Brick Oven Pizza

Yes, brick oven pizza. Thin-crust, brick oven pizza. In our apartment! In an apartment-sized oven. Results: A perfectly crisp, sturdy crust, slightly blackened on the bottom, nice and chewy within. Back in March I saw a video on making a brick oven in your regular oven for pizza making. Since we are big pizza fans, and there was a touch of "construction" involved, Matt was excited as I was to try this. Fast forward to last month, we went out and purchased firebrick (less than $25), lined the oven, and saw the oven thermometer's needle get buried past 600 degrees, when the oven was technically set to 500 degrees. Three pizza margheritas and one pizza sacrificed to the oven gods later (should have checked the width of the pizza peel before shoving it into the oven...and that boys and girls is how you get pizza burned to the floor of the oven and smoke alarms going off...), I have mastered the new addition to our kitchen.

Matt's friend Roger (the most gracious house guest anyone could ask for) was visiting this week, and having a couple men to cook for created an excuse to make three different types of pizza in the brick oven. To start, we had a classic pizza margherita with red sauce, fresh basil from the pot Matt has going in the windowsill, and fresh mozzarella. Next up was my favorite of the night: green apples, homebrewed Irish Red beer-melized onions, mozzarella and gorgonzola. The final pizza was a favorite with Matt and Roger; it was a perfect combination of red sauce, spicy sopresatta and mozzarella. In the photograph is the sopresatta pizza whole, and the stragglers are one piece of pizza margherita, and two slices of the green apples and beer-melized onion pizza. One perk of the brick oven set-up is that instead of 10-12 minutes for a pizza, you can cook one in about 5-6 minutes. This is great when doing different kinds of pizza, because they come out of the oven in rapid succession, so you can have more than one kind on the table at a time.

Why line your oven with firebrick and crank the oven for an hour before cooking? Because you get a pizza unlike anything you've had at home, even on a pizza stone. When you can't or don't want to go out for brick oven pizza, you can have something almost exactly like it at home, and you know exactly what is in it! The next question is...what kind of amazing bread crusts could I coax from the brick oven with the right bread recipe?

Pizza dough recipe and red sauce recipe are both my mother's, but they'll be a post for another day...need to keep you coming back to read more!

Brew Day Dinner

A couple times a month my kitchen is transformed into Stone Mountain Brewery. Matt labors away for about 7 hours to create wonderful handcrafted beers for us (today he brewed a saison, now that summer is upon us). The man deserves a tasty meal afterwards.

The catch is...I must make that meal with only a little counter space, and without the stove or oven. Naturally, sandwiches or boring salads make frequent appearances. Not tonight!

Last night I made a London Broil, and having leftovers is half the reason to make a London Broil. Slice up the leftover steak and arrange over a bed of lettuce. Add some diced red pepper and celery, and some chopped toasted walnuts (I recently learned that you can toast nuts in the microwave!). Some blue cheese dressing ties everything together (walnuts/celery/steak and blue cheese...all classic pairings).

From now on I think I will always have leftover London Broil on Brew Days!

(the beer in the tulip glass is Matt's aka Stone Mountain Brewery's flagship Brown Ale)

Fall Off the Bone Ribs....without a grill.

Someday we will have a house, with a yard, and in that yard will be an awesome grill/smoker where we can do barbecue properly and frequently. However, in the meantime, we have no yard and no deck. I do some "grilling" on my grill pan (although it is most often pressed into service for panini), and of course smoking is out of the question. But Matt really wanted to do ribs. And I wanted the ribs to be as close to properly done ribs as possible.

So, after consulting a gajillion recipes, one satisfactory albeit disappointing attempt and soliciting advice from a couple of Matt's friends (thanks John and Mark)...I have created fall off the bone bbq ribs from our oven. And it is insanely simple.

Equipment needed: foil, rimmed baking sheet, basting brush
Ingredients: one (1 1/2 to 2 pound) rack of ribs (baby or St. Louis, your call), bbq rub, bbq sauce (preferably complementary rub and sauce)

Turn on the oven to 300. Line the baking sheet with foil (I was stupid and did not do this originally, so my awesome fiance was scrubbing the baking sheet all night). Remove the membrane from the back of the ribs (get it started by wiggling your index finger under it and then pull like mad) Liberally rub in bbq rub on both sides of the rack of ribs. Place on foil lined baking sheet. Cover with foil, sealing the edges around the baking sheet, but leaving air around the ribs.

Place in oven for 3 hours. Remove from oven, remove foil tent, and then baste with bbq sauce on both sides. Return to oven, uncovered for about 30 minutes.

Eat them. Maybe with more sauce if you're like Matt.

Don't know what to do for a bbq rub and sauce? Well, if you want a sauce you can get at the grocery store, try either Sweet Baby Ray's or Bone Suckin' Sauce. Buy a bbq rub or make one (the internet is full of suggestions).
We used the most amazing rub and sauce combination from our favorite bbq place down in Anna Maria Island, Florida. The restaurant is called Mr. Bones BBQ and they sell their rub and sauce retail. You can also mail order it from them here. We like the hot version, it is spicy but not overpowering.

Truly you could use any flavor profile on these ribs and make your own rub and sauce. Have fun!

Brie and Black Forest Ham Panini

A new panini has entered the roster. I felt this week at the store that I relied too much on munster and fontina for my panini, in addition to pantry items. Not that I won't continue making my workhorse panini, but change is good! A change with a double-creme cheese is really good! So, I picked up some basic brie and a nitrate-free Black Forest Ham.

A couple slices of Italian Bread, a generous slather of a spicy whole grain mustard (I used Whole Foods 365 brand "German Mustard", a layer of brie slices, and a couple folded slices of glorious Black Forest Ham.


And stay tuned for the Fall-Off-The-Bone oven-cooked ribs!

Green Apple Risotto with Bacon

I'm Back! Things are finally calming down some from an insanely busy year of work and school...so the blog is back! I'm very appreciative of all of you who expressed interest that I bring it back sooner than now. Thanks for your support and love...I hope you enjoy the new posts!

Last night my facebook status let folks know I was making this for dinner. Lots of you asked for the recipe. At the end of the post, I've made a vegetarian suggestion to dress up the risotto without bacon, although I haven't field tested it myself.

The Green Apple Risotto is something I've been making for years (adapted a bit) from a Mario Batali recipe. For whatever reason, I hadn't made risotto for Matt yet (he still loves most everything I make, and just in case he had texture issues with risotto as some people do, I didn't want to risk it). A week ago I made him a saffron and shrimp risotto, and he was hooked. Thank God!

Matt also loves bacon (if you eat pork, who doesn't?). Since pork and apples are such a classic pair, I thought it would work. And it does wonderfully....the risotto has a rich mouthfeel, but a light taste, and then the contrasting bacon adds a crunchy, meaty saltiness.

Here's the recipe as the main dish for two.

Cook 6 slices of bacon. Crumble. Set Aside.

In a large skillet or wide-bottom saucier melt/heat: 1 TBS Olive Oil, I TBS Unsalted Butter.

Add, cook until softened: Red Onion, half a medium one, finely chopped.

Add and toast/cook for a few minutes: 3/4 cup Arborio Rice, 1 Granny Smith Apple, peeled, cored,and sliced 1/8" thick.

Add and cook until absorbed/evaporated: 1/2 cup Dry White Wine (last night I used Black Box Pinot Grigio).

So here's what lots of people think of as the "scary" part about risotto. Honestly, it is what I love. You have to stay at the stove for about a half hour. It is the same reason I like ironing. You cannot do anything else. Other than maybe having a phone conversation or listening to the Red Sox make stupid mistakes and fall behind, you can't really multi-task while making risotto.

You will need about about 4 cups of Broth or Stock. I use homemade stock that has very little salt in it. If you do not have any homemade stock, use a low sodium broth, or better yet a 3 parts low sodium broth 1 part water mix. For store-bought broths I like the Imagine brand (low sodium vegetable broth) or Swansons (low sodium chicken).

So, while you were prepping and beginning to cook the risotto, bring the stock to a simmer in a separate pot, and keep warm over a very low heat. After you have cooked off the wine, start adding ladles of the stock. Add enough stock to just cover rice. Cook over medium-high heat and stir constantly. When stock has been almost completely absorbed, add another ladle or two of stock. Continue process until rice is creamy, but individual grains are al dente. This will take about 25-35 minutes, less if you like your rice to have more of a bite. I prefer this risotto the Venetian way: all'onda, which means wavy. The rice is still a little moist and appears like waves in the dish, as opposed to the Milanese way, which is a tighter, more compact dish. Try it both ways and see which you like!

So, once you have your risotto at your preferred level of doneness,turn off the heat and stir in: 1 TBS butter, 1/3 cup grated Parmigiano, and a couple TBS of finely chopped parsley

Mound the risotto onto warmed plates and sprinkle crumbled bacon over the top. Enjoy the silky, slightly sweet, but definitely savory rice, and the crunchy salty gift from heaven that is bacon.

For my vegetarian friends, use vegetable broth and some chopped pecans. I think pecans are an equally classic pairing with apples. If you try it, let me know how it comes out!