Cabbage and Rice Pie

Kay is at soccer practice right now and it is very cold and starting to rain. Therefore, I'm going to type this up as quickly as possible before I get called to pick her up!

First of all we want to thank everyone who voted for our Paper Chef entry. We won the People's Choice!!

I received quite a bit of cabbage this week from the farm so I searched through all my old cookbooks for some new way to prepare it. I chose this recipe mostly because I had all the ingredients. Turns out we all liked it. Bill and Kay both told me it was good without me asking their opinions so that is a very good sign. Kay, I think, was just happy I finally made something without onions!

Cabbage and Rice Pie

adapted from Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking

1 1/2 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 cups shredded green cabbage

2 cups frozen hash brown potatoes (we used the chopped)

1 1/4 cups uncooked instant rice

8 oz cream cheese, softened (we used soy)

1 teaspoon ground sage

1/2 package puff pastry, thawed

1 can tomato sauce + your choice of seasonings

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9 inch pie plate.

Heat the water to boiling in a medium saucepan. Stir in salt, pepper, cabbage and potatoes. Heat to boiling. Reduce to medium, cover and cook 5 minutes.

Stir in rice, cream cheese, and sage. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 5 minutes. Stir to mix all ingredients well. Pour into the pie plate.

Unfold the pastry sheet and place it over the cabbage mixture. Trim pastry to fit pie plate. Press edge of pastry onto pie plate with a fork.

Bake uncovered 25 minutes.

For sauce, heat one can tomato sauce with salt, pepper, Italian seasonings, etc to suit your taste.

Spread sauce on plate. Top with wedge of pie. Sprinkle additional sauce over the pie.

Kay: The cabbage thing was ok even though I don't really like cabbage. I think it would be good with spinach and would help my cousin Lily eat spinach. When we cut off the puff pastry from the edges, I wanted to eat it but my mom dipped them in cinnamon sugar and baked them. They were really good but hot. My mom said I was crazy.

Mom (Dana): This was really easy. I was worried about leftovers and how they would warm up. Bill worked late, though, and his warmed up fine. Just don't heat it too much - just enough to slightly warm it.

I'd recommend this cookbook to anyone, vegetarian or not. The recipes are very basic and "normal". No weirdo tempeh or tofu or other strange vegetarian things!!

Our special guest commenter, Dad (Bill): Amazingly enough, I actually like this puff pastry thing! (He's eating the leftovers right now!)

Promise

I am posting this to promise that I'll post a real post tonight. This should make me feel guilty enough that I won't put it off!

We tried something new last night and all 3 of us really liked it (shocking)!!

Paper Chef - Apple Pie

Edited to add: the round up has been posted - http://paperchef.blogspot.com/2008/10/paper-chef-33-roundup.html. I'm always overwhelmed by how creative everyone is!



Kay and I had a lot of fun coming up with a recipe the first time we did Paper Chef and really wanted to do it again. We tried one other time with disastrous results. The other months we were either too busy or the ingredients did not suit us. When I saw the ingredients this time, I felt like we had to participate because there were no animal products!



For anyone not familiar with Paper Chef, each month 4 ingredients are selected from a list and everyone is asked to come up with a recipe using those ingredients. This month's ingredients are beets, ginger, rice, and apples. My first thought was a main dish which we did make. It looked like this:



We really liked how it looked but weren't happy with the taste. Luckily we had a second recipe planned as well. I have to thank my mom and my friend Claire for this idea. Claire had suggested doing some kind of layered dish. I came up with a couple ideas and asked my mom's opinion. She is the one that actually said that I should base it off an apple pie. That is when I decided to go ahead and make just that - apple pie!



I used the beets mostly just for coloring. I always think that apple pie should be red instead of a boring beige and the beets worked perfect for that.



For the rice portion, I used rice milk and rice flour.



Bill immediately noticed the ginger in the filling which was surprising because I thought it was too subdued and that we should have added more.



Kay helped make both recipes and also had the very important job of writing everything down as we did it.



Really Red Apple Pie Crisp



Crust:

1 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup margarine
3-4 tablespoons rice milk



Filling:

2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced
2 gala apples, peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons grated ginger
1 beet, boiled, peeled, and pureed



Topping:

1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup pecans
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons margarine


To make the crust, combine the flour and sugar in a medium bowl. Cut in the margarine with a pastry cutter or two knives. Add in just enough milk to bring the dough together. Wrap the dough in wax paper and refrigerate until you're ready to use it.



Combine all filling ingredients in a large bowl.



Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Press the crust into the bottom of a pie pan. Bake the crust for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Fill the pan with the filling. Cover with foil and place in oven. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 30 minutes.



Combine all topping ingredients in a food processor and blend until combined but still chunky.



After 30 minutes, remove the foil from the pie and spread topping evenly over the apple filling. Return the pie to the oven and bake an additional 30 minutes.

Kay: I don't really care for cooked fruits but this was actually good. I think regular crust on the bottom would have been better but I liked the top crust. This tasted like regular pie or apple crisp, not like beets at all.

Mom(Dana): Bill refuses to let me tell him what is in this pie! We all really liked this. If you need proof, here is all that is left after 24 hours!