Pizza, Lean 'n Thin

I usually don't write about what I ate last night. But, this was kind of interesting. I usually have a lump of dough in the fridge from the baguette recipe. Recall, that's a lean dough, about 3 grams fat (veg shortening) per 500 grams of dough; much less than my pizza dough which has about 25 grams fat (olive oil) per 500 grams (and a little honey). I keep the baguette dough in the fridge (up to a couple days) so we have something on hand to add something special to an otherwise skimpy meal.

Last night Mom was out wining and dining a job candidate and it was me and the kid home for dinner. Table for two and I had no plan. After a brief panic, I took my lean dough, warmed it a bit, and decided to make a couple personal pizzas out of it with some fresh tomato (ugly ripes™, the best!), mozzarella and a bit of Reggiano. Seemed like a promising fix. But would that lean a dough work for a crust? I like my pizza crust with the oil and trace of honey to give it a tender interior, crispy exterior and amber color.

To my (and Frankie's) pleasant surprise, it worked quite well. A bit more chewy than usual but since we let the topped pies rest a good 10-20 minutes (diaper change between pizzas) before shoving them in the 550-deg-F furnace, they bubbled up nicely and were adequately tender. Frankie ate mostly my crusts, a couple pieces of orange and a crayon (purple, I think). She likes sauce more than fresh tomato but the different dough was a nice change.

The image is one just out of the oven and one about to go in on my two peels.

Quick, Call My Agent

Got the TV commercial. Me and my Weber (and dog, of course, she cleans the grate). Got a conference call Wednesday morning at 9:15 to hash out some details. I think I'm going to hold out for Nick Cage as the stunt double. Let you know how it goes. Update: Cage is busy that day. Filming starts Feb 15th (weather permitting) and I get my choice of a new grill for compensation! Someone pinch me.

Desperation Dinner #1 (Soup)

Our newest favorite quickie:

Collards, Chicken and Beans Soup, serves 2-3
1. Saute onion and a sliver of garlic in olive oil.
2. Add 10 oz. frozen collard greens, a chopped boneless chicken breast and can of cannelini beans.
3. Let simmer while walking the dog, changing a diaper and reading "Everyone Poops" (about 30 minutes).
4. Ladle into bowls, top with grated Reggiano, serve with crusty bread, wait anxiously for Spring and enjoy.

Fresh tomatoes - in Winter?

Last night was pizza night. We made one of our favorites: roasted eggplant, fresh tomato and chevre. The amazing thing I noticed this horrible season of rain, snow and dirt is the tomatoes in the supermarkets are pretty darn good! What a cool surprise. I've been buying a beefsteak type from Michigan and just last night got some killer Romas and used them for our pizza.

During past Winter seasons, supermarket tomatoes have always presented as ripe, red and juicy only to taste mealy and flavorless. But these two examples are really good - and from Giant Eagle of all places. It's good to have them around. Salads, pizzas and our spirits are better for them.

P.S. Pay no attention to the psychotic way I cut this pizza. Frankie gets small squares and we get slices and then I just started making random cuts. Trust me, it tasted MUCH better than it looks here.

We Made the Short List

A note I received last Friday from my contact at Picture Show Films:

Hi Dave-

I hope you had a good holiday season. I just wanted to let you know that you're on the short list of candidates for the Weber spots we're shooting. Weber is still figuring out exactly what they want to do in terms of the number of spots and the products they want to feature, but they really liked your story. I should know more by the middle of next week.

I had a phone interview a few weeks ago. He's making commercials for Weber and I might get in one. He said if the deal goes down, he pulls up with his crew in an RV and shoots improv style all day while I grill. Is that a cool gig or what? Keep you posted.

And for the last time, I did tell them what I looked like. Brad Pitt and Nicholas Cage made the short list for the stunt double.

Pan Size

Note: See update appended.

I was reading about a bread I'd like to try on Let's Cook with Meg and Ted. It's called a Grant Loaf and it seems really quick beginning to end. I especially appreciated the emphasis placed on the size of the baking pan relative to the batch size of the loaf. When baking in a pan (rather than free-form on tiles or something) I believe this is a particularly overlooked parameter. At least, it's been in my experience. I found this cool reference on volumes of popular Pan Size and their volumetric equivalents. Should be a useful reference when creating/planning/scaling a recipe. Just thought I'd share.

Update: You'd think I'd actually pay attention to my own advice. I used an 8 1/2 x 4 x 2 inch pan which was roughly 1100 mL volume (measured by simply adding water to the empty pan; It's tricky to compensate for the bevel in the pan and really wanted an accurate determination of volume. The recipe I decided to use was:

My First Grant Loaf
water, hot tap, ca 110F, 200 g
whole wheat flour, 90 g
rye flour, 90 g
spelt flour, 90 g
honey, ca. 15 g
salt, 5-6 g
rapid rise yeast, 1.5 t, ca. 5 g
Total mass, ca. 500 g

8 minute mix in my bread machine, shaped into a loaf, let proof for 30 minutes, baked at 425 for 30 minutes, popped out of the pan, let cool 20 minutes and ate some. It looked like the earthy crunchy super dense loaves at your least favorite health store. So, right now, no pic. But it tasted great!

The pan size, based on the citation in the first paragraph, was roughly 2 times too big. I think this has a lot to do with the dynamics of baking, the sides covered the loaf rather than the loaf springing past the sides of the pan to be baked. Maybe it won't make a difference, but my next attempt will confirm it. I'll either double the dough size or decrease the pan size. Stay tuned.

One last note: I'm actually not pitching this it tasted so good and I always pitch stuff that frustrates me. Drives my loved one nuts but I can't tolerate inferior baked goods and despite this one's shortcomings, it was quite good. And, I did all before dropping the kid off at daycare.

Cookies, Frankie and Decorations

More cookies! During the past holiday, Frankie decorated cookies with Mom (kind of) and showed amazing potential. Trish finished 'em off (2nd image). The cookies were heavenly. Flour was used merely as a support for butter and sugar in this rendition of the sugar cookie. These were the most delicate sugar cookies I have ever had (I think it was from the Cooks' Illustrated Baking Book). Then, they were decorated quite festively. Christmas this year was food, food and more food.

A Turkey, A Weber and 1-deg-F

The weather for Christmas stunk this year; snow followed by lots of ice. But, we kept indoors and had a very relaxing holiday.

However, we still needed to cook the holiday bird. Recipes developed for barbecueing from the infamous Weber Grill Company (note the sucking up so I can be in their televeision commercial) are created based on an ambient temperature of 60-deg-F. I figured it'd be about March before we saw those temps and the bird needed to be done by 4 pm. On Christmas morning, it was only 1-deg-F (note the ice covered bush in the foreground: proof it's wicked cold out). Luckily, it wasn't windy. Wind makes temperature control nearly impossible in the cold.

I knew my Weber was still the weapon of choice for our brined bird. The 8-pounder was prepared in the same manner described previously (only it wasn't given a name). The cold posed a bit of a challenge but a relatively steady temp of about 300 +/- 40 degrees was still realized; it simply required a bit more lump charcoal than anticipated. Four hours later, we had our bronzed turkey resting and waiting for dinner. It was pretty tasty and we reached a new low in 'cue.

Raviolis, et. al.

They need names.

Our Christmas eve feast will include ravioli with tomato sauce, breaded/fried smelts, cod (breaded/baked), assorted veggies, etc. Yesterday, I made the dough and stuffed it with a mixture of cheeses and spices to make our ravioli. For the first time ever, I used the food processor for the dough and it worked miraculously. A typical batch of dough was:



Pasta Dough (soon to be replaced by measures in mass, not volume)
unbleached white flour, 1 3/4 C
eggs, two
olive oil, 1.5 T
water, 1.5 T plus enough to make it "ball up" in the processor.
salt, 1/4 t

I didn't weigh the ingredients, but should have since eggs will always vary and moisture content is key to ease of rollability for pasta dough. Each batch of this dough was rolled to a huge, very thin sheet of pasta by hand. It was not sticky; almost a texture of kids' fruit leather. I used a mold to make about a dozen ravs at a time. Worked pretty well, a bit tedious, but worth it. Well, off to prepare more food (Trish has taken over cinnabon-style rolls - hers are better!), play with the kid and listen to Andy Williams tunes. Merry Christmas all.

I'll be pulling this entry back up and updating it sometime in the future with weights of ingredients.

ps: The image is of the little guys undergoing a flash freeze stage on our back stairs. It's been chili here in Columbus.

pps: Boy were these good. Not one burst on boiling. The pasta could probably have been rolled a tad thinner (to give them an apparently greater tenderness) but not many complaints. Of course it was just Trish and Frankie.

Artisan/Straight Dough Hybrid

A good bread can make even a quick meal seem special. But can a good bread be made when the night's hectic and time's short?

I think so. I've been playing playing around lately with my favorite hobby, the baguette recipe and realizing some nice unexpected results. That prep is a simple straight dough with a few small but significant modifications. Lately, I've been making the dough (up through step 6) and placing the resulting dough in the fridge.

This time, I made the dough (500 g) on Sunday and put it in the fridge (ca. 40-deg-F) and took off a piece on Tuesday, warmed it up for 20 minutes, baked it and repeated with the rest of the dough on Thursday. The resulting bread on the latter day was different, but each day good. Tuesday's was a bit bigger in volume; by Thursday, I think the yeast was nearly spent and the resulting loaf (pictured in this post) was a tad more dense than the one earlier in the week.

I suspect it's kind of a continuum where baking early is closest to the result of a typical straight dough but after several days in the fridge, even though a full shot of yeast is used, a more elaborate flavor profile develops; the resulting loaf has a bit more irregular crumb, open holes, etc. and it begins to approach a sourdough-derived loaf in texture.

I've repeated this a few times; here are a few specifics: After step 6 on the baguette recipe (for the delayed loaves I use chilled tap water anticipating not baking for at least 24 hours) I refrigerate the dough immediately. On the first or second day I want to make bread, I take about 250 grams of the dough and round the remaining dough and put it back in the fridge. With the portion I removed, I squash it into a disc (ca. 7" in diameter) to expose a lot of surface area and let it sit on the counter loosely covered with a dish towel for about 20 minutes to warm up (kind of a second rise). I then roll up the disc into a baguette shape (also a break from convention), dust it with flour and proceed as in the recipe using about 30 minutes for the final proof while the oven preheats to 450-deg-F. Last night, I only used about 200 grams and made something closer to a ficelle. It was very nice to have with leftover greans/cannelini bean/chicken soup we had.

Incidentally, the baguette, or better, the ficelle, offers another advantage for the busy weekday night. It can cool properly and quickly before the meal. A warm loaf is nice but if you crack into the baguette prematurely, the crumb doesn't get enough time to develop its flavor.

Frankincense, Myrrh and Samichlaus

About a year ago, I shamelessly begged for a special beer. Suddenly, out of the blue came a special package in the mail. It was two bottles swaddled safely in bubble wrap and carefully placed upon my porch. Behold, it was two bottles of Samichlaus Bier. Given some recent events, this was no less than a miracle. You don't just drink a Sami. When indulging, it's more like a date. You put the kid to bed, wear something comfortable, find a friend to share it with and savor the spirit. It's on par with a good port. And, while you savor your fine drink, you remind yourself of your wealth of good friends and family. Thanks! I owe ya big time.

I Win

I know my food preps are either too simple or too tedious to have any broad appeal to be nominated in The Floggies, so I'm going to nominate myself and give myself the honor of winning in the Too Simple or Too Tedious Food Blog category of 2004.

I'll be spending my $20.04 that I paid myself tonight on a bottle or two of Chimay.

And, if there were a Lifetime Achievement Food Blog award, KIP should get it.

Thank you all!

My 2.5 Minutes of Fame?

A gentleman from Picture Show Films contacted me by email today. He's working with the gods of The Weber Grill Company to make some tv spots for 2005. They need candidates who care and worship their grills using an improv/documentary style.

I am so all over this. Wish me luck. I'll be grilling something this weekend trying to create some good vibes.

Update: Just gave a quick phone interview, the info will be submitted to Weber for decisions and, yes, I did inform him I'm a short white bald guy. It wasn't a dealbreaker.

Food Finds Columbus: Northstar Cafe

Last Saturday we went out for breakfast and tried the Northstar Cafe. The Dispatch had a piece on it recently (paid content though). An excerpt:

An increasing number of restaurants are finding that the rewards of knowing the grower outweigh the bother.

One example is Northstar Cafe, founded earlier this year with a mission of buying from Ohio farmers.

A seasonal special uses beets from the Sippel Family Farm north of Columbus.

Chef John Skaggs oven-roasts the beets -- he uses Bull's Blood beets, an heirloom variety -- and then cuts them into large chunks that form the basis for the roasted-root salad ($7.80), where they're joined by goat cheese, house-glazed pecans and lots of designer greens in a light vinaigrette.

Another special is fresh-pressed apple cider from Charlie's Apples near Newark. The apples used are the yellow-colored GoldRush, which has the intense apple flavor missing from most types developed for cross-country shipping to supermarkets.

Northstar is now open for dinner.

Where: Northstar Cafe, 951 N. High St. (at 2nd Avenue), 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday

We were there for breakfast with Frankie. There were a few other little kids there, good thing for us. I ordered a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and was initially regretful. Such a nice place, why did I get a McD's knockoff??

This sandwich was exquisite. Perfectly cooked egg, perfect sausage, cheese and served on the best biscuit I have ever had in my entire life. How could a simple biscuit be this good? This is an example of what excites me about food. The simple preparations that have no absolute standard. A biscuit has only a few ingredients. But there are an infinite number of possibilities in the way they are processed - and the outcome is always different. In this case, I wanted to go and sit down with the chef, pat him encouragingly on the back and tell him how thrilled I was about this biscuit. It nearly drew a tear.

Instead, I chased Frankie around the restaurant.

But you should go there. B'fast or dinner, it's about $5-7/meal. It's got a small magazine stand in there, wireless and extraordinary coffee. It's so not Tarbucks. Go there. You won't regret it.

Update: Additional Reviews
Columbus Alive
10TV.com