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| Bourbon Pecan Tarts |
I've had several people ask me about the pecan tarts I mentioned in my post on what to think about when you want to use bourbon in dishes. They seem to be a simple version of a favorite Southern dessert - the pecan pie. Well, it's not really a pecan pie in the way we think of it down here. It's actually a lot more similar to a butter tart, a common Canadian dish. And even more similar to a buttermilk pie (one of my favorite desserts). The basic idea is melted butter or margarine, sugar, and egg. The standard version is definitely more of a custard than what we think of as pecan pie. Adding/changing other ingredients is what makes it a more Southern dish - buttermilk or the sweet, rich, and buttery pecan.
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| Poblano Chicken Chowder |
I
love southern food, and the various cultural influences on it. There is
definitely an undeniable Hispanic influence on our food here - rich,
earthy, robust, flavorful foods are a staple of that cuisine, and it
fits well with our food here. I've posted about liking spicy foods before - so when I developed my first recipe from a blank piece of paper, I decided to do something full of flavor with a little kick. Someone I was talking to mentioned wanting to make a chowder with poblano and corn. I've made plenty of soups before, but not chowders. Chowders can be incredibly flavorful and actually aren't too difficult. To start developing the recipe, all I needed to know was how to make a base for chowder. I read about that for a bit and began.
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| Charred Poblanos |
After FoodBlog South a couple of weekends ago, I decided I really wanted to start developing my own recipes to share. There was a great session with Virginia Willis discussing a general how-to of recipe development (she should know - her books have some of my favorite recipes). It was a lot more complex than I originally thought it would be. It actually made me want to develop my own even more. I enjoy using other people's recipes, and will continue to do so and occasionally post about them. But I assumed that creating my own recipe from nothing other than the basic knowledge of a food type would be more gratifying than using a recipe in existence and changing it some. I was right.
