Supper Before Grace

Recipes

Roasted Rosemary Cashews

Last modified on 2010-04-13 20:38:48 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a Glance

1 pound raw, unsalted cashews
2 tbs fresh rosemary, coarsely chopped (from about 3-4 sprigs)
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tbs light brown sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tbs melted butter

Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 8 min
Utensil/bowl use: Minimal – cutting board, knife, measuring spoon, large bowl, small bowl
Serve for: Party food

Before too long, I suspect Supper Before Grace will have a number of party food recipes. I tend to go to a few parties a month and am generally expected to bring some sort of culinary concoction whenever I go. I have since developed an obsessive habit scouring the internet for party food ideas. In particular for the people throwing this week’s party, I have taken on the habit of bringing something with nuts. This habit is simply due to the host’s personal tastes of no meat and no sweets which immediately disqualifies a large number of my already existing party recipes. It also helps that I brought spiced nuts to this host’s first party and have a fondness for keeping with a theme.

When I came across Lottie + Doof’s recipe for Rosemary Cashews, I knew it would be perfect for this party. Internet searches done, I thought nothing more of it until a few moments before the party. I mean, this recipe was going to be great and I had nothing to worry about. I work right by a Trader Joe’s so there was no concern for finding raw cashews, and this recipe could not take anymore than 15 minutes to throw together. So moments before the party, I decide to sample a few and realize that they are fairly salty. Like, so salty that they are perfect with beer and then more beer. This warranted another internet search for Ina Garten’s original take on this recipe and in the process of doing that search, I found The Kitchen Sink’s adaptation as well. Both of these have a bit less salt than the recipe I made and I feel, would have been more to my liking (and it will be the one I am sharing at the end of the post despite taking pictures of the Lottie + Doof recipe). That said, the cashews I brought to the party got me no less than 5 wedding proposals and 3 promises of first born children…all incredibly useful things to me right now. I would have been just as flattered with offers of more beer.

First, gather ingredients. I found my cashews at Trader Joes. These pictures are of Lottie + Doof’s version of the recipe but I have since adapted the recipe to use less salt. The recipe printed here is the adapted version.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Place cashews on a parchment lined baking sheet and roast cashews for about 10 minutes until heated through. They might brown a little.

Trim the rosemary leaves from the stems and coarsely chop the leaves. I find that rocking the knife back and forth over the leaves while putting pressure on the dull end of the knife with your hand works really well when chopping the leaves.

Chop about 2 tablespoons worth of leaves.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and add it to a medium mixing bowl.

Add spices and rosemary to bowl and mix thoroughly.

Mix cashews and spiced butter mixture until cashews are well coated. I found it difficult to mix everything without the use of a spatula. Here is my stocking stuffer spatula.

These cashews can be served warm or at room temperature.

Roasted Rosemary Cashews (adapted from here, here, and here)

1 pound raw, unsalted cashews
2 tbs fresh rosemary, coarsely chopped (from about 3-4 sprigs)
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tbs light brown sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tbs melted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread cashews on a parchement lined baking sheet and roast nuts for about 10 minutes. A few pieces will brown slightly.

Mix melted butter, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and chopped rosemary in a medium or large bowl. Add roasted cashews to bowl and mix ingredients thoroughly to coat the cashews. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Baked Beans

Last modified on 2010-04-13 22:10:38 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This post may be titled Baked Beans but I really intend for this post to bring a Tuesday night tradition of mine to your attention. I do this because I feel like the event is much more special to me than this recipe. Please scroll to the bottom of the post to get the recipe.

First, it begins with a bar:

Any old bar will do. The divey, the better.

Add a bartender named Bob:

This might be harder to do since Bob is the best bartender, you see. He has an over-abundance of generosity and caring for a group of ragtag twenty-somethings, far beyond what we deserve. He particularly likes to feed us and was the instigator of this Tuesday night tradition by serving us Italian Beef, just because. He has since made chicken wings, beef stroganoff, fajitas, pulled pork, and on this particular Tuesday, served his signature, Sloppy Bob’s for these fine folks:

Ok, enough revelry, there are baked beans to be had.

Now, this baked bean recipe is not one that I would recommend if you are wanting to make something healthy, or something that incorporates natural ingredients, or has any degree of food couture. To be honest, I am in the market for a new baked bean recipe. This recipe is definitely tasty and it feeds alot of people for not alot of cash. And it is exceedingly easy to prepare and doesn’t require much time in the kitchen. And it leaves your house sharply smelling of amazing BBQ, a vinegary sweet and spicy aroma that I wish I could bottle.

Ok, maybe I am just in the market for a recipe that doesn’t start with “open a can of…”

I feel like recipes that incorporate beans should show off the health benefit and flavor of beans, not totally usurp those bonuses for the sake of bacon, like this recipe does.

Despite any bean based philosophy you may or may not have, make this recipe. You might just be called the Bean Queen by your favorite bartender because of it.

To make this recipe, you’re going to need lots of beans.

Plus a few pieces of bacon, a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce (or whatever is most handy), some apple cider vinegar, dry mustard and a few onions. Oh, and brown sugar! I forgot to add that in the picture.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and move a rack to the lower middle position.

Fry up about 8 slices of bacon in a large (my is 12 inches and barely fit everything) skillet on medium heat until the bacon fat is rendered. Don’t cook the bacon until it is crispy, that happens in the oven. There just needs to be a shallow depth of fat in the bottom and the bacon needs to be slightly rippled.

Remove the bacon and let it drain on a paper towel lined plate. Turn the heat down to medium low and fry about a cup of diced onions in the bacon fat until they are translucent. I might have burned mine. It still tasted awesome.

Add 4 cans of pork n’ beans to skillet and stir. I can justify this step by telling myself that I don’t have a good homemade recipe for pork n’ beans.

Give it a good stir.

Mix 1 cup of BBQ sauce, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and 1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar. You can see that specific measurements are a crucial part of this recipe.

Pour mixture into skillet and stir again.

Add 2 tsp of dry mustard. Two tablespoons of Dijon mustard would also work.

Pour entire bean mixture into a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Make a layer of bacon across the top of the beans.

Stick the dish into the oven and bake for two hours. The long and low baking will allow for all the flavors to incorporate leaving rich and savory beans topped with caramelized bacon.

It also makes you late to the bar…

Which means that the only picture of the final dish is one that has a few bites of beans removed. They went fast.

Also made this evening by another friend, were bacon-wrapped jalapenos:

And Sloppy Bob’s!

Here is the picture-less recipe, with minor adaptations from The Pioneer Woman:

Baked Beans (adapted from here)

10 slices of bacon, cut in half
2-3 small onions, about 1 cup diced
4 cans of porn n’ beans
1 cup barbecue sauce (any flavor will do)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tsp dry mustard

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 1.5-2 hours
Utensil/bowl use: minimal – cutting board, knife, skillet, baking dish, measuring cups/spoons
Serve: when you have a large, hungry, bacon-loving crowd to feed

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and place a rack on the lower middle position. Fry bacon for 2-3 minutes on a large skillet set to medium heat. Once bacon fat is rendered, remove it from the skillet and set aside on a paper lined plate to drain. Turn heat to medium low and fry onions in bacon fat for about 5 minutes or until they are just tender. Add beans to skillet and stir. Add barbecue sauce, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and dry mustard to skillet and stir until well mixed.

Pour bean mixture into a greased 9 x 13 baking dish. Place bacon on top of beans in a single layer covering the beans. Bake beans in preheated oven on the low rack for two hours. It might cook faster depending on your oven, so check the beans after an hour and a half. If the beans are bubbly and the top of the dish is nicely caramelized and dark brown, go ahead and removed the baked beans from the oven.

Let the beans stand for a few minutes before serving.

Steel Cut Oatmeal

Last modified on 2010-03-31 04:11:09 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

Steel Cut Oatmeal

1 cup steel cut oats
3 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup milk (any fat content, optional)
1/8 tsp salt

Suggested flavorings:
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs ground flax seed
dried fruits, nuts, maple syrup

Note: if you wanted savory oatmeal, you could cook the oatmeal with celery, eggs, or add soy sauce or sriracha. Options are endless.

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes
Utensil/bowl use: minimal: large pot, spoon, measuring spoon/cup
Serve for: a week of breakfasts!

I am a breakfast person. I look forward to it every day. However, I am not a morning person in the slightest so you can often find me making breakfast for the week ahead on a Sunday night. Things like homemade waffles, homemade yogurt, granola, muffin veggie frittata, and as seen here, steel cut oatmeal. Each and every one of these meals have the added bonus of being easily split into breakfast serving sizes and stored for a few days until they are ready to be eaten. They only require a little bit of heating in the toaster or microwave at most. Absolutely perfect for me, since I hardly ever am in the right mind to cook in the morning.

I happen to prefer steel cut oatmeal to regular because it tends to be crunchier and less gooey than regular oatmeal. I also feel like the flavor of the oats comes through better when prepared this way thus requiring less extra flavoring. And making oatmeal from scratch tastes infinitely better than the individually packaged stuff. Plus, this recipe produces about 5-6 servings, easily holding me over until the next Sunday evening.

I forgot to include the ground flax in the picture. Another post, another ingredient left off. I could justify the omission because the flax is really an optional ingredient, but it also happens to be my favorite ingredient so I couldn’t do that in good conscience.

Boil 3 1/2 cups of water in a large sauce pot.

Add 1 cup of steel cut oats to the water.

Add a dash of salt to the oats.

Turn heat to medium low and let oats cook for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. The oats will stick to the pan if you don’t stir. (Also, make sure to rinse the pot immediately because oatmeal turns to concrete if it is allowed to dry. I learned this the hard way.)

Once the water has mostly cooked off, add 1/2 cup of milk, stir and cook for another 5 minutes. The milk is optional. It only adds a creaminess to the oatmeal.

The following additions are also optional, they are just my favorite flavorings for oatmeal.

Add 1 tsp of vanilla extract

and 1 tbs of brown sugar

and my favorite – 1 tbs of ground flax seed. Flax is a great way to get extra omega 3 fatty acid into your diet especially if you are like me and don’t eat the recommended amount of fish. Besides this health benefit, I like its flavor. Flax has a really nutty flavor that goes well with oatmeal.

It tastes much better than it looks. I promise.

Steel Cut Oatmeal

1 cup steel cut oats
3 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup milk (any fat content, optional)
1/8 tsp salt

Suggested flavorings:
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs ground flax seed
dried fruits, nuts, maple syrup

Bring 3 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Stir in steel cut oats and salt and reduce heat to medium low. Let oats cook for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep the oats from sticking. Add milk and let cook for 5 minutes more. Steel cut oats will have the same wet look as regular oatmeal.

Flavor as desired.

I tend to store oatmeal in 5 -6 individual serving sized tupperware. It reheats in about a minute in the microwave. Make sure that whatever bowl you use to reheat the oatmeal is rather big to prevent it from bubbling over. I don’t know why oatmeal bubbles over. If I find an answer while I am futzing around on the internet, I will share it with you.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Last modified on 2010-03-27 19:37:39 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a Glance

1 lb Brussels sprouts
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
4-5 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper, to taste
1-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, optional

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 35-40 minutes
Utensil/bowl use: minimal – skillet, cutting board, knife, stirring spoon, measuring spoon
Serve for: an easy, healthy side dish

The first time I made Brussels sprouts, I tried steaming them. Steaming has got to be the easiest way to prepare vegetables and I have often used it to cook crunchy, tough vegetables like broccoli and carrots. It works beautifully for them. But not for Brussels sprouts. When I steamed them I got wilty green sacks of veggie goo. These sprouts did not make a good first impression.

However, I kept trying. I knew that I could make Brussels sprouts work for me. When my grocery store happened to have a huge pile of bright green, freshly picked sprouts, it was time. Roasting is my second favorite way to cook vegetables (and second only because of the added fat) so I scoured the internet for the perfect roasted Brussels sprouts recipe.

I found this recipe from Mark Bittman and thought that it would be perfect, with a minor change here and there. Indeed it was perfect. The Brussels sprouts were nicely crisped on the outside and delicately soft on the inside. They looked a little burned, but somehow Brussels sprouts don’t take on the overly bitter flavor that other burned greens can get. Instead, the leaves were crispy and savory, a fantastic compliment to the tender centers.

Simple ingredient list: about a pound of sprouts, several cloves of garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (optional). Oh, and salt to taste. I often forget to take a picture of the salt.

First, preheat oven to 450 degrees.

I am not sure if this is the best way to do this, but to clean my sprouts, I first chop off the ends

and then soak them in water for a few minutes. It works pretty well for me.

For this recipe, cut each sprout in half along its length.

Just like this. There will be a pile of outer leaves that will have fallen off but don’t worry about those. Just cook them mixed in with the sprouts. They will become little chips when cooked.

Heat about 4 tbs of olive oil on medium in a skillet. The oil should thinly cover the bottom of the pan. You want the oil to be shimmery and warm but not smoking. Bittman recommends using a cast iron skillet and I happen to agree with the recommendation. However, I don’t happen to have one of those so I used a regular skillet instead. The larger the skillet, the better here, too. Here I happened to use my 10 inch skillet and it worked just fine.

Gently spoon sprouts into hot oil, trying to place cut sides down into the oil. I was not very particular about this step as you can see.

Add several cloves of garlic to the skillet during the frying stage.

Lightly salt and pepper if desired.

Cook the sprouts for about 5 minutes undisturbed until they become lightly browned. Once browned, put the skillet into the preheated oven and roast for 30 minutes.

The sprouts should be quite brown and crispy.

If you want, drizzle 1-2 tbs of balsamic vinegar over the sprouts. While the addition of vinegar is quite tasty, I happen to like them just as much without.

Enjoy!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

1 lb Brussels sprouts
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
4-5 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper, to taste
1-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, optional

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash, trim and cut sprouts in half lengthwise.

Add oil to a large oven safe skillet or cast iron pan. The oil should just cover the bottom of the pan. Heat oil on medium until it shimmers, should only take about a minute. Place sprouts cut side down into the pan taking care not to let the oil spray. Add garlic cloves, and salt and pepper if desired. Fry the sprouts in the oil for about 5 minutes until they start to brown.

Transfer skillet to preheated oven. Cook for about thirty minutes until sprouts are well browned and crispy on the outside. Occasionally shift the sprouts to keep them from sticking.

When done, add more salt and pepper if desired. Drizzle balsamic vinegar over the top of the sprouts if using.

Sausage and Kale Pasta

Last modified on 2010-03-23 03:32:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a Glance

8 oz dried pasta
3/4 lb Italian sausage
5 garlic cloves
1 – 1 1/2 lb bunch of kale
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tbs crushed red pepper (optional)
2 tbs of olive oil, as needed.

Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Utensil/bowl use: minimal – Sauce pot, skillet, cutting board, knife, spatula, colander
Serve for: an easy weeknight meal

The sun shone this week. For about three whole days in a row. The dark, rich earth had finally loosed itself of the last remnants of snow to be able to reflect a warm smile back at the sky.

Ok, now this might sound a little ridiculous coming from me and my non-poetic ways but there is something about that first spring sunshine that makes me think about the world anew. The winters in Chicago are so strong and dreary that they begin to seem eternal. That first glimpse of dry dirt is more exciting than seeing the first gift appear under the Christmas tree. I took the opportunity to run outside and to stroll along the lakefront, relishing in warm breezes.

As has come to be expected of March, and sadly of April, the sunshine was fleeting and there was snow on the ground again by the time I woke up the next morning. However brief, the warmer weather made me have a hankering for spring veggies, most notably, kale.

Kale is a favorite of mine and it goes especially well with sausage. The strong flavor of the kale always balances nicely with the richness of sausage. I also like adding obscene amounts of kale such that I should really rename this dish Kale and Sausage Pasta. But I understand kale might not be the favorite of others like it is with me. I highly recommend trying kale this way, and try not to long for spring.

A very simple cast of characters: kale, garlic, pasta and sausage are the only main ingredients. Wash kale and tear leaves from the stems and tough ribs.

Boil 2 quarts of water in a large saucepan to cook the pasta. Salt the water it if that is your thing.

I got a nice boil going. While I am pretty sure everyone has seen a pot of boiling water, I wanted to share mine just for the fun of it.

Add about half a package of dried pasta, about 8 oz. Now this is more pasta than the two servings needed for tonight’s dinner, but this dish makes great leftovers for lunch to take to work.

Cook pasta according to package instructions.

Coarsely chop 5 cloves of garlic. I like chopping them into little “chips” that crisp in the skillet.

Set stove to medium heat and preheat skillet. Heat oil until it shimmers.

Fry garlic for a few minutes until it gets lightly browned.

Add (or don’t) 1 tablespoon of crushed red pepper. This dish is spicy but not especially hot with this level of heat.

Cook pepper and garlic for a minute more.

Once pasta has finished cooking, remove it from its water and set pasta aside. Keep water on medium heat and dunk kale into reserved water.

While kale is cooking, remove the casing from the sausage and cook it in the skillet with the garlic and crushed red pepper. Gradually break up the sausage into little pieces while cooking.

Let kale cook for 2-3 minutes. It will wilt and shrink to about half size.

Briefly drain the kale before placing it into the skillet.

Mix kale and sausage together and make sure that the sausage is cooked thoroughly. This should only take a minute or two more.

Mix pasta with sausage and kale.

Add salt and pepper as desired, sprinkle with a little bit of cheese, and enjoy!

Sausage and Kale Pasta

8 oz dried pasta*
3/4 lb Italian sausage
5 garlic cloves, chopped
1 – 1 1/2 lb bunch of kale
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tbs crushed red pepper (optional)
2 tbs of olive oil, as needed

Cook pasta according to package instructions. Once pasta is cooked, drain pasta but reserve cooking water in pot to cook the kale. Remove tough stems and ribs from kale leaves and cook for 3-4 minutes in the hot water used for boiling the pasta.

Heat oil in a large skillet on medium heat until it shimmers. Fry garlic in oil until it is lightly browned, 2-3 minutes. Add crushed red pepper to oil, if using, and cook for a minute more. Remove sausage from casing and add to skillet. Cook until the sausage is browned, breaking up sausage while cooking.

Once sausage is cooked, add boiled kale and pasta to skillet. Toss all together to mix and heat thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle freshly grated Parmesan over the pasta and serve.

*any type of pasta can be used in this dish. I have used both linguine and bowtie pasta, as seen in these pictures.

Texas Style Kolaches

Last modified on 2010-03-13 19:38:19 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

I am trying something new with this post, as per a suggestion from Chris, and just presenting a brief story and a recipe instead of step-by-step picture instructions. Maybe I should call these Lazy Tuesday Posts, you know, in celebration of being lazy on a Tuesday. Or in my case, a lazy Wednesday, because that is when I finally got around to posting this.

Kolaches are a favorite of mine. For a brief instance in our relationship, Chris and I were separated by about 100 miles of Texas interstate. Located along this drive is the town of West, Texas, which is no where near the actual West Texas. To the wandering passerby, West, Texas is little more than a highway stop with a gas station and truck stop motel. But served from this gas station are some of the best pastries ever created – kolaches. If you happen to find yourself on the far northern reaches of Waco, look for the exit for West off I-35 and look for the Shell sign. Make sure to be hungry.

Kolaches have their origin in Central Europe and somehow found their way to central Texas. In Texas, their name was changed along with their ingredient list and instructions. When I moved from Texas to Chicago, I went looking for kolaches. Chicago had yet to let me down in its culinary variety so I just assumed that I would be able to find my favorite dessert with a little internet sleuthing. I found a European bakery that advertises good kolaches only to be given this flat folded cookie-like pastry with jam on top. Sure it was good, but it was nothing like the yeasty, buttery roll that I was familiar with. I was also informed that they didn’t have a jalapeno sausage option. My disappointment drove me to find a recipe of my very own.

Several less-than-great attempts at making the kolaches from my memories kept me at the drawing board. I now think I have found the perfect batter, and with that, a stellar fruit topping and the sweet cheese topping. I just need to find a good jalapeno kielbasa sausage and I will be set. Here is the recipe, adapted from Saveur and then adapted from Lottie + Doof. Oddly enough, Tim of Lottie + Doof grew up on the more traditional Kolaczky, happened across the Texan version and decided to make it. I almost feel obligated to try to find a recipe for the real kolaczky. Almost. However, I doubt that I could ever not make these. Besides, I still need to develop a good jalapeno sausage kolache recipe.

Texas Style Kolaches (adapted from here and here):

For the dough:
1 package of active dry yeast (1/4 oz, or 2 1/4 tsp)
4 tbs granulated sugar in multiple divisions (1 tbs for yeast and 3 tbs for dough)
4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 egg yolk, reserve the egg white for the filling
3 cups flour, plus 1/4 cup for kneading
3/4 cup milk, any fat content

For the topping:
4 tbs granulated sugar
1/4 cup flour
2 tbs butter, melted

For the strawberry filling:
10 oz bag frozen strawberries or 8 oz hulled fresh strawberries, thinly sliced (almost any frozen fruit can be used)
3/4 cup sugar (can be reduced to 1/4 cup or less if frozen strawberries come with syrup)
1/2 tsp lemon juice

For the sweet cheese filling:
4 oz cottage cheese
4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
3 tbs granulated sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1 egg yolk

Note: These instructions look long, but the recipe comes together rather quickly and the dough is very forgiving. Don’t be intimidated.

Stir yeast, 1 tbs of sugar and 1/2 cup of warm water (about 115 degrees) in a small bowl. Set bowl aside until yeast becomes foamy, about 5-10 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and 3 tbs of sugar on low speed until combined. Beat in salt and egg yolk. With a large mixing spoon, stir in yeast mixture and milk. Add 3 cups of flour and work dough into a ball.

Place dough on a lightly floured surface. It will be quite sticky, so while working the dough, gradually add more flour until the dough comes together into a smooth, homogenous ball. I have used up to 1/4 to 1/3 cup of flour. It should no longer be sticky. Roll dough around inside of the mixing bowl to pick up any loose scraps of flour. Place dough ball in bowl and cover with foil. Place bowl in a warm area for about 1 hour or until it has doubled in size. During this time, make topping and fillings.

After dough has doubled in size, preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut dough into 16 equal sized balls and place on baking sheet spaced about 1/2 inch apart. (I used 4 rows of 3 balls with a final row of 4. You can also use 4 rows of 4.) Brush dough generously with the melted tablespoon of butter. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let the dough rise again, this time for 20-30 minutes.
Remove plastic wrap after the second rise. Make indentations into the dough balls that fit about a tablespoon of filling. (I found that sticking two fingers into each ball and then spreading my fingers apart worked well.) Fill each indentation with about 1 tablespoon of filling and sprinkle both dough and filling with crumb topping. Bake until the dough becomes toasted and golden brown in color, about 25-30 minutes.

For the crumb topping, mix sugar, flour and butter in a small bowl until combined. It will appear slightly chunky and sandy. Set aside until dough is ready.

For the strawberry filling, mix strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a small saucepan. If using fresh berries, add 1/4 cup water to pan. Set the saucepan over medium-high heat and cook for 10 minutes and mash berries. They should begin to break apart as they cook. Let cool to thicken.

For the sweet cheese filling, combine cheese, sugar, lemon juice and egg yolk in a medium mixing bowl. Beat with the back of a spoon, breaking up cheese curds until the topping is smooth.

Gingerbread Beer Cake

Last modified on 2010-03-08 02:29:06 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Yes, Gingerbread Beer Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting. Otherwise called “the new hotness”

Recipe at a Glance:

Gingerbread Beer Cake (stay with me through this list):
2 1/4 cups cake flour
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 tbs ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons grated nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark beer or porter
1/2 cup unsulphured molasses
6 tbs buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 eggs

Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting:
10 oz bittersweet chocolate (60-65 % cocoa)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp

This cake can be found in Sky High.

Prep time: about 90 minutes if you are slow like me
Cook time: 15 minutes for cake layers, 10 minutes for frosting
Wait time: 30 minutes for cake layers to cool, 15 minutes for frosting to cool, 30 minutes for crumb coat to set, 30 minutes for frosting to set (These are the times that I used, you may choose to use more or less depending on your use of a crumb coat.)
Utensil/bowl use: Extreme, I am still digging my kitchen out of the mess two days later. But hot damn, the mess is worth it.

I must admit that cake baking is one of my favorite hobbies. It is where I splurge in the kitchen and go ahead and make that extra trip to Whole Foods/Trader Joes to find the higher quality or obscure ingredients that I normally hold disdain for when making everyday meals. As such, I hope you don’t feel let down that perhaps I am not staying true to this blog’s roots by posting a recipe with a long and involved ingredient list or by sharing a cake that has no business being baked in my tiny kitchen with limited supplies. But, I am going to have my indulgences (read: more cakes for you!) and I highly recommend you giving into yours. Hopefully they will include beer and gingerbread like mine do.

This cake is my fifth birthday cake. I have done the yellow layer cake, the chocolate layer cake, and the strawberry layer cake. I felt like this was a good occasion to venture into something a bit different, something spicy, and perhaps a bit risky.

This gingerbread beer cake didn’t jump out at me at first, however. I had poured over the cake offerings of Sky High for hours and just expected to make one of the cakes that had a gorgeous picture associated with it. Yet, this cake had no picture. After considering the setting of the party (a bar!), and the people it was for (beer aficionados), I figured I should take a chance on this cake.

For a brief moment, I was all proud of myself for picking a cake that was going to be a bit edgy, a bit nontraditional, and alot loud. That rush of pride was dashed when I realized that this cake would be the finale to a party filled with beer, wings, and gumbo. Yet the cake turned out to be a huge hit. Spicy enough to stand up to beer-numbed tastebuds and sweet enough to compliment the richness of the other foods, this cake made me proud again.

I wish this cake could be my sixth and seventh birthday cakes too. It was just that good. However, I have promised to make a carrot cake for the next birthday. Thankfully Sky High has a recipe for one of those. Look forward to Easter weekend for Carrot Cake!

For the cake layers:

Look at that pile. I keep telling myself that this shot is way more interesting than a picture of boxed cake mix. With an ingredient list this long, I secretly longed for a boxed mix. But only for a minute or three.

Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sky High is a firm believer in the triple layer cake. And I have to give it to them, there is something truly impressive about towering layers of cake. I thought 2 layers were plenty (which in all regards, they are), there is just something glamorous and showy about having three layers. Or at least I tell myself that. I am neither glamorous nor showy, but I like to make my cakes that way.

As you can see, my dishware is definitely not as pretty as the cakes that are born from them. Yet, I have found that cheap and mismatched cake pans work just fine. Please note that I only have 9” round pans and the recipe called for 8” rounds. I will note changes from the original recipe due to this substitution.

The first step is pan prepping. Get a large sheet of parchment paper and mark the paper to the size of your pans. The parchment paper will line the inside of the cake pan.

Cut just inside the markings on the parchment paper. You want to make sure it will fit inside the pan so cut liberally.

Butter the insides of the pan.

Cover all sides with butter.

Insert parchment paper round into buttered pan. Make sure it adheres well to the butter on the inside of the pan.

Butter the top of the parchment paper.

This recipe calls for buttermilk but I did not have buttermilk. All was not lost. A variant of buttermilk can be made by adding 1 tbs of lemon juice to 1 cup of milk. After the lemon juice is added, let the milk sit for about ten minutes until it clabbers (has curdled and generally looks kind of gross with slimy chunks). I did this prior to making the cake batter.

To make the cake batter, add 2 and 1/4ths cups of cake flour to a large mixing bowl. Cake flour is made from the softest part of the wheat grain, is extra starchy and heavily milled, and has less protein content than regular flour. This process leads to flour that is especially fine and is able to hold a large volume of sugar and butter without collapsing, an all important characteristic when baking a cake.

Unfortunately, I only had 2 cups of cake flour on hand. Lucky for me, there is a way to make a substitution for cake flour from regular flour and cornstarch. I will post on the best way to do this in a future post. But for right now, all I did was measure out the remaining 1/4 cup of flour with regular flour. I then removed a teaspoon of that flour and replaced it with a teaspoon of cornstarch.

I then sifted the regular flour and cornstarch mixture and incorporated it into the rest of the cake flour.

Add sugar to the flour.

Now the parade of spices begins. First comes the 4 tsp of cocoa powder.

and 4 1/2 tsp of ground ginger. This is the main spice I splurged on and man, it was awesomely potent.

Add 1 tbs of cinnamon

add 1 1/2 tsp of grated nutmeg

and 1 1/2 tsp of powdered mustard. Yes, powdered mustard.

This is the type I used. You won’t be able to taste any mustard. All it is there to do is add some heat and enhance the flavor of the other spices. Sounds wild, right?

This funny colored spice is 1/2 tsp of ground cardamom

add 3/4 tsp of ground cloves

add 1/2 tsp of salt

and 1/2 tsp baking soda

and finally 2 1/4 tsp of baking powder.

That’s one beautiful pile of spices.

Mix dry ingredients with a mixer

Beer happens to be a stellar leavening agent for cakes. All the bubbles from the beer foam and soften the batter to make an extra tender crumb in the final cake. For most cakes, dark beers are generally preferred because they tend to impart a chocolate-y sweetness to the cake. This recipe recommends using a Porter for the beer ingredient. Sky High says that lagers are too bitter and stouts are too heavy. I happened to have a hard time finding a place that sold a Porter and I was considering just using Shiner Bock. Luckily, Whole Foods had this porter and while I didn’t care for its flavor out of the bottle, it served its purpose well in the cake. It was quite rich and compliments the spices very well. Chris appreciates dark beers more than me and finished the rest of it off.

Add 3/4 cup of dark beer or porter to a medium mixing bowl.

Add 1/2 cup of unsulphured molasses to the beer. Unsulphured molasses is the highest quality molasses because it doesn’t use chemicals to process the sugar cane.

Add 6 tbs of buttermilk (or clabbered milk, as I used).

and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Whisk the liquid ingredients well.

Place a stick and a half of softened butter into the bowl of dry ingredients.

Add 2/3rds of the beer/molasses mixture to the butter and dry ingredients.

Beat with a mixer on low speed

until everything is well blended. I needed to use a spatula to help mix everything. Bump up the mixing speed to medium and aerate the batter for about 3 minutes.

Grab three eggs and add them to the remaining beer/molasses mixture.

Whisk the eggs to incorporate.

Pour the egg/beer mixture into the batter in several additions.

Incorporate liquid after each addition with the mixer on medium speed.

The batter will look almost grainy when fully mixed (and it will also taste out of this world delicious, but I don’t want to be the one to encourage bad habits).

Evenly pour the batter amongst the three prepared baking pans. Place the three pans into the preheated oven. If you happened to use three 8 inch rounds (as the recipe called for), bake the cake layers for 25 to 30 minutes. If you are me, and only have 9 inch rounds, the cake layers will only need about 12-15 minutes of baking time.

To ensure doneness, insert a toothpick into the center of the cake. The cake is done if the toothpick comes out clean.

Let cake layers cool for about 10 minutes still in the pan.

Remove cake layers from pan by turning them over and letting the cake gently slip out of the pan. Delicately pull off parchment paper liners and allow the cake to fully cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour.

This frosting is made by making a ganache (melted chocolate and cream) and then adding more fat to it in the form of 1 and a half sticks of butter. I was mildly mortified to have all these “Bad” ingredients on my table for the time it took me to snap a picture. However, this frosting was an excellent compliment to the cake. Where the cake was spicy and loud, the frosting was subtle and cool. It wasn’t sweet and I would even go so far as to call it “Adult.”

Get 10 oz of bittersweet chocolate. This is chocolate that is about 65% cocoa. I splurged here too although it was probably unnecessary.

Set up a double boiler to melt the chocolate. I honestly have no idea what a real double boiler looks like, and I doubt that I ever will. Instead of actually using a double boiler, I used a modified one to melt the chocolate. To do this, simmer a small amount of water in a small or medium sized saucepan. I might have let mine boil, oops. Set a bowl over the saucepan such that it rests on the rim of the pan and does not touch the water.

Break up the chocolate into small pieces and place into bowl set over the simmering water.

Add cream to the chocolate. Stir often during the melting process to prevent the chocolate burning on the bottom of the bowl.

Once the chocolate starts melting, whisk to blend the milk and chocolate.

Remove the bowl from the heat and let cool, whisking occasionally. The chocolate/cream mixture will thicken as it cools and will have set up after about 30 minutes of cooling. Sky High says that it should be close to the texture of mayonnaise when cool but I haven’t actually had mayonnaise in ages so I wasn’t quite sure what that thickness would look like. Instead, I would try a small amount to test if it was cool to the touch.

To finish the frosting, put a stick and a half of softened butter into a mixing bowl.

Beat butter at a medium speed until it is fluffy.

Add cooled chocolate/creme mixture and whip until it is well incorporated and slightly stiff.

This should take about three minutes and it will have lightened in color.

Place one of the cake layers on a cake stand or other suitable plate. I used to use cutting boards until I got a cake stand.

Place pieces of parchment paper around the cake to keep the cake stand clean during frosting.

Add about 2/3 cup of frosting to the top of the cake layer.

Spread frosting to the edges of the cake.

Even out the frosting layer.

Place a second layer of cake over the frosting and frost again.

Add the third cake layer, flat side up.

Now, I happen to appreciate a crumb coat on my cakes. A crumb coat is a very thin layer of frosting that catches any crumbs that might fall off the cake layers. It is intended to prevent any of these crumbs from showing on the outside of the cake. To crumb coat your cake, apply a thin layer of frosting to the top of the cake and then the sides of the cake. This doesn’t have to be pretty and the cake layers can be seen through the frosting.

Once you finish this first coat, stick the cake into the refrigerator for 1 hour to allow the cake to set. I didn’t have a ton of time at my disposal so I placed my cake into the freezer for about 20 minutes. This worked just as well.

To make smooth frosting, most people would use an offset spatula. I don’t have one of those, so I use a flat knife instead. I also like to run hot water over my knife to heat it up a bit and then dry it right before using. That is why it looks a little streaky and wet.

Smooth the rest of the frosting over the crumb coat. Use this final frosting layer to smooth out the sides of the cake as well. From this point, decorate as you wish.

Since this was a birthday cake, I wanted to jazz it up a bit so I decided to make it look spikey. However, it was rather boring looking and a very plain brown.

So I went for the sprinkles. And then a second type of sprinkles.

Pull out the parchment paper when finished decorating.

Place finished cake in the freezer or fridge for 20-30 minutes so it fully sets. I knew that my cake was going to be sitting out for several hours in a warm bar, so I kept it in the freezer for close to an hour.

Here is the cake, making its debut! It was a huge success.

Again, I would highly recommend checking out Smitten Kitchen’s layer cake tips. I incorporate several of her tips here in this post. While I have made many cakes, I still use SK’s site as a reference and to make sure that I remember what’s what.

If you happen to also buy Sky High, they too have a whole chapter on cake making tips and explanations about common ingredients and tools. They expound on why you measure out flour certain ways, how to properly whip egg whites (I always failed miserably at this step), and what the differences are between all the major sweeteners, in case you are curious.

Gingerbread Beer Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting (from Sky High)

For cake layers:
2 1/4 cups cake flour
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 tbs ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons grated nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark beer or porter
1/2 cup unsulphured molasses
6 tbs buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
3 eggs

For Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting:
10 oz bittersweet chocolate (60-65 % cocoa)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

To make cake layers:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter three 8 inch cake pans (or three 9 inch cake pans like I did) and line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper. Butter the tops of the parchment paper as well.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, mustard, nutmeg, cloves, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix all the dry ingredients with a mixer on low speed until they are well blended.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine the next four ingredients: beer, molasses, buttermilk and vanilla and whisk well.

With an electric mixer on low speed, mix 2/3rds of the beer/molasses mixture and the softened butter to the dry ingredients. Blend well on medium speed for about three minutes to lighten and aerate the mixture.

Whisk the eggs into the remaining beer/molasses mixture. Pour this mixture into the batter in the other bowl in 2-3 batches. Beat the batter on medium speed to incorporate these additions before adding more. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula to ensure a complete mix.

Pour the batter evenly among the prepared pans.

Bake the cake layers for 25-30 minutes if using 8 inch round pans (12-15 for 9 inch rounds). To ensure doneness, insert a toothpick into the center of the layer and if it comes out clean, the cake layers are done. Cool the layers in their pans for 10 minutes. Remove cake layers from the pans and delicately remove the parchment paper liners. Place the cake layers on a wire rack and allow to cool completely for one hour.

To make frosting:

Combine chocolate and cream in the bowl of a double boiler or a heat safe bowl placed on a saucepan with simmering water and melt the chocolate. Whisk the chocolate and cream together to combine thoroughly, taking care not to burn the chocolate. Remove chocolate and cream from the heat once the chocolate has melted and let cool until the chocolate thickens, whisking occasionally. Whip the butter until fluffy with a mixer set at medium speed in a new mixing bowl. While mixing, add the chocolate and cream mixture and whip for three minutes until the frosting lightens in color. The frosting might separate if whipped too long.

To build cake:

Place one cake layer on a cake stand or serving plate and line the edges of the cake with pieces of parchment paper. Spread 2/3 cup of frosting evenly on the top of the cake layer making sure to spread frosting all the way to the edge of the cake layer. Repeat with another layer of cake. Top the cake with the final layer, flat side up. Spread a very thin layer of frosting over the entire cake and refrigerate for an hour or freeze for 20 minutes to set the crumb coat.

Frost the cake with the remaining frosting. Decorate as you wish. I created spikey peaks all over the cake surface by touching the cake with a silicone spatula and quickly pulling it away from the frosting. I then sprinkled the edges and center of the cake.

Let cake set in the refrigerator or freezer for 20 minutes or more to allow the frosting time to set.

Yeast Waffles: Three Ways

Last modified on 2010-03-19 02:52:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

For plain waffles:
2 cups milk (any fat content)
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups (or 10 oz) unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tbs granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp active dry or instant yeast
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbs cornmeal (optional)

For Banana-nut Waffles, add:
3 large, ripe bananas
1 cup walnuts

For Spiked Waffles, add:
4 tbs Baileys (or other sweet alcohol of choice)

Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15-30 min (depends on type of waffle iron using)
Wait time: 12-24 hours to allow yeast to do its thing (or a 3 hour rise can be used if rushed)
Utensil/bowl use: Minimal – mixing bowl, whisk, waffle iron, measuring spoons/cups, small saucepan

Posted here is a basic yeasted waffle recipe with two variations, Banana-nut and Spiked Waffles. The plain yeasted waffle recipe is incredibly good and somewhat reminiscent of what Eggo waffles should be. In fact, this recipe is my favorite waffle recipe and considering that we’re a household of waffle fiends, that says alot. We happen to even have 2 waffle cookbooks (out of 6 total cookbooks in the house) and have tried out quite a few of the recipes within their pages. However, it is rare that we stray too far from this basic and simple recipe.

About once a month, our group of friends that live in the Lincoln Square (the Linc) neighborhood of Chicago, get together on Sunday mornings for brunch in someone’s apartment. We lack the seating necessary for 10+ people in our home and should have no business inviting people over to eat, but we do anyways. We jump on any chance to show off our waffles. They are so much fun to make and are also an extremely cheap way to feed a ton of people (or just yourself over the course of several days). Unfortunately for this blog, as soon as the waffles came off the iron, they were gone. I had difficultly snagging a picture of the finished product before they were snatched out of my hands and gobbled up. We made three batches of yeasted waffles that morning, one plain, one with bananas and walnuts added, and a third batch spiked with Baileys.

The players:

Most importantly, make sure your yeast is fresh. I tend to just buy the packets because this recipe requires 2 tsp of yeast and each packet has about 2 and 1/4 tsp.

Chop up a stick of butter into smallish pieces and put into a small sauce pot.

Add two cups of milk to the butter and heat on low to melt the butter.

Stir occasionally to make sure the milk doesn’t boil. Melting of the butter should take less than five minutes. Remove the saucepan from heat and set aside for a few minutes to allow the milk mixture to cool until it is warm to the touch.

Add two cups of all purpose flour to a medium mixing bowl.

Add a tablespoon of sugar

and a teaspoon of salt.

Add two teaspoons of yeast to the dry ingredients

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

Once the melted butter/milk mixture is warm to the touch, add it to the dry ingredients in 2-3 batches.

Whisk the wet and dry ingredients together in between additions of the butter and milk mixture

The mixture will be very milky and you want it not have many flour chunks.

Crack two eggs into a small bowl.

Add a teaspoon of vanilla to the eggs.

Beat eggs and vanilla together until well mixed.

Pour egg mixture into batter.

Gently whisk egg mixture and batter to incorporate.

Cover batter with foil (or plastic wrap) and place bowl in the fridge. The batter needs 12-24 hours in order to properly develop the yeast. We usually make the batter on Saturday afternoon for a Sunday brunch. If you happen to not have enough time for the batter to rise in the fridge, you can cut the rise time down by allowing the batter to rise on the countertop. You can cut the rise time down to about 3-4 hours using this warm rise method. However, the longer rise time allows for the yeasty flavor to really develop and I would highly recommend using a cold rise over the warm rise.

If you want to make plain waffles, skip the steps that include the bananas, walnuts, or Baileys.

For Banana-Nut waffles:

Ideally, your 3-4 large bananas will be riper than this. You want to be able to mash them easily.

Peel bananas into a small bowl and mash them with a fork. Since these bananas weren’t overripe, the mashing was a bit difficult. You can see that Chris was tasked with this job.

Here’s what three mashed bananas look like. I thought you should know. Lovely, right?

Get a cup of walnuts or any other nut that tickles your fancy.

Coarsely chop the nuts.

Check out these nuts!

Add bananas and nuts to batter and whisk to incorporate.

To make Spiked Waffles, grab your favorite liqueur. I chose Baileys because that is what I had on hand but I think that Kahlua or Cointreau would work just as well.

Add 4 tbs of liqueur to the waffle batter and whisk to incorporate.

To make your waffles, first preheat your waffle iron.

Once toppings are prepared (if using), it is time to reveal the batter. Peel away the foil to reveal…

…the most bubbly of batters!

Add 1 tbs of cornmeal to the batter. This step is optional but I find that its addition crisps up the outer crust of the waffle while leaving a soft and moist texture on the inside.

Whisk batter to deflate and mix in the cornmeal. The batter will have doubled in size.

Cook the waffles according to your waffle iron’s instructions. Here is my giant waffle iron after several rounds of waffles. We’re such a mess.

The banana-nut waffles are ready to come off the iron. We still have yet to develop the proper technique for pouring waffle batter to make 6 perfect waffle squares. We have yet to do exhaustive research into this phenomenon either. I don’t mind. I like to sneak bites the partial corners right off the iron before they make it to the plate.

Mmmm! My plate of finished waffles!

Another bonus to this recipe is that these waffles freeze extremely well. We freeze any leftovers in individual serving sandwich bags. After a few minutes in the toaster, they are as good as fresh and way better than anything you can buy premade in the freezer section.

Yeast Waffles (inspired by Cooks Illustrated)

For Banana-nut Waffles, add:
3 large, ripe bananas
1 cup walnuts

For Spiked Waffles, add:
4 tbs Baileys (or other liqueur of choice)

Cut up butter into small pieces and place into a small saucepan. Heat milk and butter on low to medium low until the butter is just melted, stirring often. Once the butter is melted, remove the saucepan from heat and cool the butter and milk mixture until it is warm to the touch. While the mixture is cooling, combine flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a medium mixing bowl. Whisk the butter and milk mixture into the dry ingredients mixture in several batches. Continue whisking until the mixture is smooth. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and vanilla until combined. Add egg mixture to batter and whisk until combined. Cover the bowl of batter with plastic wrap or foil and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours. (Alternatively, if you are short on time, you can make this batter three hours in advance and allow it to rise on the countertop. However, the yeast flavor is richer with the cooler rise in the fridge)

After the batter has had time to rise, prepare and heat your waffle iron according to manufacturer’s instructions. Prepare any additional ingredients for Banana-nut or Spiked waffles. Removed the batter from the fridge and whisk batter to deflate. Add extra ingredients (mashed bananas and chopped nuts or Baileys, if using). Whisk in cornmeal, if using. Bake waffles according to your waffle iron’s instructions. (We use about 1 cup of batter for our large waffle iron. Round waffle irons will use about 1/2 cup of batter.)

Serve waffles immediately or keep in a warm oven on a wire rack until ready to serve. Any leftover waffles can be frozen in plastic wrap or in a plastic zippered storage bag and reheated in a toaster when ready to eat.

Homemade Pizza: Three Ways

Last modified on 2010-03-02 03:07:50 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Rosemary Potato Pizza

Recipe at a glance:

For crust (makes 1 thin crust):

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp active dry or instant yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water (plus 1-2 tbs extra)
2 tbs olive oil
1-2 tbs corn meal (for dusting)

For toppings:

Rosemary Potato Pizza:
1 link chicken bratwurst, cooked or 1 cup of cooked shredded chicken
3-4 small red or new potatoes
3-4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
3-4 tbs of wine sauce (enough to lightly cover pizza, store bought or homemade, recipe below)
1 tsp dried rosemary

Sausage and Roasted Peppers Pizza:
1 link of hot italian sausage, cooked
2 bell peppers (I prefer using 1 red and 1 yellow bell pepper)
3-4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
3-4 tbs of marinara sauce (enough to lightly cover pizza)

BBQ Chicken pizza:
1 cup chicken (cooked and shredded)
2 small onions (or 1 large onion, chopped, about 1 cup)
1 tbs brown sugar
3-4 oz shredded cheddar cheese
2-4 tbs barbecue sauce

Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 10 min
Wait time: 2 hours for first rise, 20 minutes for second rise. First rise can be 8 hours in the fridge.
Utensil/bowl use: Minimal – medium mixing bowl, measuring cup/spoon, large cutting board, baking sheet, rolling pin
Extra items: parchment paper

Prep and cook times for toppings are variable, but none listed here take more than 20 minutes for prepping and cooking. This is assuming that you have the leftover shredded chicken already made for the BBQ pizza.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

The irony of writing a post about homemade pizza while I currently have delivery pizza on its way to my door right now hasn’t escaped me. In fact, it makes me feel a little guilty for extolling the virtues of the homemade pizza (simple, cheap, tasty!). In fact, I feel so guilty that I am having a hard time finding anything more than pathetic excuses as to why I am not eating homemade pizza right now. I mean, I live in Chicago, the land of the deep dish pizza. That means I should at least get a pass in the homemade pizza department, right? Maybe if I had actually ordered deep dish pizza, that excuse might work. Or there is the fact that Chris and I hosted a waffle brunch for about 15 people this morning and spent two plus hours in the kitchen tending to waffles and bacon. This excuse has legs, at least. We absolutely do not want to be in the kitchen anymore. In all honesty though, homemade pizza should be the perfect meal for this sort of mood, it is just that easy.

But instead, we’re just being exceedingly lazy. Don’t be like us. Try homemade for a change. It really is that easy.

For a recent gathering of friends, Chris and I wanted to make a few pizzas. For seven hungry adults, three pizzas worked out well. For these pizzas, there are usually 2-3 moderately sized servings; Chris and I can split one and have something to take for lunch the next day.

Because we ended up making three pizzas that night, you are getting three recipes in one. I also hope that the variations in types of pizza I have thought up here might inspire you to try out your favorite pizza topping combinations. The crust is the main recipe here, the toppings are meant to be modified and played around with to your heart’s content. The three pizzas that I made that evening are well-loved combos that I have made often before: Rosemary Potato Pizza, Sausage and Roasted Pepper Pizza, and BBQ Chicken Pizza. Even though I made three crusts, I am only going to give instructions for making one.

To begin, put 2 cups of flour in a medium sized mixing bowl.

Add 1 tsp of active dry yeast.

Add 1 tsp salt.

Whisk these three ingredients to mix.

Once mixed, add 1 cup of lukewarm water. Hot water out of the tap works just fine.

Add 2 tbs of olive oil. Stir to combine the wet ingredients with the dry. Only spend about a minute on this step. The ingredients aren’t going to fully incorporate with just stirring.

Instead, they will begin to look like a shaggy mess. When you get to this phase after a short bout of stirring, start trying to work the dough into a shaggy ball with lightly floured hands.

Also, lightly flour a work surface that will be used for kneading the dough. I used a large glass cutting board. Because I can’t stand actually cutting on this board, it serves no other purpose than this one.

Turn your shaggy dough ball out onto your floured surface and knead it for about two minutes.

If you happened to have a few bits of dough left in the mixing bowl that weren’t incorporating into the ball, simply take the dough ball and rub/roll/toss it around the sides of the bowl. Make sure to get as much of the flour in the bowl as possible.

After a minute or two of kneading, shape the dough into a ball. It should have a consistent texture and color throughout and all shagginess should be gone. If it isn’t, add a few drops of water, briefly knead some more, and repeat until it does look similar to this.

Place the dough back on the floured surface for a moment and put several drops of olive oil back in the mixing bowl.

Spread the oil around so that the bowl is coated with oil. A spritz of cooking spray will also work.

Roll the dough ball around in the oil to give it a coating as well.

Now, every where I have found pizza dough recipes, suggest using plastic wrap to cover the top of the bowl while the dough rises. I have no idea why, but I can never seem to get plastic wrap to actually stick to anything. It says “Plastic Wrap” on the roll and I know that you want to stretch it and pull it tight around the edges of the bowl and somehow manage to get it to stick to itself on the sides of the bowl. I am perfectly aware of how it is “supposed” to work. But it never does. I have no idea how I fail at plastic wrap 101 every single time. Wadded up wrap or stretched out shards of plastic later, I always end up covering the bowl with foil and then covering that with a heavy plate. Wrapping the bowl ensures that there are no drafts around your dough. The foil/heavy plate method is not ideal for this. My dough tends to form a slight crust due because of my failure at plastic wrap, but the slight crust tends to fall apart during the second rise.

After tightly covering the dough, let it double in size. This can be done using two methods. The first is to let the bowl sit out for 1-2 hours depending on how warm your kitchen is. The second method, and my favorite, is to let the dough have a “cool rise.” I tend to make the dough in the morning, stick it in the fridge before I leave for work, give it 8 hours to rise in the fridge, and it is ready to be “punched down” in the evening when I get home.

When the dough has doubled in size, release the air in the dough by pressing down on the dough with your palm or “punch down” the dough with your fist. Recover the dough and let it rest for 20 minutes if doing a regular rise or about 30 minutes for a cool rise. This is usually more than enough time to prep topping ingredients. I am rarely precise with the second rise time and almost always cut it short. This dough is awfully forgiving.

Preheat oven as high as it can safely go. 450 degrees is the maximum I like to have my oven go.

Here are a few topping suggestions:

BBQ Chicken Pizza:

The base for this pizza is the BBQ sauce. Pick your favorite brand.

I had a cup of leftover roast chicken and a few onions.

Chop the onions into thin slivers by making long top-to-bottom cuts.

To caramelize the onion, cook it on medium-low with 1 tbs of brown sugar. To best caramelize onions, you want to cook them on low for about 30 minutes. However, I don’t have that sort of time, so I usually only cook them for about 10 minutes until they are soft and browned.

They will look like this.

After the second rise, turn the dough out on a floured surface and start flattening it out. I usually let gravity do most of the hard work so I do most of this step by holding up an edge of the dough and letting the dough stretch and flatten with its own weight until it gets too big and unwieldy to hold

Roll the pizza out to your desired size and shape.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly coat with cornmeal. The cornmeal is usually used to ensure that the pizza won’t stick to the baking dish, but I think it gives the crust an amazing texture.

Once the dough is rolled out, start throwing on toppings. Lightly spread the BBQ sauce on the dough.

Cover the BBQ sauce with the caramelized onions.

Scatter the shredded chicken on the onions.

Lightly cover the toppings with the cheddar cheese.

Bake the pizza in the oven at the highest temperature you can get it. I never feel safe broiling in my tiny apartment oven or taking it over 450 degrees. At 45o degrees, the pizza is done after 10-12 minutes or when the crust is a golden brown and the toppings are lightly blistered.

Rosemary Potato Pizza:

Slice 3-4 small potatoes as thinly as you can. You want enough potato slices to cover the pizza in a thin layer.

Line a baking sheet with foil and roast the potato slices fro 10 minutes or until they are sweating and their edges are slightly browned.

Cut the chicken sausage into small chunks and cook on medium low until done. Since I had two pizzas that used sausage, I cooked both batches of sausage in the same skillet. The chicken bratwurst is on the left and the Italian sausage is on the right.

Normally, I make my own wine sauce for this pizza, but since I was making three pizzas at once, I used a generic sauce. Both work well. To make your own wine sauce, melt 4 tbs of butter in a medium skillet and add 1/4 cup of wine when melted. Simmer on low for 10-15 minutes until liquid is slightly reduced. Add 1/2 tsp of lemon juice to sauce right before applying sauce to pizza.

Again, roll the crust out to desired size on a cornmeal and parchment lined baking sheet. Thinly spread wine sauce on the crust. Dot the pizza with the cooked chicken sausage.

Cover the pizza with a layer of slightly-overlapping roasted potato slices. Lightly sprinkle pizza with rosemary and mozzarella cheese (I completely missed the picture of this step, whoops!). Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until crust is lightly browned and the toppings are slightly blistered.

Sausage and Roasted Peppers Pizza:

Chop off the tops and bottoms of the two peppers and remove stems and seeds.

Make a cut lengthwise down the pepper.

Cut the pepper into long, thin matchsticks.

If your peppers are long, cut the matchsticks in half so they are a bit more bite sized.

Put them on a foil lined baking sheet and place into preheated, 450 degree oven for 10 minutes.

Spread a thin layer of marinara sauce on the rolled out pizza crust.

Dot the pizza with the sausage and add a layer of roasted peppers on top of the sausage.

Lightly sprinkle mozzarella cheese on the pizza and bake for 10-12 minutes in your preheated oven.

It will look like this!

Here’s a shot of the BBQ chicken. My guests were so enthusiastic about eating it that it was stolen from my kitchen and cut up before I could get a fresh, just-out-of-the-oven picture.

Here is the favorite of the evening, the Rosemary Potato Pizza.

Homemade Pizza: Three Ways

Pizza Dough (mostly my creation but inspiration was found on Smitten Kitchen):

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp active dry or instant yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water (plus 1-2 tbs extra)
2 tbs olive oil
1-2 tbs corn meal (for dusting)

Makes 1 large thin crust pizza. The crust can be made 2 or 8 hours in advance depending on what type of rise you choose, either warm or cool, respectively.

Mix flour, salt and yeast in a medium sized mixing bowl. Add lukewarm water and oil to the bowl and stir to incorporate the wet ingredients with the dry. When stirring, try to incorporate dough into a shaggy ball.

Lightly flour a work surface. Empty dough and as much flour from the bowl onto the work surface. Knead dough for 1 to 2 minutes and form it into a homogeneous ball. If there are cracks still left in the dough, a few drops of warm water will help make it smoother. Try to avoid using too much extra water, the dough shouldn’t be terribly sticky.

Coat the inside of the mixing bowl with a few drops of olive oil and place the dough ball back into the bowl. Roll the dough around the inside of the bowl to coat the dough with oil as well. Tightly cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise for 1-2 hours on the countertop if using a warm rise or 8 hours in the refrigerator if using a cool rise.

After the specified rise time, the dough should have doubled in size. Right before you begin making the toppings, press down the dough with a lightly floured hand in order to release air from the dough. Reshape the dough back into a ball and recover. Let the dough sit in the covered bowl on the counter top for 20 minutes if you used a warm rise or 30 if a cool rise was used.

Preheat oven to the highest heat it can attain (I use 450 degrees) and prepare your toppings.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and sprinkle cornmeal on the sheet. On the floured work surface, roll out the pizza dough to the desired size and transfer it to the baking sheet. Cover the dough with toppings of your choice and bake for 10-12 minutes until the crust is browned and the toppings have lightly blistered.

Topping Suggestions:

BBQ chicken pizza:
1 cup chicken (cooked and shredded)
2 small onions (or 1 large onion, chopped, about 1 cup)
1 tbs brown sugar
3-4 oz shredded cheddar cheese
2-4 tbs barbecue sauce

For each of these pizzas, spread a thin layer of sauce on top of the rolled out pizza dough. Leave about an inch of the dough uncovered around the edges. Dot the pizza with meat and other toppings. Some of the vegetable toppings will need slight cooking before putting on the pizza. Potatoes especially will require a bit of pre-roasting in order for them to cook fully on the pizza. Sprinkle with seasonings of choice. Lightly cover toppings with cheese.

Dirty Risotto

Last modified on 2010-03-02 05:40:45 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

2 lbs Italian sausage (spicy or regular)
4 oz bacon (regular, Canadian, or pancetta will do)
1 cup onion, finely chopped (from two small onions)
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
3/4 lb white button mushrooms, chopped (from one standard package)
5 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 cups Arborio rice (or orzo pasta)
1 cup dry white wine
2 tbs parsley
Freshly grated Parmesan, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cayenne pepper (optional)

Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 40 min
Utensil/bowl use: Moderate – knife, cutting board, mixing bowl, small and large sauce pan, spoon, measuring cup
Difficulty: Easy, nearly impossible to screw up
Serve for: Weekend dinner. This dish is especially great to keep for leftovers.

This dish was the first dish that helped me realize that I was a good cook. And that cooking wasn’t that hard. And especially that home cooking could be incredibly rewarding. Now, this isn’t to say that I hadn’t cooked at home before. I had, and my recipe rotation usually involved chicken breasts and potatoes, homemade chicken nuggets, pasta, more pasta, and lots of sandwiches. Food came only in boxes, jars, or plastic bags from the freezer section. I barely knew my way around a vegetable and I didn’t care to become acquainted with one either. Plus, Chicago has an abundance of Thai food places, something that Texas really misses out on. Our favorite Thai place started recognizing my voice on the phone because I might have called them more often than I called my parents.

Once Chris and I were both in graduate school though, we needed to start spending less money. Thai takeout became a less frequent occurrence. Sandwiches started getting boring. I decided that I was going to find a dish that I could make on the weekend for not alot of money that we could gnaw on all week. That’s when I hit on Giada De Laurentiis’s Dirty Risotto recipe and decided to be ambitious. Dirty Rice, one of my favorites from back home, is fantastic and this looked like an amazing cold-weather take on that Cajun classic.

This dish was everything I wanted to be. It sounded impressively fancy; I had never made a risotto before and Chris had no idea what it was. It had a strong, rich flavor that stuck to your insides on a cold winter night. And, even better, it tasted just as good the next day for lunch. I would find out later that as long as you give it the time it needs, risotto tastes great with just about any number of ingredients, each variation tasting rich and creamy. After making several more risottos, I came to refer to risotto as Adult Mac-and-cheese. Because, honestly, risotto is just that easy and just as worthy as being considered comfort food. But, I keep coming back to this recipe because it’s a solid combination with minimal work.

Grab a handful or package of white button mushrooms. Prechopped ones are fine. I happen to really like mushrooms but Chris is less of a fan. However, if you chop them small enough, they blend with the fluffy rice and end up tasting like sausage. A win for everyone.

A coarse chop is fine.

Make vertical cuts around the crown of a red bell pepper. You want to be able to take out the top and insides while leaving the sides intact.

Discard the stem, seeds, and any white inner membrane; empty it out like a tiny jack-o-lantern. Cut the pepper vertically into 3-4 semi flat pieces.

Cut the pepper into long, thin sticks.

Line up the sticks in a pile and chop into small dice.

The pepper should look like this.

Do the same with the yellow pepper. Feel free to substitute green instead. I just happen to like red and yellow better.

Here is a mini lesson on how to dice an onion. First, peel the onion. I tend to chop off the ends but you certainly don’t have to.

Cut the onion in half along its main axis.

Make longitudinal cuts on the first half.

Rotate the onion and chop perpendicular to the previous cut.

Continue chopping down the length of the onion and repeat with the other half…

until you have two diced onions.

Once all the vegetables are chopped, set them aside and simmer 5 cups of chicken broth on low in a small saucepan.

In a new saucepan, this one large and heavy, chop (your choice of) bacon into small pieces and let cook for 2-3 minutes over medium heat to render some of the fat. Rendering basically means releasing some of the fat from the actual meaty parts.

Remove the casing on the Italian sausage and put the sausage in the large saucepan with the bacon. Discard the casing. I prefer to remove the casing with kitchen shears because it is easy. Use a knife if you want to keep your fingers cleaner.

Cook the sausage and bacon until browned, about 5 minutes.

Add the onions and peppers.

And the mushrooms. Give it all a good stir and let cook until onion and peppers are tender, about 5-10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add 2 cups of Arborio rice. Alternatively, you can also add 2 cups of orzo pasta. Orzo tends to be cheaper than Arborio rice but may require the addition of a tablespoon or two of butter towards the end of cooking in order to mimic the creaminess of Arborio rice.

Stir to coat the rice. Just a couple of turns around the pot.

Add the wine and simmer until the wine is almost evaporated, this should only take a minute or two. I tend to use Pinot Grigio as my wine of choice but that is simply because I can get it cheaper than other types. Plus I happen to prefer to drink Pinot Grigio over other types. Sauvignon Blanc and certain less-sweet Chardonnays can work well too. However, the basic rule in picking what wine to use in your cooking is to pick the wine that you will actually want to drink. So if you like drinking the sweetest Riesling out there, by all means, use it.

Add about 1/2 cup of the simmering broth to the risotto and stir. Stir until the broth is absorbed by the rice, about 3-4 minutes. Risotto doesn’t actually need to be continuously stirred. A good stir every few minutes will be fine.

Add more broth, 1/2 cup at a time and stir with each addition of broth. The rice will become plump and creamy as it absorbs the broth. This process of adding broth, stirring, and absorbing should last about 25-30 minutes. Towards the end of cooking, try a bite of the risotto making sure that the rice is firm but not crunchy. Once the rice is completely cooked, remove from heat. If you want to add spice to the risotto, feel free to add cayenne pepper to taste. I happen to like mine fairly hot and will add about 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne.

Once off heat, add parsley, dry or fresh, and stir to incorporate.

Once ready to serve, sprinkle risotto with Parmesan cheese.

Dirty Risotto (inspired and heavily adapted from Giada De Laurentiis)

2 lbs Italian sausage, casings removed (spicy or regular)
4 oz bacon, chopped fine (regular, canadian, or pancetta will do)
1 cup onion, finely chopped (from two small onions)
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
3/4 lb white button mushrooms, chopped (from one standard package)
5 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 cups Aborio rice (or orzo pasta)
1 cup dry white wine
2 tbs parsley
Freshly grated Parmesan, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste
cayenne pepper (optional)

Simmer broth in medium sized saucepan on low.

Cook bacon pieces in a large saucepan for 2-3 minutes. If using pancetta instead, cook it in a tablespoon of butter. Add sausage and cook with bacon until brown, about 5 minutes. Add chopped onion, peppers, and mushrooms and cook for 5-10 minutes or until onion is tender, stirring often. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add rice and stir.

Pour wine into saucepan and cook until wine evaporates, about 1 minute. Add about 1/2 cup of the simmering broth to the risotto and stir. Stir until the broth becomes absorbed by the rice, about 3-4 minutes. Keep adding 1/2 cup of the broth in batches and stirring until each addition is absorbed. You only need to stir every few minutes. This process should last up to 25-30 minutes. Towards the end of cooking, taste the risotto to make sure the rice is done and is no longer crunchy or hard. It should be tender and creamy. Once rice is cooked, remove from heat and stir in parsley.

Serve with freshly grated Parmesan.

Pioneer Woman’s Bread Pudding

Last modified on 2010-02-16 05:48:27 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

For Bread Pudding:
2 eggs
2 tbs melted butter
2 1/2 cups milk (any fat content)
2 cups sugar
3 1/2 to 5 cups of sourdough bread from 1 large sourdough round
1/3 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped finely

For Whiskey Sauce:
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup whiskey or bourbon

Prep time: about 15 min
Cook time: about an hour
Utensil/bowl use: Moderate – knife, cutting board, mixing bowl, mixing spoon, small bowl, saucepan, measuring cups and spoons, pie plate
Difficulty: easy
Serve for: an indulgent, home style dessert.

This recipe for bread pudding is from the Pioneer Woman who got it from Tom Perrini. If you have not acquainted yourself with The Pioneer Woman, I highly recommend taking a few minutes (or a few hours) and doing yourself a favor. Her website is the major inspiration for mine. And by inspiration, I mean that I have completely cribbed her unique style of taking pictures of every single step of the cooking process and posting it to the web. Her work is fantastic and innovative and I hope she doesn’t mind that I am now adapting it for my own purposes.

I personally feel like step-by-step photography is one of the best ways to learn a recipe because you are able to see what each step in the process is supposed to look like. I also like pictures over other options, such as videos, because you can go at your own pace with pictures. (Conversely, my cooking pace is ridiculously slow while I take all these pictures!). Plus, if you are me, you are attached to your laptop at all times, your browser is always set to some cooking site, and you naturally use the internet as the giant recipe trove that it is. Incorporating online recipes with step-by-step pictures is the natural evolution of cooking for me. Don’t think this blog is just for you readers; I refer to it when I cook.

In tribute to The Pioneer Woman, I am sharing my favorite recipe of hers, the Perfect Bread Pudding. I admit, I haven’t tried all of her recipes, but of those that I have made (Pecan Pie, Bacon-wrapped Jalepeno thingies, Chicken Tikka Masala, and Bolognese Sauce to name a few) this one is very special. It has a drug-like quality to it where I begin to think that it just might be ok if I didn’t bring this dish to my friends that I made this for, and it would actually be ok if I don’t hang out with them at all and just savored the bread pudding by myself all evening instead, and it would definitely be ok if I fixed another bread pudding for myself tomorrow. It’s just that good. It isn’t particularly good for you though, so make sure you have some designated friends to help you eat it. If you lack friends, this recipe will help you make some immediately.

First, gather your ingredients for the bread pudding. The Pioneer Woman’s recipe calls for pecans but, here in the Midwest, walnuts tend to be extremely cheap, so I used them instead. Being from Texas where I had unlimited access to my grandmother’s huge pecan tree, I lament the substitution. However, it will not mar the tastiness of this dish in the slightest. Just go with your preference. Or you could leave them out entirely. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Melt two tablespoons of butter and let it slightly cool.

Grab a large sourdough round. The sourness of the bread contrasts the milky sweetness of the batter mixture amazingly well.

Grab your serrated knife. Cutting bread generally requires a serrated knife, and this particular dish is one where you can’t really fake it with another type of knife.

Cut off the ends of the round.

Slice the rest of the round into 1 inch thick slices. They don’t have to be pretty.

Pile up a few slices and then cut those into 1 inch thick strips.

Rotate the strips and then cut them into 1 inch cubes. Again, don’t worry if they aren’t perfect little cubes. This dish isn’t supposed to be a looker.

Continue chopping up the rest of the round. You should have about 4-5 cups.

Crack two large eggs into a medium mixing bowl.

Add the cooled, melted butter to the bowl.

Add 2 1/2 cups of milk.

My favorite part of the recipe: add two tablespoons of vanilla.

Mix it all together making sure that the eggs are well beaten.

Add the sugar and give the mixture a good stir until the sugar dissolves.

Arrange the bread cubes in the pie plate so that they are tightly packed. You want there to be as few gaps as possible. Near the edges of the dish, make sure that any crust pieces have the crust facing up. (I am not sure as to the reasoning behind this but I have not made it without this step.)

The whole thing should look similar this. But not nearly as flat looking because you used too much flash.

Pour the sugar milk mixture onto the bread cubes. Make sure to pour it all over the cubes so that each one gets wet. I will often compress the cubes around the edges into the mixture to make sure that they get well soaked.

Spread the chopped pecans (ahem, walnuts) all over the top of the bread.

Slide this beauty into the preheated oven and bake it for 55-70 minutes. It is done when the entire top is a crusty golden brown.

To make the whiskey sauce, add 1/2 cup cream, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 stick of butter, and 1/4 cup of whiskey to a medium sized saucepan while the bread pudding is baking. I have used half and half instead of cream because my store was out of cream. It turned out well, although I would still recommend full cream. If you are using half and half instead to cut a few calories I would just not make this dish

Here is the best, most delightful part about the sauce. Now the Pioneer Woman specifically says to use Jack Daniels Whiskey. While I have nothing against Jack Daniels, I have never used it for this dish. Jack Daniels just happens to be more expensive than some other brands and I have never been able to justify splurging on more expensive alcohol in my cooking. Actually, Jack Daniels is a splurge for any use in this household. That said, I have made this sauce with Evan Williams bourbon, Southern Comfort, and Seagrams 7. While all iterations of this sauce have been good, I think I like Seagrams the best so far. Southern Comfort made the sauce a little too sweet and the flavor of the whiskey was a bit muted with Evan Williams.

Stir the sauce constantly while it cooks over a low heat. Once it achieves a low boil, remove it from the heat and set it aside until the bread pudding is done.

Once the bread pudding is nice and brown, pull it out of the oven and drool. This is when your friend you designated to help you gobble this up is incredibly helpful.

Spoon a few of these beautifully gooey and toasted cubes into a bowl and drizzle a spoonful or two of the whiskey sauce on top. It will be so good.

Pioneer Woman’s Bread Pudding (from the Pioneer Woman)

Bread Pudding:
2 eggs
2 tbs melted butter
2 1/2 cups milk (any fat content)
2 cups sugar
3 1/2 to 5 cups of sourdough bread from 1 large sourdough round
1/3 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped finely

Whiskey Sauce:
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup whiskey or bourbon

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt 2 tbs of butter and allow to cool for a few minutes. Mix together eggs, milk, vanilla, and melted butter. Mix in the sugar until it dissolves. Cut sourdough into 1 inch sized cubes and tightly arrange in a 9 in pie plate or baking dish. Keep the crust facing upwards around the edges of the dish. Pour the liquid over the bread and sprinkle nuts over the top of the bread. Bake for 55-70 minutes or until the top of the bread is golden brown all over.

For the whiskey sauce, combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Heat on low, stirring constantly until a low boil develops. Remove from heat. Pour a spoonful or two over servings of bread pudding.

Pork Katsu

Last modified on 2010-02-13 23:58:27 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

6 boneless pork loin chops, center cut if possible
2 cups panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
3 large eggs (for dredging)
~ 1 1/2 cup flour (for dredging)
2 tbs Chinese five spice (optional)
salt and pepper
peanut oil for frying
1 head of cabbage shredded (optional)
Katsu sauce
2 cups brown rice

Prep time: about 20 min
Cook time: about 15 min
Utensil/bowl use: Many- sharp knife, cutting board, three bowls for dredging, skillet for frying, tongs, plate, rice cooker
Difficulty: Intermediate
Serve for: a slightly out of the ordinary dinner. Makes great leftovers for sandwiches

When Chris and I were in Japan, our guidebook (Lonely Planet, Kyoto – it rules!) recommended a Katsu restaurant for travel weary tourists. The main selling point for this place was the all-you-can-eat rice, miso soup, and cabbage slaw. And by main selling point, I mean anything could have been advertised after all-you-can-eat, and we were there. We were starved since our main mode of transportation around Kyoto was bike.

As is the tradition in Japan, the menu items are displayed outside the restaurant deliciously wrapped in plastic. This is quite convenient for the grunt-and-point method of ordering food that we adopted.

Now, pork katsu (or tonkatsu, in Japanese) has the interesting quality of being both familiar, yet oddly not. It was wholly different from the other meals that I had enjoyed in Japan. Most of my other meals there were definitely tasty, but so unrecognizable to anything I had ever eaten before. Even the sushi was quite different. There were no rolls or tasty little green balls of wasabi paste. Instead, the fish was the foremost flavor in every bite and each bite was magnificent, yet still unlike the sushi I was used to (it was so much better!). And the unagi! Let’s not get started on that.

In fact, tonkatsu started appearing on tables in Japan around the mid to late 19th century which coincides with the arrival of western influences on Japan’s culture. Katsu is even an abbreviation of the word English word cutlet. Additionally, it is most commonly served with a Worcestershire-based sauce that you can find in most grocery stores next to the soy sauce. There are recipes for the sauce floating around on the web, but I have yet to find one that is as good (or as easy) as Kikkoman’s.

Anyways, back to my reverie. When a fried pork cutlet was placed in front of me, there was no question as to what it was or how to eat it and every bite was better than the one before it, I felt the purest bliss. Or some sort of similarly addictive effect. The entire meal was utterly breath-taking and I don’t think a single meal has ever made me happier.

We definitely ate there again. And I have spent many an hour since trying to replicate the dish according to my memory and a few pointers from the internet.

The ingredient list is a bit more obscure than most things that you will find on Supper Before Grace. Thankfully most of them have other uses as well and none are especially expensive. Panko for one, is my favorite bread crumb and I never use any other type now.

Wash the cabbage well with cold water. The cold water will also crisp up the cabbage a bit. I usually let the cabbage rest a bit in cold water but I am sure this step could be skipped.

I happened to be hosting a small dinner party this evening so I had alot of pork. The pork needs to be trimmed of any extra fat. A sharp knife makes this job easy.

The pork also should be about 3/4ths of an inch thick. Since my cutlets were pretty thick, I cut them in half. I have found that the easiest way to do this is to place the cutlet on its edge and cut downward. They can also be tenderized with a mallet or knife, but I have never done that.

Cut through the entire cutlet.

Once all cutlets are prepared, get the dredging station ready. In the first bowl, put flour and spices. For this amount of meat, I use about 2 cups of flour and 2 tbs of Chinese Five Spice blend. This spice is optional because the pork will have quite a bit of flavor on its own. I never omit the salt and pepper though. Usually about a teaspoon of salt and a few turns of the peppermill is enough.

In the second bowl, beat 3-4 large eggs. This will depend on how much meat you have.

Put about 2 cups of Panko in the third bowl.

Before you dredge the meat, pour oil into the skillet at a depth of about 1/4th to 1/2 of an inch. Turn the heat to medium to preheat the oil.

To dredge the pork, first cover the sides of the meat in flour. It does not need to be thick, just a quick pat on the major sides of the cutlet will do. Immediately after dredging in the flour, dunk the cutlet in the beaten eggs and let the egg briefly drip off the sides back into the egg bowl. The cutlet should be wet now. After the cutlet is coated in egg, coat the sides of the cutlet in Panko crumbs. The crumbs should adhere to the meat rather thickly.

When you are finished dredging, the oil should be hot enough for frying. I always fry a small test cutlet first to make sure that the oil is actually hot enough. The cutlet should crackle and sizzle in the hot oil. Once the oil is hot, fry a few cutlets at a time, about 3-4 minutes a side until the Panko is a deep golden-brown.

When the cutlets are done cooking, let them drain on a plate with paper towels.

While the pork is cooking or draining, slice the head of cabbage finely. This can be done with a mandolin if you have it.

Cut the pork into thin strips before serving.

The cutlet is fantastic with Katsu sauce. Spread the sauce on the cutlet. Serve the cutlet with rice and cabbage.

If you want, you can dress up the cabbage with a little bit of Ponzu sauce.

I personally like to cook the rice in the rice cooker with 2 tbs of sesame oil and 1/2 cup of mirin. I would tell you how to make rice in a pot but I was a complete failure when I tried cooking it that way. I would get distracted doing something else and I would end up with rice kernels cemented to the bottom of the pan. Then I bought a rice cooker that actually encourages me to be negligent. My bad behavior is rewarded with perfect rice every time.

And because I was fixing this meal for a hungry dinner party, I barely got to snap a picture of the finished product before the plate was taken away. I can’t blame them. I snuck a few bites of pork before it was even plated.

Looks like I came pretty close!

Pork Katsu (Tonkatsu):

6 boneless pork loin chops, center cut if possible
2 cups panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
3 large eggs (for dredging)
1 1/2 cup flour (for dredging)
2 tbs Chinese five spice (optional)
salt and pepper
peanut oil for frying (about 3 cups for a large skillet)
1 head of cabbage shredded (optional)
Katsu sauce
Ponzu sauce
2 cups brown rice (1tbs of sesame oil and 1/4 cup mirin are used to cook rice)

Cook rice in rice cooker with 4 cups of water, 1 tbs of sesame oil and 1/4 cup of mirin.

Wash cabbage and let rest in ice cold water.

Trim pork of fat and cut to a thickness of about 3/4ths of an inch. Mix spices, salt and pepper with flour in one medium sized bowl. Beat eggs in a second bowl, and pour Panko into a third bowl.

Pour peanut oil into a large skillet to a depth of about 1/4th of an inch and heat oil on medium heat.

Dredge cutlets in flour. Dip floured cutlets into egg and let any large clumps of egg drip off. Drop cutlet into bowl of Panko and cover the cutlet with the Panko crumbs. Place breaded cutlet into hot oil and let fry for 3-4 minutes per side or until each side is a deep golden-brown. Let fried cutlet drain on a paper towel lined plate. Before serving, slice cutlet into 1 inch thick strips.

Pat cabbage dry and thinly shred.

When serving, pour a small amount of Katsu sauce on the pork strips. Serve with a serving of rice and cabbage. Drizzle Ponzu sauce on cabbage if desired.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last modified on 2010-02-12 20:06:03 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, at room temperature
3 cups of oats
1 cup of whole-wheat flour
2 cups chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla

Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: about 30 minutes. My cookie sheet held about half the recipe and it takes about 15 minutes for cookies to be done. For all cookies to be done, it took about a half hour. Add an extra 1-2 hours for waiting for the butter and egg to come to room temperature.
Utensil/bowl use: Intermediate – mixing bowl, mixer, measuring cups/spoons, cookie sheet, cooling rack (if desired)
Difficulty: Easy
Serve for: whenever you please, this recipe makes a ton of little cookies that aren’t overly sweet

Raisins are heinous and I wish I could say that you wouldn’t be able to find any in my pantry. In fact, I usually can’t find anything in my pantry when I want it but I can always tell you where the raisins are. They are only there because I have a very good friend that loves them and loves oatmeal raisin cookies even more. So on his birthday, I made some him oatmeal raisin cookies. And I tried only one.

From then on, I decided that my world would be better off without raisins and found a fabulous recipe that replaces the traditional raisin for chocolate chips. I have also found an amazing recipe for raisin-less bread pudding that I will share the next time I come across a reason to chop up a sourdough round. Additionally, my world is a better place with raisin-less chicken empanadas. I feel like each of these recipes are made better by the absence of a particular ingredient and I can always get behind a less-is-more sort of approach to food.

These cookies are great and can stand on their own without my anti-raisinist attitude. I made them for a game night with friends and the whole batch was gone in an hour. This recipe makes small, golf-ball sized cookies that are only mildly sweet. The brown sugar really lets the oatmeal and chocolate chips be front and center.

First, and foremost, take your butter and egg and remove them from the fridge about 1-2 hours before you begin cooking. Creaming butter only works when the butter is soft and that only works well when it is at room temperature. Butter can be softened in the microwave but you don’t want to melt it. I almost always forget to do this and have adopted the habit of taking the butter out of the fridge well before I begin cooking.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Next, gather your ingredients. I used extra thick rolled oats, but I am sure any type of oats will do based on your preference. There isn’t enough liquid in this recipe to make quick cooking oats soften. Steel cut oats will make for a chewier, heartier cookie but will also probably require a bit of extra cook time.

Add the brown sugar to the butter in a medium or large mixing bowl. A good tip to keep brown sugar moist in the pantry is to add a few marshmallows to the bag. Sadly, I have no good tips on how to un-brick brown sugar.

Crack open the egg.

Cream these three ingredients. I used a hand mixer on low to cream.

Add the oatmeal to the creamed mixture.

And the flour

The semi-sweet morsels

1/2 tsp baking soda

and a teaspoon of salt

And my favorite part is saved for for last, the vanilla.

Take a few minutes to mix these all together. The batter will look rather dry.

And will look like this when fully mixed.

Form teaspoon-sized balls of batter and place them about an inch and a half apart on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. I found that forming the batter into little balls in the palm of my hand worked really well. I put pressure on the balls in order to make sure they had an even shape. This step isn’t necessary though.

Bake cookies for 12-15 minutes. They will turn a slightly deeper shade of brown when done. Let cool on a wire rack. Repeat with remaining batter. You should finish with about 4 dozen cookies.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (from Homesick Texan)

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, at room temperature
3 cups of oats
1 cup of whole-wheat flour
2 cups chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla

Remove butter and egg from the fridge and give them 1-2 hours to warm to room temperature. When they have warmed to room temperature, preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Cream butter, sugar, and egg. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and stir until ingredients are well incorporated. Form batter into 1 teaspoon sized balls and place on cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake cookies for 12-15 minutes in preheated 350 degree oven.

Crispy Kale Chips

Last modified on 2010-02-14 00:57:37 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

A giant bunch of kale
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
Kosher or sea salt

Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min dry time; 10-15 min cook time
Utensil/bowl use: Minimal – mixing bowl, baking sheet, parchment paper
Difficulty: Easy
Serve for: veggie snacks or fun side dish

Kale is something that I never had back in Texas. I could guess that my parents didn’t care for it. They liked things like turnip greens, and even then only on holidays, and doubly so, only if cooked with some sort of salty pork product. To me, dark, leafy greens were always soggy and slimy – characteristics that my family appreciated, but not me. So when I got kale this summer in my local, organic farmers co-op veggie box, I was at a loss for what to do with this curious looking, fiberlicious leaf. I didn’t even know what it was. I had to google image search for it. Epicurious to the rescue, I found several tasty kale recipes, which will gradually be shared here as the year progresses. Anyways, as we got deeper into the winter and the vegetable co-op had less and less leafy greens and more and more peppers, mushrooms, and squash, I got a deep craving for some dark greens. It also helped that I had just found this recipe on Steamy Kitchen and it looked irresistible. Supposedly it is kid friendly, but I can’t speak to that. I do know that it is surprisingly dog friendly once a piece hits the floor.

These kale chips are absolutely phenomenal! Now, they didn’t transport me to the bliss of summer on my snowy winter afternoon – the grip of the Chicago winters is a bit too strong for that. But what they did do was briefly satiate my desire for strong, crispy, fresh greens, at least until the last chip was finished, which came all too soon because they were that delicious. If you are a fan of kale, make these immediately. If you aren’t, make these and become a fan. If you have no idea what kale is, like I once did, I hope this is your first recipe using it.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash the kale and let it dry completely. Steamy Kitchen recommends using a salad spinner, but I don’t happen to have one of those so I just let the leaves sun themselves for about 20 minutes. Make sure that they are extra extra dry! They need to be completely dry so that they don’t steam. A good pat with a paper towel also helps. Crispy kale chips are infinitely better than steamed limp kale scraps.

Once kale is dry, tear the leafy parts from the stems into bite size pieces.

Drizzle kale with 1 tbs of olive oil. Try not to drizzle your counter like I did.

Try to cover every square bit of kale with oil. You might want to use an extra tablespoon of oil. Use your fingers and get a little dirty, it’s worth it.

Spread oiled kale onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Slide sheet into preheated oven and bake for about 10 minutes. Steamy Kitchen recommends 12-15 but I found that my oven needed much less time. In fact, I am going to show you what happens when you overcook your kale.

This is what overdone kale looks like. You will want to remove the kale from the oven right before it starts turning brown. The kale is done if it is paper crisp and “crackly.” Test this out with tongs or a fork. If it gets brown, it gets bitter and will have a mean aftertaste. If you happen to see any piece of the kale turning brown, remove the baking sheet from the oven.

This is what you want your kale to look like – bright green, crisp, and amazing.

When the kale is done baking, sprinkle with kosher or sea salt, chow down.

Crispy Kale Chips (Taken straight from Steamy Kitchen)

A giant bunch of kale (4-5 large leaves)
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
Kosher or sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

Wash and dry kale. Make extra sure the kale is completely dry through any method you have available – blotting, spinning, air drying, etc. Tear kale into bite-sized pieces and remove from stems. Coat leaves with oil using your hands to toss and coat.

Place leaves on parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes and check for doneness. If kale is still wilty, put the kale back in the oven for 1-2 minutes. Remove kale when it is crackly and snaps to the touch. If some is turning brown, remove immediately.

Sprinkle kale with desired amount of salt. Feel free to experiment with other spices to add extra flavor.

Mexican Roast Chicken

Last modified on 2010-02-12 20:09:58 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance

4 lbs of potatoes (usually about 7-8 small potatoes or 4-5 large ones)
1 leek
1 large lemon (or 2 small)
3-4 lb whole chicken
kosher salt and pepper (to taste)
4-6 oz of Mexican chorizo (base the amount you use on the size of the bird)
small bunch of cilantro or parsley stems and leaves

Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 1 hr 15 min
Utensil/bowl use: Minimal – sauce pot, knife, cutting board
Difficulty: Easy
Serve for: several weeknight dinners or dinner for a group

Roast chicken is one of my favorite meals. It has everything: simplicity, tastiness, and can be dressed up or dressed down. And when a total of two people are eating it, it can last all week. All parts of this recipe go great as other things – filling in tacos and quesidillas, toppings on pizza, added to fritatas, etc. It may take an hour today, but it will save you time tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. On top of all this, it is cheap.

Now, don’t worry about buying the whole bird. Just do it. It might be a little gross and a little unwieldy at first, but I promise the whole bird is where it is at. I promise. There will be gizzards and I know that word sounds gross, but all you have to do with them is throw them away. Yes, there will be bones left over that resemble something that was a living creature at one time, but this is ok too. It is a good thing to remind yourself of what exactly you are eating in this processed food world of ours.

This recipe is not hard and I don’t have any shortcuts. It is real, plain, and amazing. It makes your kitchen smell peppery and fragrant in an instant. It tastes ambrosial after its hour-long stay in the oven.

The base of this recipe is the chicken and potatoes. Feel free to add as much or as little to it as you want. I often add seasonal roasting vegetables that I tend to have on hand. Here, I added a single leek because I like its mild oniony taste that really infuses with the chorizo. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Whatever accent vegetable you choose, make sure to wash it well. Leeks require a bit of extra washing because of the dirt that gets buried in between the stalk. Usually a bit of soaking will loosen out that dirt, as will chopping and then washing.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Leek, that is, my leek. You can wash after chopping too.

Roughly chop the white and light green parts of the leek. Don’t cut much more than I have here. The darker green parts are tougher and tend to taste bitter.

Next, put a lemon in boiling water for about 5 minutes while you are chopping the potatoes. You can boil it in the pot that you are going to roast the chicken. (I didn’t do that though.) The hot lemon will go inside the chicken to make it extra juicy and cook faster from the inside. Especially, it will add to the ridiculous aroma that will taunt you while the chicken is cooking.

Roughly chop about 7-8 small potatoes or 4 larger ones. I don’t tend to take the time to weigh my produce in the store and generally just eyeball it. You will want enough potatoes to make about a two-three inch deep bed in the pan for the chicken to roast on. I personally like the skin on my potatoes but feel free to peel them if you want.

Put potatoes in a heavy, oven safe saucepan or roasting dish.

Mix in the leeks. Mixing the vegetables is important because thinner vegetables can burn on the bottom of the pan if you happen to omit this step. I learned this the hard way.

Get your roasting chicken. Aim for a 3-4 lb chicken. I happen to have a local Amish brand of chicken that I like but don’t interpret this as an endorsement for Amish chickens. Amish can mean just about anything and does not, and probably will not, mean organic, free-range, hormone-free, or whatever else you might want your chicken to be. I simply prefer this particular brand because it is local, it tastes good, and falls off the bone better than other types of chicken I have tried. Unless you live in the greater Chicagoland area, you probably won’t be able to find this brand. I do recommend trying to find a higher quality bird than the common bird you can find in the meat fridge as the meat is usually more tender and will be easier to debone.

Throw out whatever is hanging out in the cavity of the chicken and check the wings and legs to make sure they aren’t sporting any feathers. I promise most won’t have any feathers. Place the chicken on top of the potatoes.

Prick the lemon with a knife several times and stick it in the waiting cavity.

Sprinkle chicken and potatoes with Kosher or sea salt and pepper. You will want to use enough salt to lightly coat the skin of the chicken. Kosher salt has a larger grain than common table salt and works especially well on meat. The salt does not dissolve into the meat and instead draws liquid out of the meat. However, if regular salt is all you have, that works fine too, just use a fair bit less so you don’t coat the chicken. Often with salting meat, err on the side of caution if you aren’t sure how much is too much.

Here is an idea of how much pepper I use.

Now for the crowning glory of this dish, the chorizo. Remove about 6 oz of chorizo from its casing. I prefer to use Mexican style chorizo. It is a bit more flavorful, spreadable, and much more abundant than Spanish chorizo. Most grocery stores that serve a decent sized Hispanic population will have this stuff. It is fantastic. Look for chorizo that is bright red and looks like it is all paprika. I have seen some Americanized chorizo that looks like hot italian sausage and while tasty, it will not have the same effect.

This sausage is very wet and almost putty-like compared to regular sausage. All the more easy to spread over the chicken!

Spread 4-6oz of chorizo on the outside of the chicken and in between the chicken and potatoes. Tuck some under the wings and legs. I also put some under the skin on the breasts. Use your hands if you want, it is easier to stick it to the chicken. The flavor of the chorizo will infuse with the potatoes during cooking and they will be heavenly.

Finally, stuff some cilantro or parsley into the cavity and sprinkle a few leaves on top of the potato mixture. Add any extra salt that you might want. Put pot into a 425 degree oven and wait for an hour.

When done, the chicken will be a caramel colored, golden brown with toasted flecks. Some of the chorizo might be slightly crispy. Feel free to throw the crispy pieces away fi you don’t like them.

Cut off a few pieces chicken for your meal and remove the whole chicken from the pot. If you want to brown the potatoes a bit more, stir the potatoes and put the pot back in the oven for about 5 minutes. Besides, the chicken needs a few minutes to cool.

Ta Da!

Now I always carve the rest of the chicken about an hour afterwards so that it is cool enough to the touch, but that is by no means the only way.

I also like shredding the chicken by hand and fork. It is a messy kitchen I run here at Supper Before Grace. I have to admit though, taking pictures of your cooking makes you a bit more cognizant of your messes and I hope I get to most of them before the camera does.

Here is what I have left over. This should keep my tiny household running for a few days. If only the rich aroma of the chicken would last that long.

Mexican Roast Chicken (wildly adapted from Jamie Oliver when I couldn’t find spanish chorizo)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Boil lemon for 5 minutes. Coarsely chop potatoes (~1 to 1.5 inch dice) and leek using only the white and light green parts. Place potatoes and leeks in a large, heavy sauce pan and mix. Place chicken on top of potatoes. Pierce lemon several times with a knife and place in chicken cavity. Season chicken and potato mixture with salt and pepper. Insert cilantro stems into chicken cavity with lemon. Sprinkle leaves on potato mixture, reserve some for serving. Smear or place a portion of the chorizo on the chicken. Insert some more chorizo under the wings and legs. Place the rest of the chorizo in between the chicken and potatoes.

Cook the chicken for 1 hour. At the one hour mark, check chicken for doneness. If it is not done, add about 15 more minutes.

Once done, remove the chicken from the pot. Give the potatoes a quick stir and put the pot with just the potato mixture back into the oven for 5-10 minutes. Carve the chicken during this time. Serve with the potato mixture.

The Simplest Tomato Sauce

Last modified on 2010-02-12 20:10:46 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Recipe at a glance:

28 oz. canned whole peeled tomatoes
5 tbs unsalted butter
2 small or 1 large yellow onion (peeled and halved)
salt and pepper to taste

Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 50 min
Utensil/bowl use: Minimal: Sauce pot, knife, cutting board, spoon
Difficulty: Easy!
Serve this for: an easy weeknight meal, or when you need tomato sauce

I recently made this sauce one night when I was all by my lonesome preparing for a huge presentation. Normally on stressful nights prepping for some big assignment, I’ll get takeout for dinner or cobble together some sort of popcorn/mini wheats/chips concoction and call it dinner. However, upon learning of this recipe, it appeared easier than either of those options and so I went for it. I dumped everything in a pot, forgot about it, and then came back an hour later only to be sent into a tomato-butter induced reverie. This sauce is fantastic. But then again, if something has most of a stick of butter in it, it better be worth every calorie. On a night when I have been studying for 12 hours straight, oh how I need those calories. Even when I am not working hard and it might be a cold, bleary, in-pajamas-all-day, winter evening, every drop of this sauce is worth it.

First, get the 3 whole ingredients needed for the sauce.

Next, get a knife.

Promptly accidentally drop knife on the floor right next to your dog that is none the wiser about his brush with death as he is currently engaged.

Give your now-bent knife a good rinse before using it.

Peel two onions if they are small or one big onion if it is big and cut off the ends. If you have a single large onion, cut it in half. Nothing more. I am lazy so I didn’t want to cut the small onions. But I could have.

Cut the butter. You want 5 tablespoons.

Yes, 5. You really want this much butter. Make it first with 5 tbs and then reduce it for the next batches if you can’t get over putting 5 tbs of butter into a pot.

Butter makes everything taste richer, deeper in flavor. And in this sauce, it really makes the tomatoes sing. Butter is also the simplest way to make yourself feel like a great cook because it is the biggest cheat to enhance the flavor of your food. If you happen to have a sauce or soup or stew that seems to be lacking a bit in flavor, adding a bit of butter might do the trick. To those friends of mine I have fed in the past, I might (more like probably) have snuck a few a tablespoons of butter here and there into the food I have served you. Here is a recipe that embraces my sins with celebration. Anyways, enough about me.

Here is the best part: grab a 28 oz. jar of whole tomatoes. Dump the whole thing into a pot.

Turn the heat on low and then forget about it. Don’t even stir. (You might consider bringing it to a simmer on medium and then turn it down low, but I have skipped this part and been just fine).

After about 45 minutes have past, put water on to boil. Then grab a spoon and smash the tomatoes. Go to town on them. They should bend to your will.

Throw some pasta on to boil for a few minutes. This sauce goes well with just about any type of pasta. Feel free to be picky. I happen to like adding salt to the water just because it gives the pasta more flavor and allows for less salt to be used in the sauce. However, since canned tomatoes can come with wildly varying salt contents, taste your sauce to see if it needs salt. If it does, feel free to add it to the water before cooking the pasta.

Let the pasta cook to desired doneness. Since I am lazy, and have a tendency to burn my tongue on boiling pasta, I generally follow the instructions on the bag without ever testing for doneness. Throwing spaghetti against the wall (as was my job when my mom cooked when I was little) never made logical sense to me as I got older. In the time it takes for a strand of spaghetti to be remotely cool enough to handle and then throw against the wall, the spaghetti boiling away in the pot will already be soft and gummy. Not my kind of pasta.

Drain the pasta once it is done. Add pepper or spices to your sauce as you see fit. I only add a little bit of pepper out of habit but this sauce is quite spectacular nude. This will be the easiest sauce you will ever make. So good that I don’t care to buy jarred tomato sauce for my pasta anymore. And it is so wholesome and uncomplicated, perfect for a busy night in.

The Simplest Tomato Sauce (from Smitten Kitchen who got it from Marcella Hazan)

28 oz. canned whole peeled tomatoes*
5 tbs unsalted butter
2 small or 1 large yellow onion (peeled and halved)
salt and pepper to taste

Put first three ingredients into a saucepan on medium heat. Bring sauce to a simmer (a little steam should be rolling off the top of the sauce and there might be a few bubbles). Once brought to a simmer, turn heat to low and maintain the sauce at a low simmer for 45 minutes**. Stir periodically 2-3 times during simmering process. Crush tomatoes with a spoon after 45 minutes. The tomatoes should fall apart with a little pressure from the spoon. Remove the pot from the heat and throw away the onions. Taste the sauce and add salt and/or pepper to taste.

Serve with pasta.

* I have only used San Marzano brand tomatoes as it was recommended by Smitten Kitchen. I am sure other brands would work just as well, you will just have to pay attention to the spice/salt content. I have also used San Marzano crushed tomatoes with similar success. It just removes the fun of crushing the tomatoes.

** I have skipped the step that includes the higher simmer as well. I cooked the sauce just on low for about 50 minutes and I couldn’t tell the difference. So consider this if you are wanting to be extra lazy, like me.

Recipes

Roasted Rosemary Cashews

Baked Beans

Steel Cut Oatmeal

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Sausage and Kale Pasta

Texas Style Kolaches

Gingerbread Beer Cake

Yeast Waffles: Three Ways

Homemade Pizza: Three Ways

Dirty Risotto

Pioneer Woman’s Bread Pudding

Pork Katsu

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Crispy Kale Chips

Mexican Roast Chicken

The Simplest Tomato Sauce

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