every day, pizza

ingredients on pizza 1 (this picture) / pizza 2 (elsewhere), in the following order up from the crust:

• tomato sauce (with Penzey’s Italian seasoning and sun-dried tomatoes)
• parmesan
• extra parmesan / dubliner
• salami
• caramelized onions
• roast peppers / roast asparagus
• part-skim mozzarella

I made a big bucket of dough (2 qts unrisen = 4 lbs) with about 80/20 AP/white whole wheat. I left the cornmeal out of this one, but I think I’ll add it next time (at about 2 T for every 8 oz of flour). I used 1/2 lbs of dough for each 12″ pizza.

We used the BBQ Guru to hold the BGE temp at 450 F. Pre-baked the dough for 7 min. Flipped the crust to put on ingredients. Baked the pizza for 13 min.

——————–
We prepared ingredients a few days ago and froze them in single layers (so we can break off small amounts) in ziploc bags:

• roasted asparagus
• roasted peppers
• sauteed mushrooms
• grilled chicken
• steak
• chicken-apple sausage
• pulled pork
• part-skim mozzarella

We didn’t get a cheese blend because we have specialty cheeses in the fridge:

• aged gouda
• stilton
• dubliner
• cranberry wensleydale
• parmesan
• aged jack
• goat cheese

We also bought a 3 lbs log of salami

Everything is Costco-sized. We’ve committed to eating a lot of pizza this month.

beginner truffle how-to, from Sis

From my sister, a part-time chocolatier, in response to “what’s the easiest chocolate thing I can make”:

I’ll try to keep this a reasonable length. I’m sorry if I fail.

So, the easiest thing for you is probably a piped cream ganache, which is what I normally do. Basically your recipe is (with everything by weight):

1 part liquefier: this includes heavy cream and any liquid flavorings. If you aren’t using liquid flavoring (liquer, extract), then it’s just your cream. If you do use liquid flavoring, a good place to start is 5:1 cream:flavoring.

2 parts dark chocolate OR 2.5 parts milk or white chocolate (chopped and still tempered). I’ve never noticed a really significant difference in types of chocolate here. I’m sure it does matter, but it comes out tasty either way. The only place I really care about how fancy my chocolate is is for dipping, where my advice is to not use chocolate chips – they’re formulated to stay somewhat cohesive when melted and are just a pain to dip in.

.25-.30 parts glucose syrup (generally light corn syrup for me, can also be a flavoring like honey or molasses)

Half as much butter as liquid flavoring, if necessary.

Bring the cream and glucose syrup to a boil. Pour it on the chopped chocolate. Give it a minute to melt the chocolate, then stir to emulsify. Pour out, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for about an hour until firm and plastic. Table it lightly until it forms stiff peaks, but no further or it will be difficult to pipe. If you let it sit long enough and were using well-tempered chocolate, you may be able to skip tabling. If you let it sit too long and were using well-tempered chocolate, it may be too hard to pipe at all. Pipe it into balls if you can, or just use a spoon and your hands. There’s not a real difference in result here, I just think piping’s easier.

The easiest way to finish them is to roll them in cocoa powder or chopped nut or something along those lines. If you’re doing this, you can do so with the freshly formed truffles, rather than waiting for them to finish crystallization. If you don’t want to do this, or your ganache is soft enough you think it’s a bad idea texture-wise, then your best bet for tempering is just barely melt the chocolate – don’t let it get hot enough to lose its temper (oh the puns), just get most of the chocolate melted and then stir without heat to melt the rest.

I think the easiest way to get good flavors are to substitute for the cream or glucose syrup. Honey and molasses have both worked really well to replace corn syrup. Nut milks give a really great flavor replacing cream – blend 1 part hazelnut with 2 parts water, strain it with moistened cheesecloth or just a strainer, and use as a direct substitute for cream. Other nuts will work the same, though you might have to adjust the nut to water ratio based on the fat/protein content of the nuts, to best approximate cream.

So, I did indeed fail at making that short. Oops. Hopefully that’s what you wanted to know, though, and I didn’t spend too much time repeating things you’ve already heard.

slow-roasted tomatoes

From my brother:

This is without a doubt the best way to prepare a grape, cherry, or plum tomato. You’ll never regret buying a full case of tomatoes from Costco again. Bittman’s book has essentially the same recipe, but he recommends you put the tomatoes cut side down on a wire rack over a baking pan. Cut side up on baking parchment worked well for me. The recipe says you should go easy on salt, pepper, and herb, and they aren’t kidding. Trace amounts of the stuff is all you need, as the tomatoes are so flavorful by the end anyways.

slow-roasted tomatoes at smitten kitchen
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blackberry cobbler

ingredients

shortcake-style topping

• 8 oz water
• 6 oz sugar
• 11 oz self-rising flour
• 3/4 t cinnamon
• 8 T butter
• 3/8 c dry buttermilk
• 3/4 t baking soda

filling

• 42 oz blackberries
• 3 T corn starch (dissolved in 2 T water)
• 1/3 c sugar (to taste)

process

notes

• We used a 13×9 pan.
• We precooked the filling.
• There was much too much topping for me. I would decrease the topping by half or more. Juliana thought it was perfect.

brother’s beginner BBQ sauces

My brother made some pulled pork the last weekend and decided to compare a few different Carolina barbecue sauces. So, without any preamble, here are the recipes (with minor edits):

Carolina, mustard-style

• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 2 t (granulated) garlic
• 2 t salt
• 2 t pepper
• 1 t red pepper flakes
• 1/3 c lemon juice
• 1/4 c white vinegar
• 1/2 c apple cider
• 1 T worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 c molasses
• 2 c mustard

Carolina, western-style

• 6 oz tomato paste
• 1/4 c ketchup
• 2 c water
• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 1/4 c fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 c worcestershire
• 2 T cider vinegar
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 t ground allspice
• 1 t salt
• 1 t black pepper

Carolina, eastern-style

• 1 c white vinegar
• 1 c cider vinegar
• 1 T brown sugar
• 1 T red pepper flakes
• 1 T hot sauce, or to taste
• 1 t salt
• 1 t ground black pepper

The first two you put together, heat, and let simmer. For the vinegar sauce throw the ingredients in a jar and store in your fridge, shaking occasionally. The vinegar sauce was the easiest by far, but I think I actually liked the taste of it the most. My wife’s favorite was the tomato-based sauce.

cobblers of July 2011

We’ve been on a cobbler kick. Blueberry. Blackberry. Cherry. Yesterday, Hools came close to making one with passion fruit and mango. The blueberry was based on America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe . The blackberry came out of our Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (p 272). The cherry is straight from Bittmans HCE (p 883).

blueberry cobbler

filling

• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 T cornstarch
• 1/4 t cinnamon
• 1/8 t salt
• 30 oz blueberries
• 1 1/2 t lemon zest
• 1 T lemon juice

topping

• 5 oz AP flour
• 2 T cornmeal
• 3 T crystallized ginger, minced
• 1/4 c sugar
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/4 t baking soda
• 1/4 t salt
• 4 T butter
• 1 t lemon juice
• 1/3 c milk
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 1/4 t ground ginger

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. For the filling: Stir sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt together in large bowl. Add berries and mix gently with rubber spatula until evenly coated; add lemon zest and juice and mix to combine. Transfer berry mixture to 9-inch glass pie pan, place pie pan on rimmed baking sheet, and bake until filling is hot and bubbling around edges, about 25 minutes.
3. For the biscuit topping: Whisk flour, cornmeal, crystallized ginger, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to combine. Whisk melted butter, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla in small bowl. Mix remaining 2 teaspoons sugar and ground ginger in second small bowl and set aside. One minute before berries come out of the oven, add wet ingredients to dry ingredients; stir with rubber spatula until just combined and no dry pockets remain.
4. To assemble and bake cobbler: Remove berries from oven; increase oven temperature to 425 degrees. Pinch off 8 equal-sized pieces biscuit dough and place on hot berry filling, spacing them at least 1/2 inch apart (they should not touch). Sprinkle each mound of dough with ginger-sugar. Bake until filling is bubbling and biscuits are golden brown on top and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool cobbler and serve.

comments

An excellent cobbler. We each had minor issues, though. I thought that the berries had a kind of strange aftertaste (from the cornstarch, I think), and Hools wasn’t a fan of the ginger in the crust.

blackberry cobbler

On p 272 of BHG. It was the cherry cobbler recipe made with blackberries. This one came out too sweet, but otherwise nice.

cherry cobbler

On p 883 of HCE. The blueberry cobbler recipe made with cherries. I only mixed 1/4 c of sugar into the cherries (instead of 1/2 c). Also, we precooked the cherries until they started to give off juice (because they started out frozen). The crust spread out a fair amount, which surprised me, and tastes more like cookie than like shortcake.

It was delicious. The best so far, but not great, yet… Hools thinks we need to double our crust. I think we need to double the fruit.

mandarin wine

• 16 oz pulped mandarins
• 24 oz fruity red wine (we used a shiraz)
• 4 1/2 oz spiced rum
• 4 1/4 oz brandy

1. mix.
2. serve chilled.

Good Night Waffles

I think I would have named them something else. “Good Night Waffles” sounds a bit too like much like a light thriller to me, honestly. Like something Ian Fleming would title a short story about breakfast. Of course, it does have much more poetry and appeal than “Belgian-Style Yeast Waffles”, which is what descriptive recipe-writers at King Arthur Flour called their recipe. -DB

Mom writes…

Most of the mixing for these waffles is done the night before. In the morning, just mix in the eggs, vanilla extract and a pinch of baking soda while the waffle maker is heating. Leftover batter may be covered and kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Heat your waffle maker in the morning, stir the batter and have a freshly baked waffle for breakfast.

Makes about 6 Belgian waffles (I don’t really know – I’ve never counted)

• 1/2 cup lukewarm (105 F) water
• 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
• 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (1 packet)
• 2 cups whole milk, warmed (about 105 F) ( I scald mine then let cool, and I almost always use skim milk ’cause that’s what I have. You can increase the amount of the butter by .04*16=.64oz or another Tablespoon to compensate)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

The night before, or at least 8 hours before baking, combine the warm water, granulated sugar and yeast. Let stand 10 minutes, until foamy (I usually skip this step). Stir in the warm milk, melted butter and salt. Beat in the flour until smooth. Wrap bowl with plastic wrap and let stand overnight on the counter top – do not refrigerate.
When ready to bake, preheat waffle iron. Stir the eggs, vanilla extract and baking soda into the batter. Cook.

Alternative if you don’t have overnight or 8 hours before you need to cook them:
Use self rising flour instead of all purpose, don’t add extra salt, and combine everything at once. The leftover batter will be great the next couple days, too. The waffles on the first day won’t be as light and airy, but are still better than anything that’s not home made.

Good luck,
Mom

hummus

Mom writes…

So, I have knitting group tonight, and just made up some hummus to take. One of the flavors turned out so good that I thought I’d share it with you!

So, basically I followed Bittman’s Hummus recipe in HCE pg. 93.

I like to make my chickpeas/garbanzo beans this way: soak a one pound bag overnight in salted water. (Read somewhere recently that salted water will soften the skin on beans as some of the sodium will replace calcium or something else, and that helps. Whatever). OK, so then I put them in the pressure cooker with fresh water, teaspoon of salt, water just barely over the top of the beans. Bring to pressure and cook 18 minutes, then let cool down on its own. You could do this in the morning and let it sit on the stove during the day until you get home. If you don’t open it, they’ll stay ’til evening with no concerns at all. This will make about 6 cups of beams, enough for 3 recipes–which is why I got to try different flavors. You can make just one big batch, but I really like having different flavors.

OK, so Bittman puts everything in food processor and lets it blend:

• 2 cups beans (drained)
• 1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste)
• 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 cloves garlic
• juice of one lemon, salt & pepper
• 1 Tbsp cumin or paprika
• parsley garnish

Very tasty

I used less tahini (1/3 cup) since I didn’t have enough for 3 batches at 1/2 cup each, 1 Tbsp chopped garlic instead of cloves, 1 tsp salt, and extra Tbsp of lemon juice since my lemons weren’t very juicy, and a little very fine lemon zest, and some fresh toasted & ground cumin.

Awesomely tasty

As above, without the cumin. Add 1/4 tsp chipotle powder, 1/2 tsp dulce paprika (Spanish), about 8 pieces of sun dried tomato (the jar I had had pieces that were halves of tomatoes, but they were small tomatoes – I used 8 pieces), and some extra liquid. Blend. Adjust salt. AWESOME! The chipotle powder really adds a lovely smoky depth to this flavor.

Really tasty

As above, without the cumin. Add a couple tablespoons of the ‘rooster’ chili/garlic sauce. I had some home made sweet/hot pepper sauce that I added some of too, but I don’t think it made much difference. Add some bean liquid if you like. Adjust salt if needed. Garnish with a tiny dollop of the chili garlic sauce to make it pretty!

Each of these makes about 3 cups or a little more, depending on how much extra bean water you add. Flavors are better a couple hours after they’re made, but are good even immediately if you don’t have time. I love the sun dried tomato/chipotle/paprika one the best. It’s what inspired me to send this to you, and thought that the pressure cooker directions might be helpful – but you can just buy canned chickpeas, too, and make this up super quick. Canned chickpeas are probably a good pantry item to have. Tahini is less likely to be found in your pantry.

David’s note on flavors

We’ve also had great success with this hummus recipe. However, when we use paprika, we typically leave out the lemon. This is because once when we made smoked paprika hummus, it was merely “ok”, and I ascribed that to a flavor clash between the lemon and the smoked paprika.

goulash

You can do this same recipe in a slow cooker.

• 3 lbs beef cut into 1″ cubes (I used bottom round – wanted to use top round chuck – any kind of stew appropriate beef works, even hamburger)
• 1/4 lb bacon
• 1 massive onion or 2 large ones or 4 medium – chop
• 1 lb carrots, cut into 1/2″ cubes or approximation thereof
• 1 lb sauerkraut (sold here in bags in the meat section, next to the pork. Canned is fine. Amt is approx.)
• 1/4 cup hot Hungarian paprika
• 1/4 cup sweet Hungarian paprika
• salt and pepper

1. Cook the bacon, brown the beef in the bacon with some salt & pepper, maybe some other spices as you choose (I used a little homemade “Montreal Steak Seasoning”)
2. Remove beef, soften the onion with high heat (add oil if needed), then stir in paprika. add beef back in, with carrots and sauerkraut (with the liquid). Simmer for a couple hours. Done!
3. Serve over what you like – I used wide egg noodles tossed with a little olive oil and poppy seeds. Also served with some sour cream on the side. This recipe will help keep your sinuses clear. You can use all sweet paprika, or adjust the ratio as you like.