This summer has been all about pizza for me – and the perfect summer pizza is a grilled pizza. This one is topped with smoked salmon, goat cheese, red onions, capers, and arugula. So good! Head over to the SeaChange blog for more pictures and a full recipe tutorial. 🙂
Last year sometime, I went to a homemade calamari feast at my friend Katheryn’s house. (I brought dessert, and also helped disembowel about 300 little squid. My kind of dinner party!) One of her other guests, who was from the Szechuan province of China, concocted a delicious Szechuan spice mix for dipping our calamari: a combination of sugar, salt, black pepper, Chinese 5 spice powder, and hot paprika.
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Now that we’ve covered making the dough, it’s time to turn it into a pizza! This is the fun part. 🙂 (And if you haven’t already, you should read my previous post on Neapolitan-style pizza dough.)…
A little while ago I posted a pizza I’d made, and promised to report back with the details on the process once I’d worked out the kinks. I’ve been working with Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough and a few methods for baking it in a home oven that are supposed to mimic the effects of a commercial wood-fired pizza oven. The Sourdough Surprises project this month was pizza, so I took the opportunity to make a sourdough version of the dough.
sourdough Neapolitan-style pizza heading into the oven
To clarify, when I say “pizza”, I’m talking Neapolitan–style pizzas: thin-crispy-chewy-airy crust and a few carefully chosen toppings, baked in a wood-fired oven at a zillion degrees so they come out minutes later, smoking hot and slightly charred and delicious. …
I have another guest post up at the SeaChange blog: Cedar Planked Salmon with Rosemary Smoke. This is a perfect summer grilling recipe and a very exciting cooking method!
We’re moving in almost exactly two weeks and so far I have managed to do very little in the way of packing. I have also managed to neglect this blog, so I wanted to quickly share this “Blue Hawaiian” pizza I made for dinner last night. No recipe needed – just make your traditional Hawaiian pizza with sauce, ham, and pineapple, plus the secret ingredient: crumbled blue cheese.
(Don’t forget the mozzarella.)
Nate and I both love this combination – definitely a grown-up twist on a kid favorite, especially if you like blue cheese.
I’ve discovered a really awesome pizza crust recipe and baking method which I will share here eventually… in the meantime, try this on your next pizza!
When I was a kid, roast chicken and gravy was my family’s favorite comfort food (I think it’s safe to say it still is) and it was always up to me to make the gravy. I don’t know how or where he got the idea, but on one occasion my Dad convinced me to put a handful of cured, salted Chinese black beans in the gravy. This was another case of a strange flavour combination working out much better than expected, because surprisingly, the gravy didn’t taste like Chinese take-out – it tasted like delicious chicken gravy with a good dose of salty umani flavour thanks to the black beans. After that successful case, almost any kind of gravy was subject to the addition of black beans, including Christmas turkey gravy (although my Mum was somewhat less enthusiastic about this than my Dad and I)….
Just a quick note to say that I have another guest post on the SeaChange blog: Salad Lyonnaise with Candied Salmon. In addition to the candied salmon, there’s golden fried garlic, buttery toasted croutons, and a perfectly poached egg. I think it’s a good one – go check it out and let me know what you think. 🙂
One of the truly great taste combinations is mushrooms and cheese, so it is a no-brainer to put them together on a pizza. What is not a no-brainer is making mushroom pesto to put on the pizza instead of tomato sauce. That is brilliant. Another brilliant thing is to roast the mushrooms in the oven before making them into pesto. How have I never roasted mushrooms before? The smells coming out of the oven while they were roasting were just incredible….
I usually think of rhubarb as a really great companion to strawberries in a pie or crisp, but its slightly acidic, slightly sweet flavour lends itself well to applications other than dessert. I have a freezer full of rhubarb from last year, and seeing as rhubarb season is almost upon us once again, I figured I had better use some of it up. Inspired by the rhubarb meatballs in Kate’s weekly meal plan at Venison for Dinner, I did a Google search for a sweet and sour sauce made with rhubarb and came across a recipe by Jamie Oliver for “My Favorite Hot and Sour Rhubarb with Crispy Pork and Noodles”. Being at home sick for a few days last week, I ended up watching a lot of Jamie on the Food Network, which cemented my gigantic crush on him and made me only too happy to try this recipe. Pieces of pork are baked in a sauce of pureed rhubarb, chilis, honey, and Asian flavours, then the pork is shallow-fried until crispy and served with the sauce over noodles, topped with what Jamie calls “interesting cresses”. I think what he means by this is micro greens, however my local grocery store isn’t so posh, so I ended up using bean sprouts and sunflower sprouts.
Look at those interesting cresses!
Jamie uses pork belly in his recipe, but I used pork shoulder instead (pork butt would work too). This was SO GOOD! The rhubarb sauce is tangy and flavourful, the pork is tender yet crisp, and the “interesting cresses” add a good dose of freshness and crunchy texture. It requires a bit of foresight to make because the pork takes at least an hour in the oven, but it’s definitely going on the “make again” list!
Adapted from Jamie Oliver. Serves 2.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. In an 8-inch square roasting pan, place:
500 grams boneless pork shoulder or butt, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
Sprinkle the pork with salt and pepper and set aside.
In a food processor, combine:
200 grams chopped rhubarb (fresh or frozen and thawed)
2 tbsp liquid honey
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1/2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 fresh red chili, de-seeded and chopped, OR 1 tsp chili paste (such as sambal oelek)
heaping 1/2 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder
Process until smooth (or as Jamie says, “wazz it up!”).
Pour the rhubarb mixture over the pork and cover the pan with foil.
Pretty unattractive but delicious anyway!
Bake in a 350˚F oven for 60-90 minutes, until the pork is tender.
Remove the pork from the pan and scrape off as much rhubarb sauce as you can.
Place the rhubarb sauce in a pot and bring to a simmer to thicken if needed. Adjust the seasoning to taste – I added a little more honey and soy sauce and a dab of chili paste.
For the crispy pork, pour enough vegetable oil in the bottom of a wok or large pan to cover it 1/4-inch deep, and heat it over medium. When the oil is hot, add the pork pieces (I did this in two batches so as not to crowd the pan). Fry on both sides until brown and crispy, then set aside on paper towels to drain.
For the noodles, put a large pot of water on to boil while the oil heats. When you fry the pork, place about 175 grams of dry Asian egg noodles in the boiling water and cook until al dente.
To serve, divide the noodles between two bowls and spoon over the rhubarb sauce and crispy pork.
Top each bowl with:
a handful of “interesting cresses” such as bean sprouts and sunflower sprouts
sliced green onions (I forgot these)
seeded and chopped red chili
cilantro leaves
lime wedge
Mix it all up and dig in!
