Oscar Night Means Pizza and a bunch of dogs at la Casa.

Mama Mia!  It's Oscar night and Mrs K and I had our dear friend over with her two dogs and a third in tow for some pizza at our house.  We've been planning this evening for quite a while and what better night than tonight? 

Like most things food, I take pizza pretty seriously.  Again, there are things that make a good pizza good.  Let's go through them, shall we?  The "star" of the show for pizza is the crust.  I like it thin, crisp, chewy and a little charred.  Just like it came out of a wood burning pizza oven.  Now, Mrs. K and I don't have a wood burning pizza at our disposal but don't think that I didn't think about building one.  That could be a post later.  We'll see.  Summer's here.

The sauce should be simple.  Namely, tomatoes and salt and maybe some sugar to round out the acidity.  I use canned tomatoes and use a stick blender to chop up the tomatoes to make a thicker sauce like consistency.  I add salt and if it's too acidic, I add a little sugar.  In the case of the tomatoes tonight, I didn't have to add any sugar.  I leave it raw, as well and let it just cook in the oven with the pizza.

Toppings are whatever you want them to be.  Tonight I prepared my "mis en place" with:  Fresh Mozzarella, aged Mozzarella, Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano Reggiano, Roasted corn, bacon (made into Pancetta, I'll fill you in later), Pepperoni, Green Peppers, Red Onions, Fresh Basil, Feta Cheese, Sauteed Mushrooms, Broccoli Rabe, blah, blah, blah.  Whatever you want to use, use it.  Just make sure it's fresh.  Italian cuisine is all about simplicity just as long as the products you use are the best products available.

The dough is a simple recipe, I mean seriously simple.  Flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water.  Could it get any simpler than that?  Mix it, proof it, punch it, portion it, roll it, top it, bake it.

So, like I said, we don't have a pizza oven so I used a pizza stone in a very hot oven.  I set the oven to 550 deg. F.  and let it preheat for two hours.  Did I mention that we want to start with a hot oven?  Using a pizza stone is crucial as it retains heat even after you put a cold pizza on it and more importantly, it wicks moisture away from the cooking pizza crust.  This ensures a nice crispy crust.  I have been using a sheet of maple plywood I had laying around the garage since I didn't have a pizza peel.  A peel is that huge spatula thing that pizza shops use to move the pies in and out of the oven.  Oh, by the way, Mrs. K hates it when I say a pie when I refer to a pizza.  I don't know where she gets this stuff.

So, again, I get a little lippy and no showy so here are some pictures of how it all went down:

Flour, water, yeast, salt and sugar in the stand mixer.

Workin' it.

After kneading the dough for about ten minutes, into an oiled bowl and ready to wrap with plastic to be put into a warm spot to rise until doubled its mass:

After about an hour or so, it's alive, it doubled in size and needs to be punched down and portioned

About baseball sized makes a 12-14 inch thin crust pie.  Once portioned, cover and put it into the fridge cause you want to slow down the yeast so that they don't rise anymore.  You don't want to create gas pockets in the dough or else you will get a bunch of bubbles in the cooked pie.  A little tidbit:  if ever you get a pizza and there are huge air pockets in the crust, then chances are the dough is old, from the night before or it was overproofed after they were portioned.

Okay, so the dough is done.  Let's work on the toppings:

Sauteed Broccoli Rabe with Olive Oil and Garlic

My clean up crew.  They are the best

Sauteed mushrooms, definitely cook these before you put it on your pie.  Not only does caramelizing develop some flavor but it also removes a lot of the moisture hidden within them

 I cheated, I didn't actually roast the corn, I sauteed then with onions, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Please don't comment on my knife cuts.  Really sloppy.  Oh by the way, thyme goes with corn like peanut butter goes with jelly.

This is how I cook bacon lardons.  It's much easier and cleaner to do them in a tall sided pan.

I wanted pancetta but forgot to get some so after I cooked the bacon I gave the cooked lardon some nutmeg and cracked pepper.  It's smoked but it will do.

You can't have Pizza Margherita without fresh Mozz

Mrs. K preparing her "Kentucky Tiramisu"  That's 'Nilla Wafers, vanilla pudding, cool whip and fresh strawberries.  Really good stuff!

Mis en place all in place, ready for some Pizza makin'

But wait, we need to start this dinner with a bit of a Caesar Salad

Pepperoni, Mozz, Tomato sauce and Feta Cheese

"Roasted" corn, mushrooms, Mozz and Broccoli Rabe

Peppers, Onions, Pepperoni, Sauce and Feta

Left Overs

Corn, sauce, Mozz, Pepperoni, onions, basil and Ricotta cheese

Crispy and good!  Make sure you put the pies on a cooling rack as soon as they come out of the oven so that the steam doesn't make the crust soggy.  By letting them rest a bit you will let the cheese set up a bit so that all the toppings won't slide off the pie while you cut and serve.

Okay, so our neighbors just had a beautiful little girl and I thought that I'd bring over some pie for dinner.  Well, they already had dinner and sent me home with some of their leftovers.  He made some Tennessee Hot Chicken.  I couldn't wait and while walking literally five yards I just had to have a bite.  This is what made it back home.  this was OUTSTANDING!  They are Johnston and Wales culinary grads.  I mean what are the chances?

So, what's up for next time?  Not positive but I think that it's going to be getting the cars ready for eBay.  This ought to be interesting cause the G-Wagen needs some TLC before I pass it along to the next lucky owner.  Go make some pizza pies until then!

Baby Nursery Redux

Okay, I'm all Blog crazed tonight.  I know, you all are thinking, "J, We love your nursery but what were you working with before you started all this nursery conversion?"  I know, you all just have to know.  Well, in the beginning, Mrs. K's mother got us all fired up to get the house ready to "stage" to sell and to move closer to home.  I was all on board with that so we "reformatted" the guest room as a home office and guest space.  That's what got me to repaint and change up the room:


Building the Soffet to connect the two closets to create some more overhead storage and to create some lighting effect to the room:

Of course, I pulled a building permit for the electrical work:

This is the Soffet completed:

This was what we were working with Pre-nursery:

And there you have it.  I feel all caught up on my blog.

Fini! Our expected Nug has a place to crash.

So, I've been slackin' on my blog posts.  What can I say?  Projects are getting completed.  So, for a brief half arsed installation I feel the need to share the finished nursery.  I hope that it is unisex enough so that our child will never know what sex we wanted our child to be.  Not that we had any preference.  No more dry wall dust, no more paint fumes, Mrs. K, I swear it's done!  So,  here it is:

 Beautiful changing table "donated" by our wonderful sister and brother in law.  Thanks guys.  We love it!

 Our friends know us better than we do.  The giraffe theme has preceded us.  Thank you, as well.

 Arrgggh, it already looks a little cluttered:

Mis-aligned light.  That needs to be fixed

I think that we are ready.  God forbid the little nug comes earlier than expected, he/she has a crash pad!

"Game Night" and Pigs in a Duvet

So, last Friday evening Mrs K and I got together with some dear friends for some board gaming and dinner.  Well, I couldn't go over empty handed and a bottle of purchased wine just doesn't cut it in our book.  So, when I cook for a Pot Luck or the like I usually cook what I want to eat for the evening.  I know, selfish.  Last Friday, I was in the mood for some Pigs in a Blanket cause what's better than a sausage wrapped in pastry?  I don't generally like to mess with classics like cocktail wieners and Pilsbury Crescent rolls.  Isn't that great that Pillsbury went ahead and renamed one of the greatest French pastries?  I'm sure they didn't ask France for their blessing on that one.  Dennis Leary had a comedy bit about Burger King doing the same with their Cross'anwich.  Anyhow, I find some satisfaction in putting my own twist on some classics.  I did go through a pretzel baking phase at home and knew I had a recipe for them some where so I decided to wrap those cocktail wienies in pretzel dough and serve them with a honey mustard.  Sounded good to me.  So, off to the grocery I went and got some "goods."

This is how they went down:

 This is a proofed, basic pretzel dough with butter as the fat.  I don't think that it really crisps up that well.  I may have to modify the dough recipe a bit next time:

 Rolled out and cut into rectangles with the aid of a pizza cutter.  I knew that that thing would come in handy one day:

Okay, so now that the wiener is wrapped in dough I put them into a pot of just simmering water with baking soda in it.  Back in the old days, pretzels were dunked in a bath of a lye solution.  Now, the only lye that had, uh.....lying around was in a bag of concrete mix I have in the garage.  I didn't feel like poisoning anyone that night so I opted for baking soda.  So, lye is an akali. So is baking soda.  What an alkaline bath does is give a pretzel a nice sheen, crust and that distinctive metallic-y flavor pretzels have.

Once they have been dunked for about 30 seconds, I place them on a cooling rack to dry off a bit and give them an egg wash (equal parts egg and water) to get them nice and brown and so that the salt I sprinkle on them have a chance to stick to them.

Very coarse sea salt.  This stuff is salty.  Much more so than Kosher so be light handed.

I felt that a little sweetness would be nice with the sausage and sea salt and I had this stuff laying around so I decided to sprinkle it on top liberally. It is Rock Maple Sugar.  It's great on Bagels as well:

I baked these on a silpat pan liner.  I think that if one were to bake them on the cooling rack you would have a heck of a time getting them out of the pan intact:

What to do with left over pretzel dough?  Why not twist up some pretzels:

Out of the oven to cool on a rack so they don't get soggy from the steam:

Golden, Brown, Cracklin'

A little honey mustard?

There you have it, Pretzel wrapped Pigs in a Blanket, or as a guest at the dinner called them:  "Pigs in a Duvet"  That sounds CLASSY, don't it?  These turned out well.  I think that the sausage created too much moisture being encased in dough.  They just didn't have the correct texture for my taste.  Next time, I will leave out the fat in the dough recipe.  Again, pretzel dough recipes can be found on line.  I hope that this inspires you to try it.