"Cows Make Delicious!"

Australian meat pies are, to me, originate from either an inexpensive restaurant, or the freezer. I did make them from scratch two weeks ago, but, ironically, the "real" version to me is the frozen kind I used to stick in the microwave, or the hot, fresh kind I got a Penrith Plaza (or my primary school tuck shop). The Australian meat pies that I knew weren't made with whole-wheat flour or American cows.

So I've decided just to make meat tarts because:

1. I had a pound of minced cow pieces and I didn't feel like making meatballs

2. Tarts use less pastry than pies.

Fortunately, one pound of minced cow filling fit perfectly into 19 pastry shells!

For 19 egg-tart-sized pastry shells:

180 g of butter/1.5 sticks cut into about 320 g whole-wheat flour/2.5 cups and 1 tsp salt, with some water added to make the crumbs stick to each other to form a dough.

The top of the filling hardens/crisps a bit when cooking, while the inside of the tart remains moist and delicious (I'm assuming).

Along with apparently being a good spaghetti sauce...

...INGREDIENTS FOR THE FILLING:

1 large diced onion

40 ml ketchup

1 tsp Vegemite (optional, since this is not an Australian meat pie, after all)

6 heaping tbsp steak sauce

2 tbsp barbecue sauce

450 g minced beef

1 tsp salt (optional)

1 tbsp cornstarch/cornflour

250 ml water (or tomato juice, if you have any)

METHOD

1. On high heat, cook onions, ketchup, Vegemite, steak sauce, barbecue sauce, and salt for a few minutes.

2. Throw in minced beef and listen to it sizzle for a few minutes.

3. Mix the cornstarch with a little bit of water, then dilute with remaining water. Pour water+cornstarch into saucepan.

4. Simmer on medium heat for around 20 minutes. A little less is fine. Just make sure the mince is cooked. If you are a vegetarian, use your eyes.

5. Scoop about 1.5 heaping tbsp of filling into each pastry shell. The filling will look very liquidy, but the liquid will congeal to a terrifically juicy meat filling thing in the oven.

6. Bake in an un-preheated oven on the lower rack for 15 minutes at 221 degrees C/430 degrees F. Let sit in oven for an hour or so. OR, just let them bake for 20 minutes. Either way, you just want to the crust to be cooked.

Something that's been on my mind recently is Chowder saying "Cuz cows make delicious!" from the episode "The Garage Sale". It goes something like...

Mung: We're going to-

Chowder: gettin' a cow?

Mung: Why do you want a cow?

Chowder: Cuz cows make delicious!

Mung: Delicious what?

Chowder: A garage sale, huh? Why would anyone want to sell their garage?

(this is paraphrased)

Australian Meat Pie...

...sort of.

I highly doubt I could make an authentic Australian meat pie. Even if I did, I wouldn't be able to eat it. Though, I guess if/when I go to Australia (That shop at Penrith Plaza, particularly), I'd probably actually eat (*gasp*) the beefy concoction enclosed in a crusty pastry shell.

The first step towards making a nice Australian meat pie would be to obtain a neat, authentic recipe. I'm not really sure whether this is an authentic recipe, but I chose it because Vegemite was one of the ingredients and everything was in metric units. So, at least I know it's from someone from the other-ish side of the world.

I didn't use prefrozen crust though (I made a whole-wheat short crust instead), and I did use different ingredients...but I don't feel like delving into this subject since HFCS and other random ingredients are involved. The filling smelled just like Australian meat pies (AHHHHH :D) which brought back a shock of nostalgia. When I smell the filling, I think about breezy Saturdays at Penrith Plaza, or at the public library, or walking down the lawn, or running up and down the hills at Nepean River. Carefree days. Unfortunately, I made too little pastry. Unlike the standard sized pies, I made small ones that fit into egg tart shells. Why? Er, I don't have any other containers for these pies...

Although it appeared that my filling was too runny, after baking the pies in the oven (430 degrees F for 10 minutes, 375 degrees F for 7 minutes, and... sit in the oven for half an hour), the texture and moist-ness was perfect!

bLIMEy...

Although I was fully aware that milk curdles when an acid is introduced, I still thought that it was a good idea to mix 250 ml of milk with 100 ml of freshly squeezed lime juice and its zest. I told myself that I was going to make lime pie filling. No, not key lime pie filling, because I don't have key limes, but just lime pie filling... the delicious, gooey, jammy-pudding filling.

Since I've never made lime pie filling/lime curd before, I thought it'd be an absolutely greatly stupid idea to use artificial sweetener instead of sugar for the lime pie filling. My mum bought a huge pack of artificial sweetener because she thought that it was sucrose :( So now I'm stuck with a lot of artificial sweetener and I'm not sure I want to use it, since it is obviously less superior than sucrose. :(

So, I don't really want to explain how I messed up making lime pie filling, but I basically mixed fresh lime juice (2 limes) with zest, milk and an egg. Then, while the milk was curdling, I added in artificial sweetener. After baking at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, and seeing that everything was still liquidy (and smelled nice), I figured I should just freeze the thin liquid product and make crushed ice.

It then smelled weird and tasted terrible. Oh gosh. b-LIME-y. It was. Atrocious. The texture was gritty, thanks to the milk. There was a millisecond of sweetness and limey-ness. And then, for the next 4 minutes, there was a putrid artificial aftertaste.

Bleh.

So. I mixed liquid with brown sugar, added stuff, and ended up with lime muffin-gluteny-somethings. They're not cookies or cakes or muffins... the texture is slightly rubbery and gluteny. They're not crumbly but there is a neat whole-wheatish-lime flavour and they're really moist... It actually is like a steamed cake! So if anyone wants to try these weird muffin things...

Ingredients

250 g whole wheat flour

250 ml milk

100 g brown sugar

24 packets of artificial sweetener (ew.) OR 200 g caster sugar

Juice of two limes

Zest of two limes

1 egg

1 cup shredded zucchini

2 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Mix all ingredients.

2. Bake at 190 degrees C/380 degrees F for 15 minutes.

Zucchini Pie

We have a lot of zucchini in the house due to the fact that my dad planted a lot of zucchini this year. I'm going to make zucchini brownies at some point, but for now, I've made zucchini pie. It's extremely moist, and has the texture of a generic quiche, but without as much egg. Actually, I would say it has the texture of chunky flan, although it's a savoury pie rather than a sweet pie. I got the basic recipe from my dad's company's employee-submitted-recipes cookbook, so I guess credit goes to Ms Conti. I modified the recipe because we had a lot of zucchini, and I also decided to cut out the oil.

Ingredients for one 24-cm diameter pie

600-800 g shredded zucchini (More zucchini=more moist/pudding-like)

100 g parmesan cheese (or more, if you like)

50 g self-raising flour

50 g 100% whole wheat flour

4 eggs

Few leaves of fresh basil

Salt

Pepper

Method:

1. Mix everything. The consistency should be like a medium cake batter. The final product will only be a bit drier. The pie will rise a little.

2. Bake at 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) for about 30-40 minutes. Leave it in the oven if you want. For me, the flour was a bit undercooked in the centre, so I had to stick it in the oven for a bit longer.

The pie is not crispy or crunchy. Like I said, it's quiche-like, but lacks a crust and is definitely more light. It's great for breakfast! Lunch! Dinner!

Apple Pie!

I finally made a pie. Refer to here for a story about the last few pies that I've made...

0.5 cup of sugar

3 tbsp whole wheat flour

cinnamon and/or whatever spices you like

3 giant apples (You know, the ones from Costco), sliced. I had one Rome, one Royal Gala, and one Golden Delicious.

Pie crust!! (whole wheat!)

All you do is layer apple with sugar and flour. I managed to get three layers of apples in my glass pie pan (which doesn't seem to have issues with dough sticking on it, so it's cool).

On the bottom rack, I baked for 20 mins at 375F and 15 mins at 350F. Then, I let it sit in the oven (while the oven was cooling down) for about 50 minutes to an hour.

I guess it's a matter of preference, but I really don't like apple pie when the apple parts have the consistency of mashed potato/applesauce. I also don't want super sweet apple pie.

So, for me, improvements to this recipe would be

1. Less sugar in apple filling. For sure.

2. Bake pie in less time (Possibly bake the crust for 10 minutes first, then add in the apple, to get less soggy apple).

3. More sugar in crust.

We had leftover pie crust because the top design didn't really use much crust, so my sister ended up making cookies with it (microwave for 45 s). Pie crust cookies are really yummy, actually.

Pie Crust!

I made pie crust today because it has to sit overnight for the apple pie tomorrow. I've already figured out a design for the top! No, it will not be a crumble top.

I looked through my old photos to see if I ever took a picture of the pie I made 5 years ago, and unfortunately, I didn't.

I guess the rules for this pie crust are that it's made with patience and whole wheat flour. I know it's rare to see whole wheat pie crust, and it's even rarer to see pie crust made with chunks of butter (not melted) without the use of a food processor.

I found a pie crust recipe here and I altered it specifically for whole wheat flour and apple pie filling.

Ingredients for a 9- to 9.5-inch pie base and top

2.5 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp cinnamon sugar or just plain sugar (more if you want)

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter cut into chunks

5 to 7 tbsp apple juice (or water)

Method

1. Sift flour. Add everything except juice/water into bowl.

2. Cut butter using a metal spoon. I suppose a plastic knife would work well too.

3. Cut butter. Now, the dough starts smelling phenomenal. For some reason, my dough smelled like cheesecake-graham-cracker crust, or just pie crust in general.

4. Cut butter. The dough looks browner, the butter pieces are smaller, and ... I smooshed some butter too because cutting butter took a lot of time. In retrospect, though, leaving a few lumps may not have made much differenc.

5. Add juice/water until you can form a ball.

6. Stick in fridge overnight. I didn't wrap it in plastic wrap... I just stuck it in a container. For cookie dough, at least, it doesn't seem necessary to wrap stuff in plastic.

Well. Let's see what happens tomorrow!

Chocolate Pudding!

Something is wrong about my blog. Something terrible and ignored for 17 months.

The pie is a lie.

Despite calling my blog PIE-314, I've yet to make a pie and blog it on here. Sure, cheesecake has some sorta shell, and egg tarts can be considered open-top pies, and I've posted about pie before (made by others). I've just never made pie from scratch.

Actually, scratch that. I've made pies a few times in my life and I believe that they all turned out to be pretty much disasters. The chocolate pie I made when I was in year 8 turned out to have super overwhipped filling (it was still delicious, though). The berry pie with lattice top I made when Harry Potter 5 came out was really sour I didn't follow a recipe and I used only a few teaspoons of sugar.

The apple pies I made nearly EXACTLY 4 years ago, on Memorial Day 2007, were made with some biscuit mix and cracker crumbs (cracker crumb top). If THAT doesn't sound bad enough, I used dried apples that I tried to rehydrate by sticking them in water for half an hour (figuring osmosis would do something). I also followed no recipe, meaning that I had this dried-apple-and-preservatives-and-water sludge sitting on biscuit-mix-mixed-with-crackers concoction sitting in the oven for some random amount of time...but it didn't burn.

The best part was that the crust actually turned out pretty delicious.

The worst part was that I gave one of the two pies that I had made to my neighbour...and I actually felt proud of what I had made. So, now I cringe.

On Friday, I will actually make an apple pie. (Why? To show that in 4 years, I taught myself how to bake. It's not for a patriotic reason.) From scratch. I guess you all know by now that I dislike the whole pre-made crust, cake mix, pudding mix etc. enterprise.

So how does all this tie in with chocolate pudding? Well, I was going to make a chocolate pie, and I was determined to follow the recipe for once (instead of tweaking everything), because it was a tofu recipe by Alton Brown, and he's pretty awesome. However, I was pretty occupied most of today, and it was also really hot, so baking just didn't sound appetizing. Instead, I just made chocolate pudding from the pie recipe. No, not pie filling, because instead of using 13 ounces of chocolate, I only used 4 (116 g). Why? ...I only had 116 g of chocolate. It's perfectly fine, though, because 4 oz of strong chocolate makes the pudding taste like chocolate, too. I'm never going to buy pudding again! Those pudding cups are silly now!

Ingredients for pretty bitter but so intensely chocolately pudding (just the way I like it!)

116 g (4 oz) 65% cocoa chocolate

1 tbsp honey

1 lb silken tofu

2 tsp instant coffee

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

vanilla

Method:

Stick everything except tofu in the microwave for 30 s.

Blend with tofu.

Stick in fridge overnight.

Eat.

Since my pudding is still chillin' in the "chill chest" (Alton Brown terminology), I guess I'll take more photogenic pictures tomorrow at breakfast time [Update: it's the first photo]

What? You don't eat pudding for breakfast?

Nutritionally, it's the same as eating scrambled tofu and drinking hot chocolate, which many people do for breakfast. So why can't I eat pudding?

I'm making apple pie on Friday.

(By the way, it's world thyroid day...not that much happens)

My Brain Isn't Fried!!

...But my food is.

Today I did absolutely no work. I had an extra half an hour of spare time because we finished comp sci recitation early, and I had an extra two hours of spare time because we got out of bio lab early. My Thursdays usually go from 9 to 2, then 4:30 to 7:30. Today, however, I had all this extra time! Perhaps I should've done some homework. I used it very unwisely, but very wisely all the same; I slept, I read The Hobbit , I went to Quiz Bowl, I watched Robocop ... and I fried apples!

At 10pm, my dorm house had Fry Night; there were fried Oreos, fried apples, fried pop-pastries, and one fried cherry pie [which I fried!]. I wanted to fry an orange, but apparently oranges are too watery...

So, here is a fried Oreo. Since the kitchen table area apparently lacks lights, I had to use flash, and with oily hands and people swarming around picking up food, picture-taking was a bit difficult. I'm quite unhappy about this image, but I can say that the oreo cream was literally dripping, and it looked like icing. The cookie was moist, and the batter was...well, fried batter. 90% oil.

The rejects...

...tasted great too!

These are a close up of the fried Oreos; they look so perfectly elliptical!

After a while, I decided to help out at the fryer, and this reminded me of Spongebob although I don't think I've actually seem him frying fries; he does have a deep-fryer though [I think?]. J, who had been at the fryer, had burned himself a bit when the oil splattered on him, which made me scared to use a wooden stick to flip the fried items over... but I did it anyway, so now I smell like fryer oil. It was fun, though!

I made a few batches of stuff, and this was the last batch; the huge thing in the middle is a cherry pie. A pre-packaged oblong cherry pie. I couldn't flip it over with a wooden skewer/stick, so I had to use a knife, and it was seriously difficult to manoeuvre it, with oily hands. I thought this was really fun, though, and a few specks of oil did fling onto my arms but they were really minuscule, so it's alright.

I really loved the fried apple; it reminds me of fried apple pie which I used to adore in HK, from McDevil. It was perhaps more enjoyable than the fried Oreo, to be honest. I accidentally ate some fried pop-pastry, because I thought it was just an abnormally small piece of fried Oreo. It tasted like melted pop-pastry, and I decided just to finish the rest of my chunk instead of wasting it, despite the fact there were PHO and HFCS in it. Oh, that reminds me; today I was eating a calzone and realised that there was small cubes of ham in it...because I suddenly tasted ham. I suppose that was a bit upsetting. Oh well...

Here is the fried cherry pie...cut into pieces because it was really huge. I didn't eat it, though. They also tried to fry chocolate but the batter kept slipping off or something.

I'm really glad I went and helped out. It was all delicious and fun, and I have to say I did have an amazing day!

PIE FOR MY PI!!!

Monday Night [13th]: PIE!!!!

Study Break by my dorm house!

There were myriad pies of all shapes and colours and burns...

Oreo (3)

Coconut (2)

Chocolate (2)

Peach/mixed fruit (1 or 2)

Berry (2?)

Cherry (?)

Pumpkin (2)

Pecan (2)

Apple (?)

More? 18 total... x 12 slices each

And the coconut pie crust tasted like bacon. I am serious. I honestly doubt that they used lard, and the aluminium containers were new... so the crust really shouldn't've tasted like bacon.

Maybe, relative to the coconut and custard, the crust was bacon flavoured.

AND FUDGE! I didn't eat any cookies but the fudge... the chocolate fudge tasted a bit on the chocolate side rather than the soft, gooey side of fudge that I'm used to [I'm guessing there were no marshmallows in this batch]. The white fudge was literally gritty powdered sugar stacked into cubes. It was densely packed sweetness. Sort of like compact chunks of aspartame without the aftertaste [not that I would know, but they really don't give that much sweetener in those little packets, since each artificial sweetener is ~200? times sweeter than sucrose].

It's in a bucket.

BEST PIE EVER. I love chocolate pie. I actually also love key lime pie.

Actually, I like pie a lot more than I like cake, but cupcakes are much easier to draw.

I brought my coconut, cherry, chocolate, and fudge back to the computer lab because I had to study/write an 8-page final. The pies mixed together was... interesting. I liked the cherry chocolate combination.

Vegetable Pocket Pie!

This vegetable pocket pie really makes me feel comforted on a cold rainy day. Unfortunately, we haven't had many cold rainy days... they've just been rainy. Either way, it's quite nice to try new food; I've never had a pocket pie, let alone a pocket pie made with whole wheat flour. So now it's buttery empty carbs... WITH FIBRE!

The filling was curry vegetables, which was quite spicy so I needed to drink a lot of milk. I read somewhere that the reason we taste stuff as spicy is that capsaicin [Well, capsaicin in chillies. I'm not sure what chemical it is in pepper or curry or bengay...not that we consume bengay] is a molecule that, when attached to a receptor, sends a message to the brain. The brain interprets the message as "heat" which is why we feel heat.

This doesn't explain why there is physical heat, though. Also, do we have curry molecule receptors? Pepper molecule receptors? Do we have receptors for every molecule of food [e.g. every molecule that elicits some taste?] We probably don't, since there are so many flavours in the world. We all know of the 5 tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. What about spicy? What is THAT classified as? Is spicy stuff just classified as "heat"? However, heat is energy. Where did we get the energy from? The molecule of food? So, why aren't chillies warm? They could totally be hand warmers in the winter!!

Tastes good... with milk... which again asks the question, why dairy? Why does that alleviate heat? Does that mean chili ice cream isn't legit?

Ice Cream and Pie.

Five years ago, when I saw no error or consequences in organic foods, my science teacher did the unthinkable. He created a science project in which one group would argue for ORGANIC food, and one group would argue for GM food. I was in the group for GM food, and I was utterly speechless. My narrow mind believed that there was NO SUCH THING as a negative side to organic farming. It was like telling me that I didn't exist. I'm not sure what I said in the debate [probably something with a lot of eye rolling], but I remember that one of my group members said "Well...GM food makes food taste good. Like, carrots actually taste like CARROTS".

This is something I thought of today when I got back from the Eco-Reps meeting. What defines the taste of food? I'm currently eating tempeh. I think a piece of tempeh tastes like tempeh [I'm still relatively new to eating it], but how would I describe it to TJ? TJ tried tempeh for the first time today, and I was trying to get her to eat it. I said that "it tastes kinda fishy... and nutty..." but tempeh does NOT taste fishy or nutty. Today, the tempeh in my sandwich tastes like cattle slices. But that may be because I associate mustard with cattle slices. I mean, the first time I tried tempeh, it tasted like fish, but that maybe have been due to the sauce [tomato? I don't think I've ever had tomato sauce with fish before, though...].

Last Friday I ate a lot of ice cream and pie. This only happens when I eat meals with people [which is why, perhaps, I should start being a hermit]. I'd never had egg nog ice cream before [actually, I've never had egg nog. I've had egg nog soymilk, though], so I asked what it tasted like. "It tastes like egg nog", TJ replied.

So, if egg nog ice cream tastes like egg nog, why is there such thing as egg nog ice cream? Egg nog is some gelatinous type custard, right? So is ice cream... except colder. So, I guess the question is also about texture, and not just about taste.

However, someone decided to come along and say that people don't enjoy food as much if they eat it in the dark. I personally disagree, but I personally think/obsess over food more than the "general population".

Anyway, I think I started digressing.

If carrots do taste better after modification [after all, GM corn is sweeter and juicier], then what is the negative side? A loss of nutrients, perhaps, but evolutionarily speaking, haven't we evolved so that we can get our nutrients through foods? Why would we pick bland carrots over flavourful carrots? We wouldn't. But, the bland carrots are the ones that have more nutrients...according to various sources that tell me that organic farming is healthier for both myself and the environment. I suppose a counter-argument would be that humans like to eat sweet stuff because of the calories which we needed, way back when people ate once every few days instead of once every few hours. But what about texture? One can't generalise on that; we like moist, soft apple pie filling, but we dislike squishy peaches and overripe bananas [which, by the way, are also very. Very. Sweet.]... but they have similar macronutrient profiles [SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR!!!]

So, my Goldfish cracker obsession for the past two weeks still hasn't receded.

Common Sense...

A common sense is taste. Another one is to actually name a plum a "plum".

I decided to try pecan pie, for the first time in my life. As I looked at the slice of pie, I realised something. This was literally a lump of fat mixed with a lump of sugar. There is no substance. It isn't even disguised as something awesome! The crust is a lump of baked fat and flour. The pecans are chunks of fat. The ... sugar-fat filling is basically brown sugar mixed with butter and spread into a thick gelatinous paste.

I know I can say the same thing about caramel, or toffee, or even chocolate, but that stuff actually tastes amazing. This tasted like fat and sugar in their raw states, which, for some, may be delicious. I, however, would prefer if there was also a cup of cocoa powder in this slice of pie...

I have to say that pecans are delicious, but pecan pies are overkill. They over kill your adipose tissues...

So, the second lack-of-common-sense kind of thing is the fact that they called this plum "sweet fruit". As if "plum" isn't already too generic [There are plenty of varieties of plums. There're the little ones, the big ones, the super sour ones, the ones with the red skins, and they're also related to [or, one compartment] of prunes. Actually, here is a list... which includes the Mirabelle plum, the Damask plum... etc. The fact that it's merely labeled a "sweet fruit" threw me off. It's pretty funny, I suppose.

Soon, they're going to have fruit stickers that say "fruit" on them.

I think I actually threw this sticker away, by accident, since I don't have my fruit sticker book with me in college. I really need to bring it here after November break.