Photo by Andrea Grablewski

Miss Mancini's Rice Pie

From Sweety Pies by Patty Pinner, The Taunton Press 2007

• One 9-inch single Flaky Pie Crust (see recipe below), rolled out, fitted into a pie plate, and edge trimmed and crimped
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 3/4 cups ricotta cheese
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1/4 cup cooked white rice
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon  
• Makes one 9-inch pie

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare the pie crust and set aside.

Crack the eggs into a large bowl and beat until well blended. Beat in the sugar, then stir in the ricotta and lemon juice and rind until thoroughly incorporated. Add the cream and stir until smooth and creamy. Fold in the rice, then stir in the cinnamon. Pour the filling into the pie crust. Place in the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is nicely browned, 45 to 60 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack before serving.

Flaky Pie Crust

From Sweety Pies by Patty Pinner, The Taunton Press 2007

For 9 or 10-inch single crust

• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chilled vegetable shortening
• 3 tablespoons ice-cold heavy cream or evaporated milk, more or less as needed

For 9-inch double crust or 9-inch deep-dish single crust

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chilled vegetable shortening
• 5 to 6 tablespoons of ice-cold heavy cream or evaporated milk, more or less as needed

Sift the flour, sugar, and salt together in a medium-size to large bowl. Using a pastry blender, a big serving fork, or the tips of your fingers, cut in or pinch or squeeze the shortening until the mixture resembles a bowl of sweet peas. Tossing the mixture quickly and lightly with a fork, sprinkle in the cream or milk 1 tablespoon at a time. (It's better to err on the side of not having enough liquid than to have too much; you don't want a soupy crust.) Continue tossing until the dough holds together when lightly pressed.

With lightly floured hands, loosely gather up the dough into a flat ball, place it in a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until you are ready to roll out the crust. I try to chill at least 30 minutes but not too much longer than overnight. 

Gather together your pie dish, rolling pin, flour canister, flour sifter, and a small, sharp knife. Prepare a clean surface for rolling out the dough. Sift enough flour over the surface to prevent the dough from sticking to it. Lightly flour your hands and the rolling pin. Place the chilled dough on the surface. If you are making a double-crust pie, divide the dough into two balls, one ball (it will be used as the bottom crust) slightly larger than the other (top crust). Keep the top crust covered and refrigerated while you roll out the bottom crust. Press it into a small, flat disk. Using the rolling pin, roll the dough into a circle, working from the center to the edges.

Starting at the center, roll straight up to the edge, turn the dough slightly, and roll straight up to the edge. Repeat the process - turning the dough and rolling - until the dough has formed a circle that's slightly larger than the pan. (Make a 12-inch circle for a 9-inch pan, or a 13-inch circle for a 10-inch pan, or a 12 x 16-inch rectangle for a 9 x 13-inch pan.) Be careful to keep the dough as even as you can, about 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick.

Place the pie plate upside down on top of the rolled-out dough. Using a small knife, cut a circle around the plate, leaving a 1-inch border of dough around the plate. Set aside the scraps. Remove the pie plate. Gently fold the crust in half. Now, fold the crust into quarters. Gently pick up the crust and place it in the pie plate so the center point of the crust is positioned in the center of the plate. Unfold the dough and press it firmly into position in the plate. Trim all excess dough from the edge, except for a 1/2-inch flap of dough around the edge.

If you are making a single crust pie, crimp the edge first, then fill with the pie filling. If you are making a double-crust pie, fill the pie, then roll out the second crust the same way you rolled the bottom crust. Cut the top crust so it extends beyond that of the bottom crust. (Cut an 11-inch circle for a 9-inch pie, a 13-inch circle for a 10-inch pie, and a 10 x 14-inch rectangle for a 9 x 13-inch pie.) Place the top crust on top of the filled pie. Trim the overhang to 1/2 inch. Fold the top flap of dough under the edge of the bottom crust, until the edges are even with the rim of the pan. Using the tines of a fork, flatten the hem evenly against the rim of the pie plate, moving completely around the pie. To prevent sticking, dip the fork in flour, if needed. Cut a few slits on top of the crust to let out the steam, then bake as directed in your particular recipe.

About Sweety Pies

Women sharpen women. I'm convinced that you can learn a lot about a woman based on what she feeds herself and the people she loves; a woman's recipes--especially her prized recipes--are a revelation of who the woman is: what she thinks, how she behaves, what she values, and how she lives her life." Sweety Pies, is a collection of 70 such pie recipes, gathered from the women in author Patty Pinner's life--family, friends, women who are part of her own personal history. What distinguishes this book is its utterly beguiling storytelling--each recipe is accompanied by a story told on the woman known for making the pie, from Sister Baby's Buttermilk Pie to Miss Hatfield and Her Jelly Pies. It's also filled with the truths handed down by our mothers (or that we wish had been handed down by our mothers) like: "An unhappy husband will ask for toasted snow" and "You don't want a man who is jealous of nothing or everything." This is a cookbook that's about love, life, family, friendship, and community as much as it is about the recipes.

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Want to get some fruit into your weekend breakfast indulgence?  Try making this French toast stuffed with peaches from Sea Breeze Manor (Gulfport, FL).  Frozen or canned peaches both work equally well but be sure to prepare this the night before so the flavors can meld overnight in the fridge.  Come Saturday or Sunday morning you’ll have a delicious hot breakfast without any work! 

Stuffed Peach French Toast

• 1 Loaf white Bread
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 1 large bag of frozen peaches defrosted or two large cans
• 10 eggs
• 1 ½ cups half and half
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• ½ cup melted butter

Cut bread into 1 inch cubes.  Spray 9x13 inch baking dish with pam.  Place half the bread cubes in prepared baking dish.  Scatter cream cheese pieces across bread.  Place sliced peaches over cream cheese.  Cover the peaches with remaining bread cubes.  Combine the eggs, half and half, syrup and melted butter in a bowl and mix well.  Pour the egg mixture over the bread cubes.  Chill, covered, overnight.  Preheat oven to 350.  Bake uncovered for 40-50 minutes or until set. This dish stays well in the oven at 200 degrees for an hour if you need to hold it for any period of time.

About Sea Breeze Manor

Ready to shed your everyday stress and immerse yourself in unpretentious luxury at your own island escape? In the midst of every type of activity you could ask for is a place where you are set apart from the crowds.  Directly across from the white sandy beaches of Boca Ciega Bay, between St. Petersburg and the Gulf of Mexico lies the Sea Breeze Manor of Gulfport, Florida.  Escape to our casual island elegance and indulge in our “no problem" hospitality. 

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Sweet chili sauce, cilantro, pickled ginger, and garlic marinated shrimp create a wonderful Thai inspired main entrée in today’s recipe from John Sarich the culinary director at Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery (Woodinville, WA). Although this dish marinades overnight it is a quick dish to prepare for a touch of elegance in a great mid-week dish.  John recommends pairing it with the Chateau Ste. Michelle's Indian Wells Riesling. 

Thai Cilantro Shrimp

By Chateau Ste. Michelle Culinary Director, John Sarich

Serves 8

• 1/3 cup (75ml) vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup (75ml) Thai sweet chili sauce
• ¼ cup minced cilantro
• 2 tablespoons minced pickled ginger
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 ½ pounds (675g) large (21-25 count) raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

Combine oil, sweet chili sauce, cilantro, pickled ginger and garlic in a large, low-sided glass or ceramic baking dish.  Add shrimp and toss well.  Cover tightly and put in refrigerator the day before serving. Stir once or twice.

Preheat barbeque, grill or broiler.  Cook shrimp over high heat on the barbeque grill or in the broiler for about 3 minutes total, turning once.  Transfer to a platter and serve either warm or cold accompanied by Avocado and Tomato Salsa.

About Chateau Ste. Michelle 2006 Indian Wells Riesling

This is our ripe, tropical style Riesling, which comes from the warm Wahluke Slope region of eastern Washington. The 2006 Indian Wells Riesling exhibits fruit-driven aromas of juicy pineapple and mango. The wine is rich and unctuous, while maintaining a fresh, elegant style that is typical of Washington state Riesling 

About Chateau Ste. Michelle

This year marks Chateau Ste. Michelle’s 40th year of Washington winemaking.  Founded in 1934, Chateau Ste. Michelle pioneered vinifera grape growing in Washington State and has been producing classic European varietal wines under the Chateau Ste. Michelle label since 1967. The winery combines an ongoing dedication to research with a commitment to classic winemaking traditions. The winery owns 3,400 acres of vineyards in the Columbia Valley of eastern Washington, including Canoe Ridge Estate and Cold Creek, one of the state’s oldest and most acclaimed vineyards. As part of the winery’s ongoing pursuit to quality, Chateau Ste. Michelle enjoys winemaking partnerships with two of the world’s most distinguished vintners.  Col Solare is an alliance with Tuscany’s Piero Antinori and Eroica Riesling is a partnership with the Mosel’s Ernst Loosen.    

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There is something about James Peterson’s latest cookbook, “Cooking”, that simply draws me to it.  What exactly it is I’m not sure.  In fact, I think it's a bunch of things including the wonderful design, the detailed photographs (all 1500 of them) and perhaps most luring is his wonderful instructive prose aimed at “steering us away from the mistakes he and his students have made” while instilling “a real passion for food”.  Cooking doesn’t focus on any single food, technique or tool; instead cooking aims to help you do just that – cook.  Following the introduction and a discussion on basic cooking assumptions, James provides a description of 10 basic cooking techniques.  After that the rest of the book is recipes that James suggests we learn. 

Although this is an everyday cookbook, James livens the recipes up with a mix of fundamental recipes and personal favorites leaning towards recipes from France and Mexico.  Sprinkled throughout the book are sidebars with photos on various techniques, needed for the related recipes, such as how to make glazed pearl onions or how to trim an artichoke.  But, the recipes are not just instructive they are also practical recipes for everyday food such as the “Scallops in White Wine-Herb Sauce” below.  As the scallops recipe shows, many of the recipes also provide you with variations so that once you learn how to make the general recipe you can recreate it in other forms to enjoy (and further improve upon the method).  If you are looking for a general purpose book to help you learn more about cooking or to improve your cooking skills take a look at Cooking, but be forewarned you may find you love it.

Scallops in White Wine–Herb Sauce

From Cooking by James Peterson, Ten Speed Press 2007 

One of the easiest sauces for scallops and other shellfish is a white wine sauce with shallots, finished with a swirl of butter. You can add chopped herbs to the sauce, either at the beginning with the shallots if using oil-rich herbs, such as thyme or marjoram, or at the end if using delicate herbs, such as parsley or chervil. This sauce is fairly liquid, so you will need to serve the scallops in soup plates. If you want a thicker sauce, reduce the wine twice as much and double the butter.

Makes enough for 4 main-course scallop servings

• Sautéed Sea Scallops (see recipe below)
• 1 large shallot, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme or marjoram leaves, chopped (optional)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley, chervil, or chives, or a combination
• 6 tablespoons butter
• Salt
• Pepper

Wipe out the pan used to sauté the scallops with a paper towel to rid it of any burnt oil, add the shallot and thyme, and stir them around in the still-hot pan with a whisk for about 30 seconds, or until the shallot smells toasty (the heat retained in the pan is enough to bring out the flavor of the shallot and thyme). Pour in the wine and boil it down to about 2 tablespoons. Whisk in the parsley and the butter. Season with salt and pepper and spoon over the scallops.

Variations

Compound butters can be used in two ways to top scallops and other seafood: Put it right on the scallops when they are served or melt it in the sauté pan, heat it until it is frothy, and then spoon it over the scallops. Some compound butters, such as escargot butter (garlic and parsley) are delicious when cooked in the pan until they break and turn frothy. More delicate butters, say, chervil or parsley butter, should be left emulsified, which is to say the pan should be deglazed with a liquid, such as wine, and the butter whisked into the liquid. 

Sorrel Sauce for Sautéed Sea Scallops or Other Shellfish

Because of its tartness, sorrel is the perfect accompaniment to seafood. You can cream it as you would spinach, except that you don’t blanch it first or it will melt into nothing. The leaves, which look very much like spinach, are cut into little strips, or chiffonade, and then swirled into a white wine sauce. Sorrel can be hard to track down, so when you see it, usually in the summer, buy it up for making soups, for creaming alone or with spinach, or for making sauces for accompanying seafood. To make the sauce, first prepare the White Wine–Herb Sauce (above), made without the herbs. Remove the stems of 8 large sorrel leaves and cut into chiffonade. Whisk the sorrel into the warm sauce. The sorrel will immediately turn a sullen green. Serve immediately.

Sautéed Sea Scallops

Old cookbooks call for cooking scallops for 20 minutes and then covering them with a thick béchamel and broiling them. In fact, scallops need very little cooking—they are even delicious raw when freshly shucked—to bring out their delicate flavor, just enough to heat them through. When sautéing scallops, you need high heat to brown the two sides without overcooking the inside. Also, if the heat isn’t high enough, the scallops will release liquid (especially if they have been soaked) into the pan and then boil in their own juices. Get your sauté pan very hot before you add the scallops, and then start sautéing them one at a time, waiting for the last one added to start browning before you add the next one. When they are ready to turn, after 2 to 3 minutes, turn them only one or two at a time. If you turn them all at once, the pan will cool and the scallops will release liquid. This is one time when you can use a pan larger than needed to hold the scallops in a single layer.

If you are serving scallops as a first course or as part of a multi-course dinner, serve a single very large scallop for a stunning presentation. If you are serving the scallops as the main course, make them in the White Wine–Herb Sauce (above).

Makes 4 main-course servings or 6 first-course servings

• 16 large sea scallops for main courses, 18 small sea scallops or 6 very large sea scallops
  for first courses
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, olive oil, or grapeseed oil
• Salt, preferably fleur de sel
• Pepper 

Don’t season the scallops with salt and pepper ahead of time because the salt will draw out their liquid and the flavor of the pepper will be destroyed by the heat. Pat the scallops perfectly dry.

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over high heat until the oil smokes. Add 1 or 2 scallops, wait for about 30 seconds, and then add 2 more scallops. Continue in this way until the first scallops you added are well browned on one side. This should take 2 to 3 minutes. Then begin to turn the scallops, starting with those that are browned and turning 1 or 2 at a time. Sauté for 2 to 3 minutes on the second side, or until all the scallops have a brown crust on both sides. Remove from the pan, and place on a paper towel–covered plate to absorb the excess oil. Season with salt and pepper and serve on warmed plates. If you have fleur de sel, put a tiny pinch of it in the center of each scallop.

About Cooking

In an era of outfitted home kitchens and food fascination, it's no wonder home cooks who never learned the fundamentals of the kitchen are intimidated. Twenty years ago, James Peterson could relate, and so he taught himself by cooking his way through professional kitchens and stacks of books, logging the lessons of his kitchen education one by one. Now one of the country's most revered cooking teachers, Peterson provides the confidence-building instructions home cooks need to teach themselves to cook consistently with ease and success. COOKING is the only all-in-one instructional that details the techniques that cooks really need to master, teaches all the basic recipes, and includes hundreds of photos that illuminate and inspire.

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