Music - In the Wild West

( In the Wild West: A Supernatural Character Mix )

Glögg and Apple Pie

Boondoggle's Quick Cheat Glögg

2 bottles wine
2 whole nutmeg
4 whole clove
2 cinnamon sticks
1 orange peel
1 lemon peel
2 - 3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Pour wine into pot. (I used Ariel Dealcoholised Wine from Trader Joe's for this experiment because we had drivers among us. However, cheap wine is not a bad thing here.) Add spices. Warm (but not too hot! Keep an eye on it - you want this warm, not hot!). I've been told by the experienced glögg makers in my life that if your glögg is too sweet, you can add some vodka, but I erred on the side of caution.

I will be trying a 'real' glögg soon (ie soaking the spices in hard liquor overnight), but I just threw this together when I came home tonight.

*

Old Fashioned Apple Pie

Suet Pastry
Apples
Ginger
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Maple Syrup

Make the suet pastry*. Peel and chop apples. In a bowl, shake the spices over the apple slices until lightly coated. Pour a dollop of syrup over the apples and coat lightly. Put in bottom crust of pie. Cover with top crust, piercing the top crust several times with a fork. Bake at 425 F for 25 minutes (or until brown).

Suet Pastry

Pastry is, in my experience, much more of an art than a science, even more so than the rest of my cooking. I treated my suet pastry much like butter pastry (my base point for all things pastry) and have learned that suet pastry is, when cooked, thicker than butter pastry, but just as strong and flaky. With pastry, even more than cookies and meatballs, you have to get into the batter and work with it, but with a light touch - overworked pastry is difficult, if not impossible to save.

I bought one lb of beef suet at a local grocery store (do not assume your local shop carries it - I had to visit four grocery stores before finding decent suet). I chopped all of this, discarding the bloody bits, the overly hard bits (the ones that gave my knife issue), and this particularly thick connective tissue. Everything else was chopped finely (very finely) and thrown into the bowl. On top of that I tossed about 4.5 cups flour (give or take), a couple dashes of salt, and some baking powder. I stirred. I then added a cup and a bit of water (butter has more water than suet if you are familiar with making butter pastry). This formed a thick, somewhat lumpy dough. I split this into two balls. One ball I pounded by hand into the pie dish, forming the bottom crust. The other ball I pounded by hand on the counter, forming the top crust which I draped over the top of the filling.


As an addendum, I am going to try rendering my own pork fat into lard soon, I think, to see if beef suet or lard makes a better crust. I have a butcher (who I hate driving to, but whatever, they've got everything a cook could ever desire) from whom I can probably get pork back or leaf fat. Then I am going to take the lobster pot and a Saturday and render it properly. And god knows I have enough canning jars in which to store the lard