mizchef

posted by admin on Jan 2

Hi, everyone. Since I’ve been in cooking school, I haven’t had much time to cook at home (ironically).  The most I’ve been able to do throughout the course of the year is throw a bunch of vegetables together in a pot to make a chili, stew, or soup, or in a pan for the occasional frittata, and once or twice, I whipped up a batter for some muffins.

It’s now January 2, 2012. Classes are almost over (I have my last one on the 4^th), exams are behind me, and my Friday Night Dinner is just a memory now. And because of the holiday weekends, I’ve been able to make a few things, like the New Year’s Red Quinoa & Black-Eyed Peas Salad.

It’s getting mighty cold here in New York, so I decided that I should make some soup today. I started with homemade vegetable stock, then made the soup with scallions, garlic, zucchini, carrots, plum tomatoes, peas, and black-eyed peas. Toward the end, I added some minced parsley, which gave it a nice, fresh, “green” flavor. I ladled some in a bowl, then I threw in some separately cooked noodles for good measure.

To accompany my soup, I also made baked millet croquettes, a recipe I got from the Natural Gourmet Institute. Millet is a whole grain that has been used since antiquity.  It’s a staple grain in many countries, but until recently, you would most likely find millet in the U.S. in bird seed. Millet is a good source of magnesium, as well as phosphorus and manganese. In fact, 1 cup cooked millet provides 19% RDA of magnesium and 17% of phosphorus. Millet is recommended in our diets for heart health, the development and repair of body tissue, and to help prevent against diabetes, breast cancer, and asthma.

These croquettes are a nice way to use millet and they make a good party food. So here’s the recipe, which I’ve adapted from the original NGI version. Aside from being completely vegetarian and vegan, if you use tamari instead of shoyu, it's completely gluten free, too. Enjoy!

Baked Millet Croquettes

1 cup millet
2 cups water*
½ tsp salt
½ cup sunflower seeds, toasted**
1/2 bunch scallions, minced
½ bunch parsley, minced
1 small carrot, finely grated
2-4 tbs shoyu or tamari

1. Wash millet in sieve. Drain well. In saucepot, dry roast over medium heat, stirring constantly for about 10 minutes or until millet starts to smell nutty.
2. Add water and salt to millet and bring to a bowl. Simmer 30 minutes until water is absorbed. Cool millet in large bowl.
3. Grind sunflower seeds in food processor. Add to millet, along with scallions, parsley, and carrots. Add shoyu to taste, and squeeze mixture together with hands until soft and sticky. If the croquettes don’t stick together, add a little water to the mixture, just enough to make it stickier.
4. Form into croquettes and bake on greased cookie sheet or parchment paper until golden brown, about 30 minutes.

* I prefer to cook the millet in vegetable stock for a better flavor.

** The sunflower seeds give the croquettes a discernible crunch; if you prefer a smoother mouth feel, omit the sunflower seeds.

posted by admin on Jan 1

Happy New Year, everyone! Around the world, different people have their own traditions and rituals for ringing in the New Year. And food always plays a part.

For example, in Japan, it is customary to eat soba noodles during the New Year’s celebration to ensure a long life. In many Latin American countries, as well as Spain, 12 grapes are eaten—1 for each month—and it is hoped that the grapes are sweet as a harbinger of a sweet year ahead. In many countries, legumes are popular for New Year’s because they swell when cooked, symbolizing increased financial prosperity. Lentils, particularly, are used in Italy and Brazil.

In the United States, black-eyed peas are popular (the band and the legume) and Hoppin’ John is a staple New Year’s dish in the South. I made my own black-eyed peas dish incorporating the healthy grain quinoa. And to make it more festive, I used red quinoa. So, here’s the recipe for my New Year’s Red Quinoa and Black-Eyed Peas Salad. Enjoy.

New Year’s Red Quinoa and Black-Eyed Peas Salad

1 1/2 cups red or white quinoa, rinsed
2 3/4 cups vegetable stock
2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
1 1/2 cups chopped bell peppers, mixed colors
5 scallions, thinly sliced
1 Haas avocado, cut into small dice
1/4 finely chopped fresh Italian parsley

Dressing:
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp flavored mustard
salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook the quinoa in the vegetable stock until liquid has been absorbed and grains are tender. Transfer to a large bowl and let cool.

2. When quinoa has cooled, add remaining ingredients (except dressing).

3. Whisk together the dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Mix well and adjust seasoning as desired. If it’s dry, add more oil a little at a time and mix well.

posted by admin on Dec 5

We’ve been in the thick of the food and wellness portion of our program at the Natural

Squash-Sea Vegetable Salad

Gourmet Institute. I don’t know whether other cooking schools have anything like this, but I don’t think so. This is what sets NGI apart from other schools: Its focus on health-supportive cooking. And part of that is understanding various diets and lifestyle programs/principles (for lack of a better way of putting it), such as Macrobiotics and Aryuveda.

Summer Squash with Pesto

We’ve also learned about food and healing for specific illnesses, such as heart disease and cancer, and for keeping the immune system strong, and a couple of weeks ago, we had a cleanse and detox class. This class discussed the digestive system, specifically the kidneys, liver, and colon, and how to cleanse toxins from them.

This week, we had another detox class, except that this time it was “living foods”—i.e., raw foods. We prepared and ate numerous dishes that were completely raw, and it was surprisingly filling and satisfying. We had:

Sweet Potato Pie

Filbert Sweet Milk
Vegetable Soup
Mixed Nut and Vegetable Pate
Jicama Salad
Cinnamon Beets
Squash-Sea Vegetable Salad
Summer Squash with Pesto
Sweet Potato Pie with Cashew Nut Cream
Sunflower Spread
Raw Chocolate Brownie

Sunflower Pate

We started the meal with a shot of wheatgrass-apple juice. When they hear “wheatgrass,” most people think of 1970s hippies living in communes and subsisting on alfalfa sprouts and brown rice. But wheatgrass has so many health benefits, such as helping acne and skin problems, reducing inflammation, and aiding digestion. Its shining quality is that it contains chlorophyll. In fact, wheatgrass is the best living source of chlorophyll, and the health benefits are extensive.

Wheatgrass does not exactly make people go “Mmm, mmm!” but when combined with freshly juiced apples, as we had it, it’s actually quite tasty. We also had homemade kefir, which I can’t honestly say I was crazy about. It had a funky, bad-cheese flavor to it. But some people like that, and to those who do, more power to you.

Mixed Nuts Vegetable Pate

Personally, I would never be able to survive on a raw foods diet (not happily, anyway). I need hot foods, especially in winter. Can you imagine going home at the end of a dark, dreary, freezing winter day and having all cold, raw foods? As delicious as they might be, I would not feel satisfied. In fact, when I got home after class, I had the urge to have a bowl of hot soup. Which I did. And I was happy.

But a raw food diet is a great way to detox, particularly if you’ve gone through a heavy eating period, or a “bad-food” period. On a temporary basis, it wouldn’t be so bad. If you’re interested in giving it a try, here’s a simple recipe for Cinnamon Beets to try. Adjust the seasonings until it’s to your liking. Enjoy.

Cinnamon Beets

Cinnamon Beets

Adapted from Dining in the Raw: cooking with “the Buff” by Rita Romano

Makes 4 servings

2 medium beets, peeled
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon tahini
Juice form 1 orange
1 ½ tablespoons Nama shoyu*
ginger juice**
splash lemon juice
salt

1. Make long strands of “angel hair” by putting beets through a spriralizer. [If you don’t have one of these, just grate the beets using the large holes of a box grater.]
2. Blend cinnamon, tahini, orange juice, and shoyu, along with ginger juice, lemon juice and salt to taste. Pour dressing over beets. Let sit 1 hour and drain well before serving.

Note: For a different taste, substitute one teaspoon chives for the cinnamon and add one teaspoon dry mustard.

*Nama shoyu is unpasteurized shoyu, available in health food stores.

**Make ginger juice by grating fresh ginger and squeezing it in cheese cloth.

posted by admin on Aug 27

This week at the Natural Gourmet Institute, we had wheat-free baking. Wheat allergies/sensitivities seem to be a growing issue around the world; consequently, wheat-free products are part of a booming industry, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to wane anytime soon.

I personally know people who are affected by wheat sensitivities and I have been experimenting with different grains and flours for a while now. I probably would be doing it anyway because I just love using different products in my cooking, but it was nice to learn more about wheat-free baking in an official forum.

We had different flours at our disposal, such as chick pea, white rice, potato and tapioca starch, sorghum, and arrowroot, and we also made flour out of almonds. We made cookies, cakes, macaroons, scones, and tartlets.

I personally made currant scones with chick pea flour, aka garbanzo flour, bean flour, besan, and gram flour. This type of flour is very popular in Italy, but is essential in Indian cuisine. So, it can easily be found in any Italian or Indian market, and probably well-stocked supermarkets these days. A traditional dish in Italian cuisine that utilizes chick pea flour is panelle, which are blocks of chick pea flour mixture, baked or fried, and eaten with sauces or in a sandwich with ricotta and grated cheese. In fact, I have a recipe for it in my cookbook, What, No Meat?

Right now, though, I’m going to share with you the recipe for Currant Scones with chick pea flour. Enjoy!

Wheat-Free Currant Scones

Copyright © Natural Gourmet Institute

Yield: 10 tiny scones

1 cup garbanzo flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tb maple crystals
2 Tb cold butter*
1 egg
2 Tb + 2 tsp cream
1 Tb orange or lemon zest
1/4 currants

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and maple crystals.

3. Cut butter into dry mix to form coarse crumbs.

4. In another bowl, beat eggs, cream, zest, and currants together.

5. Add wet to dry until just combined.

6. Fold out onto table and form a semi-flattened log.

7. Cut log into triangles and bake on parchment for 10 minutes.

8. Serve warm.

*If found that 2 Tb of butter was not enough. The dough was dry and I had to more than double the amount of butter until it was moist enough. When the butter is cut into the dry ingredients, it should stick together lightly when you pinch a little between your fingers. If it looks dry and “flour-y” instead of like coarse crumbs, add more butter, a tablespoon at a time, until it’s the right consistency.

posted by admin on Aug 11

I’m a little behind in my class reports but I’m trying to catch up.

So, after cookie class at school, we had Cakes and Cake Decorating. But, of course, being that this is the Natural Gourmet Institute we’re talking about, we didn’t just make any old cakes. We made cakes with whole, healthy ingredients in mind.

We made a couple of classics—carrot cake, genoise, and almond torte–but we also made some modern cakes, such as carob cake and ginger cake. It was the frostings, though, that were the real experiments for us. While we did make some standard frostings, such as Swiss Buttercream and Cream Cheese, we stepped into the brave new world of healthy and/or gluten-free and/or vegan alternatives.

Photo: Elyse Prince

Some of the frostings we made were Almond Ganache Frosting, Nut Butter Frosting, Carob Frosting, Coconut Cashew Frosting, Coconut Ganache, and Lemon Tofu Cream. Even the seemingly ubiquitous Chocolate Fudge Icing we made was a page out of the ordinary, as its main ingredient was nut butter. And you know what? They were delicious!

Photo: Elyse Prince

After we made the cakes themselves, we decorated them. We learned how to use various tips in our pastry kits to make flowers, shells, and basket weaves. Everyone did such a great job, I was truly impressed. The cake at right was decorated by my classmate Kalie. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Ultimately, no matter how you cut it, cake is cake, and it will never be a “healthy” thing to eat. But done the NGI way, these desserts don’t have to be the worst things for you, either. Below are recipes for Carob Cake with Walnuts and Chocolate Fudge Icing, both health-supportive alternatives to supermarket or bakery cakes. Let me know what you think.

Carob Cake with Walnuts

Copyright © NGI

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons carob powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
6 tablespoons canola or melted coconut oil
2/3 cup maple syrup, room temp
3/4 cup almond milk or soymilk, room temp
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Oil and flour one 8-inch cake pan and line bottom with parchment.

2. Combine dry ingredients in bowl and whisk together to combine. set aside.

3. In separate bowl, whisk together wet ingredients and ;pour into dry. mix well.

4. Pour batter into prepared baking pan.

5. Sprinkle walnuts on top.

6. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Chocolate Fudge Icing

Copyright © Jenny Matthau/NGI

2 1/2 cups maple syrup
1 1/2 cups smooth nut butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups cocoa, sifted

1. In bowl of food processor, combine syrup, nut butter and vanilla.

2. Sift cocoa into wet mixture.

3. Continue to mix until thoroughly combined.

posted by admin on Aug 5

Blueberry waffles. Belgian waffles. Buttermilk waffles. They all sound good, right? Waffles have become an American breakfast classic. And today is National Waffle Day. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Waffles may seem like a contemporary invention, but they’ve actually been around quite a long time, some say as early as the ancient Greek period. The word waffle is derived from the word wafer. According to legend,  during the Middle Ages, bakers wanted to compete with monasteries, where communion wafers were made, and came up with the waffle.

kfc.com

Waffles received a marketing boost when Thomas Jefferson bought a waffle iron in France and began serving waffles in the White House. Culinary history tells us that he began a waffle trend, and “waffle parties” became de rigueuracross the U.S.  Belgian waffles became popular after they were introduced at the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, New York.

The waffle iron was invented by Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York. He patented his “device to bake waffles” on August 24, 1869.

In the interest of keeping things healthy, here is a recipe for “Healthy Waffles,” courtesy of Waffle-Recipe.com. Enjoy!

Healthy Waffles

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup ground flax seed
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups skim milk or water
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat a waffle iron, and coat with cooking spray if necessary.

2. Sift dry ingredients – flour, flax seed, wheat germ, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

3. Beat eggs in a separate bowl.

4. Add remaining liquid ingredients – milk, oil, applesauce, and vanilla together and whisk until well blended.

5. Add liquid ingredients to flour mixture and stir until smooth.

6. Pour batter into waffle iron and cook until crisp and golden brown.

posted by admin on Jul 31

Okay, so people have been bugging me for the recipe for the Poached Pear Tart with Cornmeal Crust that I made at the Natural Gourmet Institute this week. So here you go:

Poached Pear Tart with Cornmeal Crust

Copyright © Natural Gourmet Institute

1 cornmeal pie shell (see recipe below)
1 qt white grape juice
pinch sea salt
4 pears, peeled, halved, and cored
1 tbsp agar flakes
1 tbsp kuzu dissolved in 1/4 cup water
3/4 cup seedless raspberry jam
1 pint raspberries

1. Poach pears in grape juice until fork tender. Remove pears with slotted spoon, cover, and chill.

2. In small pot simmer 1 1/2 cups poaching liquid with agar flakes until agar is dissolved. Stir in kuzu mixture and cook, stirring gently, until mixture turns clear. remove from heat, cover with lid, and set aside.

3. Spread a layer of raspberry jam evenly in bottom of prepared crust. Slice the pears and fan them out on top of the jam. Arrange raspberries over the top. Pour or brush the glaze over everything. Chill until set, about 20 minutes.

Cornmeal Crust

1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup pecans
1 cup oats
1/4 cup canola or melted coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
pinch sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In bowl of food processor, combine cornmeal, pecans, and oats. grind to a fine meal. place mixture in medium bowl.

3. In small bowl, whisk together oil, maple syrup, and sea slat.

4. Stir wet ingredients into dry and mix until cookie-like dough is formed.
5. Press into lightly oiled tart pan. bake tart 12 – 15 minutes or until firm and lightly browned. Cool.

posted by admin on Jul 25

On Saturday, July 23, 2011, New York City experienced a heatwave that knocked everyone on their asses. Temperatures were record breaking—it was 104 degrees F in Central Park! And so, on this day, the air conditioning unit in the kitchen at school was broken. Oh, yes. Broken. It was hot enough to bake a quiche in that room when it was still dark and empty.

Imagine, then, how 14 students felt when they had to show up to class in full uniform, turn on the ovens (that’s plural), and bake pastry crusts. Sweet fancy Moses, it felt like my brain was melting. Everyone was withering and was barely able to stay alert. Finally, at about 3:15, we got word that we were allowed to take off our jackets and hats. And thank god, because I really don’t know if I would have made it. We all practically stripped down to our skivvies, except for our pants and aprons. That is, with the exception of one resilient soul who felt that it was her duty to stay in uniform. Bless her heart, she made it, and we didn’t have to call the paramedics.

Our instructor said that that kind of heat is typical of restaurant kitchens and being able to deal with the heat was a badge of honor. Understood. But I don’t plan on working in a restaurant kitchen so to hell with that. Badges? We don’t need your stinkin’ badges.

Anyway, we made apple galettes with vegan pastry crusts and they all turned out pretty nice. The instructor was impressed with the height I achieved with only two apples. LOL Don’t know what to say about that. I took the galette to my parents’ house the next day. It was my brother’s birthday, so I thought I’d share it. Not bad. Not bad at all. The apple filling was light and not cloyingly sweet. The crust was not flaky because we used solid coconut oil rather than butter and it was so hot in the room that the oil was melting as we were working with it. So, it came out denser than I would have liked, but it was still tender and tasty with the nutty flavor of whole wheat pastry flour.

Here is the recipe, and you don’t have to be a vegan to enjoy it.

Apple Galette with Vegan Crust

© Susan Baldassano/The Natural Gourmet Institute

Yield: 1 6-inch diameter galette

Make dough first
*Addition to the original recipe

Filling
2 large apples, peeled, thinly sliced
1 tbsp lemon juice in 1 cup water
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp maple crystals
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp maple crystals
2 tbsp bread crumbs
Pinch cinnamon
*2 tbsp maple syrup

1. Place sliced apples in bowl with lemon juice and water.
2. In medium sauté pan, heat oil. Add apples and cook until apples are slightly tender but not mushy,
3. Place cooked apples in bowl. Add 2 tbsp maple crystals, cinnamon, and vanilla. Mix to combine. Set aside.
4. Preheat oven to 375 F. roll out dough to 9-inch circle, 1/8 inch thick.
5. In small bowl, combine bread crumbs with remaining 2 tbsp of maple crystals and pinch cinnamon.
6. Scatter bread crumbs/maple crystal mixture into center of circle leaving 1 ½ inch border.
7. Fan apples in concentric circles over area covered with bread crumb/crystal mixture
8. Rotate halfway through and brush completely with maple syrup.* Fold dough over apples. Place in refrigerator 30 minutes.
9. Bake 30-35 minutes until crust is brown and firm to touch. Cook, slice, and serve.

Vegan Pastry Crust

¾ cup whole wheat pastry crust
¾ cup unbleached white flour
2 tbsp maple crystals
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
Pinch sea salt
1/3 cup coconut oil (room temp, partially sold)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp maple syrup
3-5 tbsp ice cold water

1. In medium bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Use whisk to fully combine.
2. Add oil to bowl. Using pastry cutter; blend oil into flour. Dough should have coarse, sand-like consistency.
3. Add vanilla, 1 tbsp water and maple syrup to dough with wooden spoon. Mix to combine.
4. Slowly add water to dough one tbsp at at a time. Dough should just hold together and be wet (but not dripping).
5. Place dough in plastic wrap. Flatten to disc shape and refrigerate 10-15 minutes only.
6. Take out dough; allow to rest until workable.
7. Roll out dough between 2 layers of parchment paper. Dough should be about 9 inches around and no more than 1/8 inch thick.

posted by admin on Jul 17

My class at Natural Gourmet Institute rocked the cookies last week! I have to say, everyone made some great cookies. We actually made them in two separate classes: one in which we started with regular cookie recipes (and muffins and brownies) and made batch after batch, substituting an ingredient with each subsequent batch until a gluten-free, vegan product was produced. The proper way to do this is in stages: you start by substituting one ingredient at a time, bake each batch with that one substitution, and proceed in that manner until you reach your final product.

We worked in teams of two, each team converting one recipe. My partner and I made peanut butter cookies. Our final product was made up of spelt and oat flour, natural peanut butter, coconut (palm) sugar, coconut oil (in place of butter), and—are you ready for this?—in place of eggs: mashed sweet potatoes. And they were awesome. Everyone (I think) in the class loved them, as did the instructor. Numerous people asked us for the recipe, which I am sharing with you below.

That was Wednesday. On Saturday, we each made our own cookies and the goal was to make “beautiful” cookies that would be good enough to serve to guests (or something like that). I think we all did a spectacular job, as the photos here attest. We had a gorgeous table of linzer tart cookies, checkerboard cookies, tuiles, thumbprint cookies, chocolate-cherry bars, and numerous others. And, of course, we had a couple of vegan cookies. My recipe was walnut tea crescents, but rather than shaping them into crescents, the instructor suggested that I roll it out and stamp out shapes with a cookie cutter. It was a really cute tray of cookies, what with the little bunnies, butterflies, flowers, and maple leaves. One of the other students had fig filling left over from her fig pinwheels and I used that to make little fig sandwiches with my tea cookies.

I think we could have opened up a bakery with the beauties we baked. If you Facebook friend me, you can see the photo gallery HERE. What do you think? Give the vegan peanut butter recipe a try and let us know how they turn out.

Gluten-Free, Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies (with sugar alternatives)

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and  cut into chunks
1 cup natural, organic peanut butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup coconut (palm) sugar (or maple crystals)
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1 1/4 cup spelt flour
1/4 cup oat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt

1. Place the sweet potato in a small pot with just enough water to cover; bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer until tender. Drain; let cool and mash well. Measure out 1/4 cup.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper; set aside.

3.In a stand mixer, mix the peanut butter until smooth. Add the 1/4 cup sweet potato and vanilla.

4. In another bowl, whisk together sugar and coconut oil until well blended, and add to the mixer. Mix until light and fluffy.

5. Whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt and add to the batter. Mix until well blended.

6. Using a medium-size ice cream scoop, place balls of the batter about 1 inch apart on the sheet pans. Press each one down with a fork in a cross-hatch pattern. Bake about 15 minutes. Transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

Note: I lost track of exactly how many this recipe made, but count on at least a couple of dozen.

posted by admin on Jul 12

It’s National Pecan Pie Day and this dessert is a classic American one. I imagine, though, that many people who once enjoyed reveling in pecan pie’s thick, sugary center and crunchy pecan topping have stopped doing so because of one particular ingredient: the demon corn syrup.

Corn syrup has traditionally been an integral ingredient in pecan pie, providing not only sweetness but viscosity and binding action. Well, pecan pie-lovers can once again indulge because there are now recipes that do not require corn syrup. Below is one such recipe, from Epicurious.com. And it sounds gooooooood. Of course, it still calls for brown sugar, but if you’re afraid of sugar, too, maybe it’s time to put pecan pie back into your oven by experimenting and making a version that is not only corn syrup-free but sweetened in a healthier way as well. Maybe even gluten-free? Give it a shot. And please share your recipe with the rest of us.

While I’m on the subject of pecans, I’d like to mention Priester’s Pecans in Fort Deposit, Alabama. I was there last year and got a 5-pound bag of pecan pieces for $30, which is a great price if you know anything about pecans. I wrote up a little something about it in a blog about food in Alabama in Uncovering Food Secrets in Alabama.  Enjoy!

Spirited Brown Sugar Pecan Pie

• 1 refrigerated pie crust (half of 15-ounce package), room temperature
• 2 cups (packed) dark brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon Scotch whisky
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 cups pecan halves
• Whipped cream