Oven “fried” pickles

Ingredients
1 cup All-purpose flour
2 eggs
20 pickle slices
1 1/2 cup bread crumbs with garlic powder, salt, Italian seasoning mixed in
Choice of dipping sauce (Ranch/”Spicy Ranch” in my case)
*Note, flour and bread crumbs amounts are an estimate.

The usual suspects. Also, the bowl has 4 eggs in it. You don’t need that many.

Directions sans commentary
1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2) Put pickles into colander to drain
3) Into three separate bowls add the flour, eggs, and bread crumbs
4) Lightly beat the eggs
5) Coat each pickle with flour, then coat with egg, finally coat with bread crumbs
6) Add pickles to oven safe wire rack over a cookie sheet
7) Put pickles into oven for 13-15 minutes
8) Take out, and eat with selected dipping sauce

Directions with commentary
First, I have to admit, this is the second time I tried making these. The first time I had the “bright” idea of using cornmeal instead of bread crumbs since 1) it was what I had, and 2) I had them that way before once in a restaurant. Ultimately they did not turn out, as the cornmeal both overpowered the flavor of the pickle and provided a texture that was less than pleasing. But I wanted to give these another shot.

I have a special place in my heart, and my stomach, for fried pickles. The briny salty flavor, mixed typically with lovely fattening ranch dressing. I know, incredibly healthy, and exactly what I need in my life. Still, I wanted to take a stab at making some “fried” pickles in my oven – I had seen recipes with them being done this way before, and I figured it’d be an easy recipe to whip up for a lazy Sunday. … I was partially correct.

In starting off this recipe, there was a decisive question to be answered. That is, spears or slices? My first experience with fried pickles was the spear, so I’m a bit nostalgic when it comes to them. However, I thought pickle slices would prove to be a little easier to work with.

After pulling together all of my ingredients, I set to work.

First, I started by preheating my oven to 400 degrees. Next, I pulled out however many pickles we wanted to work with, and let them drip a little bit into the colander. I’m guessing just coating them and baking without removing any excess brine would result in a sad, soggy pickle chip. (Note, in my previous version, I had blotted them dry with a paper towel. Don’t do this. I’m sure it contributed to the overwhelming flavor of the cornmeal).

While letting the pickles sit, I arranged my three bowls from left to right with 1) flour, 2) eggs, lightly beaten and 3) breadcrumbs.

The joys of apartment cooking, everything gets to be so close together.

The process itself is easy, and very familiar if you’ve ever breaded chicken before (or really anything that requires breading). Coat pickle with flour, dip into egg, and coat with breadcrumbs. The one recommendation I’d have here is to coat all of your pickle slices in the flour first, as I prefer to work on one “station” at a time, otherwise you end up with your eggs mixing heavily into your bread crumbs, and with large chunks of bread crumbs working into your eggs.

I used some crumpled up aluminum foil rather than a wire rack this time since my wire rack was dirty, but you can definitely go either way. Then it’s just set them out spaced a little apart, and put into the heated oven for about 13-15 minutes. I didn’t flip mine, but if you’re putting them on a flat surface you may just want to do that.

Added bonus of the foil? It’s shiny.

All that remains is to load up the plate with your preferred sauce, toss on the pickles and enjoy! (As far as the “spicy” ranch – it’s just a mixture of Franks Red Hot and ranch. I likely would have used sriracha if I had any in the fridge).

So how were they? Far better this time than they were with the cornmeal. I had made my own bread crumbs that I used for this recipe, and I think they were just a little too large, so there was a bit of extra “crunch” that I wasn’t too thrilled with. They’re still not as good as deep fried ones, but they’ll do in a pinch! I would definitely make these again.

The finished, salty, tasty product.

Mixed Berry Smoothie

Happiness in a glass

Ingredients
1 cup water
1 apple (granny smith, in this case)
5 ounces Greek yogurt (plain)
1/8 cup freeze dried spinach
1 cup mixed frozen berries
1/4 cup freeze dried strawberry powder (the dust at the bottom of a can of freeze dried strawberries).
3 lemon ice cubes

Directions without commentary
1) In advance: Mix 1 part lemon juice with 2 parts water. Freeze into cubes.
2) Add 1 cup water to blender.
3) Add all other ingredients, including previously-frozen lemon ice cubes.
4) Blend to desired consistency.

Directions with commentary
A pretty easy recipe here, and really it’s just more of a general guideline. First, the hardest question is probably “what’s a lemon ice cube?”

Lemon in cube form… fancy.

Simple. It’s an ice cube. Made with lemon juice, and in my case, mixed with water. Simply put, I squeeze out my lemons (into a strainer to catch the seeds) into a 2 cup measuring cup. Usually I put in 1/2 cup of lemon juice, add a cup of water to bring us to a full 1 1/2 cups of liquid. Mix, then pour into an ice cube tray and freeze. Add to water to give it a hint of lemon flavor, or to a smoothie (who would have guessed?)

As a pretty obvious note, if you’re going to make a lot of these, you’ll want a good quality blender, or else the blades will dull in no time flat.

Almost there…

Now that the hard part is over with, the rest of it is incredibly, incredibly easy. Add the water to the bottom of your blender. Add in your fruit, yogurt, and spinach – we usually do it in exactly that order. And then… blend. Blend until you reach a consistency you’re happy with. If it’s too thin, add some ice cubes, add some more frozen fruit. If it’s too thick, guess what? Add some water! Pour, drink, enjoy. This made enough for two glasses of about 8 – 10 ounces.

Perfect!

A few things about the ingredients:

1) Everything is optional – that is you can mix, match, add, subtract. Play with it.

2) The spinach – I’d use fresh spinach instead of the freeze dried stuff. You can add a load of fresh stuff, and you don’t really taste it. However, the color may not be entirely pleasing – often it’ll get a greenish/grayish color to it. If that doesn’t bother you, load up!

3) To not quite quote George Orwell, all fruits are equal, but some fruits are more equal than others. That is, a few fruits will be way, way more overpowering in a smoothie – pineapples and bananas immediately come to mind. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever add them. You should. They’re delicious. But just remember that you don’t want to go too crazy with them.

4) You may note that some of the fruit is frozen, some is fresh. You can do this, no one will tattle. If you have nothing but frozen fruit, that’s okay, that works! (Though it’ll probably hurt your blender more). If you have nothing but fresh fruit, you can mix that as well – if you want to thicken it up, you can always add just some regular ice cubes. Frozen grapes work as well.

5) You can add some form of sweetener if you want. We don’t do that, we like a little bit of tartness to our smoothie, and it’s plenty sweet already.

6) Yes. You can add vodka if you want. Obviously, it’ll make your smoothie less thick.

So that’s about it here – have a favorite smoothie recipe, please share!

And again, a delicious virgin fruit smoothie.

A Wannabe: Fire & Smoke Pizza

While the wife’s away, the husband will… make spicy food.

13 ounces of pizza dough
3 strips of cooked smoked bacon
Sauce (ingredients below)
Approximately 1/4 onion (Purple preferred)
1 roasted red pepper
Gouda cheese (about 4-5 ounces)
Chopped fresh basil (approximately a handful)

Sauce ingredients
3 cups of water
Tomato powder (enough to thicken it to desired consistency)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chipotle powder
1 tablespoon Italian herb seasoning
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 tablespoon onion powder
2 roasted jalapenos (seeded)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions without commentary

Peppers

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cut peppers into strips, removing membranes and seeds.
3. Lay out on a baking sheet, put onto top rack in oven.
4. Cook until skin is blackened, remove from oven, and toss into paper bag. After they cool down, remove from bag, and remove skin from strips. Refrigerate.
5. Blend roasted jalapenos until diced small.

Sauce

1. Heat water in a saucepan until steaming, add tomato powder until desired thickness, then add remaining sauce ingredients.

Pizza

1. Put pizza stone on center rack in a cold oven and preheat to 500 degrees. (Will take ~30 minutes).
2. Fry your bacon if it’s not already cooked and crispy – can also be baked. Crumble or chop into smaller pieces when it’s cooled down.
3. Cut onion into strips.
4. Roll out dough (homemade or store-bought) onto a well-floured pizza peel or parchment paper, to desired thickness. Keep in mind, it’ll puff up a little.
5. Add warm sauce to dough, then top with remaining desired ingredients, minus the basil.
6. Put pizza on preheated pizza stone in oven for ~10 minutes – cheese should start to brown.
7. Carefully remove, let it cool a minute. Toss chopped basil on top, then cut pizza and serve.
8. Enjoy! (Obvious note. Pizza will be very, very hot.)

Instructions with commentary
One of our favorite places to eat at in DC is Matchbox in Chinatown. As for me, I reliably stick to three items there: the pepperoni pizza, the prosciutto white pizza (kalamata olives, prosciutto, a cheese blend, with a white sauce), and my personal favorite.. Their fire & smoke pizza. Labeled as spicy, I’d say this often provides a pleasant heat, rather than a huge burning sensation. My wife, being someone who hates any type of spicy food, disagrees with me. Regardless, I’ve wanted to recreate this at home, and since we’re making our pizzas with a little more consistency these days, I felt up to the challenge. As it so happened, my wife had to be away from home for a week for work, so what better time to give this a shot?

Step one was roasting the red and jalapeno peppers. This is something I’ve never done before, so why not add that to the list? Simply put, cut the peppers into small strips, take away the membrane and seeds, add a little olive oil, and toss them onto the very top most rack at 400 degrees. Then just keep an eye on it for when the skin blackens, and they’ll turn out fine. Sadly we don’t have a broiling tray, but if we did I’d probably just toss it in there instead. Take them out, add them to a paper bag (or in my case, a bowl with cling wrap tight around it), and soon the skin will peel right off. I then tossed them in the fridge overnight.

Post-roast, pre-bag

While Matchbox doesn’t add bacon to their pizza (what?!) I figured the smokiness would go well with the whole fire & smoke motif. I chose to bake mine in the oven, versus frying it, but whatever floats your boat. Anyhow, let that cool, and crumble/chop it up. Also, you can probably cut your onion at this point. Sadly, the purple onions at my local grocery store looked, generously speaking, terrible. So I stuck it out with white.

Prior to making the pizza, put the pizza stone in the center of a cold oven, and heat it up to 500 degrees. If yours goes higher than that, 550 is probably acceptable as well, but mine tops out at five even.

Next up, the sauce. I don’t think Matchbox uses jalapenos in their sauce, but I wanted to add that extra kick, so I tossed the jalapenos I roasted the night before into the blender (well, Magic Bullet), and got them to a nice thin texture. For the sauce itself, I have to admit, I love using tomato powder to make tomato sauce, tomato paste, and once in a while, tomato soup. I buy ours from beprepared.com but I imagine there are a huge number of places to get it. Heat the water up – usually to where it’s steaming – add in powder gradually and stir until mixed in to eventually get the sauce to the right consistency, turn off the heat, and then add in the additional sauce ingredients, mixing thoroughly. How much water, how much powder? I used 3 cups of water here, and just play around with the powder. Since this is a thinner crust pizza, I like my sauce to be just a bit thicker than the stuff you buy in a jar… but not as thick as tomato paste. Fair warning, this tends to splatter, so your nice clean stove probably won’t end the night that way. If you like a chunky sauce, you can definitely add in diced up tomatoes.

The dough came from a bread recipe from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (previously mentioned on here). I didn’t do anything crazy to it, just a regular recipe. In making a pizza crust, the book specifies you should use one pound of dough. I’ve found that to be a little bit too much, so we’ve been playing around with reducing it. Happy to report that 13 ounces seems to be a good spot – though I may try reducing it a  tiny bit more in the future.

Dough!

One problem I’ve had with making pizza at home is actually rolling out the dough, even with another person. Usually it would stick to the paper, stick my rolling pin, or the paper would move with the rolling pin. However, I’ve taken to putting the dough on a well-floured piece of parchment paper, and in this case, folding the paper under the peel so that it doesn’t slide all over the place. Douse liberally with flour (seriously, don’t skimp), and roll to desired thickness. After that, here comes the easiest part of the whole process… add everything on top, starting, obviously, with the sauce.

Honestly… I could probably eat it just like this.

Again, this is a thin crust, so go easy on the sauce. Actually, go easy on all of the ingredients. They should play off of, not compete with, each other. For me, I went with the roasted red peppers, bacon pieces, onion pieces, and of course, the gouda. Tossing the pizza (still on top of the parchment paper) into the oven onto the pizza stone, let it cook for 10-11 minutes, and take it out. I recommend letting it cool down here, but I’m usually in too much of a hurry to do that.

Now it just needs the finishing greenery….

So if you’re like me, you’ll just add on the chopped basil, and go to town with the pizza cutter and dish it out.

The finished product!

The question was… how was it?

Good. Very, very good. It’s not quite the same as what Matchbox offers, but I think it was a pretty decent substitute. The bacon added a new layer to it, and the remaining ingredients incorporated well. It wasn’t as spicy as I would have imagined, but again, the heat was pleasant, and I still managed to burn my mouth on it. If there’s one complaint, it’s that I should try it again with the correct type of onion. Regardless, I would definitely try it again.

Game 7

Game 7 between the Detroit Red Wings and the Tampa Bay Lightning. I think I’ve only taken 3 full breathes since the start about 30 minutes ago.

Still, a tasty dinner of hummus melts and Arcadia Ales Nut Brown Ale.

Working on a few posts, hope to return here soon!

Oh the Humanity! A Disaster in Cheesesteak

Four ingredients. That’s all this really has. Actually, it may have five, depending on how you count them. But really, you’d think that a recipe that consists of meat, bread, peppers, and a cheese or cheese-like product wouldn’t be that difficult.

And I’m sure it’s not. After all, what I used was:

-Top sirloin (I realize “real” Philadelphia Cheesesteak calls for something fancier than this. I’m not in Philadelphia, and this is what someone recommended, so tough noogies).

-Bread. Surprisingly, the Safeway by me has some pretty decent sub-style rolls. I think, anyhow.

-Peppers. Banana peppers are possibly my favorite food item. Yes, even more than bacon.

-Cheez Whiz. It’s hard to quantify this as an ingredient. After all, this is one product… made up of probably another 25 individual products… But in this case, we’ll count it just as one.

-A light amount of oil for the pan. I usually don’t include this as an ingredient. I probably should.

Usually I’d consider using a little salt for this. But I’m pretty certain salt makes up a significant part of Cheez Whiz, so in the interest of being healthy (HA!) I decided to pass this time around. So what did I do, and where did I go wrong?

The meat. Naturally. First, the sirloin I bought looked great… from the top. And as many of you have probably experienced, you can buy a piece of meat that looks good from top down, but bottom up looks… less than desirable. Fatty, gristly, altogether undesirable. But I bought the meat, and by golly, we are going to cut, cook, and eat the meat.

I then made the mistake of not freezing the meat prior to cutting, which resulted in larger-than-ideal pieces.

Apart from that, all that was required was a hot iron skillet to quickly cook the meat on, heated Whiz, and the liberal application of hot peppers*.

Flavor wise, it was pretty good. Yes, I felt a little wrong buying and using Cheez Whiz. And next time, I’d actually consider just cooking it in a crock pot (which makes the cheesesteak purists cringe, I’m sure). Since I’ve had some pretty decent luck (one time) making a similar style sandwich that way, I’d be quite okay with it.

What may have been the world’s saddest cheesesteak.

Overall: I’d try it again. Different cut of meat. And maybe a different cheese. Ideally I’d also be making my own sub rolls as well, but I’m not quite that far in my culinary prowess.

*As far as I know there is no research demonstrating that any sandwich that consists of meat, bread, and cheese will be made superior via the application of banana peppers, but I prefer to believe that it’s just common sense.

#100HappyBeers – Week 4

“A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it’s better to be thoroughly sure.”

–Czech Proverb

Starting this week I’ll be working harder to write as I try each beer. It’s probably something I should have been doing all along… but alas, here we are.

Day 22 – Red Skies at Night by Heavy Seas Brewery. I really want to like more of Heavy Seas’ beer. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy their Loose Cannon IPA, but beyond that, I just can’t currently get behind any of their other beers. I feel as though I had one of their stouts once, and it wasn’t bad, but given that I don’t remember it, I have to wonder if it was all that good. Sadly, Red Skies at Night is more of the same. Possibly in part because I’m finding I don’t really like saisons.

Day 23 – Riverdriver Hazelnut Porter by Sea Dog Brewing Company. Starts off with a good aroma. Hazelnuts are noticeable, but not overpowering. Flavor has a very light tang to it, but with a sadly unpleasant aftertaste. I’d probably drink it again, but I’m not sure how well it’d pair with food.

Day 24 – Great White Beer by Lost Coast Brewery. I decided to drink this in honor of Shark Week. Now, I don’t really watch any programming associated with Shark Week, so I can’t speak to the quality of that, but I can tell you this beer was pretty boring. I’d drink it again if offered, but I definitely wouldn’t spend the money on it.

Day 25 – Beard Beer by Rogue Ales. The concept is gross. “Beer? From a guy’s beard? It was made with yeast from some dude, I’ve never met? I’m literally* drinking a man’s beard?” (*No. Not literally. But this is often the thought process for folks.) Honestly, not a lot to say, other than the fact that I really actually enjoyed it. Hoppy enough, but still a pretty light flavor.

Day 26 – Flensburger Dunkel by Flensburger Brauerei. Clean and refreshing tasting. Now that my glass is empty, I can also say it leaves little aftertaste, and my mouth doesn’t have that “post beer” feel to it. I bought it almost entirely because of the bottle, but I do feel that I could put away a few more of these and think nothing of it.

Day 27 – 961 Porter by 961 Beer. Two things intrigued me about this beer: 1) The label in all of its simplicity, and 2) the fact that it’s from Lebanon. Overall it wasn’t that bad. Light tasting and didn’t have a prolonged aftertaste. I’d probably drink it again, but certainly would not go out of my way to purchase it. However, since this is, as I understand it, the first craft brewery in the Middle East, this makes me optimistic about their capabilities to eventually make a stellar drink.

Day 28 – Raspberry Ale by Dark Horse Brewing Company. It tastes like an ale. An ale with raspberry flavor. Not strong raspberry, just a small hint of it. Overall, it was all right, but nothing to write home about.

Overall it wasn’t a bad week for the 100 Happy Beers project. I’ve had a few other food events come up this week as well, so I’m hoping to post some of that in the next few days. Geekward ho!

#100HappyBeers – Week 3

“Beer. Now there’s a temporary solution.”

-Homer Simpson

This was a pretty good week in the 100 Happy Beers project. Nothing was overly offensive, and there were some tasty brews this go, as well as a surprise or two.

Surprisingly, Idaho pulled off a pretty tasty beer…

Day 15 – Mokah by Southern Tier. I want to like this one. I really do. It’s very smooth, has a great mouth feel, but there’s just too much of an aftertaste for me to get behind. Maybe it’s because I drank it on its own. Added to a chocolate cake, or a small glass served with a plain slice of cheesecake, I could see this beer really shining.

Day 16 – Huckleberry Cream Ale by Laughing Dog Brewery. This was one of the surprises. First, it’s a fruit beer. It’s not overly strong in the huckleberry flavor, and it’s not the least bit sweet. Very easy to drink. The other surprise: It’s from an Idaho brewery. I wasn’t aware Idaho had breweries. Or any industry that wasn’t potato based.*

Day 17 – Little Sumpin’ Extra by Lagunitas. I’m not sure I’ve had a bad beer from them. This is no exception.

Day 18 – Vanilla Java Porter by Atwater Brewery. I may be biased because they’re a Michigan brewery, but I did enjoy this. I’ve had beer from Atwater before, but to be completely honest, I don’t fully remember it. Still, first chair for porters in the Beer Orchestra is held by Founder’s Brewing.

Day 19 – Citra Imperial IPA by Flying Dog Brewery. I’m definitely split on Flying Dog. I’ve enjoyed their Raging Bitch IPA and Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout. Some of their other beers… not so much. Happy to say Citra was a pleasant surprise.

Day 20 – Dark Starr Stout by Starr Hill. Boring. Guinness like. If I’m going to have a stout, I want it to be better than this.

Day 21 – White Ale by Williamsburg AleWerks. This was like Blue Moon beer, only without the nostalgia.**

*Yes, I know talking potatoes and Idaho is pretty obvious. To be fair, you go to the “Electronic Superhighway” exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, and all they show from Idaho are potatoes.

**Blue Moon – my first beer I had in a bar. Drank it while eating a slab of ribs. Life was good.

All in all, this was a good beer week. So far week 4 has been a little more lackluster, but I’ll be posting that update later. Keep on geekin’.

Quick Hits – Hummus Melts

I’ll be trying something new, my “Quick Hits” – shorter blog posts that talk about a fast, easy to make meal. For this one, we made up some Hummus Melts, from (never)homemaker. While we follow her recipe pretty closely, we do change a number of things.

Ingredients-makes 12 “melts” (the halves from 6 English Muffins)

–Hummus- we buy the Sabra roasted garlic. I know, I know, it’s not real hummus, but for our purposes (that is, a quick meal) it does the job.
–2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded. I’ve not tried this with good mozzarella… I’ll have to try that sometime.
–1 package of 6 English Muffins.
–A few handfuls of baby spinach
–Olive Oil
—Aleppo Pepper, dried. If you’ve not had it, it’s the chili’s response to bacon. Seriously, it makes just about everything taste better.

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350º F
2) Cut English Muffins in half, lay out on cookie sheet.
3) Sauté spinach in olive oil until it’s cooked down a bit.
4) Spread hummus onto E.M. halves
5) Add aleppo pepper on top of hummus.
6) Add spinach on top
7) Cover as liberally with cheese as you feel comfortable.
8) Put into oven for 10-12 minutes*
9) Optional: Add more aleppo pepper.

We don’t toast our English Muffins, but I know the original source does it. It probably firms up the base nicely, so I’ll have to give it a shot. Nevertheless, it’s still a fun, tasty take on an English Muffin pizza.

Needs more pepper.

*I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure “Cook it at 350º until done” is the culinary equivalent of “Sprained ankle? Walk it off.” Geek on friends.

#100HappyBeers – Week 2

“This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption. Let us give praise to our maker and glory to his bounty by learning about… BEER.”

-Friar Tuck, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

I should probably start off by apologizing for using a quote from a Kevin Costner movie. So for that, I’m sorry – it shouldn’t happen again.

100 Happy Beers, Week 2 of Partial Deliciousness

Week 2 in beers. There were some highs, and my goodness were there ever some lows. Let’s start with the downside:

Day 10- Ghost Face Killah Beer. This was, without a doubt, one of the most disgusting beers I’ve had. Ever. At first I told my wife I’d institute a three sip rule. I’ll give a beer three sips before making a ruling. I got through two with this one. It pours like a soda, in that the head immediately fizzes down. Frankly, I imagine that if you carbonated chili juice, it’d taste like this. It actually reminds me of a time I once took a swig of Mt. Dew that had sat in a hot car for several hours.

Day 9, Fire & Blood, Ommegang Brewery. A bit of a letdown, which is surprising. It was a Game of Thrones inspired Red Ale, and by this point in my life I should realize that most themed products are overly hyped. On the plus side, it probably had the best label of any of the beers I’ve had so far.

Day 12, Oatmeal Stout by Schlafly Beer. Not great. Not bad. Passable.

Day 13, Sweet Baby Jesus! A chocolate peanut butter porter, DuClaw Brewing. I feel like this could be a great addition to a chocolate cake or cheesecake recipe. As a drinking beer, not so much.

The winners for the week were definitely:

Day 8, Indian Brown Ale from Dogfish Head. I’ve had it before, so this isn’t a “new” beer, but I snuck in some ringers to keep me going through this project. Ringers, and I just had leftover beer when I started.

Day 11, Turbodog from Abita. I was a little harsh on their Purple Haze, but Turbodog was a definite step up. Easy to drink.

Day 14, Anchor IPA. This was the first day having a beer not at home, and I celebrated this fact with an IPA, figuring I’d enjoy it more than anything else on the menu–which was mostly your run of the mill domestic. Maybe it’s cheating a little bit to have a draft beer rather than bottled.

Next week has been far superior, so I’m excited to report on that. Until then, keep it geeky.

Food time – Pizza

“You said the magic word.”
“You guys eat pizza?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”

-Donatello, April O’Neil, and Michelangelo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

In case you missed the bulletin, just 4 days until the release of the next Ninja Turtles movie! All shilling for movies aside, I thought it was about time to get back on the horse that was my early project for the year – 1 new food per week.

A lot of emotions can come out when one talks about pizza, and what style you prefer. One need only go to New York city and proclaim the superiority of a deep dish pizza to understand the passion behind a bit of bread, cheese, and sauce. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll start off by saying I’m a pretty big fan of New Haven style pizza–but I don’t discriminate. Lay a slice of pizza before me, and it’s altogether likely I’ll eat it with a smile.

I had one other thought going into this food. Specifically, I have a friend that makes amazing looking pizza. Try as I might, I didn’t want to try and compare mine to his, since he’s been at it a lot longer. For a first try though, I was pretty happy with the result.

Making the sauce

Step one, prep the sauce. Nothing too fancy here, just some tomato powder from Emergency Essentials mixed in with hot water, along with garlic, Italian Seasoning, salt, and a splash of olive oil all mixed together. The big problem with this is the same as a jar of sauce that you’d buy in the store: It splatters everywhere.

Making the dough

For the dough I went ahead and used the recipe from “Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.” I’m not a copyright lawyer, but in the interest of not getting in trouble, I’ll have to pass on repeating the recipe here. Needless to say, I can pronounce all of the ingredients included, and it’s a batch to put together. Below you can see the process – dry ingredients whisked together, add the water, and then shape into a ball. (Note, the recipe I used actually makes 4 lbs of dough, and you only need 1 lb for the pizza. Guess someone gets to make some extra bread!). Ultimately I have two recommendations: 1) Get a scale to weigh your ingredients and 2) Handle the dough with wet hands.

Dough!

Making the pizza

When stretching the dough out on the peel – whether by hand or with rolling pin – don’t spare the flour. This process just takes some time and patience. As far as toppings, go lighter than you’d think. Especially if you’re using “wet” mozzarella (as opposed to the block/shredded kind), as it’ll end up with a lot more moisture than you may normally be used to.

Urge to top with ridiculous amounts of meat… rising…. rising…

All that remains is to toss it into the oven. For me that meant 500 degrees on the pizza stone. If it’s your first time using a pizza stone, remember a few key points: Heat it up with the oven (it’s more prone to crack otherwise), and remember that when you open the oven, the stone is HOT. Finally, let the pizza stone cool down in the oven as well.

9 minutes cooking – just enough time to open up a bottle of wine and prepare to serve the pizza!

Next time, just toss a big straw in the bottle, and call it a day.

Reminder, pizza is hot coming out of the oven – let it rest.

The astute reader will ask where the banana peppers are. Surprise, this was actually the SECOND pizza. The first one was just not nearly photogenic enough.

Well worth it, though I’ll confess – I’ll still have a place in my stomach for inferior pizza. Geek on friends.