[TCF April] Mocha Walnut Pie and Coffee rub steak.

Sorry for the photo.. my camera is being maintenance and all i have is my vita.



Steak

Pics


Pie


Pics for pie.

that pie looks amazing

This.

Shouldn't the thread be "TCF April"?

Oh God, that pie looks amazing... D:

Pie looks good. I personally would skip tho walnuts though

I been busy lately.. i haven't slept more then 4 hrs in the last 3 days.

The pie looks great, I must ask, which did you use, butter or margarine? I find that in a dish like that, the sweet content of margarine might do well, but a salted butter would work just as well paired with the walnuts.

Also, which brand of pie crust did you use, or did you make your own? The finished crust on that looks amazing.

I use margarine because i not a fan of butter for cooking, unless it's really necessary like in sauces and baking. The pie crust is a pillsbury deep dish crust.

what is the difference between margarine and butter in cooking?

also I never thought about buying your own pie crusts... I always try and make my own, inevitably failing. Now I know.

lol, yeah, its normally a smart move just to buy a good frozen pie crust. You can easily find a decent crust in the market and the time it saves you just cant be over looked.

Also, the big difference between butter and margarine is the salt content (at least thats what the others are talking about). On a more technical note, margarine is composed of hydrogenated vegetable oils while butter is churned cream. On a practical note, margarine tends to be cheaper. I would have recommended using a sweet butter (aka unsalted) because I think it lends a richer flavor than margarine without adding the salt. In all the kitchens I've worked in we've used unsalted butter (or when being cheap butter blend or straight margarine) so we can control the level of the salt more accurately.

However, in this case I would have added some kosher salt. Just a pinch of salt actually increases the sweetness and brings out the flavors better.

Notes on the food:
For the steak I would have used Hungarian paprika because I find it more smokey, would have used new mexican or chipotle (or similar smokey chili) powder, and would have added garlic powder (or simply roasted some garlic and served it on the side. I'm skeptical of the recipe because it appears to make way more rub than is necessary for one steak. Im not sure if the ginger quite works, I might test if I have time.

The pie on the other hand looks really solid. One of the few nitpicky things I'd recommend is dissolving the coffee in something other than water. Water adds no flavor so using milk or etc. would make it that much better. Also, you might want to consider adding a chocolate or coffee liquor to this, Kahlua for sure, or if you replaced the walnuts with dried cherries you could add some kirsch.

Quite a deep analysis, I approve. However, I must take issue with a few of your comments.

Increasing the sweetness...Well, from what I see, this pie is already sweet enough, and I think Freaky knows that. A salty taste, or a savory note would work well to counterbalance the already present sweetness. Remember, desserts are not supposed to be cloyingly sweet, and some aren't meant to be sweet at all.

More rub than is necessary. Okay, when you make a rub, you SHOULD make more than is necessary, for a few reasons. First off, if you try to make only one serving of rub, more often than not, you only need a few Tbsp of the stuff for the entire cut of meat, and I'd like to see you try to measure out such small amounts of spices for that. Also, it is smart to have left over rub, especially if it is a good one, to save for later. Perhaps this rub would also be good on pork or chicken, or even grilled or roasted veg, so you should always have something like that handy.

Edit: Seriously? I got neg repped for this?

Actually i made used coffee grounds instead of the instant. I just copypasta the recipe. I wanted to try this for a while.

@mouse

Butter is cream fat beated to uniformity like cheese. Take heavy cream and shake it up for a long period of time.. or a paint mixer shaker.[.. fun] Any in a 30 mins you have unsalted butter like great great grandma maded.

Margarine is just vegetable oil that been chemically whipped and cool to make a butter sub. Which they made margarine for cooking with butter flavor.. that it butter flavor is what you want.. and it's thicking process. I actually prefer shorting for baking since it low fat and less of that bad cholesterol. Only certain things i believe butter in baked goods are better then oil or shorting.. like gram cracker crusts, cookies, tarts and rolls. The tarts because the butter is what makes the layer crusts of danishes and tart so flaky and tender and because each of the thin layers are coated in butter for steam and flavor. Also i never would make puff pastry dough... that master level stuff.

Oh come now, where's your adventurous spirit? Puff pastry dough isn't THAT hard to do

http://homecooking.about.com/od/breadrecipes/r/blbread85.htm
I seen hungrian bakers and greeks made this by hand.. all thousand layers of folded dough wider the half a hair.

Weird. I've been noticing people are neg rep-ing you for no reason lately... it really defeats the purpose of sharing opinions when people neg rep without explanation.


- Oh, and on the salt and sweetness thing, I by no means meant the salt made it sweeter, rather that the contrast on your palate highlights the flavors.
- And the rub recipe, sure there are some pros to making a lot, but it seems like an exorbitant amount. Its quite nearly a full cup of rub for one steak. I think there is plenty of room to balance flavors more or even just cut the recipe in half. I think the issue is that when animefreak_usa made the recipe two steaks were used (as seen in pics) while in the recipe it seems to only call for one.

Who said it for one steak? This is a stock rub recipe. I made four steaks btw. The other ones are still grilling. You do know when recipes for seasoning.. you use what amount you like right. I still have 2/3 of it left.

Come on, didnt you read the last line of my post? It's smarter to make more than less, that way you have enough AND can put the rest away for later

I'd rather not nitpick about cooking habits, where I cook, making too much dry rub becomes excess and we have to throw it out and thats money out the window. In any case, I said nothing to criticize the recipe directly. I simply voiced my skepticism about the spice ratios.

It's quarter the original of a oral recipe which was for one tri tip roast. It's like with bbq sauce... you make more since you don't know how much is needed. The rub lasts for 6 month in a air tight container without the brown sugar. Which you never mix the two until your ready to rub the meat. Anyways the rub is literally a buck 75 for all those spices and herbs. You literally waste half of it on the grill. I think this is more taste vs translation. All recipes are meant to be fuck with and change/sub with other stuff... unless baking or using chemical formulas like cal and agar agar. I just added coffee because i never have.

Don't like chili powder use something else... shit only thing you need on a nice steak is salt. Hell only thing a grill or bbq rub is necessary is pepper, salt, garlic powder and brown sugar... everything else is personal pep.

I dunno about the pie (haven't tried it), but I tried the steak, and it was awesome. And it seems like roughly grounded Java coffee beans works awesomely on this. I tried robusta, colombian and hawaiian kona as well, but it seems like Java beans works best. I wanna try Jamaican blue mountain, but alas, we're short on that here (and not to mention the price as well).