Kitchen Cats: Lemongrass Chicken and Skillet Apple Pie

38-cents worth of lemongrass from Your Dekalb Co. Farmer's Market!

Yesterday I repeated a simple recipe for Vietnamese Chicken Stir-fry from Cooking Light (Oct 2010 issue, pg 134) that I had made a few months ago. I was mainly drawn to it because there aren't too many new ingredients to buy, and it has the nice flavor of lemongrass. I think last time I made this, I thought that all the soy sauce at the end was too much. I didn't change it, but did add about 1 tsp of sugar to the recipe, for balance.

FYI - Chopping lemongrass is tough. I think next time I should consider mincing in a food processor, for finer pieces. The recipe ends up with tiny bits of tough reed in it.

The finished Lemongrass Chicken

Vietnamese Chicken Stir-Fry (Cooking Light, Oct 2010)

1 Tbsp canola oil

1/3 cup finely chopped lemongrass (used just 1 stalk)

2 lbs of boneless/skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces

(recipe called for 1 lb but I bought 2 lbs)

1.5 Tbsp of sambal oelek

1/4 cup soy sauce

Heat oil in skillet. Add lemongrass, saute 1 minute. Add chicken, cook for 3 minutes or until browned. Stir in sambal oelek. Add soy sauce. Reduce heat and cook 5 minutes or until chicken is done.

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Skillet Apple Pie (Cooks Illustrated Sept/Oct 2008)

For dessert, I decided to try a Cook's Illustrated (Sept-Oct 2008) recipe for skillet apple pie. I already have a great apple pie recipe, using Mark Bittman's all-butter crust (despite many other recipes that claim that you have to use vegetable shortening for a better crust). So I stuck with my own crust recipe here. This recipe seemed novel, because you saute the apples on the stove top, then lay one crust over the top of the skillet, and finish baking in the oven.

Some of the caveats:

- Recipe calls for 2.5 lbs of apples to be baked in a 12" skillet. The physics didn't work so well. I heated my butter in a 12" skillet, couldn't fit all the apples into the skillet, and transferred to a deeper saute pan. After they cooked down, I poured everything back into the original 12" skillet for the final bake.

- This bakes in the oven at 500-degrees. The story of our crazy Thermador oven in our rental house is too long for this post, but suffice to say that pre-heat times are LONG even for 350-degrees, so heating to 500 is a marathon wait (like an hour). Not worth it every night.

- This is just as much work as a regular apple pie (maybe more), but you end up without a bottom crust. And if you bake in a nice Calphalon skillet like I did, you run the risk of damaging your nice skillet with a knife.

Caveats aside, here is the pie:

Crust (link to Mark Bittman Butter Crust)

5 oz all-purpose flour (1 and 1/8 cups)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

8 Tbsp (1 stick) cold butter, cut into pieces

3 Tbsp ice cold water

Blend flour, salt, sugar in food processor. Add butter and process until fine crumbs. Transfer to a bowl and add water, 1 Tbsp at a time, until dough forms. Turn dough onto plastic wrap and shape into a disk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Then roll into a flat crust.

Pie Filling

1/2 cup apple cider

1/3 cup maple syrup

(forgot 2 Tsp lemon juice)

2 tsp cornstarch

1/8 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp butter

2 - 2.5 lbs peeled, sliced apples (2 large granny smiths, 3 Fuji)

Preheat to 500 degrees. Whisk cider, syrup, cornstarch cinnamon in a bowl and set aside.

Heat butter in skillet over med-high heat. Add apples and saute 5 minutes, until start to caramelize. Remove pan from heat, add the cider mixture and stir.

Lay the crust over the apples in the pan. (Recipe called for an eggwhite and sugar brush - I skipped this). Bake in oven for 20 minutes. Cool 15 minutes. Serve.