Don't waste food. That's what my grandmother always told me. I took that simple idea to heart.
When we go out to eat, I bring home what we don't eat. Especially the
bread. Why let good bread get thrown away?
And if you're in the grocery store, and you see a loaf of marked-down white bread, buy it and you'll be able to make a dessert that's as easy-to-make as it is elegant looking and delicious.
Day 26 of 31 Days Of Pie is a Macadamia Nut Pie
If you’ve noticed a theme here (other than pies), you’ll notice a love for the nuts+pie combo. Perhaps it’s a contrasting textural thang, or maybe it’s a way of rationalizing eating so many pies (i.e. nuts are healthy, right?) At any rate, this pie is a tropical breeze in a pie shell, using macadamias for crunch on top of sweet vanilla pie filling. It’s a good one from Epicurious. Enjoy!
Ingredients
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup dark corn syrup
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 frozen 9-inch deep-dish pie crust
2 cups roasted unsalted macadamia nuts
Vanilla ice cream (optional)
Sometimes I think I should just throw caution to the wind and write a book called “The Blue Cheese Diet: Eating Your Way To Happiness Through Gorgonzola And Roquefort”. I’d take all the photos, test each recipe personally, get it published, then do the TV show talk circuit, answering questions like “How did you come to invent the Blue Cheese Diet?” and “Now correct me if I’m wrong, but you went from 186 lbs to well over 350 lbs over the last 15 months, right?” The audience would snicker and laugh and point, I’d wipe the sweat from my face, and then they’d wheel me out on some gurney and my cookbook would be on the clearance rack at some B. Dalton close out sale a few months later, or worse, a bogo.
On second thought, I think I’ll stick with the day job.
But seriously, if I knew I could live on blue cheese I’d probably do it. I always seem to crave the full flavors of blue and when the craving starts no amount of cheddar or aged anything will suffice. I realize eating so much blue cheese is the taste equivalent to listening to my iPod at full blast, but that’s not to say I don’t appreciate the subtle flavors of shyer cheeses – I most certainly do!
I’ve steered clear of biscuit-making ever since I mixed up a crumbly mess of dry ingredients with butter and buttermilk years ago. The end result, inedible hockey pucks, came after a very frustrating baking experience. The wanna-be biscuits wound up in the garbage. That was when I decided I just didn’t need to ever, ever be making biscuits. And that’s why, when Katie Novotny, owner of St. Paul Classic Cookie Co. said that scones are simply a biscuit, I got nervous.
Katie Novotny offered to show members of my Bemidji Cookbook Club how to make the perfect scone. We gathered in her bitty bakery with an enormous menu of sweet treats in the south St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul on a recent Friday morning.
She sliced small chunks of butter into a bowl holding her measured dry ingredients, emphasizing the fact the butter must be well-chilled. I use the same technique when I make my favorite recipe for scones — the ones I plop onto a baking sheet using a measuring cup. That technique keeps my hands off the dough, convincing me that I am making scones, not biscuits.
I have a serious problem with this dish. I am embarrassed to say that I ate 25% of it before dinner was served last night. I am scared to put on my jeans. Instead of walking my usual 2.5 miles today, I am going to have to double that! What was I thinking?
The real problem here is that these are so utterly good, that one cannot just take a small portion. With that said,, eating 25% of the pan, isn’t all that unreasonable. Is it? In the past, I have always made Patricia Well’s recipe, Gratin Dauphinois from her book At Home in Provence
Potatoes au Gratin or “scalloped potatoes” as my dad endearingly referred to them as, was one of my dad’s favorite dishes. He loved his food. And he loved his restaurants. He was a carbs kind of guy. Happily I admit, I am as well.