Pizza

Friday night pizza, what could be better!

The only problem that is I am at work and cannot make dough... Hmm what to do? Call my hubby and ask him to make it.

So, Nathans pulls out my trusty recipe book. It is impossibly small and the pages are falling out, but it is a treasure trove. To me at least!

The recipe we use is as follows

3 1/2 cups of flour
1 cup of warm H2O
2 t yeast
2 t sugar (we used to use honey, but since we have small kids, we stopped)
Olive Oil
salt.

Put the yeast in the water, and add the sweetener. Wait 5 minutes.

add the yeast and the salt to 1/2 of the flour gradually adding more flour until it is the desired consistency. Elastic, but not gooey or too sticky. Knead for 5 minutes.

Put in a bowl, coat with olive oil and let it rest. When it had doubled, punch it down, let it rise again and then it is time to cook!

Now, to make truly spectacular pizza, you need a few essentials. A pizza stone and a pizza paddle.

Put the stone in the oven to heat up before you put the pizza in, and the paddle is to put in and take out the pie. Just sprinkle some corn meal on the paddle and the dough will be all slidey, and slide right on to the stone.

We used to skip this step, thinking that it didn't really matter, but it really is important to put the pizza on a very hot surface! My sis-in-law has one of these paddles, and after I tried it, I was hooked! In t bay you can get one at the Kitchen Nook!



Put the corn meal on the paddle, then the flattened dough, add sauce and toppings...et voila!

Nice work on the dough, Nathan! I was very Impressed. Especially considering you live with a kitchen hog!

Making Cheese at Home!

Making cheese at home might seem unneccesary, and a little too ambitious, but not only is it easy, it can be quite economical! Here is how to make delicious Mozzarella!

Here is what you need!

1 gallon of whole/homo milk
1 1/2t citric acid
1/4 tablet of rennet
Salt
Spices/flavorings
Thermometer.


Dissolve the citric acid in 1 cup of cold water, set aside.

Disolve the rennet in 1/4 cup of cold water, set aside.

Pour the gallon of milk into a large pot.

*Those of you who can buy a milk in a gallon jug are lucky. Here we can only get 2 liter cartons, and bags, equalling almost a gallon. I lack the finesse to open the bags without spilling. Luckily 4 liters is a little over a gallon and I usually end up right on.

Heat your milk to 85 degrees F

Stir in the Citric acid solution

The curds and whey will begin to seperate a bit at this point.




Heat to 100, and then add the rennet- Stir for a few seconds and turn off the heat.

The separation between curds and whey should be very apparent at this time.





The whey will look like a light green transluscent fluid, and the curds a bit like cottage cheese or ricotta.




Scoop out the curds and place in a microwave safe bowl. Remove as much whey as you can.



Microwave for 30 seconds, and pour off the addtional whey. Continue repeating this step until the cheese is 135f degrees and no more whey is coming off of the cheese.

Add your salt, and start to stretch and fold the cheese over on itself. You can also add flavourings at this point. I added some sundried tomatoes, fresh basil and dill to half of the batch.



Shape the cheese into a log and let it cool.

Slice some off, and enjoy. Try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting, you may get a stomachache... and yes, I speak from personal experience.




To store, wrap up and keep in the fridge.

Pizza!

I was just down in Minnesota this weekend for my sisters baby shower (she looks amazing! She will obviously be thrilled that I am posting her pic here.)

The day before the shower, me and Loch took a trip to the science museum! In hindsight this was not a great idea. he was still tired from the drive, and quite crabby.


After the museum, we went to the Red Balloon Book store, where he chose a book for both himself and his little brother. We then went over to Cooks of Crocus Hill, where I procured some bars of Vosges Haut Chocolat, and Loch picked out some kids cooking supplies. This is probably my favorite cooking store in the cities. Obviously, part of that is because it is on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, but they have great cooking supplies from brands like Emile Henry, and Le Creuset. And hard to find chocolates, salt, vinegars, oils and more!

Afterwards, following the advice of my Brother, we went to Punch Neapolitan Pizza, on Grand Ave.

How had I never gone there before! it was magnificent!



Thy cook the pizza in a 900 degree woodstove for 90 seconds. The result is a perfectly chewy crust; hot cheese covering the landscape of san marzano tomatoes and delectable toppings, a fresh tasting sheen of olive oil tops it all off. Lochlan got the Margherita, and I ordered the Siciliana with prosciutto, artichokes, olives and basil. It was legendary.




Lucky for me, I had a crabby kid, so the experience wasn't quite what it could have been. And we had to skip the trip to Grand Ole Creamery.

Have you been there? You should go!

Happy Monday

"What is that? What are you doing.. I have no idea what you even have going on there..."

My husband said this to me as I was cooking my breakfast this morning.

"I'm going to take a picture of it for my Blog." He said, poking fun.

and he did.






Mondays can be so "blah," so sometimes it is nice to take a few minutes to whip up a lovely start to the day :)


Like a poached egg on an english muffin, ham, Thunder Oak Dill gouda, basil and some fresh ground pepper!

Guten Appetit!

Garlic party!

So.

Me and the girls try to go out once a month for a girls night out. This month we decided that we would have a girls night in! That way we could save a few bucks, and try out each others cooking!

The party was at Stacy's house, so she chose the theme: Garlic!



For the first course, I made...

Walleye Corn Cakes! My last post was a test run for this. the recipe is similar, but not quite the same.

Here is the recipe!

I large Walleye/Pickerel Fillet, cooked and roughly chopped
1 cob of corn, cooked and removed from the cob
2 eggs
1/3 cup of milk
1/2 cup flour
1T fresh Dill
1/2 c. Shredded cheese
1 sweet potato cooked.
1 bulb of Garlic, roasted.

Mix it all together.

Heat some olive oil, and pour 1/4c servings into oil, into small fritters. Cook until browned, and flip and cook the other side. Drain on towels.



Stacy made delicious Garlic soup




Giorg Garlic Soup
SAUTE:
4 oz butter
1 head garlic (9-10 coves)
3/4 C chopped prosciutto
1/2 C leeks*
1/2 C white onion*
*Leeks/onion chopped in food processor

ADD TO: 32 oz chicken stock

ADD:
flour to thicken (1/2 cup mixed with wate)
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
2 large potatoes (diced small)
1 C white wine
salt and pepper to taste

Cook until potatoes are tender. Add 500 ml of heavy cream. Heat and serve.

Excuse the dark photos, the dining room was dark and candlelit!

Lori made gnocchi with garlic sauce.

The recipe can be found here
http://lipsmackinggoodness.blogspot.com/2009/02/sweet-potato-gnocchi-with-garlic-sauce.html





And a caesar salad.





Jackii made garlic Dessert.

You read that right.

And guess what?

They were delicious.

She took garlic cream cheese, and coated them with chocolate, and then rolled them in graham cracker crumbs. They only tasted the tiniest bit of garlic. They were wonderful!

She found the recipe here

http://daydreamerdesserts.com/2011/01/chocolate-garlic-cheesecake-truffles.html/





I can't wait to see what we come up with next month!

Corn cakes and Saffron Sauce

How have I never made this before. It is amazing and beautiful!

Corn Cakes with Saffron Sauce.

2 ears of corn/ de earred- or 1 small can of corn.
1 small yam peeled, grated, and cooked.
2 eggs
1/3 cup of milk
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 cup of shredded cheddar
S and P

Mix it all up in a bowl!

Heat about 2/3 cup of olive oil in a pan. When it is hot, drop 1/4 cup scoop of the batter into the oil. When it is nice and browned on the bottom, flip it and cook the other side.




Since I used a ridiculously small pan, I put the fritters in a warm oven on a cooking rack, on a cookie sheet, while I cooked the subsequent batches.


Saffron Sauce

2 T unsalted butter
1 shallot- chopped
Pinch of Saffron
1/3 cup white wine
1/4 lemon
1/4 cup Heavy cream/half-and-half/sour cream

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and throw in the shallots. Cook until they are soft and fragrant- 5-7 minutes. Crush the saffron threads and add them. Stirring for a moment. Throw in the wine and let reduce a bitt. Squeeze the lemon in and let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the cream.

Pour the contents of the saucepan through a fine strainer, into a bowl.

Spoon the saffron sauce over the corn cakes. Eat immediately.

This is a wonderful side dish! Especially if you can get fresh corn! The kids loved it (sans saffron sauce) I can't wait to make it again!

Green Goddess

I was so excited to get to go here.

The Hubby of one of my fave authors is the owner/chef of this establishment.

Green goddess is situated in a lovely little alleway (yes, alleyway) in the French Quarter. There are pots of plants along the tables, growing things like rainbow chard, mint, and tons of other edibles.

There are only 4 tables or so inside, and about 9 outside. We waited 45 minutes for our table, we NEVER wait at a restaurant, but I really really wanted to go here, so we waited. Writing about this I can practically feel the warmth of the sun on my face....



I have to say, I was a bit disappointed with the service. We had a couple screw ups, but the awesomeness of the food made up for that. The dishes that they serve, are simple, but the imaginitive mix of ingredients is what makes this food truly spectacular.

I ordered a mojito, and nathan had a bloody mary. Definitely not from a mix, there was actually tomato skin floating in the drink.




For an entree I had a cuban sandwich. It had pineapple, aioli, pork and more. It was great! What really stood out though, was the bread. It wasn't too thick or thin, too floppy, crumbly, crusty, or soft...it was just.... perfect. ...

Nathan ordered a meatloaf sandwich, and it was quite good. I believe it was bison or buffalo, studded with bacon pieces and smothered in whole grain mustard sauce.

Quite good.

I ended up getting sunburned. I have to say that was less than stellar, but I was so happy to get to experience this restaurant.

They have a ton of fun drinks on the menu as well, I would have liked to try some of the others, but they were a little steep.




I cant find the damn pictures of our entrees. I will try to find them soon