Food Experiments: Mad Men and Grasshopper Pie

I've been slacking on posting my experiments and adventures lately...I wish I could say it was because I've had so many, but really I've just been lazy. Now it's time to catch up!

Henry and I took a cooking class on Wednesday that my parents gave us for Christmas. It was themed around 1960s food and the show Mad Men, and took place at the Cooks of Crocus Hill. I love their cooking classes--they usually have fantastic food, very knowledgeable and personable chefs and more information than I know what to do with. In this class, I learned more than I ever thought I'd learn about mashed potatoes (which I'll share later--first I need to write about the dessert experiment!) and also about food anthropology. (Yes, there is such a thing--the chef went to school for it!)

The chef leading the course was named Kevin Ryan, and he was pretty much fantastic. I should have expected it--my mom and roommate went to one of his classes last fall, and this Christmas my mom was still singing his praises for helping her figure out one of her biggest candy-making challenges. He could not only explain how to make every dish we tried, but also exactly what was happening chemically otherwise to make the food the way it was AND the history how this food had been eaten. I was impressed. And, by the time I left, absolutely stuffed. (And today I learned that he has a book, which I'm going to have to check out soon...)

Kevin Ryan also taught me why my grandma, as well as most people's grandparents, so dearly love bringing some sort of jello to every family occasion. He pointed out that powdered gelatin is really a surprisingly new phenomenon, so in my grandma's day, bringing a jello dish somewhere meant you cared enough to spend a couple of days boiling down cow hooves to make it. Unfortunately, that feeling of jello being a luxury hasn't translated into our generation...until this class, I never really understood that the strawberry jello filled with shredded carrots meant "I love you enough to slave all week in my kitchen over cow hooves."

Anyway, for today I would like to post his recipe for grasshopper pie. To those who have been making this for a long time, maybe this isn't revolutionary BUT--in my experience, making grasshopper pie pretty much meant mixing some booze with ice cream and crunching up some Oreos. Without the ice cream, this was much, much better.


Kevin Ryan's Grasshopper Pie
Delicious, light and creamy. Makes 1 pie. This recipe should be made the night before you iintend to eat it to make sure it has plenty of time to chill and set.

Ingredients

Crust
16 Oreo Mint n' Creme cookies, broken into rough pieces (this still leaves half a box for snacking, as he pointed out--hurray!)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Filling
3 large egg yolks (the whites can be frozen and used later--they fit nicely in ice cube trays!)
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
pinch table salt
1/4 cup green creme de menthe
1/4 cup white creme de cacao

6 oz. bar semi-sweet chocolate, shaved

Instructions

Crust

1. Make sure your oven rack is in the middle position and preheat the oven to 350.
2. Grind the cookies in a food processor to make them fine crumbs. Transfer them to a bowl, drizzle with the butter and toss well.
3. Press crumbs evenly into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie place (using a ramekin can help, apparently!) abd refrigerate crust until firm, about 20 minutes.
4. Bake until set, 8 to 10 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Filling

1. Beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Combine the gelatin, sugar, 1/2 cup of the cream and salt in a medium saucepan and let sit until the gelatin softens, about 5 minutes. Then cook it over medium heat until the gelatin dissolves andthe mixture is very hot but NOT boiling, about 2 minutes. (The gelatin will break down if it's boiled.)
2. Whisking vigorously, slowly add the gelatin mix to the egg yolks. (Go very slow so you don't heat up the eggs too fast and scramble them. I've also tempered the eggs before by slowly pouring half the hot mix into the eggs, then pouring the eggs back into the hot mix.)
3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook, stirring vigorously, until it's slightly thickened, abouot 2 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and add the creme de menthe and creme de cacao.
5. Pour into a clean bowl and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, until wobbly but not set, about 20 minutes. It should be about the consistency of mayonaise.
6. Beat the remaining 1 1/2 cups cream with an electric mixer to stiff peaks. Whisk 1 cup of the whipped cream into the gelatin mixture until it is completely incorporated. Using a rubber spatula, fold the gelatin mixture into the remaining whipped cream until no streaks of white remain.
7. Scrape the mixture into the cooled pie shell, smooth the top and refrigerate until firm. This will be at least 6 hours but would be better overnight.
8. Serve, topping with chocolate curls if desired.