Cottage Cheese Pie

A couple weeks ago I was preparing to head out on vacation to Cabo San Lucas with my younger son and daughter-in-law. Ellen was going to stay home and have her sister over while I was gone. Since we have a fairly unusual diet, I wanted to make several meals ahead for Ellen so she would not have to worry about what to eat. Except for during the holidays between Thanksgiving and Christmas we generally don’t eat sugar or much in the way of carbs. But that does not mean that we don’t love our desserts. The fun and challenge is to invent desserts that don’t use sugar or flour, but instead use sugar alternatives and non-wheat flour replacements. I wanted to come up with a new dessert that was mostly protein but still tasted and looked like a normal sugar-filled dessert.

Another odd thing about my cooking style is I grew up learning to cook from a survivalist mindset. This was not because survival was a concern, but because there were no stores anywhere nearby. I lived way out in the country, so when it was time to cook you used whatever you had around. Shopping was a once every couple week affair. We would all hop into the VW bus and travel down to Sacramento to do our shopping. (I say us, but I was a kid so really I was just tagging along.) So when I decided to make Ellen a dessert for while I was away, I just looked at what I had in the fridge and went from there. On this occasion, I had 6 eggs, a container of cultured cottage cheese, some cream cheese, and a couple jars of refrigerator berry jam that I had made a couple weeks earlier. In the freezer, I fortunately found a pre-made gluten-free pie crust from who knows when. So I decided that what I needed to make was a cottage cheese pie. I didn’t know if such a thing existed, but I decided to wing it anyway. In my mind, it seemed like I should be able to create something like a cheesecake in a pie shell.

First things first. Since you probably don’t have a jar full of refrigerator jam in your fridge, creating that will be the first step. Refrigerator jam is wonderfully fresh and healthy, much like eating fresh fruit. I created a super simple version just for this newsletter. Normally I will make a version that uses a special low-sugar pectin that does involve a bit of heating, mostly because pectin is a great prebiotic fiber to have in your diet. But for this simple version, I used chia seeds as my thickening agent. Simply take about 2 pounds of frozen mixed berries. Let them thaw completely. I then put them in a blender long enough to pulverize the berries mostly but not completely. You could do this in a bowl with a mixer, but you would likely get messy berry stains all over your kitchen. I transferred the mushed berries into a bowl. Then I squeezed 1 fresh lemon (which I have almost all year round on a lemon tree by my front door) into the berries and added ½ cup of erythritol/monk fruit sweetener. I mix this all together well with a spoon and then add 2/3 cup of chia seeds and mix them in. Taste-test the mixture to see if it is as sweet as you like. If not then add liquid stevia a few drops at a time until you like the taste. Transfer the mixture into a quart jar and stick it in the fridge overnight to firm up. I found there was just enough left over to put a nice dollop on a piece of gluten-free bread.

Okay, now for the cottage cheese pie! The easy way is to use a pre-made crust from the store – in my case a gluten-free one. But normally I would make a soft crust from almond flour, some melted butter, and some sweetener like the sugar-free erythritol/monk fruit type I pick up at Costco. That is basically a graham cracker crust substituting almond flour for the graham crackers. With the crust either prepared or removed from the freezer, I put enough of the berry jam into the crust to form a layer about ½ inch thick in the bottom of the crust. This will give us a lovely fruity counterpoint taste to the creamy cottage cheese filling over top of the berry jam. Get your oven turned on to 350 degrees.

Now for the filling. Crack four eggs into the blender then add one cup of cottage cheese. I used an active culture cottage cheese because that is what I had on hand, but the active culture thing is not necessary as the pie is baked and the good guy bacteria will all be killed by the heat. Dump a half cup of the sweetener in on top of that along with about 4 ounces of cream cheese. Finally, add in a teaspoon of vanilla and blend the whole mess until smooth. That is your filing mixture. Put your pie shell with berry filling onto a baking sheet and carefully pour the cottage cheese mixture over the berry jam until the pie shell is full. Carefully place the baking sheet with the full pie into the oven. You need a steady hand if the pie is full as it loves to spill filling over the side onto the baking sheet. Bake for at least an hour, perhaps longer. You want to be able to giggle the baking sheet and see that the filling is firm. Once firmness is achieved remove the pie and let cool for several hours. This type of custard pie is best eaten cold, not hot.

Technically you don’t really have to have a crust. You could make this as a custard dish. It does not even have to be sweet. You could leave out the sweetener and make the dish savory by adding crumbled bacon, avocado, dried tomatoes, green onions, asparagus, artichoke hearts, and even pepperoni with green chilies. Get wild and put some shredded sharp cheese on top! The possibilities are endless.

The best thing about this recipe is that it is essentially all protein with a little bit of valuable fat. I say valuable because egg yolks are full of essential brain nutrients and dairy fat is a type that is readily used as energy by the body when you don’t have a bunch of sugar competing with it and you don’t eat too much of it. As such, this pie can be a main dish and not just a dessert. It makes a wonderful guilt-free snack, basically like having a slice of cheese with a handful of berries. If you use the almond flour crust, then you just added a few nuts to that cheese and fruit.

The real reason I decided to share this fun experiment with you is because Ellen shared some of this pie with a few of her Heartflow clients and they loved it. The issue was that they wanted the recipe and I did not have a recipe. I just sort of made it up in the moment with what I had on hand. So today I have been trying to replicate what I did and this time write it down. This is a frequent complaint Ellen has about me. I am always inventing new dishes, but when Ellen really likes one there is no recipe. Typically my cooking is very one-shot. Reproducing what I have done before usually doesn’t happen. What can I say? This newsletter serves to meet the requests of Ellen’s clients for a recipe.

I think that home cooking may start a resurgence soon now that the California price for Big Macs is $20 (at least that is what patients are telling me). Who can afford to eat out anymore? Micky D is where you went when you could not afford to cook at home. Are $20 per hour burger flippers to blame? I suspect not. An interesting aside since I was just in Mexico, they just raised their minimum wage on Jan. 1 2024 to $14.94 per work day. That is $1.87 per hour! The minimum wage in Mexico has been raised each year for the past few years. For comparison, the federal minimum wage in the US and in 20 states is $7.25/hr. Just something to think about.

Take care,

David

Ellen 

A few weeks ago Ellen started working with a new trainer at home. His name is Luc. He uses different techniques than her old trainer Toni, which includes directly working the muscles to stretch them out before training. Ellen is excited about the progress she has already made with her stroke arm. With just four visits she is now able to extend it out straight. Woohoo !