Wishing for Fall

Not having school on Wednesdays and Fridays is spoiling me. I get to sleep in, walk as many times through the neighborhood as I can force myself to do, stalk my blogs, and cook. I noticed the leaves were falling this morning and it gave me a craving for roasted fall vegetables-my favorite fall vegetal-butternut squash.

Roasted butternut squash with roasted onions & garlic-finished with greek yogurt and chives

Mimi's Recipe

To fill the vodka crust, there was no question mimi's chocolate pie recipe was going in. I request this pie every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. It tastes like home to me and I'm happy to share it with you

Vodka pie crust and playing hookie

The first thing my mom cooked in her new kitchen was a pie. She tried out a new pie recipes that uses 1/2 vodka 1/2 water and now swears to never use another recipe for pie. I decided to stay home for the rest of the week (because my mom bribed me with clothes and cooking) and keep on cooking. My mom had me in the kitchen all day. We started at the farmer's market to get butter beans (for butter bean soup) and green beans. Farmer's Market tomatoes, cold, crisp onions and hot buttered corn bread were enough to get my dad home from work to enjoy the last bit of summer veggies with us. 

the recipe for my moms cornbread is eggs, cornmeal mixed together, add buttermilk to loosen-no blender no measuring just toss and go

I can't take credit for the cornbread-I was busy working on this vodka pie crust that turned out to be the best ever. I probably will never make it again though because I do not have the patience to bake-I prefer to taste as I go and that does not work well with flour and butter. Here's the recipe from Cook's Illustrated and heres why it works so well:

Published November 1, 2007.   From Cook's Illustrated.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:

Since water bonds with flour to form gluten, too much of it makes a crust tough. But rolling out dry dough is difficult. For a pie dough recipe that baked up tender and flaky and rolled out easily every time, we found a magic ingredient: vodka. Using vodka, which is just 60 percent water, gave us an easy-to-roll crust with less gluten and no alcohol flavor, since the alcohol vaporizes in the oven. 

1. 
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

Home again home again

We've been re-doing our kitchen at home for way too long. The last month of summer resulted in me being a nomad because our kitchen was a disaster, the house smelled like paint, and my mom was putting me to work. Finally, I can say IT IS DONE! and my mom is beside herself because this her favorite room in the house and its her favorite thing to do-cook. I came home this week to see my mom and dad before they went to Italy and cook in the new kitchen

I had no clue what to expect when I came home; my mom would not send a picture, email, message nothing-its safe to say I was so excited to get in there and cook. My dad and I were in charge of supper (which means I was in charge of supper) since my mom had spent the day packing, unpacking, and packing for their 2 week trip. I bet she regretted giving up dinner duties when my dad suggested hibachi, but for me this was perfect because I could test out my tingting skills on the flat top griddle

These pictures don't do it justice-we all know any carb fried is good, the best part was playing in my moms kitchen