Pap Approved Pizza

Not that it takes a lot to make my father happy when you feed him....usually just food will do.  But even Alice liked the pizza I made on Sunday.  I used to think that homemade pizza crust was something that would be hard to do, so why bother when you could pick up a frozen one in the freezer case at Wally World. 

But if you make it at home, you can put as much or as little of what you like on it.  Pepperoni on a third, cheese only on two pieces, everything in the fridge on the rest.  And there aren't all the preservatives or anything yucky.

Plus, it is fun to play with dough.  I bought a Kitchen Aid mixer a couple years ago and that makes it easier but sometimes, it is so much fun to knead by hand.  Punching the dough takes out a lot of aggressions. 

Okay. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, put all this stuff in the bowl and set it on medium-low until everything comes together.  You will know.  It all just becomes a ball and sticks to the hook.  If you only have your hands....Put the flours, yeast and salt into a bowl and whisk together.  Add the olive oil and the water and stir with a spoon.  I prefer a long wooden spoon.  Makes me feel "rustic" and just seems to work better.  Then put the dough out onto the clean counter top that you have rubbed with just a big spoon of flour and knead.  That is push the dough with the heels of your hands then fold it over itself and push it again.  Just a couple of times.  Now, oil a glass or metal bowl with veggie oil or a nonstick spray. Shape the dough into a round ball and place in the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and put it in a warm spot (on top of the stove) for one hour.  TA-DA!  Homemade pizza dough!

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour (unbleached is nice if you have it)
1 1/4 cups semolina flour (this looks like fine cornmeal, comes in small bags and makes pasta too)
1 package of rapid rise yeast
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt (use less - 3/4 tsp if all you have is table salt)
2 tbls olive oil
1 1/4 cup warm water (the temperature you would bathe the baby in)

Use it right away or put in an oiled storage bag for up to three days. Half this recipe makes a nice round 12 inch pizza.  Use the whole thing and make a rectangle on a cookie sheet.  One trick is to "strech" the dough in the air, letting it hang off your hands before you start shaping it on the pan.  Also, sprinkle a little of the semolina flour onto the pan before you put the dough on the pan. It won't stick.  "Pre-baking" the crust for about 10 minutes before you add the sauce and toppings makes sure everything is done the first couple times you bake homemade pizza.  Baking at 400 degrees is good. You can bake at 500 if your oven is clean but if you have any spills, you will get some smoke at 500 and then the smoke alarms go off....it's all bad! The cats run, the dogs howl, the neighbors open doors....

I will get you a good pizza sauce recipes next.  Have a great pizza day. 

BEANS, BEANS, BEANS...

            Does anyone read all those magazine articles about how to lose weight, lower your blood pressure and cholesterol and avoid “metabolic syndrome inflammation” which leads to a vast array of woes including diabetes? Me, too.

            Lately, I have been reading a lot about beans.  I have always known that beans were a good source of fiber and protein. But now they are being touted as almost a miracle cure.  The last article I read said that I could lose some phenomenal amount of weight and inches (mostly belly fat – that deep, dark adipose kind) just by adding five cups of beans to my diet each week.  I could keep eating everything else I wanted (look out Edy’s Slow Churned Caramel Delight), just add the beans.  They even out your blood sugar, drop your blood pressure, and, they have a lot of fiber. 

            Five cups a week is about three quarters of a cup a day.  I don’t know if you realize how filling beans are, but if you eat that many beans, your appetite should take a direct hit. I always thought that beans were bad if you had a problem with sugar, but now I learn that they are one of the highest rated insulin resistant foods.  Who knew? I read a while ago that if you cooked potatoes then let them cool before eating, they also became insulin resistant.  That gave me a reason to go back for seconds on the potato salad! But back to the bean thing.

            Red meat comes under fire a lot and beans are one of the substitutes recommended in your diet. They are right up there with salmon and sardines! I’m not kidding.  Skip the burger – skip the steak – skip the prime rib roast. Who could feel deprived with sardines on crackers, blackened orange fish or a big bowl of baby limas waiting for them? Surely, not me. Snicker, snicker.

            But I do like beans. I am in the chili with beans camp.  I order the rice and beans at the Mexican place (to go with my beef entrée usually).  Garbanzos mashed with roasted garlic and olive oil then spread on toasted French bread baguettes is awesome. Maybe we should all give this bean thing a try.  The ham and bean soup I make is a pretty drawn out affair as I think that nothing beats the taste of a soup that starts with a bone in a stock pot and ends after all day simmering on the back burner. I do also like a light easy version of a Chicken and Bean Soup that I make at home sometimes. 

I must add that if you are a fan of the “Fresco” thing, with all the fresh tomatoes, onions, cilantro at that fast Mexican place, you should try using black beans on your tacos, burritos or salad. Open a can of black beans and wash them first in a colander or mesh strainer.  Everything will turn bean black if you don’t. Dice up some onion and tomato and add to the beans. Squeeze in some lime juice and it’s all the better if you have some fresh cilantro leaves to add.  It tastes, “bright”, that is the word I will use.  Long live the bean! Or is it live long with beans?

 

Chicken and Bean Soup

1 14 ounce can of chicken broth

1 tsp olive oil

½ cup each diced carrots, celery and onion

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 pinch red pepper flakes (optional, if you like some heat)

1 14 ounce can of cannelini beans (Italian white beans) or any white bean

1 6 – 8 ounce can cooked chicken

Heat olive oil in a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Add diced vegetables and stir until the onion begins to turn translucent and carrot and celery soften.  Add broth, beans and seasonings and bring to a simmer for 15 minutes. Add chicken and continue to simmer till warm.

*This is a nice base soup to build from if you wish.  You can use a broth with roasted garlic if that flavor makes you happy. Add a can of petite diced tomatoes with the broth and beans and cook just a bit longer to meld the flavors. Use a spoon of those green diced chili peppers that come out of the Mexican food cans. Leave out the chicken for a real vegetarian meal.  Float some crunchy croutons on top instead of the normal saltines.

 

DON'T WORRY ABOUT YOUR TWINKIE...

Trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup, the fat on the edge of a steak or chop – all the things that make food taste good are not good for us.  The constant drone about health issues and the cost of quality ingredients has taken the flavor out of our food.  All those childhood memories of Twinkies, Orange Cupcakes and Little Debbie’s were lost long before the bakery closed its doors.  Two all beef patties with special sauce, lettuce, cheese…just doesn’t taste like it used to taste. Who took the bop out of my bop sho bop is what I want to know?

All our favorite treats have undergone modifications.  When they made the first cupcakes and Twinkies, I bet there were very few ingredients on the label that the average American didn’t eat regularly and worse, couldn’t pronounce.  Flour, sugar, eggs, cream, butter even lard were all real ingredients.  Flash forward, the company needs to extend the shelf life, add more preservatives. There is an emulsified oil that is way cheaper than the butter or even lard. Corn syrup mixes easier sugar and is more cost efficient. Change the recipe.  In the meantime, you and I are losing that little spark in the flavor.  Not really noticeable, but yet something has changed. Involve the government and costs go up on everything.  Let’s cut back on the quality of the ingredients.  But you can’t go too far.  So next let’s take a half ounce out of the batter that goes into the cupcake, or two servings out of the carton of ice cream.

I could go on all day.  What I believe is that the quality of what you consume directly affects the quantity you need to be satisfied.  In 1960 something, when Coke was still made with sugar and sold in returnable glass bottles, eight ounces was enough to satisfy that need for something sweet to drink.  It was thought of as a treat not an everyday thirst quencher.  When I ate my first Twinkie, I don’t remember any greasy filmy feeling in my mouth.  It was sponge cake and a fluffy icing. Not only were the Chunky bars big, the chocolate tasted like chocolate not wax. And don’t get me started on the two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese…it makes me weep.  I miss that flavor most of all. It doesn’t even matter that I can’t find the beef on the bun anymore.  The question is who cares where the beef is?

I have a sponge cake recipe pulled out to share with you. My mom always called it hot milk cake, but you can prepare it with milk or water. Think of it as just one easy step on the way to Nirvana.  Should you want to “Twinkify” your sponge cake, the icing is the type that you might find in a whoopie pie and I would recommend slicing the cake in half and using this icing as a filing. Then just sprinkle the top with some powdered sugar.  Yummy.  I bet even Navin Johnson down in that run down Mississippi tenement would love this cake with a birthday candle. (1974 Steve Martin made the comedy, “The Jerk.”  Rent it today.)

 

Hot Milk Sponge Cake

3 eggs

¾ cups sugar

½ cup hot water or milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon lemon extract

1 ¼ cups cake flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 8 or 9 inch square pan.  Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Beat eggs in a bowl on high for 5 minutes until creamy.  Beat in sugar gradually. Beat in water or milk, vanilla and lemon extract on low speed.  Beat in flour on low speed. Pour into pan.

Bake 25 – 30 minutes until top springs bake when touched. Cool.

 

Flour Frosting

1 cup milk

4 tablespoons flour

1 cup sugar

½ cup each butter and shortening or 1 cup shortening

1 teaspoon vanilla

In saucepan, whisk together milk and flour over med high heat til boiling and thickened. Stir constantly. Cool.  In mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Beat til fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Stir flour mixture to make sure it’s cool. Beat into sugar mixture on med high speed until light and fluffy.

 

*To assemble the Twinkified Cake, there are two options. Number one is to slice through the center of cake horizontally, effectively making 2 layers.  Then frost the bottom half and cover with top half. Sprinkle with confectionary sugar.  Number two is to cut cake into 9 equal pieces then work with each piece individually. Slice each piece in half, dollop the icing into the center and then sprinkle with sugar.

*Should you not have lemon extract in your cupboard, you may simply add a bit more vanilla to your cake and suffer very little in the taste.

 

 

 

SUNDAY'S BEST CHICKEN

“I’ll just get us a bucket of Kentucky Fried.” That’s what I told Kyle one day at the diner.

Sunday mornings started at 4 am at the diner.  We had a nice breakfast crowd on Sundays but that was not what dragged me out of bed so early, good weather or bad.  It was that chicken!  Baked chicken.  Those people loved it.  Except Kyle and me.  

Our opinion of baked chicken ran low, but he concurred with me that the Colonel was onto something!  Now, I can fry a pretty top notch pan of chicken.  But it is no easy feat to accomplish and to do it on a large scale is rather, well scary, unless you are in the chicken frying business. That is a lot of Crisco melted at 375 degrees. I soak or brine most of the chicken that I fry or bake. Fried chicken goes into the buttermilk (don’t say yuck, you can’t taste it after it’s fried, it only serves to make it juicy - think Southern). You flour and season it once and let it stand, then flour it again and give it time to make a nice breading before you send it into a pool of quality liquefied “fat” to crisp and pop and sizzle.  The breasts cook quicker than the thighs and you have to watch the wing tips. No doubt it is worth it for family and friends, but to feed a room full of hungry folks fresh out of Sunday worship services, it is just far too tedious and time consuming. Besides, they liked the baked stuffed better anyway with homemade mashed potatoes, noodles in chicken gravy and “cooked to death” green beans studded with bits of ham or bacon. Every Sunday.

So on that particular Saturday morning when my regular customers came in to eat before 8 am, I asked Kyle if he was bringing his wife for lunch the next day.

“What are you having,” was always his question.  “Baked chicken,” was always the first answer. “I don’t like baked chicken,” he would respond with his nose and face twisted into a semi-sneer. “I’ll just get us a bucket of Kentucky Fried,” I challenged. “I’m serious. If you bring her tomorrow, I will get Kentucky Fried for you and me.”

And I did.  I put potatoes and noodles on his plate and regaled it with two pieces of the Colonel’s original recipe.  I had more in the kitchen for myself when serving was over and that was a treat. Best Sunday chicken I had the whole time I worked there!

Now it’s not that I am saying the baked chicken isn’t good, my tastes just run more toward fried. It is one of the best baked chickens I have tasted. Preparation is really not that hard and if you preplan and have time for the baking, anyone can do it.  Here is the Sunday Baked Chicken recipe.

Sunday Baked Chicken

6 to 8 chicken pieces (leg quarters or breasts)
1 gallon warm water

1 cup kosher salt or ¾ cup table salt

1 lemon

1 or 2 fresh thyme sprigs or 1 tablespoon dried thyme

1 tablespoon peppercorns (use the cheap kind, we aren’t grinding them)

¼ cup butter (1/2 stick), melted

2 tablespoons Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon garlic powder

Salt and Pepper to taste

The night before you are cooking - Stir to dissolve salt in warm water. Cut lemon into 4 wedges, squeeze into water and drop the skin in too. Add thyme and peppercorns.  Place chicken into 2 one gallon zip lock bags. Place in a bowl or container upright with tops open.  Add enough water to cover chicken and seal. Place bowl in refrigerator overnight.

When cooking - Preheat oven to 350°.  Remove chicken from bags, discard water and pat chicken dry with paper towels. Spray a 9 x 12 inch baking sheet with cooking oil or line with aluminum foil. Arrange chicken into pan skin side up.  Brush chicken with melted butter. Sprinkle each piece with seasoning, garlic and salt and pepper (it’s not an exact science, don’t be scared).  Cover pan with aluminum foil and bake for 1 ½ hours. Uncover chicken and bake an additional 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

*You may want to make a couple extra pieces because the leftovers make the best chicken salad (more on that another time) or chicken sandwiches.

*If you don’t have peppercorns, shake some pepper into the water, no problem.  If you don’t have Italian seasoning, use a combo of oregano and basil.

*You can make a really nice Rosemary chicken by replacing the thyme in the brine with rosemary, fresh or dried, and placing a few sprigs of fresh into the baking pan before cooking. That’s really yummy with quartered redskin potatoes brushed with olive oil and tossed in garlic, salt and pepper then roasted in the oven. If you like that idea, you can get a bag of those baby pearl onions and maybe some little carrots, season and toss them right in with the potatoes and roast too! Put them in about 45 minutes before the chicken is done and check after about a half hour. 

CHINESE NEW YEAR'S IS SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10TH
YEAR OF THE SNAKE...

My kitchen drawer wasn’t always full of kitchen gadgets. No, it used to be full of menus. Mostly Chinese delivery menus. 

After a childhood of watching my female roll models cook for their families, my best friend and I moved into our own apartment and began living on cans of chicken noodle soup, hot dogs and pork and beans. I could say it was because we couldn’t afford much else (true statement) but we also were twenty some things learning how to “live” and that didn’t include making soup or roasting chicken very often.

And so the “drawer” was born.  We lived on the edge of urban sprawl somewhere between Washington, DC and Baltimore.  There were steak houses, seafood shacks, sub shops, Italian, French, Polish, Korean – fast food, slow food, every kind of food. But best of all, there were eleven Chinese restaurants that would deliver til midnight or later to our little apartment.  After work or a night out, friends would gather and eventually someone would go to the “drawer”. Better jobs and better pay allowed us to upgrade from beans to rice, you might say.  We ate so many fortune cookies that we couldn’t keep up with the Buddhist inspired wisdoms we were promised and saved them in a clear glass jar on the counter.

Moving to the Tuscarawas Valley was a bit of a shock. I tired of the urban life and loved the tranquility that visits to family here had afforded me, so it was easy to relocate with little responsibilities to hold me there. Everything eventually fell into place. Except at about 10 pm, two or three times a week when I would have given anything to see the dark haired Italian delivery guy from Ping’s pull up in his Camaro with a container of General Tso’s.  I was six miles from the nearest gas station and there was definitely no delivery guy even if there had been a restaurant within a half hour ride. At 10 pm the sidewalks were rolled up in town anyway. Deep sigh.

Now even twenty years later, I still think about it.  Whenever that craving hits. 
But there are more Chinese places now.  I can get to one in about fifteen minutes in two different directs from home. When one opened within walking distance of where I worked seven or eight years ago, I made a point of taking Christmas cookies to the girl who always took my phone order and ended with, “Ten minute, please.” That, and a nice tip when you pick up, will get you extra vegetables every time!

Now that I cook for a living, I have mastered the art of satisfying my Chinese desires at home. No, nothing beats “the real thing” but I am close.  My favorite, and pretty easy, is Chicken and Broccoli with Cashews.  Not too many specialty items needed for this one.  You do need a good sized skillet unless you are in possession of “the wok” and a sharp knife is always a bonus.

 

Chicken and Broccoli with Cashews

2 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1 inch slices

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon dark Karo or cane syrup or 1 tsp brown sugar

3 cloves minced garlic or 1 tsp garlic powder

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¾ cup chicken broth

4 teaspoons cornstarch

3 tablespoons oil (sesame or peanut is great, vegetable oil will do)

4 cups broccoli flowerets and pieces

1 red bell pepper, cut into strips

1 medium onion, cut into slices

1/3 cup cashew pieces

2 tablespoons sweet chili sauce or ½ tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

 

In a medium bowl, combine soy sauce, syrup or sugar, garlic and ginger. Add chicken and stir to coat. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together broth and cornstarch. Set aside.

In a wok or large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of oil until almost smoking.

Add broccoli and pepper strips.  Stir for 3 minutes. Add onions and stir 3 minutes more. Add chicken with the soy sauce mixture and stir fry about 7 minutes til chicken is tender and cooked through.

Stir broth mixture and add to skillet. Continue stirring for 1 or 2 minutes til thickens.  Add cashews and serve with rice.

*You can modify this recipe to suit your tastes.  Exchange chicken for beef or pork in which case you would want to marinate the meat for at least a half hour up to several hours in the soy mixture.  You can skip the broccoli and go for a mixture of red and green peppers instead. Try almonds instead of cashew or skip the nuts altogether. Add more soy sauce if you like.  The sweet chili sauce is a great addition for a little spice. (Frank’s – just like the hot sauce- added one to there product list a couple years ago and you can find so many uses if you like the heat and flavor) Cooking is not always an exact science, have fun.

 

 

 

MORE TALKN' OR MORE COOKN'?

So, I thought someone might want some funny stories or some yummy recipes or some of both. Maybe. This all remains to be seen. Truth be told I can come up with a bunch of both!

I have only been cookn' for a livin' for the last six years, but I remember standing on a chair when I was too short to reach the kitchen counter to stir sugar cookie dough.  I possess, no lie, at least 100 cookbooks (of which I have read more than half cover to cover).  Then there is the four drawer filing cabinet that overflows with recipes clipped from magazines and newspaper or donated from friends or printed from the internet.  That is a lot of recipes. 

In any case, I get the urge now and then to tell a story and to share a thought.  To bake a cake and share the recipe.  To clean a chicken and make the soup.  To....alas, you tire of the to be or not to be's.  Let me go ahead and post something.  I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writin' and cookn' and eatn'. (I should have called this blog...NO G'S)