MY TOMATO PIE

My son, Rob took this photograph of tomato pie on a Sunday afternoon at Page's Okra Grill, after the restaurant had closed. I didn't work for Page's, but I loved cooking with Tony Page and he would call me and tell me when he wanted to try a new recipe. We cooked my tomato pie recipe on this day, and made buttercream and Grillades and Grits. It was a great cooking day. My son had gone with the to photograph the food, and I love the way that he photographed the pies.

Savory Tomato Pie

I've been making this pie for many years now. It's been through a few changes from the original pie. For example, I use one layer of tomatoes. If you've got really good tomatoes and you put them in a pie, then you'll have a really good pie, but if you don't, then all you will taste are tomatoes that are not really good. One layer of tomatoes forgives that in this pie. My other son loves tomato pie and he was the inspiration for the recipe below.

Try it and see if you like it. I promise this pie will be good. The recipe below is reposted from my e-book, Seasoned in the Kitchen ($2.99), available at Amazon.com.

Savory Tomato Pie

1 pre-baked 9 inch pie crust*

1-1/2 to 2 ripe tomatoes, peeled

1 teaspoon dried basil or 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1 small to medium sweet onion, finely chopped

1 ½ cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese

1 cup mayonnaise

Salt and pepper to taste

 

*Blind bake the pie crust according to package directions. Cool.

Peel the tomatoes by making an “x” on the smooth end of the tomatoes and dipping them into boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove from water, and the peel should come right off.

Slice tomatoes into ½ -3/4 inch slices and set aside on paper towels to drain.

Place the tomato slices in the pie shell in ONE layer (this is the secret).

Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

In a medium bowl, mix the chopped onion, basil, cheese and mayonnaise. Spread this mixture evenly over the tomatoes to the edge of the pie crust.

Bake at 350º for 35-40 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly in the center. Remove from the oven and wait 15 minutes before serving. 

*Note: Make small tomato pies using the same method as above. These are great for tea parties. You can also make tomato pies by putting pimiento cheese into phyllo shells, topping with a slice of Roma tomato and baking until the cheese has melted.

FABULOUS FIESTA CHILI SOUP

 

Fabulous Fiesta Chili Soup. You'll love it.

 

I Love soup all year round, and I don't care what the weather is like, but it sure felt good on this cold, rainy January night to have this hot bowl of soup at suppertime.

The first recipe that I made of this soup was an accident. I didn't have the right ingredients for a recipe that I wanted to try, so I substituted almost everything, but I wrote down the ingredients and used it for the second batch and it was just as good. I've now made it with beef and chicken. Both recipes are below.

 

Fabulous Chicken Fiesta Chili Soup

 

2 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 cup chopped sweet onion

1/2 cup finely diced green pepper

1 garlic clove, finely minced, or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, oregano

1 (10-ounce) can Rotel

1 1/4 cups beef broth

 (or if you don't have beef broth use 1-1/4 cups water and 2 teaspoons Better Than Bouillon Beef Base)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 (15-ounce) can Seasoned Black Beans, undrained (I use Bush's)

2 cups cooked cubed chicken breast or chicken tenderloin meat

1 cup white corn

 

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a Dutch oven, or heavy pan. Add the onion and green pepper and sauté until tender. Add the remaining ingredients, and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat and serve with sour cream and cheese nachos. Makes about 5 cups soup.

 



With Sour Cream and Cheese Nachos

 

 

Here is the beef version. One of the ingredients will surprise you! This was the result of adding hot chili powder  by mistake and looking for something in my pantry to cool this soup down. It was great in the soup! I also cook and freeze portions of ground sirloin, so I had a 1/2 pound package of frozen cooked beef and all I had to do was thaw it a little in the microwave and add it to the soup.

 

Fabulous Fiesta Beef Chili Soup

 

2 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 cup chopped sweet onion

1/2 cup finely diced green pepper

1 garlic clove, finely minced, or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, oregano

1 (10-ounce) can Rotel

1 (10-ounce) can French Onion Soup

 (if you don't want to use the onion soup, use the same amount of beef broth or use 1-1/4 cups water and 2 teaspoons Better Than Bouillon Beef Base)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 (15-ounce) can Seasoned Black Beans, undrained (I use Bush's)

1/2 pound cooked, crumbled ground sirloin

1 cup white corn

 

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a Dutch oven, or heavy pan. Add the onion and green pepper and sauté until tender. Add the remaining ingredients, and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat and serve with sour cream and cheese nachos. Makes about 5 cups soup.

 

Hope you enjoy this as much as we have. Thank you for reading my blog and looking at my posts.

ELLEN'S HOT BEEF BBQ POT ROAST

 

Beef cooked in onions and beef broth, sauce added after shredding. Cole slaw and squash puppies are happy on this plate.

 

See below for photo of bbq sandwich, with beef cooked in bbq sauce. 

 

My friend, Ellen Thompson lives in Greenville and we are always sharing recipes. I gave her one for a pot roast cooked with sauce that I received when attending a party up in the mountains of North Carolina. She was cooking it one night and thought there must be a better way than the long list of ingredients needed to make this roast taste good. There was a better way and she thought of it, cooked the roast, loved it, and sent me the recipe in 2014. I've been making her version ever since. I love it too, and it's so easy.

Yeah man!



 

This is my "go to" recipe when I want to make a quick beef barbecue.

 

4 lb chuck roast

2 onions, chopped

1 (10-ounce) can beef bullion or broth

Set oven at 350 degrees.

In a large Dutch oven, put onions down first, put roast over the onions, and then add ½ can Campbell’s, beef bouillon or broth if needed. Cover it and cook an hour and a half, then add the rest of broth. Pour in a middle size bottle of Sweet Baby’s Rays original barbecue or Sweet Baby Ray's Vidalia Onion Barbecue sauce. Use all of it. Cover and cook for another hour. *Cook a half hour longer with the lid off. *If you decide not to add the sauce until you've shredded the beef, keep it covered the last half hour. (That's how I prepared the cover photo above).

It cooks for 3 hours total. Let it cook and put in fridge overnight and take fat off. Reheat, shred and serve on buns or over rice.

 BBQ sauce cooked with the meat.



 

Squash Puppies



 

Squash Puppy with Garlic Mayonnaise

My friend, Johnathon Scott Barrett, is the author of a wonderful book on being a "Southern son" called, Rise and Shine, published by Mercer. It's full of stories and the other things we southerners love, like really good family recipes! Hallelujah, because I can hardly pick up a book anymore that doesn't have recipes and southern stories. Reading how other southerners lived and what they ate are my adult bedtime stories.

Johnathon's book is very popular and he has had one of the busiest schedules ever, with book signings and speaking engagements. But, finally we were able to mesh our schedules and meet in Yemassee, South Carolina. Yemassee is halfway between our two cities of Charleston and Savannah.

Lucky for us that we had planned on meeting at a place that didn't serve lunch on Saturday. And, the place we ended up was where we were really supposed to be. It was a quaint tea room by the name of Fletcher's Finds and Finest. What a wonderful surprise it was too.

After we had some great conversation with the owner and her assistants, we settled in by seating ourselves at a huge dining room table in a room off to the side of the main dining room. The tables behind ours were covered in stacks of rugs, and the walls were covered in portraits and other art. The shelves were full of glassware, and cabinets were full of knick-knacks. We couldn't stop looking, nor could we stop talking. After all, we had a lot to catch up on and one of those was, of course, southern food. 

But first, we had to eat. On the menu in the list of appetizers was one called, "squash puppies"which the owner told us that we had to try. So, we placed the order, and soon, the big basket of squash puppies was on the table. We couldn't stop eating them. So good.

We had a fun lunch, and didn't want to leave because we still had so much to talk about, but alas, life calls and we both had to leave the table with "stuff" on it and go to our homes. But, we'll meet again one day and this time we will be talking about Johnathon's latest book! I will let you know about the book as soon as it's out, and where we ate as well as what we ate. I know it will be something good.

A week or so before our meeting, I had made hush puppies and published the recipe on this blog, so I decided that I would try to use that recipe and make squash puppies. If you want the original recipe from Fletcher's, please contact them in Yemassee, for a cookbook that includes the recipe. The cookbook is very reasonable and I am sure they'd love to ship you one. If you want to try my recipe, you will find it below. I hope you enjoy them. See photo directions below the recipe.



Squash Puppies

Inspiration from Fletcher's Finds and Finest

Yemassee, SC

 

1 cup self-rising corn meal mix (I use Martha White Hot Rize, white cornmeal)

1 tablespoon self-rising flour

pepper, to taste

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg, beaten

1 cup finely diced yellow squash (zucchini would work too)*See instructions in photos below for cutting squash

3 green onions, including the stems, thinly sliced, optional (you could also use chopped jalapenos)

1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk*

 

Mix the dry ingredients together with the squash (and green onions if using them in the recipe). Add the buttermilk starting with 1/3 cup and then per tablespoon until you have a very thick batter, making sure you have no dry cornmeal in your batter.

 

Prepare a small, deep, heavy saucepan for frying the hushpuppies by adding about 2-3 inches of oil, and place over medium to medium high heat. When the oil starts to move, scoop out hushpuppy batter a tablespoon at a time and add to the hot oil. A one tablespoon ice cream scoop works great for this. Your saucepan should be deep, but large enough to hold 3-4 hushpuppies at a time. Brown hushpuppies on each side, and remove to paper towels to drain. Serve hot. Makes 13-16 hushpuppies. *Repeat-you want a thick batter, so add the extra two tablespoons sparingly. It would be better to add one at a time as needed.

 

Serve with red pepper jelly or aioli on the side. Aioli is garlic mayonnaise. I mixed finely chopped garlic with mayonnaise, and served it with the squash puppies.

 

 

Cut the squash by quartering from stem to stem. Slip your knife under the seeds and slice them out.

 

 



Cut the squash into strips and then into small dice. 

 

Batter should be thick.

 



 

I use a Le Creuset Saucepan.

 

 

Use a small ice cream scoop for the batter.

 

 

 

Drain on paper towels.

 

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

Mother's Chocolate Butterscotch Pie with Rum Whipped Cream

Mother's Chocolate Butterscotch Pie

This pie is scrumptious and it's one of Richard's favorites. So, I should post it for him. He loved all of mother's recipes, but this one is in the list that he gave me. He is right to love it because it sure is so good! Especially served with a big billowy spoonful of rum whipped cream.

 

 

Mother's Chocolate Butterscotch Pie

¾ cup brown sugar, packed

1/3 cup flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 1/3 cups milk

6 tablespoons chocolate syrup

2 egg yolks, well beaten

2 tablespoons butter

½ teaspoon vanilla

Baked 9-inch pie crust

Topping:

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon dark rum or vanilla

Pie- Bake and cool a 9-inch pie crust. Set aside until ready to fill. Thoroughly combine sugar, flour and salt. Stir in the milk, chocolate syrup and egg yolks and cook over medium heat until thick, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and blend in vanilla and butter. Add to the cooled pie crust. Cool in refrigerator. Serve with sweetened whipped cream.

Topping-Add heavy cream, sugar and rum into a mixer bowl and using the whisk attachment, whip cream until thick. Serve in dollops over the pie.