Bill Smith's Atlantic Beach Pie

I've never heard of an Atlantic Beach Pie, but once I saw this post on Food52, I knew I had to make it.  It's an amalgam of some of my favorite things:  a salty-sweet buttery crust made out of saltines, a tart citrus filling, and a simple topping of whipped cream garnished a sprinkle of flaky sea salt.  It kind of reminds me of the Momofuku Milk Bar Grapefruit Pie I made once, but a whole lot easier to make.  It's no surprise that I would love a pie with this name since I'm such an East Coast kind of gal.  =)

For the citrus juice that goes into the filling, I just used a half cup of the juice I got from juicing the zested lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit I used for making the citrus cured salmon.  The next time I make this, I will probably use the recommended lemon and/or lime mixture so that the tartness really shines through.

Bill Smith's Atlantic Beach Pie (adapted from Food52)
makes 1 pie

1 1/2 sleeves of saltine crackers (about 6 oz. or 60 crackers)
1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
3 tablespoons sugar
14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup citrus juice
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream, chilled
Coarse sea salt, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350°F.

   
Crush the crackers finely, but not to dust. You can use a food processor or your hands. Add the sugar, then knead in the butter until the crumbs hold together like dough. Press into an 8-inch pie pan. Chill for 15 minutes, then bake for 18 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

While the crust is cooling (it doesn't need to be cold), whisk the egg yolks into the milk, then whisk in the citrus juice.  Continue whisking until the mixture thickens.

Pour into the shell and bake for 16 minutes until the filling has set.  Cool on a wire rack until the pie has reached room temperature and then transfer to the refrigerator.  The pie needs to be completely cold to be sliced.

Whip the heavy cream just until stiff peaks appear (if you keep whipping too much you'll make butter).  Top the chilled pie with the whipped cream and garnish with a sprinkling of sea salt.

By the way, this is what happens when you try to carefully cut a slice and transfer it to a plate to take a picture.  Fail.  Still yummy, though! 

Next:  Crispy Skinned Salmon Teriyaki
Previously:  Citrus Cured Salmon
Last Year:  Crimini Mushroom Risotto

Alphabet and Rosemary Cheddar Crackers

I love Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, so when I saw this post on how to make your own, I was really excited to try it out. I don't have any teeny, tiny goldfish cookie cutters, but I do have rather small alphabet fondant cutters, so I thought it'd be fun to make alphabet crackers.

I'm used to the bright orange color of the original crackers, so I wanted to find some bright orange cheese to use, but I couldn't find any. So I tried the next best thing and added some yellow food coloring to half the dough since I don't have any orange food coloring, and didn't want to end up with a peach color like I did the last time I tried mixing red and yellow. But the dough was too stiff coming out of the fridge, and I didn't have the patience (or the daylight left) to knead it through properly, so it ended up looking kind of marbled. Which is fine because you can't even tell in the finished product, and ironically enough, the non-yellowed crackers turned out more orange-ish!

While the dough was chilling overnight in the fridge, I remembered that I still had some fresh rosemary left from making the duck fat French fries and thought it'd be nice to add some to the cheese cracker dough. So I added some rosemary leaves to the other half of the dough (after all, rosemary cheddar crackers are for adults and don't need artificial food coloring).

Rosemary Cheddar Crackers (adapted from Ellie's Home Cooking)
makes about 1 quart of crackers

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper (optional)

4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves

3-4 tablespoons water

Pulse the flour, salt and pepper in a food processor, then add butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

Add grated cheese a little at a time until the mixture again resembles coarse meal.

Pulse in 3 to 4 tablespoons of water, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough forms into a ball. It will probably take a minute or so.

Remove from the food processor and knead in the rosemary. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for 20 minutes or up to 24 hours.

Roll the dough out to 1/8th-inch thickness directly onto a baking sheet. You don't want to roll them paper thin, neither do you want to roll them too thick. If they are too thin, they will not puff up as much. If they are too thick, they will not be as crispy.

Using a knife, pizza cutter, or cookie cutters, cut into desired shapes.

Bake at 350° F for 15-20 minutes or until crackers are golden brown. Watch them after the 10 minute mark.

I didn't roll the dough out as thin as I should have for some of the crackers, and they were definitely not as crispy as the thinner ones. They did puff up so that they were almost cubical, though, so I threw them on top of a salad because as someone pointed out, they looked just like croutons.

I don't think these tasted exactly like Goldfish crackers, but that's because they don't taste like something you can buy in a store. Which is to say, these tasted like the fresh ingredients they were made out of. I definitely preferred the rosemary crackers to the ones without; the herb added a nice aromatic, almost astringent note to the richness of crackers. Next time I might try adding a bit of Tabasco sauce to the dough to add some heat.

Lastly, you can make this using only all-purpose flour or only whole wheat flour. I tried using half all-purpose and half white whole wheat and will probably try all whole wheat next time since it doesn't seem to make a huge difference.

New England Clam Chowda and Homemade Oyster Crackers

That should really be a sad face because Leslie is gone =(

My dear cousin and roommate, Leslie, moved out yesterday after 3.5 years of living together, so we threw a goodbye and birthday party for her on Sunday night. Annie and I came up with a theme of "Boston" for food so I made some New England clam chowder ("chowda" around these here parts) and oyster crackers. This was my first time making it, but I used a highly rated recipe on allrecipes.com for the chowder, and I think it turned out pretty good (at least, better than Campbells). The oyster crackers were more of an afterthought; I realized that it would be good to serve the chowder with oyster crackers but was too lazy to go to the store to get them so I figured I'd just make them myself. And now that I think about it, that's a pretty warped sense of laziness. Oh well.

I almost always go to allrecipes.com if there's something I want to make that I don't have a recipe for. I like the website because you can be assured that the recipes are good by looking for the ones that have tons of reviews and read the comments to catch any useful tips. For example, when I searched for clam chowder on the site, there were 43 returns, but only a few had more than a handful of comments, a couple had at least a hundred, and only one had 440. So of course I chose to use that recipe. And skimming through the comments gave me the idea to add bacon to the chowder to make it even more flavorful.

Bye Bye Leslie Clam Chowda (based on this recipe)
makes 16 servings (or feeds a party of 70+ people)

6 strips bacon
6 (6.5 oz.) cans minced clams
2 cups minced yellow onion
2 cups diced celery
4 cups cubed potatoes
2 cup diced carrots
1 1/2 cups butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 quarts half-and-half
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon salt (if you don't have salt you can just cry into the chowda because Leslie is leaving)
Ground black pepper to taste

Brown bacon in a large stock pot until crisp. Remove bacon and set aside. Add onions, celery, potatoes, and carrots to bacon fat and toss. Drain juice from clams and add to vegetables. Add enough water to cover and cook over medium-high heat until tender.

Meanwhile, in a large, heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour until smooth. Whisk in cream and stir constantly until thick and smooth. Add to the vegetables and clam juice. Heat through but do not boil.

Crumble the bacon and stir in with clams just before serving. (If the clams cook too much they get tough.) When clams are heated through, stir in vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Serve hot with oyster crackers.

I found the oyster cracker recipe using google. There were a couple of other recipes that used yeast and shortening, but I decided to keep it simple and use this one that uses butter. I considered briefly using bacon fat or duck fat, but then I decided I wanted my guests to go home alive. =P

Homemade Oyster Crackers (based on this recipe)
makes about 2 cups

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
4 oz. unsalted butter, diced
4 oz. whole milk
Sea salt for garnish

Preheat your oven to 375 °F.

Combine all dry ingredients in food processor. Add butter and pulse quickly, until it looks like "coarse meal". Add the milk and process 3 seconds. Remove to floured surface, knead 10 seconds and chill the dough.

Divide the dough into quarters, and working with one quarter at a time (leaving the rest chilling in the refrigerator), roll the dough out to 1/8" thickness and sprinkle with salt. Using a fork, prick the dough all over. Cut with the crackers into any desired shape using a sharp knife or small cookie cutter.

Place the crackers on a cookie sheet and bake for 5-7 minutes or until light brown. Store in an airtight container once cool.

At first I wanted to try to make hexagons and figured I could cut the dough into diamonds and then lop off two opposing corners. But after I cut the dough into diamonds, the dough was too warm to work with so I just stopped there. I loved how these crackers had some real flavor thanks to the butter and didn't just taste like salty cardboard as oyster crackers too often do.
Next up: Boston cream cupcakes and mousse.