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RECIPES

BUTTERMILK PIE + GO-TO PIE CRUST

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups of flour
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • 2 tbs of sugar
  • 1/2 cup of oil
  • 3 1/2 tbs of buttermilk or milk

  • 1 1/4 cups of sugar
  • 1/2 stick of butter (melted)
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tablespoons of flour or baking cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup of buttermilk
  • a pinch of nutmeg and allspice
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Pour the first five ingredients into a pie pan and mix it all together until it is a solid mass. You may want to hold back around a tablespoon oil to check first and make sure the dough is not too wet.
  3. Press the dough into the sides and bottom of the pan to form the crust, making sure that no part is overly thick.
  4. Using a fork, gently stab a bunch of small holes across the entire bottom of the pie. This will help the bottom caramelize and keep it from forming bubbles.

  5. Next, pour the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl and mix thoroughly until it is all dissolved together. Make sure the melted butter is not hot because it will curdle the eggs and mess up the pie's texture otherwise.
  6. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake it for 10 minutes. You can also prebake before adding the custard using pie weights for around 7 minutes, but it is not required.
  7. After 10 minutes turn the oven down to 325 and bake for around an hour, making sure that no part is burning and that the custard is not becoming *completely* solid.
  8. Finally, let it rest until cool and serve it with whipped cream and fruit.

Description

This is a buttermilk pie recipe I adapted from two different recipes: PiePaw's pie crust from Brenda Gantt and Mama Sue Garrett's pie filling, both on youtube. If you aren't from the American South or have never heard of it, buttermilk pie is basically a custard pie that uses full fat buttermilk. It's functionally the sister of another famous Southern pie, the chess pie, and in my opinion its the better of the two. The buttermilk just adds a lot, but to be honest there's not much difference even some chess pies will use buttermilk. This is a very cheap pie to make and you can add stuff to it very easily, just don't try it with strawberries, they turn grey and release a lot of liquid when baked.


Great Grandma's Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

  • 3 large eggs

  • 8oz of brown sugar

  • 8oz of white sugar

  • 11oz of crisco

  • 2/3 tbs of salt

  • 1/3 tsp of baking soda

  • 1lb of cake flour (Swan's Down)

  • 6oz of chopped walnuts

  • 1 tbs of vanilla extract

  • 16oz of small semi-sweet dark chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 350
  2. Combine all the ingredients in a large stand mixer bowl and mix 1-2 minutes, do not over mix!
  3. Portion the dough into 8oz balls (use a little flour if they are too sticky)
  4. Roll each ball into a log and cut into 12 equal pieces
  5. Place pieces on a cookie sheet without pressing down, they don't usually spread too much when baked
  6. Bake at the middle oven rack position
  7. Bake for about 12 minutes or until edges begin to brown

Description

This is my great grandmother's cookie recipe. Apparently when my mom's side of the family came to America from England in the early 1900s, they opened a small bakery in pennsylvania, which is where this recipe is from. It's honestly possible that it's even older than that. Whenever we make them we have a massive mechanical baking scale and some bench scrapers that we bring out, which are both nearing 100 years old since they came from the original bakery. Making these cookies in gigantic batches on holidays with my grandma is one of our strongest family traditions. That side of my family has a very patriarchic division of labor despite not being particularly conservative. Whenever the family meets for holidays it's almost exclusively women in the kitchen cooking and serving the men drinks while they basically just laze around. It's definitely kind of misogynistic, but its always been kind of affirming doing it for me. Even before I transitioned I was usually the only "guy" in the kitchen, and then afterwards it was easy to just blend into being one of the women since I've always been one of the main people doing the baking and cooking.

Grandma's No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 stick of butter (my mom uses margarine)
  • 2 cups of sugar
  • 3/4 cup of milk
  • 1/2 tsp of vanilla
  • 3 tbs of peanut butter
  • 5 tbs of cocoa powder
  • 2 cups of oatmeal

Instructions

  1. Bring the milk, sugar, and butter to a rolling boil in a pot for 3 minutes.
  2. Remove the pot from the heat and add the remaining ingredients.
  3. Stir until fully combined and then scoop onto a sheet of tin foil or parchment paper in cookie sized portions and allow to cool.

Description

This is my grandma's no-bake cookie recipe which she passed down to my mom. My mom does not like cooking at all, but every once in a while she would decide to make a batch of these chocolate oatmeal cookies. They're easy to make and they only really get one dish dirty, which was a big plus for her because I have a lot of siblings and my dad was usually not home. These cookies are super good with milk and are basically crumbly fudge with a little bit of texture added. They are somewhat temperamental with regards to how they set up, the ideal one should feel fully set and not wet or sticky at all, but occasionally for whatever reason they will just be globs of chocolate and oatmeal. My best theory, that I have yet to test, about how to solve this is possibly by substituting the margarine for butter and the cocoa powder for unsweeted bars of baking chocolate, as these can help things harden when cooling.

BASIC BUTTERMILK POUNDCAKE

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups of flour
  • 2 sticks of butter (if you use salted butter you don't have to add salt later, but otherwise make sure to add a 1/2 tsp of salt)
  • 3 eggs and 1 yolk
  • 1 half cup of buttermilk
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • extra tablespoon of butter milk or flour if you add additional wet/dry ingredients to ensure the hydration is the same

  • 1/2 cup of sugar - for the struesel
  • 1/2 cup of brown sugar - for the struesel
  • 1/2 cup of flour - for the struesel
  • 1/2 stick of cold butter - for the struesel

Instructions

  1. Make sure *all* ingredients are as room temperature as possible, leaving them out in premeasured containers overnight is ideal as long as its room temperature in your home. But placing them in sealed containers into a slightly warm water bath can also work as long as you don't accidentally cook or deactivate anything
  2. set an oven to preheat to around 350, maybe a little more if your oven has problems staying at temp.
  3. Put the butter, sugar, salt (if you're using unsalted butter), and baking powder into a mixing bowl and cream it heavily with a standmixer or handmixer until it lightens in color and is very well mixed.
  4. Add in eggs one by one and make sure that all of the egg has been emulsified into the creamed butter before you add another one. If this is done too quickly or the eggs aren't the right temperature, the batter will break and look like oily goop and affect the final cake.
  5. Add in alternating tablespoons of buttermilk and flour and mix very gently but thoroughly with a spoon so that you don't accidentally knead the flour and make it into a tough dough. You can use more than a table spoon of the flour, you mainly just don't want the liquid to break the batter. These two steps are the hardest because the dough will absolutely fall apart if something isn't right or you move too quickly. If this happens, you can try letting it sit before mixing again or you can just accept it and move on.
  6. Mix in the vanilla and pour the batter into a 9"x5" metal loaf pan, hitting it on the table and running a knife or chopstick through it to make sure there are no big bubbles. If you want to make a 10" tube pan version, double almost everything everything, but use 3 2/3 sticks of butter and 5 eggs plus a yolk instead.
  7. Optional: If you want struessel on top of this, mix the extra 1/2 cups of flour, sugar, and brown sugar and cut the butter into tiny chunks. Mix them in and crumble them even smaller into the dry ingredients with your hand like you're making some kind of pastry so that it turns into a kind of wet sand texture of buttered flower. Press it in your palm into a big clump and gently break it into large chunks onto the wet batter or any other kind of batter or dough. Press it down slightly so it doesnt just fall off.
  8. Bake for an hour, checking occasionally to make sure the top doesn't need to be covered with tinfoil. If the split part at the top looks wet or oily and a knife or toothpick comes out with batter on it, it needs to keep baking for a bit.

Description

This is my poundcake recipe that I made in a fit of hyperfixation over the course of a couple weeks. I literally was dreaming about poundcake every other night and after comparing around 5 different recipes this was the one I settled on. I've done lots of cooking and baking, but this is the first recipe that I've made by myself that was something really technical like a cake. The best ways to make this are with either the struessel, powdered sugar, or a glaze (which I'll have a whole other page for), but no matter what you should probably drink something with it. You can change this up by adding a few table spoons cocoa powder, lemon zest and juice, chocolate chips, cut fruit and berries, or basically anything. Just make sure that you balance any dry or wet stuff you add with a table spoon of an opposite ingredient like flour or buttermilk. Also strawberries do not bake well, so if you go that route, swirl some strawberry jam into the batter instead or something because fresh ones will turn grey.

Glazed Prosciutto Herb and Cheese Scones (slightly modified from this recipe)

Ingredients

  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • 2 tbs of sugar
  • 2 1/2 tsp of baking powder
  • 1/2 cup of grated frozen butter + 4 tbs for the glaze
  • 1/2 cup of buttermilk
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 cup of cheese
  • 3/4 cup of fried prosciutto or bacon
  • a small bundle of chives
  • 2 large sprigs of rosemary
  • black pepper
  • powdered sugar

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, and some pepper, then grate in the frozen butter and keep refrigerated until it is needed
  2. Chop the herbs and fried prosciutto
  3. Mix the egg and buttermilk and combine with the dry ingredients and add-ins
  4. Shape into 8-12 scones placed on a baking sheet and brush with buttermilk
  5. Refrigerate for 15 minutes and then bake for around 22 minutes or until golden brown
  6. Melt the extra butter in a pan on medium-low heat and circulate it with a spoon until it begins to brown
  7. Cut the heat and stir in powdered sugar a tablespoon at a time until a thick glaze forms with the residual heat of the pan
  8. Glaze the scones and serve

Description

This is kind of a strange recipe, but the glaze with a savory scone works really well. When my partner and I first got together, I was trying really hard to impress her with food since I knew that was something she was interested in. I think our like third date or something is when I found the base scone recipe on sallysbakingaddiction.com and decided to test this idea out. She ended up really liking it, so this is a recipe that I think about fairly often.

Mother-in-law's Pecan Pie

Ingredients

  • 3 tbs of melted butter
  • 3-4 lightly beaten eggs
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 1 cup of Karo syrup
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 1 cup of pecan halves
  • 1 9" pie crust (you can use the recipe from the buttermilk pie section)

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 275 degrees
  2. Combine the melted butter, eggs, sugar, Karo syrup, and vanilla extract
  3. Put the pie crust on a lined baking sheet in case it overflows
  4. Pour the liquid into the piecrust
  5. Add the pecans and lightly tamp them down so they are lightly covered by the filling
  6. Cover loosely with aluminum foil and bake for 20-30 minutes
  7. Uncover and bake for another 20-30 minutes
  8. Repeat this very carefully, low and slow, until they center of the pie is definitely solidified

Description

This is my mother-in-law's pecan pie that she makes for holiday get-togethers. Ironically both my partner and her mother hate pecans and basically only eat this for the syrup filling, which is why the pecans are halves and not mixed in completely, because that makes it easier for them to pick them out. This is kind of a temperamental recipe, if you don't cook it long enough it will just be sugar goop, but it's also easy to burn it.

Kimchi Jjigae

Ingredients (I don't know the actual measurements, so just eyeBall it)

  • well fermented sour kimchi + at least a half cup of its juice
  • 1/2 package of firm tofu
  • 1 small zucchini
  • doenjang
  • gochujang
  • gochugaru
  • black pepper
  • soy sauce
  • sesame oil
  • (optional cooking oil)
  • (optional) porkbelly
  • (optional) an egg yolk for each person eating
  • scallions
  • dashi stock (you can use powdered dashi or even normal chicken broth, but for the best results make a stock from scallions, garlic, ginger, kombu, and dried anchovies)
  • 1-3 chili peppers
  • 3 cloves of freshly minced garlic
  • 1 half yellow onion

Instructions

  1. Roughly chop the tofu, zucchini, and onion into relatively large chunks
  2. Add pork belly and a little bit of sesame oil to a clay pot and start frying on a very low heat (sesame oil will burn otherwise). If you didn't add porkbelly, add cooking oil to the sesame oil instead so it doesn't burn
  3. Add in the kimchi and minced garlic and stirfry with the pork or oil
  4. Add in the onions, some black pepper, a spoonful each of gochujang/doenjang, and multiple tablespoons of gochugaru to taste, and continue stir frying (you can add in some chopped chili peppers if you want it to be extra hot)
  5. Deglaze with kimchi juice and dashi stock and bring to a boil
  6. The stew should be very chunky but have enough liquid to still cover the zucchini and tofu when it goes in
  7. When the stew has cooked long enough to soften the porkbelly and kimchi, carefully add the tofu and zucchini and reduce to a simmer until the zucchini is cooked through but not mushy
  8. Garnish with diagonally sliced scallions and chili peppers
  9. Serve with rice, some banchan (korean side dishes, especially anything fried), and optionally a raw egg yolk to mix into the stew

Description

Kimchi Stew is one of the most quintessential Korean foods next to its sister doenjang stew, which is basically the same thing but with more doenjang and cabbage instead of kimchi and gochujang. I grew up eating this any time my dad was home, and it was the first thing I taught myself to cook when I started living on my own. Kimchi is so important in Korean culture, both my grandma and my dad have special mini-fridges just for storing lots of kimchi. Bap doduk (or bap dojeok in North Korean) is a term that means "rice thief", or a food that you always end up eating a lot of rice with. This is that kind of food, ideally it should be really spicy and refreshing in a way that makes you want to dump some rice into it to soak up all the flavor. Slightly off topic memory, when I was little my grandma kept banana milk in her fridge to give me during lunch at the Korean church we went to. It was delicious, but it always ended up being a very odd lunch because she would give me Kimbap (rice seaweed rolls) with american cheese and pickles alongside a carton of banana milk which had started tasting like kimchi and seafood banchan from being stored in her fridge. Korean food is really strong lmao, that's why second fridges for kimchi are so common. I remember while I was eating my kid food, I could smell the gigantic pots of kimchi jjigae and stirfried pork that were being made for the adults in the kitchen.

"COOKING WITH GRASS" (Quicksilver Times/Big Muddy Gazette No.14 circa 1971)