Give Pizza a Chance

           

           One of the first things I can remember really wanting to learn how to cook from scratch was pizza. As a fat teenager I lived off the greasy, delivered to your door variety of the stuff. I could easily take down a large or more in a single sitting so suffice to say that I am a huge fan. Maybe it is the tie in to special occasions in my household growing up. Birthday parties, visits from long lost relatives seemed to always be commemorated with a phone call and a thirty minute wait. I must also say thank you to pizza for introducing me to one of my favourite foods in life, pineapple. Yep the Hawaiian special, now that I think about it, seems fairly pedestrian now but as a little kid I think it communicated to me that you could play with your food. I mean fruit on a savoury dish? This was new territory in my pot roast and roasted root vegetables for dinner world. The other thing that I love about pizza is the passion it stirs in seemingly everyone. Everyone has an opinion about what makes great pizza. Thick vs. thin crust, the number of toppings that should go on top, what those toppings are and even the amount of sauce used will spark furious debate amongst foodies and those who eat for sustenance alike. So here we go, let’s give pizza a go.

            The first thing we have to deal with is the crust. I favour a thin and crispy crust when I make this at home but roll it out to your liking. Here is a fairly quick and easy pizza dough recipe that has never steered me wrong.

Pizza Dough

1 envelope of yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 cup warm water

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups, give or take, flour

-mix 4 tbsp of water, the yeast and the sugar in a bowl and set aside in a warm place for about 15 minutes or until it starts to foam up.

-mix the salt and the flour in a bowl and make a well in the center. Add in the oil and the yeast goo. Slowly add in the rest of the flour and mix until the dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a clean floured work surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth, about 4-5 minutes.

-stick the dough into a bowl, cover, and let it rise until it is doubled in size. About 30 minutes

-turn the dough out again and knead for another 2 minutes or so and then stretch it and roll it out to you desired thickness. It will rise in the oven so there is your warning.

You can freeze what you don’t need to use at a later date. If you don’t want to make the dough from scratch you can always just buy it. I do recommend that you aim for a joint that makes the dough fresh every day. Delis and bakeries that sell pizza as part of their menus will generally be willing to sell you a hunk of raw dough but you may need to ask.

You know have the base for your pizza the toppings are up to you. Here are a couple of my favourites. The first was inspired by a joint that served tapas and is sort of a take on a Waldorf salad. I served it at a tapas night that I hosted and it seemed to be a hit. This is for all of your veggie friends. The second is something that I made for my mom and she fell in love with it.

The Waldorf Pizza to the tune of Babylon by David Gray

2 Green apples sliced

½ cup walnuts

1 tbsp ish honey

 2-3 oz of goat cheese

1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

¼ cup of cheese sauce you can grab my recipe for this from the Mac and Cheese post

1 ball of pizza dough

-in a frying pan dry toast your walnuts, add your honey and let the little devils candy up. Let them cool completely.

-Roll out your dough and then top with the sauce, then the apples, then the cheeses then the candied walnuts.

-Bake in a 400 degree oven until cheese is melty and the crust is crisp. And you’re done.

Mom’s Chicken Margarita Pizza, like the drink, to the tune of Dreamboat Annie by Heart, one of my Mom’s favourite tunes.

1 tbsp olive oil

2 boneless chicken thighs cubed

4 oz decent tequila

Juice of 3 limes

1 small onion thinly sliced

1 red bell pepper thinly sliced

¼ cup tomato sauce

 1 ball of pizza dough

1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese

-In a frying pan heat oil and add your chicken. Sauté until the chicken is browned and close to cooked through. Add your tequila and lime juice to the pan and reduce until your chicken is coated with a nice syrupy sauce.

-Build your pizza, dough, sauce, onions, chicken, peppers, and cheese.

-Bake in a 400 degree oven until cheese is melty and the crust is crisp.

            Play around with what you want to use for toppings and I am sure that you find something different and awesome. Feel free to share any of those awesome discoveries. A special thanks to my friend Amanda "The Hamster" Strand for taking and sharing the pics. Have fun and be brave.

Sweet Memories and Gnocchi

            Like everyone else I have my food memories. A lot of them stem from my family’s cooking but every once and a while one comes from a meal that I ate out. This is certainly the case for the subject of this little blurb. On very special occasions we would go out for what we called a fancy meal, a sit down dinner with many forks and if it was a really special night a couple of bottles of wine off of a list not off of the rack. One of these meals took place on what I remember as being my Grand’s birthday at a little Italian place called Ricardo’s outside of my home town. We sat, we ate, and I fell head over heels in love with gnocchi. This was not something that we sat down to on a regular basis coming from a German, English and Irish background. I was delivered a cross between a bowl and a plate that was emitting one of the most glorious smells I have ever encountered. I was enamoured by these little pillow like things that were covered in a Gorgonzola cheese sauce, sort of an Italian classic or so I have learned. My mom made a face when I ordered; she is not a fan of that kind of cheese. I took my first bite and that was it... it was love. Everyone took a bite of my food. I was torn because I wanted my family to love this food too but I really didn’t want to share. The better part of my nature won out. It was after that I wanted; check that, I needed to know how to do it. How do you start off with potatoes, eggs and flour and end up with this glorious meal. I would find out how to do it. I researched every famous chef who cooked Italian food. I even checked out some non Italian chefs to see if they held the secret. Maybe it is an Italian grandmother thing but the best recipe and advice in making came from, surprise, an Italian grandmother. Her name is Lidia Matticchio Bastianich. She is kind of a big deal in the Italian food world. So here is my little twist on the Maestra’s recipe. It is the closest I have come to duplicating that meal and now I share it with you.

            Now just like the girl from Despicable Me, what we are aiming for is fluffy, yep so fluffy you’re gonna die. Now with Lidia’s sage words of wisdom, a couple of key things to ensure that your gnocchi is light and fluffy. The first thing is you are going to have to rice your potatoes. This can be accomplished a couple of ways, use a ricer or food mill. If you don’t have that, use your kitchen aid food grinder. If you don’t have that, force your cooked potatoes through the steamer part of a double boiler. The second thing is that your spuds need to be hot when you rice them. Then spread them out on a sheet pan to let them cool. This allows the moisture to escape and that is a good thing. It just works so just go with it. The last major thing you need to remember to do is as you are bringing your dough together don’t overwork it and use just as much flour as you need. The more you work the dough and the more flour you use the heavier your gnocchi will be. Keep all of these things in mind as we plunge forward.

            The other things that I must tell you are that you can top these little beauties with whatever you like, it doesn’t have to be the rich and wonderful gorgonzola sauce I have included. A nice tomato sauce works great or even just some butter and good parmesan cheese. They also freeze very well but you have to make sure that you freeze them spread out on a sheet pan before you package them into freezer bags. If you just toss them into a bag you will end up with a useless ball of potato dough. This is not what you want. Seeing as I am kind of doing a cover of Lidia I will suggest a cover for you to cook to, have fun with it.

Gnocchi in Gorgonzola Cheese Sauce to the tune of Love Song by Adele

The gnocchi part

5 large russet potatoes

2 eggs

2- 2 ½ cups of flour

-Boil your spuds until they give no resistance when poked with a fork. Pull them out of the water and peel. Use a kitchen towel to protect your finger because those little guys are hot. Rice them. Lay them out on a sheet pan and let them cool. You are looking at about 10-15 minutes.

-After they have cooled form a well and add your eggs and start to bring the dough together. Start adding your flour, a little at a time, and work the dough gently until it is no longer sticky and pasty. Do not over work the dough for the reasons I mentioned above.

-cut the dough into about six portions. Roll each portion into a rope about ½ an inch in diameter and then cut into bite sized portions. Using a fork press the dough over your thumb to create the ridge pattern that will hold on to the sauce.

-Boil them until they float. This should be really quick maybe 2 minutes or so. Add to your sauce; let it work for a couple of minutes and you are good to go.

The Saucy Part

¼ cup of butter

¼ cup of flour

1 cup of milk

Gorgonzola cheese, as much as you like really so that it fits your taste

-In a medium sauce pan melt your butter and then add your flour. Whisk until you have your roux. Add in your milk and whisk until smooth, no lumps. Add your cheese and whisk until it is fully incorporated. And that is the saucy part.

You can finish this dish with some chopped flat leaf parsley and you are good to go.

Mac and Cheese in Honor of The Springfield Road Boys

            There are some foods which simply ring of your youth. Most of these things are not really as good as you remember them especially when you think what they are. As we grow a little older we move past these things or at the very least we don’t eat them with the same frequency or vigour as we once did. Some of us have problems letting go and will swear that the peanut and jelly sandwiches of our youth are still the greatest food stuff in the history of the world. Just for the record they are. So I have decided to screw around with someone else’s food obsession. There were many days when I would come home from work to find my roommates all clustered around the stove gazing into a huge stock waiting for their favourite thing in the world... Kraft Dinner. No matter the time of day I could count on seeing KD splashed, in all of its day glow orange glory, all over the kitchen. The boys would buy it buy the case. So here I go, just for you boys, Johnny Condor’s Mac and Cheese.

            Everybody should have a few core sauces in their repertoire that truly kick some serious ass. So the first thing that we need to do is make a killer cheese sauce. This is pretty much a three step process and I am sure that the final product has a fancy French name for cheese sauce, but I don’t know it.  The first two steps do have fancy French names and I do know those. So here we go getting fancy. The first part is making a roux. This is just equal parts melted butter and flour and it acts as a thickening agent. The next part you add some dairy. I use whole milk but you can add whatever you like depending on how rich you want your sauce to be. Whisk the snot out of it so there are no lumps. Now you have yourself a béchamel sauce. All of those fancy words for a simple sauce. Next you add your cheese and stir constantly until all of your cheese is melted and incorporated fully. This yields what we are looking for, an awesome cheese sauce. All you need to do now is put it together with some other stuff and you have a Mac and Cheese of legendary proportions. So let’s do that

Johnny Condor’s Mac and Cheese to the tune of “Faith” by George Michael

½ a bag of elbow macaroni

¼ cup of butter

¼ cup of flour

2 pints of milk

A good size brick of the cheese of your choice I go with aged cheddar myself grated

Salt and pepper

2 onions diced and caramelized

4 strips of double smoked bacon diced and fried

¼ cup of grated Parmesan cheese

-Preheat oven at 350

-Cook up your pasta like you normally do and whip up your awesome cheese sauce as outlined above. Use about ¾ of your cheese.

-Combine your pasta, sauce, onions, and bacon and pour into a casserole or baking pan, cover with the remaining cheese and Parmesan. You can also add some breadcrumbs and butter to the top to create a gratin kind of topping.

-Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until the cheese on top is a little crispy. Then serve it up my friends.

So there it is, in honor of the boys, give it a go and let me know how it works. 

Johnny's Stuffed Pork Chops

Some things are better left alone. Things like, a really good steak, a really good scotch, or an idealistic outlook on love are just better if you don’t mess with them. Some things, on the other hand, can be, let us say, augmented to bring about a change for the better. When playing in the kitchen, start off with small, little things to make your dishes a little bit better. I am a firm believer in the Italian food philosophy that if you have great ingredients they should be the star of the show and all you have to do is let them shine. Unless you are making Mole you generally don’t need thirty ingredients. That is not to say that you should not try new things in the kitchen. The kitchen has always been a place in this world that I have felt safe and at peace and I think it should be that for everyone. It is this feeling that allows me to attempt pairings that I think might work and whether they succeed or they fail, the latter happens more often than not, I have learned a little more about food. This is a great thing.

            This recipe came out of that sort of experimental vibe that I like to have in my kitchen and the question: How the hell do I stuff a pork chop? There were many attempts at making this and some worked out better than others. That is the way things go sometimes but the end result turned out fantastic. I messed around with some different techniques to find which one worked best both in the cutting of the chop itself, the balance of the stuffing and what cooking method worked the best. To answer those questions for you:  a butterflied and pounded chop is the cut that worked best for me, the addition of goat’s cheese balanced the stuffing and pan roasting won the day for cooking method. I am sure that there are foodies out there who will say that this is not so much a stuffed chop but rather it is a roulade and a whole bunch of other fancy French terms and I am sure that they are right. To me, because of where the idea came from, it is Johnny’s stuffed pork chop. Now let’s get to it.

Johnny’s Stuffed Pork Chop to the tune of “Sunday Jen” by Slackstring

2 pork chops butterflied and pounded flat. If you don’t know what butterflying is, it is simply slicing your chop almost all the way through so that when you flip it open it looks like a butterfly

2 strips of bacon diced and fried until crispy

1 apple finely diced

¼ cup bread crumbs

A small chunk of mild goat’s cheese, this part is totally up to you I like lots and some will like less.

1 tsp of oregano

2 tbsp oil

2 tbsp butter

½ cup dry white wine

Salt and pepper

-Preheat oven to 350. Lay your chops out flat and season with salt and pepper.

-In a bowl mix together the bread crumbs, bacon, apple, cheese and oregano.

-Spread your stuffing onto your chops just like you were buttering bread. Leave about ½ and inch on each end. Gently roll your chop up and tie with butcher’s twine, like a jellyroll. At this stage your chop should look like a mini roast.

-Heat oil in a heat proof sauté pan and sear off the chop. Move the pan to the oven and roast for about 10-15 minutes. It should not take much longer than that.

-Remove from the oven and set the chops aside to rest.

-Return the pan to the stove top and add the wine to deglaze the pan and reduce 3-4 minutes on high heat. Remove from heat add your butter and whisk together.

-Remove the twine and slice your chop. Top with the wine sauce. And there you have Johnny’s Stuffed Pork Chop. Enjoy it.

Keep rocking in the kitchen and I will talk to you all soon.

The Courtship of Risotto

            So we move now into one of the trickier things to attempt in the kitchen, I am talking about risotto. I am a very avid watcher of cooking shows, the shows that actually show people cooking. I really don’t want to know how gummy bears and pop rocks are made, just so you all know. In all of my watching I have seen risotto get the best of really well trained chefs. This is not to say we should not try it at home all I am saying is that if it doesn’t come out perfect you are in really good company. And I am all about the challenge. The reason that I struggled with making risotto is due to my own lack of patience. You need to take your time with this dish and keep a close eye on it. I you don’t you will end up with something that is less than great. You may ask yourself: Is the time that I am putting in worth it? The answer is yes it is. When done well it is worth both your time and your effort. Above and beyond that, when you get it right you get that feeling that you can accomplish anything in the kitchen. That feeling is priceless.

            There are three steps to cooking risotto. As explained by my go to Italian food reference guru Mario Batali in his books they are: rossalare, coucere, and mantecare. To put it into terms that I can grasp a little better I look at cooking risotto like a relationship. The first step, rossalare, is gently toasting your rice. It is like the first couple of dates; you are warming up and starting to share. The rice will turn opaque and your kitchen will start to fill with a wonderful nutty aroma. If you toast to aggressively your rice will burn, the girl will not return your phone calls and this is bad because you really wanted this to work out. Now it is on to the courtship. You know one another and you are moving in a good direction. You buy the girl flowers, take her out for a meal or two and just generally want to do nice things for her. It is the time for coucere. This means that you are going to start adding stock to your rice. Every ladle is a little something to let the rice feel the love. If you don’t add enough you are a callous bastard and it is ruined. If you do add too much, too fast you are needy and desperate and it is ruined. Just a little at a time and you are golden. Now, big finish, you are going to pop the question or in risotto terms mantecare. This is a lavish display of affection, in a relationship that means a ring, for risotto that means adding some good stuff. It could be melted leeks, chantarelle mushrooms, some crispy pancetta or just a bit of butter. This is the stuff that puts your risotto over the edge into awesome territory. There you go, risotto is like a relationship. Now we are on to a recipe.

Simple Risotto to the tune of “In Your Light” by Gotye

1 cup Arborio rice

4-6 cups of stock, either chicken or vegetable

2 tbsp butter

-toast your rice gently over medium heat in a large sauté pan, move it around a lot so that the toasting is even.

-heat your stock over medium low heat as you are toasting your rice

- add your stock one ladle at a time and stir constantly, once the liquid has been absorbed add another ladle. Continue doing this until the rice is cooked to al dente. I recommend that you taste as you go that way you have a frame of reference.

-Add a touch more stock, your butter, and a pinch of salt to season and stir to combine. The end result should be creamy and spread out on the plate when you serve it.

            As I said before you can add whatever you like to the risotto to make it yours as long as you don’t forget the butter. It adds a little bit of richness that is, in my mind essential. Give it a go and remember that if you give it some care and attention you will be rewarded.