26 Jul 2012 – Yellywelly

Pecan pie has always been something that I loved but never really learned to make until quite recently (thank you to Hummingbird Bakery for sharing their secrets! If you haven’t got their books yet, you should go because the books have foolproof, easy to follow recipes!). I love how it looks when you’ve lined your flan pan with the pie crust and arranged the pecan nuts for decoration on top of the filling. Then you wait for 55 minutes or so and bring out the beautifully toffee-coloured cake. I’m smiling right now, just thinking about it.

So I’m sharing the love and the joy of baking and sharing my favourite pecan pie recipe.

For the pie crust:
260 g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
110 g unsalted butter

Directions for the pie crust:

Put the flour salt and butter in an electric mixer and beat on slow spead until you get a sandy consistency.
Add 1 tablespoon water and beat until well mixed. Add a second tablespoon of water and beat until you have a smooth, even dough. If the dough is still dry, add another tablespoon of water, but be careful not to add too much water. It is safer to beat the dough at high speed to bring the ingredients together.
Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to rest of 1 hour in the fridge.

For the pecan pie filling:
200 g caster sugar
250 ml corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
60 g unsalted butter, cubed
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 g shelled pecan nuts, chopped, plus extra pecan halves to decorate

Directions for the pecan pie:

Preheat oven to 170ºC (325ºF).
Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour and roll out the dough with a rolling pin. Line the prepared pie dish with dough and trim the edges with a sharp knife.
Put sugar and corn syrup and salt in a large saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil, then remove from heat and leave to cool down slightly.
In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs briefly with a balloon whisk until they’re mixed. Slowly pour the warm–not hot as this will scramble the eggs!–syrup into the eggs, stirring briskly. Add the butter and vanilla extract to the syrup and eggs mixture and stir until all the butter has completely melted.
Put the chopped pecan nuts into the pie crust and then pour the syrup-egg mixture over the nuts. Arrange the pecan halves gently on the top of the filling. Bake in the preheated oven for about 50-60 mins (in a fan oven about 55-57.5 minutes will be perfect) or until the filling is a dark, caramel colour with a slightly crusty surface.

Adobo is Spanish for sauce or seasoning or marinade and is widely used in Latin American cuisine. It is also defined as a sauce or paste made from a variety of ingredients that may include chillies, salt, vinegar, garlic, and herbs. There are also dry adobos which are spice rubs for meat, fish or poultry.

Adobo is very definitely the Philippine’s national dish. Everyone has a take on how it’s made, every Filipino who knows how to cook it, has their own version, their own set of ingredients. There are versions with vinegar, versions with coconut milk, versions with pineapple juice, versions with boiled egg, versions with bay leaf. There are so many ways of adjusting (and readjusting) the ratio of soy sauce to vinegar, some people love it really garlicky, some people want only a smidgen of garlic in it. Some like it really sour, some really salty, some really sweet and some…somewhere in the middle of all of this. Some people love pork adobo, while some people will say chicken adobo is always best. When it’s a national dish, there are a million permutations. Maybe as many as there are Filipino households in the world!

This is my take on adobo. I’ve tried it with chicken and pork and it seems to work really well. So I’m going to brave the big bad world wide web, and put forward my recipe! If you’d like to try it, let me know how it works out for you please! 🙂 I’d really love for you to let me know what it was like!

Ingredients

1 kilo of pork or chicken
5 tablespoons of soy sauce + 1 tablespoon for cooking
2 1/2 tablespoons of vinegar + 1 teaspoon for cooking
3 large cloves of garlic crushed (or 3 teaspoons of garlic granules)
1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon of whole pepper corns (or 1 heaping teaspoon ground pepper)
1 meat stock cube (chicken or pork, whichever meat you’re cooking)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
400 ml water

Directions:

In a ziplock bag, combine the soy sauce and the vinegar and the garlic. Add the meat (use belly pork if cooking pork as the fat makes the meat pieces more succulent and less dry, and if you are using chicken, wings, thighs and legs are the best parts to use because these chicken parts have more flavour) and marinade. I like using a ziplock bag because I like to be able to “massage” the marinade into the meat. The longer you marinade the meat the better, but a minimum of two hours (with a maximum of massaging!) will do.
Heat the oil in a stir-fry pan and add the meat pieces, making sure that you keep the marinating liquid. Brown the meat on all sides. Once the meat has been browned, add the marinating liquid. Add the soy sauce, vinegar, pepper corns (or ground pepper), sugar, the stock cube and water. Make sure that the stock cube and the sugar are dissolved well and make sure that all the meat are covered by the marinating liquid. Tear the bay leaves and add to the pan. Allow the liquid to reach a rolling boil, turning the meat pieces occasionally. Cover with a lid.
Allow the liquid to simmer for 30 minutes, at which time it would have thickened slightly (without you adding anything to thicken it!). This is my little step: after the 30 minutes are over, keep the lid on and keep the pot over the hot plate (if you’re using an electric stove, or over the ring, if you’re using a gas range) for 5 minutes without lifting the lid.
Serve over boiled rice, and voila! You have my version of adobo! 🙂

Photo credits:

Adobo by ISKAndals.com