Tanisse Cooks Food

A platform for my cooking and eating adventures

[tanissecooksfood]

Homemade Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

My great grandmother was an incredible pie maker. I remember being this 5-year-old little girl standing on a foot stool at the kitchen counter watching her create these amazing pies. She was the sweetest Italian women you would ever meet, and I am so grateful to have spent so many quality days with her. She has truly been an inspiration and mentor for me throughout the years and i fine that she has blessed me with my interest in cooking. So, this is dedicated to her. Thank you, Nanny.

This is my all-time favourite pie. There’s something so prestigious about rhubarb (since it is a seasonal vegetable), but I don’t think there are enough rhubarb pies out there and I was so excited to give this recipe a go.

As I will mention many times, I am an amateur. This means I don’t have the proper skills or tools to create many dishes, but I am creative, so I make do with what I have. First off, I don’t have a rolling pin for my dough, so instead I used a wine bottle (Yes, this is the one thing I always have on hand). It worked better than I expected but still left some uneven spots, but I think that gives the pie “character”. Also, I didn’t have white sugar on hand (I KNOW, WHO DOESN’T HAVE WHITE SUGAR?!?!) so I used brown sugar as a substitute. This was actually really nice, it gave the filling a rich sweetness and creaminess, thanks to the molasses. 

Here is the recipe I used: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipe/strawberry-rhubarb-pie/4042/ 

The Food Network is my go to stop for a lot of the recipes I use, they are written by well-known Chefs and have such a strong follower base that will critique the recipe, so I don’t have to. 

I found the recipe for the crust to be spot on! Although I did leave the dough in the fridge a little longer than suggested, about 40 minutes and I believe this helped bring more of an airiness and tenderness to the crust. For the fruit filling I followed everything except for the white sugar, as mentioned above, but I would suggest using half brown and half white sugar to still bring that creaminess to the pie. And lastly, for the crumble topping (not shown in the photo above), I suggest really making sure the crumble is fine because I came across too big of chunks and they are really overpowering. 

Hope you enjoy this pie as much as I did!!

Mangia!

[tanissecooksfood]

Fake It Till You Make It: Risotto

White Wine and Mushroom Risotto

I have always been intimidated by risotto, mainly because of my fear of Gordon Ramsay. Let’s take this story back a bit... 

Growing up (and still now) my mom watched many MANY cooking shows, one of her favourites was Hell’s Kitchen. I would sit and watch mainly to see who Chef Ramsay would make cry first. After so many seasons, I began to see a pattern... NO ONE COULD GET THE DAMN RISOTTO RIGHT!! Over and over again Chef Ramsay would rip these poor chefs apart for so many reasons: too overcooked, too undercooked, not seasoned well, and so on. I always thought there was a big secret to cooking risotto...

So 21 years later I decided to try it.

I decided to make this meal as my first home-cooked meal in my boyfriend and I’s first apartment together (also, I’d like to add that this was my first time moving out so up until this point I was living at home with my parents). This was a fairly new experience for me since I never cooked much at home, I was always a sous chef to my Dad but never HEAD chef.

I found a quick and easy recipe (see below), it seemed fairly straight forward even though the dish itself looks fancy and professional so I gave it a go. Hence, “Fake It Till You Make It”.

It ended up working out really well. The arborio rice I used was very easy to cook and soaked up the flavours so nicely. In my amateur opinion I feel as though it wasn’t a lot different from cooking regular rice, but it could easily go wrong if overcooked. I’m not sure if Chef Ramsay would approve of this risotto but my taste buds did.

I also used a chardonnay white wine. They say use a wine you enjoy drinking for two reasons: 

1. So you can have a glass while you’re cooking (obviously)

2. Because you can really taste the wine flavour in the rice

i regret choosing the chardonnay because I’ve never been a chardonnay drinker and I feel like I would have enjoyed it with a less dry wine but it was cheap so you give some you take some. 

I took it one step further and pan seared some asparagus with lemon juice. 

Overall I was very satisfied with myself and this recipe. 

MANGIA