I eat!
Trader Joe’s Rustic Apple Tarte is a smallish galette that tastes like apple pie. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The tarte crust was lighter, and more flavorful than your regular pie crust, and the apple filling was on point: the apples had some firmness, they weren’t overly sweet and the sliced nuts provided a good crunch. It also had sugar crystals which I love. In all, it was quite enjoyable though a little on the small side. I’d get it again.
Linn’s Easy As Pie Café is one of what are now half a dozen Linn family ventures which originated from their “pick your own berry outfit” back in the ’70’s. They have a farm store at the actual farm and a full fledged pricy restaurant, a gourmet food store, a boutiques & books store and this café in Cambria. We decided to stop at the Café for a quick bite and, of course, a slice of their famous olallieberry pie.
Linn’s Café is very small and very cute. Inside it has a counter where you order, a small gift shop – very cute stuff – and a quaint dining room. There is a small patio outside, with trees, plants and decorations. A nice, informal place for lunch.
Their menu is rather limited, however. They had a few soups, salads and sandwiches, as well as a daily special. In addition, they have their pies – which you can get whole or by the slice – as well other baked goods.
My daughter got the Caesar Salad. She thought it was average good, though she disliked that it came with tomatoes – she’s not a fan.
I got a slice of the olallieberry pie with ice cream. Olallieberries are a hybrid of blackberries, raspberries and dew berries, and he pie mostly reminded me of the boysenberry pie at Knott’s Berry Farm. As boysenberries are also a similar hybrid, this should not be surprising. The pie, warmed up, was quite good – not as overwhelmingly sweet as some berry pies can be. The vanilla ice cream was also very tasty and helped cut down the sweetness even further. We took a whole pie home with us, and my husband liked it quite a bit.
This simple lunch plus 2 sodas came out to about $27 before the tip – so not what you’d call cheap, but the Central Coast is expensive. Still, it was so cute, I’d stop by again.
Linn's Easy As Pie Café
4251 Bridge St
Cambria, CA
(805) 924-3050
Daily 11 AM - 5:30 PM
This year, my sister and her family came to visit us for Thanksgiving. It took me forever to decide in a menu, nothing really inspired me. I knew I wanted to make poultry for dinner – both as a stand for the traditional turkey that nobody likes, and because my mother, who won’t eat poultry, wasn’t coming, so it seemed like a good opportunity. First I thought about making Basque Chicken, and from there do a Basque meal. But I couldn’t find enough vegetarian recipes without peppers to satisfy my daughter’s likes. Then I read a post on FB that mentioned someone was making chicken and dumplings, a recipe I just love and that my father used to make when I was a little kid. So I thought I’d make a menu based on family recipes – but it turns out most of what I used to eat growing up is not special enough for a Thanksgiving dinner. So, I finally decided to make Calypso Chicken, because it was an old favorite, and ended up with an “old favorite” menu. Originally, it was /also/ supposed to include a bunch of persimmon dishes: soup, lassi, sorbet and pie – but this year my persimmons are ripening slowly, so I only managed to get a couple for the soup.
I didn’t sleep well the night before Thanksgiving, however, and I was really exhausted through dinner. That means that I messed up some things as I slept walk through it.
This is what I ended up with.
So my original intention was to make a salad based on this Pear & Goat Cheese Salad with Caramelized Walnuts and Cranberries recipe I’ve made before and liked. But the road to hell is paved with new intentions. First, I decided to use butter lettuce instead of mixed green because my kids – who ended up not eating it anyway – only like lettuce. Then I decided to cut corners and use a store-bought Raspberry Poppy Seed dressing instead of making a vinaigrette with olive oil and raspberry vinegar. And I decided to use an apple instead of a pear. But when the time came to actually make the salad, I realized I’d forgotten to buy the cranberries and I had ran out of goat cheese. Then it turned out that my brother in law, like one of my daughters, only likes Caesar salad. So I put out the lettuce, all the dressings I had and the caramelized walnuts – forgetting the apple and green onion slices. At least the raspberry dressing was good.
While most of my persimmons didn’t ripen in time, I was able to find two of them ripe enough for this recipe. They gave a very pleasant sweetness to this soup. At first, I felt the soup was too carrot-y, but that flavor profile mellowed the second day. Still, next time I might use just one carrot. It’s slightly modified from superchef’s recipe at allrecipes.
Ingredients
Directions
Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add the onion and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the carrots and bay leaf and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the butternut squash and continue cooking for 5 minutes, also stirring occasionally.
Add the white wine and continue cooking until it evaporates. Add the vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Stir in the persimmon pulp. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the bay leaf.
Using an immersion blender, puree the soup. Alternatively, wait until it cools down a bit and transfer to a blender, then return to the pot. Stir in the vinegar and season with salt & pepper to taste.
For my appetizers, I reverted mostly to old family favorites. I hadn’t made bacon-wrapped bananas in a long time, and I thought it would go well with the Caribbeanish theme of the dinner. This time I used a maple hickory bacon and it was delicious. I had originally planned to make coconut shrimp, but then I thought I had too many sweet flavors in this meal, so I decided to do shrimp wrapped in cheese and bacon instead – though it was a bit repetitive with the bananas. This time I used Havarti cheese and the maple bacon, and my husband loved them (but he always does).
The goat cheese & caramelized onion tart was a variation on my blue cheese & caramelized onion squares from yester holiday meals. I simply substituted goat cheese for blue and thyme for rosemary. My daughter, who doesn’t like blue cheese, loved it but I think the rest of us prefer it with blue cheese. Still, it’s an easy appetizer to make and you can make the caramelized onions in advance. I used Vidalia onions this time, but any onion will do.
The Sundried Tomatoes and Garlic Butter Bruschettas, from a recipe I found at Scrambled Chefs. It’s not really bruschetta but cheesy garlic bread with chopped sundried tomatoes on top. BUT it was very good cheesy garlic bread, mostly because it had a lot of garlic and I used a lot of butter on each slice.
Ingredients
Directions
Heat a thin layer of olive oil over medium-high heat in a sauté pan. Add the sliced onions and turn heat to medium. Sauté, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Season with salt and stir in sugar, if using. Continue cooking for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn heat to low and continue cooking until the onions get the consistency and sweetness you want. Set aside to cool.
Preheat oven to 425F. Grease a large baking sheet or cover it with parchment paper.
Set puff pastry sheets on the baking sheet. Spread goat cheese on the sheets, leaving about a 1/2 ” margin. Spread caramelized onions on top of the cream cheese. Sprinkle chopped thyme on top. Pinch the edges of the tarts, making a border. Bake until the the crust is golden, about 20 to 30 minutes.
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat oven to 350F
Cut baguette into inch-thick slices
Place the butter in a small bowl and stir until soft. Add the parsley, garlic and salt and pepper to taste and mix well. Spread butter on baguette slices. Arrange on baking sheet. Top each slice with shredded cheeses and top with chopped sundried tomatoes. Bake until the cheese starts to brown, about 5-7′
Calypso Chicken is a dish that you can find throughout the Caribbean in different iterations. I’d made a Dominican recipe originally and repeated it for this dinner. Alas, by this time in the meal I was too tired and full, and went to bed before tasting it, leaving it to my husband to do the honors. He apparently just served the chicken without the sauce, and thought it was just OK, though my daughter said she liked it. We all enjoyed the leftovers the next day, however, when I did heat them up and serve them with the sauce. It’s really a solid dish. I made roasted potatoes, carrots, green beans and asparagus to go with it – I just mixed them with olive oil, garlic powder, oregano and salt and pepper, and I’m told people enjoyed them. There were very few left the next day. I had also planned to make air fried plantain slices, but I was too tired to follow through with that.
This used to be my favorite cake as a child, one that I would ask my Grandmother and later my aunt Gladys, to make for my birthday. I’ve made it a couple of times before and my daughter specifically asked that I make it for Thanksgiving. While I didn’t eat it the night of the meal, as I was already in bed by then, everyone else enjoyed it and we had the leftovers the next day. I was extremely proud that the cake tasted exactly like I remembered it from my youth. I made it with no whipped cream in the filling and only 1/4 cup of whipped cream for the frosting. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary, and I think my grandmother probably didn’t use it, but it does make it easier to spread. In any case, both the cake and the frosting came out perfectly and I was glad that my sister could try something my grandmother – who died years before she was born – made.
I made this simple tart because it sounded divine – and it might have been had I been able to make it fresh. Unfortunately, I had a dish I had to cook at a much lower temperature right before this was meant to be served, so I decided to cook it earlier at 400F, and then just reheat it before serving. This wasn’t a truly successful endeavor, as the bottom of the pastry burned. Fortunately, it was very easy to scrape off. In any case, I wouldn’t recommend making it in advance. I would, however, try to make it again – when I can eat it right away.
Ingredients
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
Place the puff pastry on a large sheet of parchment and roll into a 10″ x 12″ rectangle. Crimp the sides, forming an elevated border.
Place the brie slices on the puff pastry sheet and then cover with the apple slices. Transfer parchment with the tart to a baking sheet. Bake until golden brown, about 30-35 minutes.
Drizzle with the honey and sprinkle almond slices on top. Top with pomegranate seeds if using.
Based on Lauren Conrad’s recipe at Good Housekeeping.
I made this recipe for vegan pecan pie for Thanksgiving, and my vegan daughter was quite happy with it. Unlike most vegan pie recipes this one didn’t use corn syrup and it wasn’t too sweet. It had the right consistency, however, and the pie set perfectly – no need for eggs.
I was cheap and made it using a Safeway refrigerated pie shell and it was horrible! There are far better vegan pie shells out there. The filling, though, was good:
Ingredients
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake pie crust for 7 minutes. Set aside to cool.
In a bowl. whisk together the coconut milk and corn starch until dissolved. Set aside.
Heat butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until it melts. Add the pecans and cook, stirring constantly, for 30 seconds. Whisk in the coconut milk mixture, brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla extract and salt.
Pour the mixture onto the pie crust. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Cool on the counter for two hours and then let cool completely on the fridge.
“These pears are getting soft,” my daughter announced from the kitchen.
I sighed. I buy so many produce that goes bad because the child that requested it forgets about it. Indeed, I buy so much food that goes bad before anyone uses it. As it happened, at that very moment I had a two or three week old puff pastry sheet in my fridge. I’d bought a package to make mushroom empanadas for my vegan daughter and only used one sheet.
The softening pears I knew I could use – but the puff pastry? I searched online and found people asking if they could use it a few days to a week after putting it in the fridge – but two to three weeks? That seemed crazy! Still, my pastry sheets did not smell bad, they had no hint of mold in them (I do keep my fridge very cold), they were not slimy and they only had a couple of spots were they’d dried out and even then, not too much. So what the heck! I figured I’d use them.
I placed the puff pastry on a cutting board and rolled it a bit with a rolling pin. Then I transferred it to a lined cookie sheet. I sliced the pears somewhat thinly (I used the two large ones I had) and placed the pear slices on the puff pastry. I mixed some raw sugar with a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and sprinkled it on the pears. Then I ground some almonds and sprinkled these on top.
I put the baking sheet in the fridge and turn on the oven to 400F. Once it was preheated, I put the baking sheet in the oven and baked it for about 20 minutes.
The results were great. Really, really delicious. And vegan!
I had a couple of pie shells that I had to use today so I decided to make pies – I had bananas and coconut, so banana and coconut cream pies were the obvious choices. The recipe for the custard on the pie is the same, I just doubled it and used half over bananas and half mixed with coconut. The pies were simply delicious. I used the egg whites to make a meringue topping – just so I I could do something with them – but you can serve the pie with whipped cream instead. Unfortunately I don’t have a broiler in my oven, so it didn’t come out as well as it could. The pie itself was delicious, however.
Topping
Bake the pie shell according to instructions or your recipe. Let cool.
Preheat oven to 350F
Beat egg yolks in a small bowl and set aside.
Place sugar, flour and salt in a medium sauce pan and place on the stove over medium heat. Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, lower the temperature and cook for two minutes. Scoop a ladle of custard from the sauce pan and transfer to the bowl with the egg yolks. Mix well. Pour egg yolk mixture back into the sauce pan, mix and cook for two more minutes. Mix in the butter and vanilla extract, stirring until they are incorporated.
If making a banana cream pie, place the banana slices on the bottom of the pie shell, then pour custard over it.
If making a coconut pie, stir the coconut into the custard.
Pour the custard into the pie shell. Bake for 12′. Cool and then transfer to the refrigerator for an hour.
If making the meringue, using the whisk attachment in an electric mixer, beat together the egg whites and cream and tartar until it becomes foamy. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until it forms stiff peaks. Spoon meringue onto the cooled pie and put under the broiler for 3-4 minutes.
Adapted from Rudy Pfeffer’s recipe at Allrecipes.com
I have to bring an appetizer to a Holiday Party for an organization I belong to, and for some reason I decided that I wanted a fruit-based savory pie. After some online research I ended up with this flavor combination, and then I found a recipe for a galette with these ingredients which I easily adapted to make a pie.
It was great! Easy and delicious. Actually, more like satisfying and addictive. It tastes good warm and cold, so it’s perfect for a holiday buffet.
Apple, Onion and Bacon Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Cook bacon over medium heat in a deep frying pan until crispy. Using a slotted spoon, remove bacon bits and set aside. Pour out all but 1 Tbsp. grease from the pan and reserve. Add the onion slices and cook until soft, stirring occasionally. Add the apple slices and cook until soft. Return the bacon to the pan and mix. Taste and add salt and sugar as needed. Set aside to cool.
Preheat oven to 400F (or the temperature indicated by your pie shell recipe).
Put the pie shell into your pie pan and press tightly. Add the cooled filling. Top with the other pie shell, sealing the borders with the bottom shell. Make several cuts on the top shell and bake until golden, about 30 minutes.
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