Pizza Bianca

Oh, how I do love my pizza. We have it at least once a month, sometimes more, and we always make it from scratch. Palle is especially fond of non-tomato sauced pizzas, although he's generally pretty happy with any homemade pizza, including old faithful - pepperoni and mushroom with a classic, oregano-laden sauce. In the interests of keeping our pizza consumption from being monotonous, I like to try new things, from time to time. A recent effort involved miso gravy for the sauce, and shabu-shabu thin cut beef dressed with sesame oil and soy sauce. It went over rather well, and I'll certainly be keeping that in mind the next time I have leftover miso gravy lurking in the fridge.

But this one really wowed me. It's not even a recipe (excepting the crust, which is my usual recipe (expired link removed, please see comments below for recipe) using a three-hour rise and a fraction of the yeast) I was particularly pleased to be able to make it entirely out of things that I already had on hand, repurposing leftover roasted chicken and roasted fennel from the previous night's lemon risotto dinner, and using up the tail end of bocconcini which we had after making Messy Giuseppes (Palle's rather Italianate Sloppy Joes). Even the parsley was leftover from garnishing the risotto!

I chopped up the fennel, which had been roasted in thick wedges. I used the tenderest bits of fennel and scattered them over the crust - no sauce, I simply depended upon the olive oil that had been used to roast the fennel to get the party started. Next, meat from the roasted thighs and legs and back of the roast chicken. I generally pull the meat off the bones after dinner, while it is still warm, and plate it up for easy use later, and so it certainly stood me in good stead here. I chopped up the larger pieces, and tore some with my fingers, to get nice distribution. Finally, I dotted the small amount of bocconcini around the perimeter, sprinkled the whole thing with the already-chopped parsley, and bashed it into the oven until the crust started to turn gold. Once out of the oven, we grated some long strands of parmesan over it, and watched them melt artistically onto the pizza.

This was really a triumph of keeping things simple, too. I resisted the urge to add peppers or mushrooms or anything else, didn't overload on the cheese, and ended up with a very satisfying pizza that was very different from the taco pizza, vegetarian pizzas, or buffalo-wing pizzas that I've shared before.

There's a lot more things I want to try, pizza-wise, but for the record, I have no objection to any particular style of pizza. I like thick crust, thin crust, wood-fired, grilled, red-sauced, mustard-sauced, no-sauce at all. Best of all, I like my pizzas homemade.

Sunshine Orecchiette

For some reason, I always want to mis-spell orecchiette. It's either orrechiette, orecchietti, or worse - orrechiete. All wrong. This dish, however, is very, very right.

It came to me as I was pondering a use for the leftover half-pound (or so) of orecchiette left over from testing a recipe for a book review. While I was originally thinking that it would be a meatless dish, I was reminded that we had a double-smoked farmer's sausage in the freezer that needed using, so I threw that in, too. I was very happy with the combination of chickpeas and sausage and pasta all together, but you could easily make this dish vegetarian (vegan, in fact) by using veggie stock in place of the chicken stock, and simply omitting the sausage.

I wanted something non-tomatoey, and we weren't all that keen on a cream sauce that particular night, so I decided to make a bright, lemony sauce, using the tips and tricks I'd learned in tweaking the Chicken Sahara recipe. With the first few bites, we knew this one was a winner.

Sunshine Orecchiette

Serves: 4
Total Prep & Cooking Time: 30 - 45 minutes

200 grams orecchiette
1 double-smoked farmer's sausage
2 cups canned chick peas
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Zest & juice of a lemon
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
1 teaspoon chicken stock/veggie broth (unheated)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
4 cups spinach, in chiffonnade

Dice sausage and fry gently in a 12" skillet until lightly browned. Obviously, vegetarians can skip ahead to the next step.

Combine flour, salt & spices in a large measuring cup or small bowl. Whisk the cold stock or broth into the flour mixture, along with the lemon zest and juice and crushed garlic. Do not use heated stock/broth, or you will get lumps; room temperature or cold is best. Whisk until the mixture is smooth with flecks of garlic. Pour the sauce mixture into the skillet, and cook, stirring often over medium heat for 15 minutes. Add the chickpeas and continue to cook on low, covered so the liquid doesn't all evaporate. The sauce will get much yellower as it cooks, don't worry.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook orecchiette to desired doneness. Drain (or - better - remove pasta from the pot with a spider tool, and add to the sauce. Stir really well, getting the sunny yellow colour to coat the pasta. If the dish seems too thick or stiff, add a little of the pasta cooking water to thin it out (maybe a quarter of a cup). Allow everything to cook for a few minutes on very low while you slice the spinach into chiffonade. Stir spinach ribbons into the pasta, combining well, and serve immediately (with a little freshly ground black pepper, if you fancy).

Hamburger Stroganoff Skillet Dinner

First things first: this is, obviously, not a true stroganoff, nor is it pretending to be one. Instead, it's a quick weeknight dinner that only uses one pan and doesn't take a whole lot of time. Bonus points that it is made from ingredients that I'm likely to have on hand. Even better, it has a surprisingly modest caloric payload, which (according to an online recipe calculator) is approximately 400 calories per serving, somewhere in the vicinity of 1 1/2 to 2 cups. Add some fresh steamed veggies for a side dish, and you're licking the plate (and patting your satisfied belly) for under 500 calories. This dish is, I presume, what Hamburger Helper wants to be. Only better, I think, and with less sodium, which means it doesn't send you desperately, repeatedly to your water glass until your insides slosh when you walk. Comfort food!

Hamburger Stroganoff Skillet Dinner

Serves 4

450 grams extra lean ground beef
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup finely diced onions
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
200 g broad/wide egg noodles
1 1/2 teaspoons Better than Bouillon Beef Base (or substitute beef broth for the boiling water below)
3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (I use Liberte's 0% fat)
2 cups sliced mushrooms of your choice
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup cold water
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp cornstarch

In a 12" non-stick skillet, fry the beef, stirring occasionally until well browned. Sprinkle the dry mustard and the salt over the meat and stir again. Add the onions and garlic, cooking and stirring until softened and a bit translucent. Add mushrooms to skillet, and a splash of water to make sure nothing sticks. Add the noodles, beef base, Worcestershire sauce, and boiling water, stir well and bring to a simmer. Shake the half cup of cold water in a lidded container with the flour, until smooth. Add to the skillet and stir well until thoroughly incorporated and gravy starts to thicken up, and then cook over medium heat until noodles are half-done (about 5 minutes). Combine yogurt with cornstarch (so it doesn't break and curdle) in a small bowl and beat with a spoon or whisk until perfectly smooth. Add yogurt mixture to skillet. Cook stirring until mixture thickens to a creamy coating and the noodles are fully cooked.

A crisp salad would be another lovely way to round this out.

Orange & Date Flecked Muffins

These are homely little muffins, but pack a fresh, orangey punch, thanks to using the whole orange - skin, pith, and all. They're not too sweet, either, so it doesn't feel like you're eating a cupcake (or one of those lethal coffeeshop-style gut-bomb muffins).

You do need a blender (or a good food processor), because chopping through both dates and orange peels is tough work.

Orange & Date Flecked Muffins
Adapted from allrecipes.com

1 orange (thin skinned is best)
3/4 cup 1% buttermilk
1/2 cup diced dates
1/4 cup butter
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon Kosher Salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Preheat oven to 400 F degrees.

Grease a 12-cup regular sized muffin tin (or spritz with canola spray).

Cut orange into eight pieces, and remove any seeds, as well as the thick strip of pith from the centre of the orange. Put the orange pieces into the blender with the egg, buttermilk, dates and butter. Blend thoroughly until mixture is thick, fairly smooth with flecks. It will look a bit like baby food.

In a separate bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cloves and ginger. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour the contents of the blender in all at once. Stir rapidly with a fork until any dry bits are gone. Don't worry about small lumps, though, the batter doesn't need to be smooth. Divide the batter between muffin cups.

Bake in preheated oven for about 20 minutes. Let stand in pan for five minutes, then remove to wire racks for cooling.

Store cooled muffins in a sealable container in the fridge to keep them fresh. You can also wrap them individually in plastic and freeze. Reheating a muffin for 15 seconds in the microwave works beautifully, and makes them taste oven-fresh.

Perfect for coffee breaks!

The Last Pie of the Year is also the First Pie of the Year

Which can only mean one thing: Tourtière for New Year’s Eve (and again, New Year’s Day). (It's also often made for Christmas Eve, instead, depending on where you hail from.)

Tourtière is one of those wonderful foods which can be summed up as “those Quebecois pork pies” (doing it something of a disservice in brevity), but also holds an awful lot of holiday tradition, and hot debates as to the exact ingredients required (or, in some cases, permitted). There is the great potato debate - should it be included at all, should it be in chunks, or should it be mashed smooth? There is the meat debate - all pork, a mixture of pork and beef (and the percentages thereof), should you use game, such as venison or rabbit? And finally, last but not least, the seasoning. I’ve seen arguments for salt-and-pepper only (boring, but safe, I suppose), nutmeg and cloves (my personal favourite), and a sort of kitchen sink approach which encompasses every possible option from the spice rack, and infinite variations in between.

I am not Quebecois (although part French), and therefore do not have a family imperative to include in my definition of this dish, but I have a great fondness for French food in general, including its many regional variations. Here is an ad-hoc version that should prove tasty to most meat-pie loving folks:

Dawna’s Tourtière

Serves 6 - 8
Total Preparation & Cooking Time: 1.5 to 2 hours

Pastry for one double crust pie
2 cups flour
½ cup butter, cold
Pinch of salt
5 tablespoons cold water

Using a food processor fitted with a metal blade, blend the flour, butter and salt with quick, full-speed pulses until the butter is the size of little peas and evenly distributed throughout the flour. With the motor running on low, add the water all at once through the top of the food processor. Immediately crank the speed up on the processor, and in a few seconds it should start to become dough, little chunks of which start to glomb together and try to crawl up out of the bowl. Pull the dough clump(s) out onto a lightly floured counter, and knead just barely until it comes together. Separate into two roughly equal pieces, and pat down into disks. You’re done! You can refrigerate them until you are ready to work with them, or you can roll out the pastry now if your filling is ready. This pastry works beautifully for sweet or savory pies and tarts.

Filling

600 grams lean ground pork
300 grams extra lean ground beef
1 medium onion, minced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 bayleaf
1 medium potato, boiled and mashed (as smooth or lumpy as you wish)
½ teaspoon salt
Good pinch of ground nutmeg
Good pinch of ground cloves
Small pinch ground sage
Small pinch ground thyme
Black pepper to taste (lots)
½ cup vegetable broth

Brown the pork and the beef in a large skillet. Add the onion, garlic, and bayleaf and stir and saute until the onion becomes translucent and tender. Stir in: first the seasonings, then the broth, and finally the potato. Stir about, and taste. Adjust the seasonings to your liking, remove the bayleaf, and remove the filling from the heat.

Roll out your pie’s bottom crust and place it in the pie plate. Heap up the filling in the middle, and then spread it about so that the pie will be full, without gaps by the side crust. Sprinkle the filling with extra nutmeg, and lay the top crust over the filling. Trim and crimp the sides, and cut slits (air vents) in the top of the pie, and brush it with an egg wash (essentially, one egg, beaten smooth, applied with a pastry brush until the whole top surface, including crenellations, are liberally coated with yellow goo. This only uses up about a tablespoon, at the most, of your beaten egg, so put the rest in the fridge (in a little dish, covered well) for a future omelette or other baking tasks).

Place pie in a 450 F oven for 10 to 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 F and continue to cook for another 20 to 30, depending on your oven.

Allow to cool for about five or ten minutes before slicing, to help it preserve its shape when cut.

You may wish to serve this with a nice tomato chutney, or banana ketchup, or even salsa. I won’t judge - well, not much, anyway.

Happy New Year!

International Bento (Afghanistan): Burani Bonjon

I realize that I have not yet posted any of the holiday baking or cooking that we have done this past month, and I'm not going to get to it again, either. I confess to be a little weary of butter tarts, shortbread, and cranberry oat squares at this point, and I'm right back to craving the savory foods that we tend to rely upon.

This bento was constructed from leftovers from a dinner that Palle cooked earlier this month, and we're definitely going to have it again. The lamb curry in almond milk (a sort of Afghani korma, if you will) was tasty but a tad monotone, and may want a little tweaking, before I'm ready to post it up. The eggplant dish, however, Burani Bonjon, was outstanding. Outstanding! Here it is again below, as we had it the first night, since I fairly drowned it in yoghurt sauce in the bento picture.


One of the marvelous things about this dish is that it is served at room temperature, or chilled, meaning that it a) can be made in advance, and b) is perfect for bento (although, I did remove the lamb curry from the bento to warm it up anyway). The other marvelous thing is that, while consisting wholly of familiar flavours, the combination was so delicious that I really could not get it into my mouth fast enough.

Burani Bonjon
Serves 4

1 large eggplant (about 8" long)
200 ml. canned diced tomatoes, drained
4 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon powdered cayenne
salt & pepper to taste
Aleppo pepper (for garnish)
Seer Moss (for garnish, see recipe below)

Slice the eggplant into coins. Lightly, but liberally salt both sides and allow to rest on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet for about an hour, to draw out the bitterness. Rinse the salt off, and pat the slices very dry.

Saute the crushed garlic in half the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet until fragrant, the remove the garlic to the side. Add the (dried) eggplant slices to the skillet and brown both sides, cooking in batches if necessary, and adding the remaining oil as needed (eggplant soaks up oil pretty fast).

Reduce the heat and add the tomato, garlic, turmeric, cayenne, salt and pepper. Simmer until the eggplant is very tender. Serve warm, or at room temperature (not hot!). Drizzle with Seer Moss and sprinkle with chopped cilantro and Aleppo pepper.

Seer Moss: Garlic Yoghurt Sauce

This makes a lot of sauce, but you will love it as a vegetable dip, or as an alternative to Tzatziki, so make the whole batch.

1 cup plain yoghurt
3 - 4 cloves crushed garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons minced fresh mint
2 tablespoons olive oil
pinch salt

Combine and let chill for at least an hour to allow the flavours to meld, but remove from fridge 15 minutes before serving, to take the chill off.

I can't wait to have this again.

A Thousand kinds of Chili: Texas Red

Why, that's my baked acorn squash stuffed with leftover Texas Red, that's what that is.

I have been eating chili all my life, but until I left home, I had only had chili that was made from ground beef and contained kidney beans. I loved it. I still do. But I soon realized that it's not the only chili kid on the block, and there are an awful lot of tasty contenders to get wrapped up in. These days, my chili might be made with ground buffalo and black beans, or, in Palle's case, ground turkey, pumpkin, and beer.

There is the great debate, of course: beans or no beans. People have very strong opinions on the subject, and while I am a fan of beans, generally speaking, I've certainly enjoyed the bean-less chiles that I've had. Tomatoes or no tomatoes is an almost as heated question. Certainly the chile of my childhood depended on tomatoes as part of the flavour and texture and overall body of the dish.

As I considered the different styles and recipes available, it gradually dawned on me that the dish I really wanted to make was closer to Mexican Carne con Chile than anything I had eaten as a kid, but I wanted an American style. A classic. I started doing some research on the classic preparations of Texas style chile, the infamous, notorious bowl of red.


Because I do like beans, I opted for red kidney beans on the side, and made them nice and spicy with lots of fresh green chiles. That's a whole separate recipe. And, because I do like cornbread, I made some to go with.

After extensively slogging my way through old American cookbooks and the interwebs in general, I found in Homesick Texan the inspiration for the chili that I wanted to make. It had almost everything I wanted: chocolate, ancho chiles, beer, chunks of tender meat braised long and low.

I confess to the scandalous addition of tomato paste, because I like the depth of flavour it brings, without contributing a particular tomato-y-ness to the entire affair.

Texas Red Chili
Adapted from Homesick Texan

4 ancho chiles
2 pasilla chiles

2 pounds of bottom blade beef, cut into 1/2 centimetre cubes

1 large onion diced

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 bottle of beer (I used Tankhouse Ale)

2 cups of water

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp cayenne

2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon ancho powder (just for good measure)
1/3 mexican chocolate tablet, grated
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Bufalo Jalapeno Hot Sauce

I heated the dried chiles by holding them over a flame on my gas stove until they became pliable. I tore them open and removed the seeds, and tore the pods into pieces. They went into a bowl with enough water to cover, and were let to soak for half an hour while I cut up the meat. I sprinkled the meat lightly with kosher salt.

I seared the meat in batches in my Dutch oven, then added the onions and garlic, and stirred them around until the onions became translucent. I added the tomato paste and dry spices, and stirred them around until everything was evenly coated. I deglazed the pan with some of the beer, then added the rest as a braising liquid, along with the water.

The chiles were retrieved from their soaking liquid, and pureed in a mini food processor with a little water to make a thin paste/thick sauce. This was then added to the chile pot.

Once the chili began to boil, I turned the heat down to low and let it simmer for about three hours, stirring occasionally.

I smashed up a couple of wedges from a Mexican hot chocolate disc using my meat mallet, and sprinkled the cocoa dust into the pot. I had some masa harina standing by to thicken it up, but it really didn't need any help, as far as I could tell Maybe a Texan would have wanted it thicker, but the spoon was standing up pretty well on its own, so that was good enough for me. I let the chili simmer for another half hour or so, and served as you see above.

Oh, and if you want to serve it (or the leftovers thereof, perhaps mixed with any leftover beans, or perhaps not) in a squash, simply hollow out a nice acorn squash, brush with canola oil and sprinkle with cumin and smoked paprika. Bake uncovered in a baking dish at 350℉ for about 20 to 30 minutes. Fill with hot chile, and maybe a nice coleslaw on the side.

International Bento (Germany/Ukraine): Sausage & Sauerkraut

Internationally speaking, this bento is a little German, a little Ukrainian/Russian, a little Polish... and generally north eastern European.

This bento was the result of leftovers, as is my usual modus operandi, The sausages and sauerkraut were cooked together in Riesling wine, using the recipe from Nigella Express, the perogies are potato, from Alenka on Kingsway in Vancouver, with caramelized red onions sprinkled over them.

I do note that the amount of sauerkraut that the recipe makes far exceeded our needs, so be advised to cut it in half if you don't want leftover kraut. Also, the amount of wine does not sufficiently cook away in the cooking time, so I have reduced it from 750 ml to 500 ml. The good news is, you get to drink the remaining 250 ml with dinner!

Sausages with Sauerkraut
Adapted from Nigella Express
Serves 6 - 8

950 grams jarred sauerkraut, rinsed and drained
2 teaspoons juniper berries or sprigs of fresh rosemary
3 dried bay leaves
8 smoked sausages, cut into shorter lengths
2 cups/500 ml dry Riesling wine
1 teaspoon white peppercorns

Spread the drained sauerkraut in the bottom of a small roasting pan. Sprinkle with juniper berries, bay leaves, and white peppercorns. Add the sausage pieces in a single layer, and carefully pour in the wine. Bring the mixture to a boil on the stovetop, then cover with foil and place in a 400℉ oven, and bake for 30 minutes (check the liquid level after 20 minutes, as your mileage may vary). Serve with mustard.

If you do not have juniper berries, sprigs of fresh rosemary give a similar effect of a woodsy floral note. It's not the same, of course, but it is a lovely alternative if juniper berries aren't something you can easily get.

Thanksgiving Redux

Happy Thanksgiving to my friends south of the border!

Up here in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving in October, so to allow time to sufficiently digest the turkey before having more at Christmas, or so the story goes (according to me). However, it's true that we don't always have turkey for Christmas dinner at our house (although we usually have one on Boxing Day with the family), and it's also true that we sometimes mess around with cross-cultural holiday traditions.

Tonight, we'll be having a turkey & stuffing skillet dinner, with roasted Brussels sprouts and a baked sweet potato. It's considerably less effort than a traditional stuffed turkey dinner, and perfect for those of us who like to squeeze in an extra turkey-related meal between the others. I'm still tweaking the recipe, though, and you'll get an update on it when I've figured it out completely...

On Canadian Thanksgiving, however, we let our fusion madness run amok. This time, the infusion was from Japanese cuisine. The above picture is our turkey gyoza with sage-rice, sake-steamed sweet potato cubes, and ginger-sauteed Brussels sprouts, with little bowls of miso gravy and cranberry-soy dipping sauce (made with cranberry sauce, rice vinegar, and soy sauce).

The sage rice needs work - I needed to use either more (and more finely chopped) fresh sage, or combine it with a pinch of dry sage to really infuse the rice with a pleasantly mild sage-iness. As it was, the inclusion of the sage was tasty, but seemed kind of accidental or incidental to the dish.

The sweet potato cubes were a new variation on our favourite "Holiday Yams" which are briefly described about half-way through this post on jerk chicken. Instead of citrus juice for the liquid, I simply used sake, and instead of the mixed spices, I used thin coins of peeled ginger. The results were lovely! I used a covered corningware dish to make these, and bake them for about 40 minutes at 375℉ (you can adjust the time accordingly if you are cooking something else concurrently at a different temperature. This version was also a big hit, and will definitely be called upon again.

As a weird, additional bonus on the day, we were let out early from work on account of the (snowy) weather, since Vancouver comes to a screeching halt if more than two snowflakes are spotted in the air together. This means that I had lots of time to get home, and get dinner on the table, which was much appreciated.

Cooking Chicken @ Quince

On Tuesday, I went to a food bloggers meetup put together by the Chicken Farmers of Canada at Quince in Kitsilano.

The evening wasn't all marketing, as I had feared. There were a couple of reps from the organization, Marty and Carol, who were available to answer questions and generally co-ordinating the evening, and one of the attendees was in fact a chicken farmer, so we had good representation from the chicken folks. The first part of the evening was wine and canapes while we introduced ourselves to each other, and got to meet some of Vancouver's other food bloggers.

The rest of the evening was in fact a cooking class, including a demo from Quince owner/chef (and former Dubrulle instructor) Andrea Jefferson, who had a terrific teaching style, by the way (and offers classes at Quince), and then we were broken up into small groups to practice the recipes we had just seen demonstrated.

In an extraordinary failure as a food blogger, I did not remember to bring my camera. D'oh! However, my excellent teammate Marianne, from French Fries to Flax Seeds has done a heroic job of documenting the evening, so I refer you to her photo-rich post here. This is an epic cheat for me, since we worked in the same group to make the mushroom risotto and pan-seared chicken breast. You can even see my hands in a couple of photos - salting/stirring the diced mushrooms, and slicing the chicken breast for the plating. Our other teammates were Tana from Cheap Appetite and Kevin from 604 Foodtography.

The veggies, oven-seared zucchini and red bell peppers, were supplied by Quince staff, working hard around us to keep everything moving smoothly, and the pomegranate-duck reduction was prepared in advance and dispensed carefully on each finished plate by the chef.

So, I met quite a few new people, who will hopefully be familiar faces at any future food blogger event, and some new blogs (including Buttercream Barbie, Van Foodies, and Real Food Made Easy) to check out. All this, and a belly full of chicken and risotto, all courtesy the Chicken Farmers of Canada and Quince. Thanks for the invite!