New Recipe Number 35: Strawberry and Rhubarb pie with a cream cheese crust - This is the one we had for M'hijo's four month celebration, and I forgot to record it earlier. The strawberries were the last of the 2002 harvest from the freezer. "But you didn't live in the yellow house in 2002! You lived in family housing and had no garden!" says the astute and longtime reader. True! But when we moved into the house, the former owners left behind a few treats, including a bottle of champagne and two glasses, and frozen rhubarb and strawberries from the garden. Wasn't that sweet?
Anyway, so the strawberries were frozen but the rhubarb was fresh from the ground. I'm not the queen of pie pastry, but the cream cheese pastry recipe from the Joy is pretty foolproof. No blind-baking though. I'm of the mind that such a wet filling demands blind baking, but what do I know, really? I'm still a novice at this pastry game.
New Recipe Number 36: Marinated Cukes with Asian Flavour - From my favourite new food blog, Dirty Sugar Cookies by Ayun Halliday, whose zine, the East Village Inky, I've been reading and loving for years. These were great, and I'd like to try them again and sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds over.
New Recipe Number 37: Breaded pork chops - If doing 100 New Recipes has taught me anything, it's how much I rely on the All-New Joy of Cooking to help fill my family's bellies. Tobias made the breaded pork chops from it on Saturday night, and man they were really tasty! I usually buy Hutterite-raised meat from my butcher, but a few weeks ago, I broke down and ordered a big pack of pork chops from Thrifty's, and froze a few for future use. So they were not the best-quality, and they had been frozen for several weeks, and the recipe was still great.
New Recipe Numer 38: Mushroom gravy - In my opinion, it would make no sense to have breaded pork chops and not have mushroom gravy (and mashed potatoes). I've never made one, but I just flew by the seat of my pants and it turned out delicious.
Instructions
Make a roux (about 2T butter, 2T flour), cook it, then add about a cup of mushroom broth (I use Harvest Sun mushroom bouillon cubes). Whisk, whisk, whisk, taste it. Good but wrong colour. Cheat with a litle Kitchen Bouquet. Ah, now it's a nice dark brown. Whisk, cook, let it thicken, yum. Distract husband, discreetly pour in some Villa Antinori Toscana (or any white, or even red, I suppose, if you want, although I wouldn't) from your glass. If he sees you putting good drinking wine in the gravy he will fuss. Taste. Could use even more wine. Distract and pour again. Now add all the sliced mushrooms that you can get your hands on and let it simmer on v, v, v low heat for oh, say, five minutes. Make a well in the middle of your mashed potatoes and make your own little mushroom gravy volcano. Dig in!
New Recipe Number 39: Smothered sunchokes with tomatoes and onions - Well, I got more sunchokes in my Spud box, but I didn't want to do a gratin of any kind, so I went hunting for something different. Apparently, Marcella Hazan is the world's biggest sunchoke fan, since her book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, has at least half a dozen sunchoke recipes in it, compared to all of my other cookbooks, which have around zero. With this one, you just cook up some onions, garlic, tomato and parsley and add hunks of sunchoke and cook for a long time, and it turns out very tasty. Can't wait to get more sunchokes!
New Recipe Number 40: Grilled Shrimp Skewers - Once I had Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking open last night, I figured I might as well cook my whole dinner from it. So, loosely following Hazan's recipe, I defrosted 15 big shrimp, stuck them on three skewers, and then pressed on a paste made from olive oil, garlic, parsley, and Breton crackers. Tobias barbecued them for two minutes a side. They turned out pretty good, slightly chewy. Would have been better with fresh shrimp.
