vegan nacatamal pie

A friend of ours recently left Colorado to travel the world and teach English. Her first destination will be Nicaragua. In the process of lightening her load, she left us with her crock pot. I thought it would be nice to expand my own horizons and make a Nicaraguan dish for our first crock pot meal. I honestly had no idea what Nicaraguan food was like until I looked it up. It's interesting how we seem to be satisfied with a certain number of ethnic foods (Chinese, Thai, Indian, Italian, Mexican) and ignore inspiration from other parts of the world.  Anyway, I made Nicaraguan nacatamal pie - a crock pot version of nacatamales which are fairly similar to Mexican tamales. Instead of using pork butt I made these vegetarian and added anasazi beans though small red beans would have been more authentic to Central American cuisine. Speaking of food diversity, wouldn't it be interesting to have more bean options on our grocery store shelves?

Filling Ingredients:
anasazi beans, cooked
rice, cooked
potatoes, sliced
bell peppers, sliced
tomatoes, sliced
onions, chopped
green olives, minced
achiote paste
mint
salt
black pepper

Topping Ingredients (adapted from The Cooking Bride):
2 c. instant Masa Harina
1 t. baking powder
¼ t. salt
2 c. veggie broth
½ c. olive oil

Mix the filling ingredients in a 6 qt. crock pot.  Mix the topping ingredients and glop it on top of the filling.  Cover and cook on low for 5 hours or until potatoes and masa dough are cooked.

pumpkin pie brulee

Everybody's doing it!  And I think with good reason - this is a tasty food fad.  Honestly, I have never enjoyed pumpkin pie until this pie.  What changed?  The crisp caramelized sugar top makes things so much more interesting and in this case it was paired with a chocolate crust.   If I haven't sold you yet, doing a brulee means you get to play with fire!  I used a recipe from Bon Appetit though next time I will make a less fussy chocolate crust.

rhubarb pie

I know, I know, all of the food here lately has included spinach or asparagus. What can I say, it's early spring. So onto another early spring classic - rhubarb pie. Strawberries aren't in season yet here in Boulder, Colorado (it snowed last week?!), so this pie is straight up rhubarb. I personally enjoy the tartness. If you insist on cutting the tartness, serve the pie with ice cream.

Pie Crust Ingredients:
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. sugar
2/3 c. canola oil
1/3 c. cold water

Pie Filling Ingredients
1 1/2 lb. rhubarb, chopped
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. all purpose flour

Mix together the pie crust ingredients until they come together. If you have the time, you can refrigerate the dough for a little while to reduce shrinkage during baking. I didn't.

Preheat the oven to 425. Grab 2/3 of the crust dough and roll out on a lightly floured counter. Roll the dough into a circular shape to fit your pie dish. Put the dough in an oiled pie dish. Finish off the edges. Mix together the pie filling ingredients. Fill the pie crust with pie filling. Roll out the remaining 1/3 dough into a rectangle and cut into strips. Form a woven lattice top pie crust with the strips of dough. Put the pie in the oven on the lowest shelf. Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake another 30-45 minutes.