) anyway. My dad's even made chicken heart soup. So eating chicken hearts is nothing new. However, when cooked this way, rather than baked to death inside a roasting chicken, they turn out extremely tender and juicy, much better than I've had them before (again, boiled or roasted to death). 10/10 would recommend for the more adventurous eater!

Fun with Soup Stock

As I've mentioned in a few previous posts, I save chicken (and duck, and turkey, and lamb) bones in order to make my own soup stock. This results in me having, first, random bags of bones sitting in the back of my freezer, and second, large amounts of soup stock sitting in my freezer. Which means even when I'm busy, I have easy access to quality soup. It's easy enough to make soup stock: fill your pot 2/3 or 3/4 up the way with bones. You can add in some veggie scraps if you have them - or some garlic, or onion, or celery - for a bit rounder a flavor. I usually toss things like corn cobs in a plastic bag and save those in my freezer as well. Cover entirely with water, with a couple inches above the bone line to spare. Add in a bay leaf if you have one, and possibly a bouillon cube as a bit of a starter, and salt generously. Cover and cook. In a regular pot you have to cook for HOURS (and you probably want to smash up the bones with a hammer or something so they release their flavor a bit easier). However, I have a pressure cooker. Hence, I can just pressure cook the pot for about 45 minutes to an hour, and it's gonna be as good as it's gonna get! Once that's done, simply strain the soup thoroughly - first to get rid of the bones, then through a finer strainer to get rid of any small particulates which may have slipped through. Apparently fine restaurants strain their stocks up to 5 times to get them extra smooth, through increasingly finer strainers, but I generally don't go that far. Any sort of bones work here - as I've said, I've made turkey soup, duck soup, chicken stock, lamb stock, shrimp stock, and even veggie stock once (I didn't find that veggie stock was worth it, though - I'd have rather just eaten all the veggies and bought veggie stock - the difference from store bought didn't seem significant, except for a bit of a stronger dill flavor, but I digress). You can also make soup out of actual meat - buy a whole chicken and work from there - and that will end up with a delicious pot of soup as well - with actual meat in it to boot. But I rather favor this bone based method, as it's nice not to waste the bones from your lovely chicken roast and to reuse them for new, delicious purposes. It feels thrifty, and it turns out very well.

So in the past few weeks, I've made a couple different soups using my stock base (and yet, still have some remaining in the freezer). First, I made a sort of 'leftover' soup using a bunch of items that I had in my fridge I wanted to get rid of. This ended up consisting of onion/garlic/celery/cream cheese/parmesan cheese/heavy cream/chicken soup/cumin/bay leaf/chili powder/pepper/cayenne pepper/chives/corn starch/MSG/salt/anchovy paste/hot sauce! I don't have a picture, or even a recipe really other than my list of ingredients, because I just kind of kept adding things to the soup, tasting it, and whisking vigorously. So I guess this bit of the post is just a self-reminder and PSA that making soup once you have a good base is pretty easy and flexible. And there aren't any rules about it. Just stick things in that will taste good, and there you have it.

More recently, I decided to make some congee. This is also a relatively recipe-less dish. At it's most basic, it is rice in soup broth, cooked for long enough that the rice breaks down and becomes mush. So it is mainly a question of what you want IN your mush. However, I scandalized Benson by putting onions instead of scallions in my congee (one of these items I had, the other I didn't. The onions taste FINE, but admittedly the scallions are a BIT more traditional...). "Why would you put onions in congee? Nobody does that." I don't recall his EXACT phrasing, but the upshot was I was corrupting one of his favorite dishes, apparently. He also gets on me for putting sugar in my tea. Which is why I don't put sugar in green tea any more (but still keep to my sugared black). Anyway, this is an example of when I like to take full advantage of my slow cooker to just let the soup sit on my counter as everything cooks. So here are the ingredients I put into my most recent batch of congee - again, the only real things you need to put in are rice and broth. And scallions. And perhaps some ginger. And salt.


Congee
1 quart chicken stock+ 4 cups water (aka, 2 quarts soup)
1.5 c. uncooked rice
2 chicken thighs
1/2 diced onion (or, fine, SCALLIONS - ok? I had to promise Benson that if I ever made this for him, I'd only put scallions in.)
Ginger (alas, I only had the ground stuff this time, but I prefer to chop up a few actual chunks/slivers - that's what I tend to do. I usually have it around, but I recently finished off my last hunk.)
Salt
Pepper
MSG (see my post, Cooking For One, if you want to hear my mini-rant on MSG having a bad rep)
Soy Sauce
Maggie sauce
Sesame oil
Jyok3 sung1 - which is shredded... dried... pork stuff? From Chinatown. Added at the end as a kind of garnish, on top of the soup, not cooked with it. Also delicious over straight up rice. Or over other stuff with rice. Or on it's own. Just look at the picture, not really sure how to describe it other than kind of sweetish dried shredded pork.

Shredded dried pork product

I add the bit of water to my soup stock because stock is STRONG, and I added other stuff into it for flavoring, so I can get away with diluting it a bit. It goes further that way. But yes, toss everything in your crockpot, give it a stir, and let it cook for 4-6 hours until the rice has broken down and it's nice and porridge-y. That's when you taste and adjust the seasonings. Obviously, since I tossed in raw chicken, one can't taste until after it's cooked through. But I don't even bother taking the chicken off the bone - just tossing the whole thing on is fine, because after a few hours it falls OFF the bone. So yes, all of the ingredients, save the jyok3 sung1, into the crockpot for 4-6 hours. Stir occasionally. Or in an actual pot, but then you have to keep an eye on it and stir a heck of a lot more often. I mean, I put it in the pot and then watched a movie with Benson. Can't do that with a pot sitting on top of your stove. (We watched Hot Fuzz, which was great. And in case you are wondering how I watched a movie with Benson when he's in England and I'm in New York, we do this by getting the same copy of the movie, shared via Dropbox, getting on Skype, setting up the movie, and counting backwards to hit play at the same time. Then we keep Skype going, and usually IM comments back and forth throughout. It's nice. We do TV shows the same way.)

 So, that's it for now. Hope that this encourages folks to stop and enjoy some delicious, delicious soup. After all, when I was little, soup was my absolute favorite meal of all. I'd eat it almost every day. Nothing wrong with that - it's extremely versatile and a wonderful comfort food.

Cooking for One

My junior and senior year of college, I was in a cooking rotation with two other people: Benson and his roommate, Abe. I'd sometimes eat with the other girls in my house, but my schedule was such that it was more similar to Benson and Abe's schedules (the other two science majors) then it was to the 4 other people residing in my house. So we'd in general grocery shop together and plan meals together, and every third day or so I'd cook. It cut costs, we almost never had leftovers or eat the same thing twice, we all had different recipe banks to go to so things changed up regularly, and on days you cooked, we had deal that you didn't have to do the dishes (Ah, dishes, my old nemesis - I dream of future days when I will have a dishwasher!). The three of us enjoyed each others cooking and meals, but when it came to basic snacks, we had very different tastes. As I've said in previous posts, I really like salt. I tend to salt my foods a little more than others I cook with might - I don't get complaints, in general, I'm just a little heavy handed. And when I want something to snack on, well, I want it to be salty! Popcorn, crackers, pretzels, or whatever. I attribute this to the fact that my parents had a "cracker jar" rather than a "cookie jar" to raid when I was hungry as a child. Abe, on the other hand, was sweet: he had a constant supply of Skittles, Starbursts, soda, and similar. And finally, there was Benson. As salt is to salty and sugar is to sweet, MSG is to umami (savory). Benson is Chinese-American, grew up in San Francisco, and the snacks of HIS choice were the wasabi-coated peas, the shrimp flavored crackers, and, for lack of better description, the crunchy MSG-coated string beans. We joked that we needed a bitter and a sour person to add to our group - but alas, never managed to complete the set. So in addition to the salt and sugar lying around, we also had a shaker of MSG to add to our soups and stir fries for added taste. I rather grew to appreciate it, and still have a shaker around my kitchen, and I certainly don't have a fear of MSG. Such fears, I think, are overhyped - it's really the rare person who reacts badly to it, and it's NOT that bad for you, any more then a bit of salt or a bit of sugar is. In excess, well, sure, but again, so are salt and sugar.

As I've stated before, now that I'm in grad school I generally just cook for myself when I'm in my apartment. When I have a roommate (and I'm currently in between roommates) I will offer food if they're around, but for the most part, food is made just for me. This tends to cut certain dishes out of my repetoire - one's that are just too massive and that I'd have to eat for a week, or foods that would leave me with a lot of leftover fresh vegetables which would spoil before I could eat it all (I almost never buy lettuce, lest I be forced to have salad EVERY DAY until it's gone). One such dish was a regular in college - Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic. I'm a huge fan of garlic in general, and a whole chicken is great for when you have a group of people. Usually some people like white meat, and some like dark, so you can generally get the part of the bird you are most fond of (DARK MEAT!). And when you were through, you'd have a chicken carcass and some bones and scraps, which were easy to toss in a bag in the freezer to save for making stock later. In fact, my bone bag was rather a running joke in my college house; it was clearly labeled "Jen's Bones" and the idea was that not only did I make chicken (and turkey, and duck) soup, but  that I was keeping other sorts of bones as well. Our apartment mate Kaila lived in constant terror that we were all trying to fatten her up for "Kaila Soup" (which as you can see that we've still not made, as evidenced by her recent visit!).

Anyway, I've not made Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic in several years at this point. But a few weeks ago, I ran into a sale on cornish game hens at the grocery store. Now, these are small birds, not even 2 lbs, so it occurred to me that it was about the right size for me to make for myself, with a few leftovers. And that a cornish hen could probably be cooked in anyway that a full sized bird could be cooked, just by changing the cooking time a bit. So I bought two. One is currently in my freezer, but for the other I used a recipe I found online which is practically identical to my recipe, but using a game hen instead of a chicken, here.



 Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic
1 cornish game hen (or more usually, a whole chicken!)
30+ cloves of garlic (roughly 1.5 heads)
3 tbs olive oil
1/3 cup chicken stock (or 1 cup for a whole chicken)
1/3 cup white wine (1 cup for a whole chicken)
1 lemon, quartered
salt, pepper, rosemary (preferably, but not necessarily, fresh)



The recipe itself is simple. Rub the bird with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, and rosemary. You can also mince a clove or two of garlic and rub the bird with that as well. Put a quarter of a lemon and some seasoning into the cavity of the bird (along with the organs, if it came with them... delicious liver, neck, heart, and giblets! I actually quite enjoy these parts, though some people do not.). Then put the bird in a roasting pan, and toss the garlic all around it.

While I peeled the garlic, you don't actually need to - I've made it before without doing so, and if you cut off the bottom before cooking the garlic, you can just squeeze it once it's cooked and it pops out the end. But I actually find it kind of relaxing to peel garlic once in a while, so I went for it anyway - it's easier to eat that way! It doesn't make a huge difference either way. And if I'm being honest, I didn't use 30 cloves of garlic - I only had 27 available, alas! But I think that's close enough, don't you?

Next, baked your game hen at 425F for 25 minutes. Mix the wine and chicken stock, and after those 25 minutes, turn down the heat to 350F, pour the liquid over the bird, and cook for another 35, basting every 10 minutes or so. For a full chicken, well, it depends on the weight, but I'd do a similar temperature changing so you can get the crisp skin. But it will then be much longer baking in the second part, because... size. Once your bird is cooked (judging by a meat thermometer, and when the juices run clear when you cut it), you can remove it from the oven and carve it up to serve. For the game hen, this meant that I cut it in half lengthwise with my kitchen shears and ate half of it, saving the rest for the next days' lunch. Half a game hen was just about the right amount for one, especially with veggies for a side. For a chicken, obviously, carve it like you would any other chicken.

You can just use the juices as a sauce, at this point, but I wanted something a little thicker and saucier, so I strained out the garlic and other particulates and cooked it down a bit in a sauce pan. I thought it needed a little more flavor, so I added a little bit of salt, msg, lemon juice (a few drops) and apple cider vinegar to brighten it up a bit! I've read numerous places that adding a bit of acidity can really improve a dish, and it turned out very nicely here, especially considering I improvised the additions! So overall, I would call this a very successful adaptation, and I would happily get game hen as a replacement for whole chicken again in the future. Since cooking for one can be a bit aggravating at times, it's always nice to find a good way to moderate my serving sizes and open up my repertoire a bit!

Fun times with Kaila and Benson

This past week, Benson (my boyfriend, visiting from California for a wedding) and I went up to Waltham for a couple days to visit a friend from undergrad, Kaila. I lived with her for two years while I was at Brandeis University, in a house with 5 girls total, including us. And I miss her cooking, she's a great cook. All three of us, in fact, quite enjoy cooking and eating well, so we made a very nice feast on Tuesday night. Again, a good way to bond and chat with people, with a delicious result. First, the main course.

My co-chefs, Benson and Kaila

Chicken Cordon Bleu, as found on that very useful site, allrecipes.
6 chicken breasts
6 slices of sliced cheese
6 slices of ham
3 tbs of flour
1 tsp paprika
a handful of breadcrumbs (not in the recipe, but we added it anyway)
3 tbs butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup white wine
1 or 2 bouillon cubes
1 tbs cornstarch
1 cup whipping cream

We altered this recipe a bit, namely in our cooking method and the addition of breadcrumbs, but I think it turned out really nicely (we also halved it). Mix the flour and paprika (and we added some breadcrumbs), which will make up the crust of your chicken. Pound out the chicken breasts flat. Lay the cheese and the ham up in a roll, securing with toothpicks. Then roll in the egg, and bread with the crumb mixture. Next, pan fry the chicken packets in butter until they're nicely browned, and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes, until fully cooked.

Meanwhile, for the sauce, mix the cornstarch and cream in a small bowl, and add to the skillet with the wine and a bouillon cube. Stir constantly until the cube dissolves (as cream can be finicky), and taste to see if you want a stronger chicken flavor - if so, add another bouillon cube. You want to cook this on medium-low heat until it has thickened into a nice saucy consistency. Then, when both sauce and chicken are complete, serve: pour the sauce over the chicken (or allow each person to do that on their own). Watch out for the toothpicks! It might be a good idea to remove those before serving to guests, or at very least warn them!

As sides, we also made Mashed Potatoes and Pan Roasted Parsnips. The potatoes were from scratch, and pretty straightforward (peel, cube, and boil potatoes; mash with butter, milk, salt and pepper until the right consistency and seasoning is reached! Add a bit of garlic for fun.) Similarly, the parsnips were another simple and delicious vegetable. If you haven't tried parsnips, they're really simple and easy to make. They look like giant albino carrots, and have a wonderful nuttiness to them. Here, we just peeled them and sliced them thin, and cooked them with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Couldn't be more simple, couldn't be more delicious. An interesting and tasty vegetable! We also made Gruyere Cheese Gougeres (aka, cheese puffs), a recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook, but I think I'll save those for another post. They're a bit complicated, and French Laundry deserves it's own place to shine, really, it's a great book.


Finally, for dessert, we made:

Apples Pielettes (Cup-pies!)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 TBS salted butter
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp apple pie spice - aka some cinnamon, and a pinch each of cloves and allspice, with, in our case, a bit of nutmeg as well. Kaila cooking ALWAYS involves nutmeg!
1 tbs cornstarch
8 soft caramel candies
3 baking apples, pealed, cored, and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

Crust:
2 11-oz boxes of pie crust mix
1/2 cup water
1 egg, beaten

Anyways, you want to put the sugar, butter, apple juice, cream, spices, cornstarch and caramel in a pot on medium heat, so that everything melts all together, stirring constantly. Then add in the apples, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 8-10 minutes - you want the apples to still hold the shape, but the sauce to be thick and syrupy. Then remove from heat and set aside. This is delicious, and if you have leftovers, you can do what we did and make french toast the following morning and have this as the topping!

A dough blender

Heat the oven to 425F, then make up the pie crust. We actually used Kaila's pie crust recipe instead of the box kind: 3 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 cup crisco, and a bit of water to keep it sticking together, all smashed together with a dough blender (NOT electronic, though it sounds that way!). Usually, I admit, when I make pies or quiche I use the pillsbury frozen ready made pie crust doughs - the crust isn't pre-baked, it's still dough form so you can shape it a bit, and you can bake it exactly as required by the recipe, and that's just fine. They're pretty tasty. But I have been thinking I want to try my hand at making actual crust, especially as it's fairly straightforwards. If you have your own recipe for crust, you want enough for a two crust pie. So just make that up, and divide in half. Take one half, then roll it out to 1/4 to 1/8 thickness.  Using a 4 inch cookie cutter (or the rim of a 13-oz coffee can), cut out 6 circles which you put in the bottom of a cupcake pan as the bottom of the cup-pies, then cut out 6 smaller 2 3/4  circles (with a glass rim, perhaps), which you'll use as the top. Then repeat this with the OTHER half of the dough, for an even dozen.

Fill each of the up pie crusts with the filling, and put the tiny circles on top, pinching all around the rim to seal them - make sure they're sealed tight! then slice a few slivers through the pie crust tops so they can vent (in decorative patterns, preferably!). Brush all over with egg so the crusts are a nice golden brown. Bake for 15 minutes until nice and brown, then remove from the oven. You can remove these from the muffin tin after perhaps about 10 minutes of letting them cool. And then, delicious pie-letts!

Pumpkin Pie-lettes

We liked these so much, the next day we did the whole thing again, only with pumpkin pie filling, instead. Note that if you take a random pie filling recipe, you'll end up with extra filling, so we had to take some dough and make one extra big pie-lette (not shown).

Anyway, Benson and I had a wonderful time visiting Kaila. We didn't JUST cook, naturally, we also walked around Waltham, which is really nice to do, since I DID live there for 4 years; we went to see Wreck-it-Ralph (a lot of fun, worth seeing); we watched some Arrested Development (Kaila hadn't seen it, though Benson and I had); and generally had a nice time. Benson left to go back to California, and I stayed an extra couple of days. And cooked some more, but thats another blog post!

Dinner is served!!!