Chicken Fat Pie Crust

Chicken Fat Pie Crust


Save chicken fat and substitute it for the butter the flavour intensifies if you do as such.


2.5 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp mace
10 ounces frozen chicken fat
1/3 cup ice cold chicken stock


Place the flour, salt and mace into a food processor ( pick one up at the resale store) whir for about five seconds to mix.
Cut the chicken fat into little cubes. Add to the processor and whir about eight seconds. Add chicken stock, whir about five seconds.
Dump ingredients into a bowl and gather together to form a ball.
Cut the dough in half, placing each into plastic wrap and flatten. Let rest in the fridge minimum one hour.
Roll dough out between two pieces of waxed paper dusted with flour. When rolled out into disks place in fridge for a half hour.
Place one disk at the base of a deep 10' pie pan, preferably ceramic or glass, pour in your chicken mixture top and seal with remaining disk perforates with a fork and cut open steam vents. Brush with milk.
Place pie in fridge for one hour.
Set rack on lowest level, preheat oven to 425 F, and bake for twenty minutes lower to 350 F for the last thirty minutes or until done.
Take out of oven, let rest then devour.

Smelts

 

Smelts once brought out generations of families to Point Pelee during their run, caught by the garbage pail full while sipping on my mother's tea. The Americans always came with beer that the park ranger immediately confiscated then disposed of right in front of the poor fellows, even if it was American beer it was still beer. My mother poured the poor gents tea as to ease their pain and to warm their insides, offering such varieties cherry whisky or brandy, apricot brandy, sloe gin, brandy, rye and rum in exchange for smelts. The park ranger always received the plain tea when they came snooping by, we youngsters got cherry brandy - evil (hic) mom.

All loved these tasty little morsels; floured, fried, spritzed with a squeeze of lemon juice accompanied with a squirt of ketchup to dip, children never enjoyed fish so much. The whole of Essex County smelled like a fish fry for two weeks and what a lovely smell it was,  we didn't want to see a smelt until next year. Nothing was wasted as the smelts' heads and visceral were either fed to the cats or tossed into the garden for fertilizer...again feed the cats.

September 2009 I attended a Culinary Guild meeting that had a spokesman from the area's largest fishery, smelts are the only fish not regulated. This is bad, very bad as the smelts are over fished and sold to Asian countries leaving only fingerlings for the locals.

Today as the good son, I took my mother shopping where I spied a package of frozen whole smelts, teased my mother about the smelts as minnows. She told me to buy them for dinner as it has been years since we enjoyed smelts. When we got to her house the joke was on me, they were not dressed, so I cleaned the tiny fish for an hour with a finished product that very much left to be desired. I called my brother for a smelt dinner, he was so anxious he salivated  as it was years too since he last ate smelts. 

The meal was strange but a bit fun as I informed my mother and brother that the menu was "smelt skins”, that was all that was left. We choked down the smelt skins to our dismay reminiscing about the great smelt runs of past with the spurting sound of the ketchup squeeze bottle burping out the red stuff.

My brother informed us that he buys his smelts that are a good size from the Asian Market, as the smelts were caught and processed here, shipped to Asia then shipped back here for us to enjoy.

Stupid!

Bacon Fat Spice Cookies

Bacon Fat Spice Cookies

Makes 20 to 24 cookies (made 22 for me)

Flour - 1 ¼ cups

Sugar – ¼ cup plus 1 Tablespoon

Brown Sugar - ¼ cup

Sea Salt – 1 teaspoon

Cinnamon (ground) – ¾ teaspoon

Ginger (ground) – ¾ teaspoon

Cloves (ground) – ¾ teaspoon

Bacon Fat – ½ cup

Molasses – 2 Tablespoons

Egg – 1

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 2 Large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Combine the flour, sugar, the salt, and the spices in a food processor and pulse to mix. Add the bacon fat, molasses, and egg and pulse until the mixture forms soft dough.

3. Take level tablespoons of the dough and roll them into balls. Place the balls on the prepared baking sheets about 2 inches / 5 cm apart. Using a fork, flatten the balls slightly, and sprinkle with the tablespoon of sugar.

4. Bake the cookies until they are beginning to brown around the edges, 10-12 minutes. Let the cookies cool slightly on the baking sheets and then transfer to a wire rack.

Store the cookies in an airtight container for up to a week.

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