Johnny Pie - SW meets NW

I love apple pie. But with my husband's new allergy to wheat, making a traditional apple pie simply isn't something that I do anymore. Mourning the loss of apple pie as I sliced up apples to dehydrate, I decided to try to make a pie that we could both eat. I didn't want a traditional apple pie recipe because I've discovered that trying to take a favorite recipe and make it wheat free usually has disappointing results. I didn't have lemon juice to soak the apples in to keep them from turning brown, so I was using lime juice. And my mind just went from there. What if I created an apple pie with a Southwest meets Northwest twist?

I sliced up some more apples using my handy dandy apple peeler/corer (I LOVE that thing!) and then squeezed fresh lime over the top of them. 

 Next, I grated two jalapenos into the bowl.

Then, wanting some color and because my husband loves them, I took a quarter cup of cranberries, diced them up and threw them in. 

And then, just because cheese and apples go so well together, I took a chunk of Tillamook Hot Habanero cheese from the fridge and grated it into the bowl. It was probably about a quarter cup worth. I added 2 tablespoons corn starch, a quarter cup of white sugar and a half cup of brown sugar, and stirred it all together.


The crust, however, was the true challenge. I mixed 1.5 cups barley flour and  1.25 cups corn masa, cut in 2/3 cup Crisco shortening and added 8 tablespoons water.

I tried to roll half of it out to make a bottom crust and it just wouldn't roll without falling completely apart. I finally resorted to taking the pieces and pressing them into the pie pan to make the bottom crust.  It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

I turned the oven on to 425 degrees, pricked the crust with a fork, and then pressed a piece of aluminum foil in it to keep it from puffing up. I stuck it in the oven and cooked it for six minutes, then removed the foil and cooked it another 4 minutes for a total of ten minutes so it was partially cooked. I took it out of the oven, poured the apple mixture in and dotted it with butter. I knew, after trying to roll out the bottom, that there would be no way that I could do a traditional top crust, so I added about a fourth cup of brown sugar to the dough crumbs and just sprinkled the crumbs on top. 

I stuck it in the oven and cooked it for about 15 minutes at 425, then turned it down to 350 and cooked it another 30 minutes. It looked good and it smelled good when it came out, but would it taste good?

When John got home a couple hours later, I told him I had made him a pie. We cut two pieces, and gave it a try. OH MY GOSH!! That pie ROCKS! It is unlike any pie I've ever eaten, especially with the corn flavored crust. And the heat from the jalapenos and the Tillamook Hot Habanero cheese is exquisite. A scoop of ice cream finishes it off. Yum. Here's the recipe. You're welcome.

Johnny Pie
Filling:
5 apples (I used Golden Delicious)
juice from one lime
1-2 jalapenos
1/4 cup cranberries, chopped
2 tablespoons corn starch
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup Tillamook Hot Habanero cheese
2 tablespoons of butter 

Crust:
1 1/2 cup barley flour (you could probably substitute gluten free oat flour if you wanted it to be gluten free)
1 1/4 masa (corn flour)
2/3 cup Crisco
8 tablespoons cold water
Take about half of this mixture and pat it into the pie pan. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Poke crust with a fork and press a piece of tin foil onto the crust to keep it from puffing up. Bake it for six minutes with the tin foil, then remove tin foil and bake it another 4 minutes. Remove from oven, add apples and dot top with the butter. Add
1/3 cup brown sugar to the remaining dough mixture and sprinkle over the top.
Cook at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn down to 350 and cook another 30 minutes.

Smokin' salsa

I was really craving some salsa, so I decided to whip up some. Salsa is very easy to make and home made tastes so good you'll never want to go back to store bought. I perused the veggies in my fridge and came up with three tomatoes, a jalapeno, and a walla walla sweet onion that I had to cut the mold off. We put whatever kind of veggies we have into our salsa, and have added zucchini, broccoli, spinach, tomatillos and even asparagus before. Salsa is a great way to use up veggies that are a bit past their prime, or even a little wilted. I tossed what I had into our BBQ pan, and added two cloves of garlic.

I fired up the BBQ on medium high, put the pan on and closed the lid. The trick with this is to have the proper kind of BBQ pan, the kind with the holes. It allows the heat to come through, as well as the flavors already on the grill. After letting it grill about seven minutes, I turned the veggies over.

All together it cooked about 15 or 20 minutes, until the tomatoes were soft and the jalapeno was blackened. The blacked bits give it a lovely smokey flavor. Then it all went into the blender, although I fished the garlic out first and popped the soft garlic out of the hard garlic husk. I also added a handful of cilantro and squeezed in the juice from a lime.

Blend it up until it is the consistency you like, add salt to taste, and you have a salsa with amazing flavor! It is even better the next day. I didn't have any chips, so I used Trader Joe's rice crackers. Yum!

To finish off dinner, I BBQ'd corn on the cob and grilled up some carne preparada, a delightful thin steak that we get at our local Mexican carniceria. 

Since summer is here and I have a bit more time on my hands, I'll try to keep this blog updated more frequently. We had a non heat eater living with us for awhile and we stopped cooking with jalapenos while he was here. Now we're back to the spice!

Easy tequila jalapeño chicken

Thank God it is Friday! It feels like it has been a very long week and I dragged myself home from school today feeling totally worn out. John suggested going out to eat, but the defrosted chicken breasts were looking a bit forlorn on the counter so I decided instead to whip up a marinade for them and then go sit in the hot tub for awhile. The marinade is:
one onion, chopped fine
one jalapeño, grated
a handful of cilantro
about a tablespoon of olive oil
3 pressed garlic cloves
1 oz. tequila (John later admitted he added about another ounce in when I wasn't looking)
the juice from one lime, plus a bit more from the bottle in the fridge when that didn't seem like enough.


And just because I wanted to keep it nice and easy, I wrapped a couple yellow potatoes in tin foil and tossed them in the oven to bake.


After about an hour soak in the hot tub while the chicken breasts marinated in the fridge, we got out and went to work. John put the chicken on the BBQ.

And then, since one little measly jalapeño really isn't that much heat in our world, he broke out the Mad Anthony's Extra Hot BBQ Sauce to add on top of his as well.

I boiled the veggies in the kitchen until John had the chicken breasts done. We were out of sour cream for the potatoes, so we broke out the Litehouse Jalapeño Ranch dressing. Yum! What an easy delicious meal.

Jalapeño Peanut Butter Cookies

Going a little stir crazy on this fourth snow day, I decided to bake. John suggested peanut butter cookies so I broke out my favorite cookie book. As I was making the cookies I began to wonder what it would be like if I put a jalapeño twist on them. So after making sure that I had at least four dozen regular cookies, I grated up a jalapeño and added it in to the remaining dough.

Then I decided to bump it up a level. I rolled the dough into balls, made a well in the center of each cookie with my thumb, grabbed the jalapeño jelly I made in September, and filled each well with some jalapeño jelly.

I upped the bake time to 12 minutes instead of the regular 10 minutes because the jelly makes the center soft.

The green of the jalapeño created a beautiful cooky. But the taste! It was a little bit of heaven. It has enough heat that it leaves a nice tingle in your mouth, and who doesn't love peanut butter and jelly together.  I think I've just found my new favorite cookie.