Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Poached Pears in Wine
As promised for my good friend Marco who lives in New York City; here is a quick dessert that you can make in a tiny Manhattan
To start we'll need 6 good sized ripe Bosch pears; unfortunately I didn't have 6 pears, I had 4. And I didn't have Bosch pears I just hadBartlett
In a medium sized, non-reactive sauce pan, over medium-high heat, combine the following:
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup grenadine
1 cup Marsella
1/2 cup port
1 cup water
Seems like an odd choice of ingredients huh? Well the grenadine is from the batch we made last week, and as for the port and the Marsella wine. Well I had about a half cup of port sitting around for awhile and wanted to get rid of it. Next, stir the liquid until the sugar dissolves and then add your pears.
Bring the pears to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium-low and let them simmer for about 30 minutes until tender.
You can simply serve the pears by themselves with a hefty splash of the reduced poaching liquid as I have done so here. Or you can add a scoop of really good vanilla ice cream, the pears and then cover it all with the syrup. Start to finish you’re looking at about maybe 2 hours with the majority of that time being spent in the chiller. Anyway you serve it up, people are going to love it- and you don’t need a very big kitchen or fancy gadgets to do it!
That is all.
To start we'll need 6 good sized ripe Bosch pears; unfortunately I didn't have 6 pears, I had 4. And I didn't have Bosch pears I just had
In a medium sized, non-reactive sauce pan, over medium-high heat, combine the following:
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup grenadine
1 cup Marsella
1/2 cup port
1 cup water
Seems like an odd choice of ingredients huh? Well the grenadine is from the batch we made last week, and as for the port and the Marsella wine. Well I had about a half cup of port sitting around for awhile and wanted to get rid of it. Next, stir the liquid until the sugar dissolves and then add your pears.
Bring the pears to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium-low and let them simmer for about 30 minutes until tender.
Remove the pears from the poaching liquid and place in the refrigerator to cool completely. Reduce the remaining poaching liquid by half until it is a nice syrup. Remove the syrup from the heat and cool completely as well.Reserve the syrup for plating.
You can simply serve the pears by themselves with a hefty splash of the reduced poaching liquid as I have done so here. Or you can add a scoop of really good vanilla ice cream, the pears and then cover it all with the syrup. Start to finish you’re looking at about maybe 2 hours with the majority of that time being spent in the chiller. Anyway you serve it up, people are going to love it- and you don’t need a very big kitchen or fancy gadgets to do it!
That is all.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Roasted Sausage Peppers and Onions
Tonight's post will be a short simple one.
I think there's really nothing better than roasted Italian sausage and peppers. You can eat them alone or you can put it in some crusty bread with some cheese and red sauce. The best part about this recipe is that it's so easy! Here's how I do it.
Start with about 6 links of good Italian sausage. This is sausage that i made a couple weeks ago and the vacuum seal didn't hold for some reason in the freezer. So since i had to defrost them i thought what the hell, i'll just cook it. Anywho- put the 6 links in a baking dish and toss it in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes; turning them once about half way through.
Next we work on the peppers and onions. For this amount of sausage i used:
2 large sweet onions
4 medium green peppers
4 medium red peppers
Peel the onions and cut them in half through the root end and then slice the onions into crescent shapes.
Heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat in a large frying pan. When the oil is just about shimmering add the onions and season with about a teaspoon of salt. Stir them up and keep an eye on them while you prep the peppers.
Core and seed the peppers, remove any of the ribs from the inside of the peppers and then cut them into strips. When the onions have started to caramelize and have cooked down a bit, add the peppers to the frying pan. i usually add some more olive oil here also, you don't have to but i like olive oil. Let that all cook down until the peppers are tender and the onions are nice and caramelized.
Now go check on your sausage. Depending on your oven and you sausages they may or may not be browned after 40 minutes. Mine were not browned, they were cooked through but not brown. Hey it happens to all of us sometimes. So here's what i did. I took the sausage out of the baking dish and put them on a plate. I then transferred all the onions and peppers to the baking dish that had the sausage and all the drippings from the sausage. i mix them all up and toss them back in the oven. i then add a little oil to the now empty frying pan and add my sausages to the pan over medium high heat. Keep an eye on them and turn them until they are browned nicely on all sides. It shouldn't take more than about 5 minutes or so. I then add them back to the baking dish with the peppers and onions.
And that's all there is to it people; you can bring them to table in the baking dish and it looks pretty damn good if i do say so myself. And for my more astute readers; yes- there is a sausage missing from the first picture to the finished dish picture. I got hungry- it happens!
See this was a quick post.
that is all.
I think there's really nothing better than roasted Italian sausage and peppers. You can eat them alone or you can put it in some crusty bread with some cheese and red sauce. The best part about this recipe is that it's so easy! Here's how I do it.
Start with about 6 links of good Italian sausage. This is sausage that i made a couple weeks ago and the vacuum seal didn't hold for some reason in the freezer. So since i had to defrost them i thought what the hell, i'll just cook it. Anywho- put the 6 links in a baking dish and toss it in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes; turning them once about half way through.
Next we work on the peppers and onions. For this amount of sausage i used:
2 large sweet onions
4 medium green peppers
4 medium red peppers
Peel the onions and cut them in half through the root end and then slice the onions into crescent shapes.
Heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat in a large frying pan. When the oil is just about shimmering add the onions and season with about a teaspoon of salt. Stir them up and keep an eye on them while you prep the peppers.
Core and seed the peppers, remove any of the ribs from the inside of the peppers and then cut them into strips. When the onions have started to caramelize and have cooked down a bit, add the peppers to the frying pan. i usually add some more olive oil here also, you don't have to but i like olive oil. Let that all cook down until the peppers are tender and the onions are nice and caramelized.
Now go check on your sausage. Depending on your oven and you sausages they may or may not be browned after 40 minutes. Mine were not browned, they were cooked through but not brown. Hey it happens to all of us sometimes. So here's what i did. I took the sausage out of the baking dish and put them on a plate. I then transferred all the onions and peppers to the baking dish that had the sausage and all the drippings from the sausage. i mix them all up and toss them back in the oven. i then add a little oil to the now empty frying pan and add my sausages to the pan over medium high heat. Keep an eye on them and turn them until they are browned nicely on all sides. It shouldn't take more than about 5 minutes or so. I then add them back to the baking dish with the peppers and onions.
And that's all there is to it people; you can bring them to table in the baking dish and it looks pretty damn good if i do say so myself. And for my more astute readers; yes- there is a sausage missing from the first picture to the finished dish picture. I got hungry- it happens!
See this was a quick post.
that is all.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Mixology 101
All right true believers as promised I have another post for you today. This time we'll take on two beverage related recipes. The first is a recipe for grenadine. I had always thought that grenadine was made from cherries. I mean look at how red it is; but it's really from pomegranate. Pomegranate- no shit.
Basically we'll looking at a simple syrup made from pomegranate; sugar and juice. I found this pomegranate juice at the Target. I was going to buy the POM brand juice but that's from concentrate as well so what's the difference? The Target brand was cheaper than the POM brand and twice as large. So there's your lesson in value:
the recipes I found online called for a 1:1 ratio of juice to sugar. I could not bring myself to use that much sugar. So I went with 2 Cups of juice to 1 1/2 Cups of sugar.
So over medium heat in a non-reactive sauce pan combine the sugar and the juice, stir until the sugar dissolves and then bring to a boil. When it reaches a boil reduce the heat to a simmer for about 30 minutes until the syrup is reduced by about 1/3.
After the syrup has reduced remove it from the heat and let it cool down to room temp. You can then bottle it and store it in the fridge up to a month or so; not only can you use it in mixed drinks but later this week I'm going to use it to poach pears!
The Mojito
Switching gears a little we move over to a mixed drink that has become a favorite of mine- the mojito. I had my first mojito at the Bahama Breeze restaurant up in Schaumburg, IL. This was probably about 5 years ago; before it became the "it" drink. The mojito is made up of rum, mint, lime, sugar cane juice, and seltzer water. At the Bahama Breeze they would actually put real sugar cane through a press to extract the juice to sweeten the drink, they would then server the drink with a swizzle stick made out of cane sugar. I got so hammered that night- it was wonderful (a big thank you goes out to my wife who was just my girlfriend at the time for knowing how to drive a manual transmission and getting my car and my drunk ass home safely.)
So Let's start.
Gather up your ingredients:
Tall glass
ice
limes
rum
mint leaves
sugar cane juice*
seltzer water
*Sugar Cane Juice- very hard to come by in the Midwest. My good friend M.R. in NYC was nice enough to send me a half dozen cans of Goya brand Guarapo de Caña. However-I was at Whole Foods one day and I saw this sweetener made from Agave (the same stuff they make tequila out of)and thought I'd give that a try- works great!
To make the drink you put about 8 or so mint leaves into a glass along with probably about half a lime cut up into wedges. You then muddle it all together. Muddle? What the hell is that you ask? A muddler is a small billy club looking thing that you use to crush the lime and mint leaves together. Muddling releases the essential oils in the skin of the lime. If you don't have a muddler you can use a spoon. After you muddle add about a tablespoon of agave syrup or so- you'll need to fool with that until you get something you like. And before any of you email- yes I know that's not a highball glass and thank you for not point it out.
Next we add the rum. Traditionally light rum was used, I however prefer dark rum. Try it, you'll like it. Fill your glass with crushed ice and add a jigger or so of the rum of your choice. Just do me a favor and don't use really cheap rum. Trust me- there's nothing worse than cheap liquor. If you can't afford good liquor don't drink at all.
Top off your drink with the seltzer water, add a lime and some mint leave for garnish, toss in a straw and you got yourself a drink. And now that you have step by step photo instructions on how to make a mojito go do it!
Probably no update tomorrow, maybe Thursday, I have a French Onion soup post waiting in the wings.
So until then-
that is all.
Basically we'll looking at a simple syrup made from pomegranate; sugar and juice. I found this pomegranate juice at the Target. I was going to buy the POM brand juice but that's from concentrate as well so what's the difference? The Target brand was cheaper than the POM brand and twice as large. So there's your lesson in value:
the recipes I found online called for a 1:1 ratio of juice to sugar. I could not bring myself to use that much sugar. So I went with 2 Cups of juice to 1 1/2 Cups of sugar.
So over medium heat in a non-reactive sauce pan combine the sugar and the juice, stir until the sugar dissolves and then bring to a boil. When it reaches a boil reduce the heat to a simmer for about 30 minutes until the syrup is reduced by about 1/3.
After the syrup has reduced remove it from the heat and let it cool down to room temp. You can then bottle it and store it in the fridge up to a month or so; not only can you use it in mixed drinks but later this week I'm going to use it to poach pears!
The Mojito
Switching gears a little we move over to a mixed drink that has become a favorite of mine- the mojito. I had my first mojito at the Bahama Breeze restaurant up in Schaumburg, IL. This was probably about 5 years ago; before it became the "it" drink. The mojito is made up of rum, mint, lime, sugar cane juice, and seltzer water. At the Bahama Breeze they would actually put real sugar cane through a press to extract the juice to sweeten the drink, they would then server the drink with a swizzle stick made out of cane sugar. I got so hammered that night- it was wonderful (a big thank you goes out to my wife who was just my girlfriend at the time for knowing how to drive a manual transmission and getting my car and my drunk ass home safely.)
So Let's start.
Gather up your ingredients:
Tall glass
ice
limes
rum
mint leaves
sugar cane juice*
seltzer water
*Sugar Cane Juice- very hard to come by in the Midwest. My good friend M.R. in NYC was nice enough to send me a half dozen cans of Goya brand Guarapo de Caña. However-I was at Whole Foods one day and I saw this sweetener made from Agave (the same stuff they make tequila out of)and thought I'd give that a try- works great!
To make the drink you put about 8 or so mint leaves into a glass along with probably about half a lime cut up into wedges. You then muddle it all together. Muddle? What the hell is that you ask? A muddler is a small billy club looking thing that you use to crush the lime and mint leaves together. Muddling releases the essential oils in the skin of the lime. If you don't have a muddler you can use a spoon. After you muddle add about a tablespoon of agave syrup or so- you'll need to fool with that until you get something you like. And before any of you email- yes I know that's not a highball glass and thank you for not point it out.
Next we add the rum. Traditionally light rum was used, I however prefer dark rum. Try it, you'll like it. Fill your glass with crushed ice and add a jigger or so of the rum of your choice. Just do me a favor and don't use really cheap rum. Trust me- there's nothing worse than cheap liquor. If you can't afford good liquor don't drink at all.
Top off your drink with the seltzer water, add a lime and some mint leave for garnish, toss in a straw and you got yourself a drink. And now that you have step by step photo instructions on how to make a mojito go do it!
Probably no update tomorrow, maybe Thursday, I have a French Onion soup post waiting in the wings.
So until then-
that is all.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Pizza! Pizza!
Let me start this post by saying that the weather here in Chicagoland has been very cool. So much so that I've been cooking up a storm. I have three more posts after this one. I hope to get them all out this week but that all depends on how busy I am. So I decided to kick off the cool weather cooking with pizza. How can you go wrong?
I've been making pizza for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid every Friday night was pizza night at our house. My mother would churn out pizzas left and right and I would help; eventually she taught me how to make them myself. She was a great a teacher, no doubt about that, but there was a flaw in her method. She never taught me to measure properly. Everything was, get the big green bowl, fill it with warm water up to here, add about that much salt, etc, etc. And don't get me wrong, it worked well, but that was enough dough for like 6 pizza's; kind of a bit much for just me and the wife.
So through trial and error I've come up a good recipe and I'm going to share that with you tonight.
To start with you'll need a big bowl. I use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Now before you start crying that you don't have a stand mixer just remember that I used to do this all by hand. In fact; my mother still mixes her dough by hand; so shut yer pie hole and let's add the wet ingredients.
In your bowl add:
1 1/4 Cup warm water
1 package of rapid rise yeast
1/2 Tablespoon of kosher salt
2 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
Toss it all in the bowl and stir it up until the salt, sugar, and yeast dissolves. It'll look like such.
So then, once the wet ingredients are mixed we'll slowly start to add the flour. I like to use flour made for bread machines; it holds up better in the mixer. In total we'll add about 3 1/2 Cups of flour a half Cup at a time until it becomes incorporated. It'll start to look like this:
When it gets to that point you'll have to knead it by hand or with the mixers dough hook for about 15 minutes. It'll eventually look like this:
Once it's been kneaded; rub the top with olive oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and toss it somewhere to rise. It should take about an hour and half to two hours to double in size. I don't buy into the whole "punch it down and let it rise again" I want to eat sometime tonight so that ain't gonna happen. While the dough is rising you should gather up your toppings. I'm all about convenience so I use a canned sauce (oh stop the gasping it's pretty good), pre-shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, sausage (fresh from the freezer after our first post), garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
I like to pre-cook both my mushrooms and sausage before I put them on the pizza. Why? Well I don't have a pizza oven at home, my oven only gets up to about 500 degrees, a pizza oven is much higher than that. I found that if I use fresh sausage on the pizza the crust is overcooked by the time the sausage is cooked. So to get around that problem I pan fry my sausage first. Once it's cooked I remove it from the pan, de-glaze with a splash of wine and then add my mushrooms. The mushrooms will pick up the flavor of the sausage as well as all them little brown bits of porky goodness.
Now that the dough has risen for a couple hours it's time to stretch it out into the pan; but first crank the oven up to 450 degrees. I use a rectangular sheet pan; I like them better than round pans for some reason. I use Crisco brand shortening to grease the pan. I've tried other things like butter or olive oil and flour, etc, but I find that the Crisco just works the best and produces an awesome golden brown crust; trust me. So stretch the pizza out into your pan; I use this little handy dandy rolling pin to get it where it need to go. I got it from the Pampered Chef. Once it's all in place I like to come back and press dimples into it with my finger tips. The little dimples make nice little pockets to hold sauce.
All right now for the assembly- first I spread garlic over the whole crust. Then I add the sauce, probably about 4 big tablespoons or so. Next I cover the whole pizza with the sausage. That's right- I use an entire pound of Italian sausage; it's just that f'en good. Cover the whole thing with the mozzarella cheese; I'd say about 1 1/2 to 2 Cups of cheese. Next I add the mushrooms, make sure you drain them first, you don't want them getting your pizza all soggy. Next, grind some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese across the whole pizza, you don't need much since this cheese has a ton of flavor. Finally- I add my secret spice blend to the entire pizza top. I can't tell you what is exactly since it's my super secret pizza spice, but let's say it has dried oregano, basil, parsley, and some other things I can't mention.
It then goes into your pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 12 or 13 minutes. Check the bottom of the crust, it should be a nice golden brown. If the pizza is done pull it out and remove it from the pan onto cooling racks. It'll need to sit there about 5 minutes or so to cool down a bit. Look at how good it looks.
Normally I make a much thicker crust but I was in a hurry this particular night and didn't let the dough rise as much as I should have; but hey even a mistake like this is delicious. Slice it up and enjoy!
I've been making pizza for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid every Friday night was pizza night at our house. My mother would churn out pizzas left and right and I would help; eventually she taught me how to make them myself. She was a great a teacher, no doubt about that, but there was a flaw in her method. She never taught me to measure properly. Everything was, get the big green bowl, fill it with warm water up to here, add about that much salt, etc, etc. And don't get me wrong, it worked well, but that was enough dough for like 6 pizza's; kind of a bit much for just me and the wife.
So through trial and error I've come up a good recipe and I'm going to share that with you tonight.
To start with you'll need a big bowl. I use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Now before you start crying that you don't have a stand mixer just remember that I used to do this all by hand. In fact; my mother still mixes her dough by hand; so shut yer pie hole and let's add the wet ingredients.
In your bowl add:
1 1/4 Cup warm water
1 package of rapid rise yeast
1/2 Tablespoon of kosher salt
2 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
Toss it all in the bowl and stir it up until the salt, sugar, and yeast dissolves. It'll look like such.
So then, once the wet ingredients are mixed we'll slowly start to add the flour. I like to use flour made for bread machines; it holds up better in the mixer. In total we'll add about 3 1/2 Cups of flour a half Cup at a time until it becomes incorporated. It'll start to look like this:
When it gets to that point you'll have to knead it by hand or with the mixers dough hook for about 15 minutes. It'll eventually look like this:
Once it's been kneaded; rub the top with olive oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and toss it somewhere to rise. It should take about an hour and half to two hours to double in size. I don't buy into the whole "punch it down and let it rise again" I want to eat sometime tonight so that ain't gonna happen. While the dough is rising you should gather up your toppings. I'm all about convenience so I use a canned sauce (oh stop the gasping it's pretty good), pre-shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, sausage (fresh from the freezer after our first post), garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
I like to pre-cook both my mushrooms and sausage before I put them on the pizza. Why? Well I don't have a pizza oven at home, my oven only gets up to about 500 degrees, a pizza oven is much higher than that. I found that if I use fresh sausage on the pizza the crust is overcooked by the time the sausage is cooked. So to get around that problem I pan fry my sausage first. Once it's cooked I remove it from the pan, de-glaze with a splash of wine and then add my mushrooms. The mushrooms will pick up the flavor of the sausage as well as all them little brown bits of porky goodness.
Now that the dough has risen for a couple hours it's time to stretch it out into the pan; but first crank the oven up to 450 degrees. I use a rectangular sheet pan; I like them better than round pans for some reason. I use Crisco brand shortening to grease the pan. I've tried other things like butter or olive oil and flour, etc, but I find that the Crisco just works the best and produces an awesome golden brown crust; trust me. So stretch the pizza out into your pan; I use this little handy dandy rolling pin to get it where it need to go. I got it from the Pampered Chef. Once it's all in place I like to come back and press dimples into it with my finger tips. The little dimples make nice little pockets to hold sauce.
All right now for the assembly- first I spread garlic over the whole crust. Then I add the sauce, probably about 4 big tablespoons or so. Next I cover the whole pizza with the sausage. That's right- I use an entire pound of Italian sausage; it's just that f'en good. Cover the whole thing with the mozzarella cheese; I'd say about 1 1/2 to 2 Cups of cheese. Next I add the mushrooms, make sure you drain them first, you don't want them getting your pizza all soggy. Next, grind some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese across the whole pizza, you don't need much since this cheese has a ton of flavor. Finally- I add my secret spice blend to the entire pizza top. I can't tell you what is exactly since it's my super secret pizza spice, but let's say it has dried oregano, basil, parsley, and some other things I can't mention.
It then goes into your pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 12 or 13 minutes. Check the bottom of the crust, it should be a nice golden brown. If the pizza is done pull it out and remove it from the pan onto cooling racks. It'll need to sit there about 5 minutes or so to cool down a bit. Look at how good it looks.
Normally I make a much thicker crust but I was in a hurry this particular night and didn't let the dough rise as much as I should have; but hey even a mistake like this is delicious. Slice it up and enjoy!
