A few photos from my most recent pizza party, with a couple older photos mixed in---didn't always have time to take a picture! Had great help from an alum and his wife, both with kitchen and waitstaff experience. The dessert course was a big hit: double chocolate biscotti and maple pecan biscotti served with pistachio almond ice cream. The chocolate biscotti recipe you can find all he over Internet, but the maple pecan recipe came from HERE.
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When a Loretto sister asks you if you'd be willing to do a fundraiser for an orphanage, you'd better say "yes" or you'll go straight to hell. That's what went through my mind when Sr. Mary Ann of the Loretto community at Lockwood Center in Webster Groves asked if I'd be willing to provide some kind of auction item for St. Vincent Home for Children. "Pizza Party for Eight" I said, with only the slightest hesitation---after all, you never know if the person who buys your party is going to have decent ovens or be any fun to be around. Happily, for my most recent venture I was lucky on all counts: lovely home, enjoyable company, gracious hosts and a pair of terrific ovens. The pizza menu (voted on by the guests) included Pesto and Prosciutto, Italian Beef, Four Cheese Tomato Top, and Pizza Diavolo (the hot one!). The pizza pictured above was our first of the night, made with pesto cream sauce and prosciutto rotola. "Rotola" is a product made by Volpi Meats in St. Louis and as a pizza topping it's nothing short of spectacular. The folks at Volpi roll up sheets of mozzarella with prosciutto, salume, basil, or sun dried tomatoes, so once you lay down a little sauce, all you have to do is cut slices of the rotola and arrange them on top, and there's your cheese and toppings in one step. I added some red onions to the one pictured above, but the rotola alone works just fine. Actually, just "fine" is an understatement, because what you end up with are pools of melted mozz with a spiral of fried ham embedded in the center of them. Here they are on top of a regular tomato-based pizza sauce (OK, I say "regular" but it's actually completely homemade from Br. Luke's tomatoes and my herbs!) Want to check out Volpi's rotola? Click HERE, and if you get a chance to visit their shop on the Hill in St. Louis, bring a cooler to take home some fresh salsiccia as well. (And no, I don't work for Volpi and they haven't paid me for this post, although I am friends with some of the staff and sometimes they give me free guanciale!) Okay, I know you're dying for the pesto cream sauce recipe, but I can't really give you much here except the base sauce: Béchamel Sauce Any kind of milk will do from skim to half and half, or even (as I used for the party last night) heavy cream. Then I whisked in about a quarter cup (??) of pesto sauce, just the stuff from a jar, and some "pizza sprinkle" herb mix I found in an Italian grocery somewhere. This produced way more sauce than a needed for one pizza, but some lucky guest at the party went home with the rest to make a knockout pasta for her Monday brown bag lunch.
Here are some photos of the other pizzas as well: Photo by Elizabeth Steffen Last day of National Pizza Month! This is Spinach Pesto Pizza, which I developed because we had scads of spinach coming in from the garden. Since fresh spinach is pretty much available year round, it's a great veggie pizza to serve anytime. I make it with red onion, baby belle mushrooms and baby Swiss cheese, but feel free to experiment. Spinach Pesto
Makes 1½ cups 4 cups washed, torn spinach leaves, stems removed, well packed, about 6 ounces 3 garlic cloves ½ cup walnuts or pistachio nuts, toasted 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil 3 oz. grated Romano Pecorino cheese Juice of ½ lemon Salt and pepper to taste Place 2 cups of spinach leaves, garlic, nuts, and lemon juice in a food processor container. Cover and puree until well blended. Add remaining spinach and olive oil, and blend until smooth. Fold in Romano cheese, and adjust seasoning. Notes ---A great alternative to traditional pesto, especially when it’s too early for basil and the spinach is the star of the garden. By the way, mixing in a little arugula, endive or other salad greens can give you subtle variations on flavor. A quarter cup of fresh parsley is a nice addition as well. ---This pesto is a gorgeous bright green with a fresh flavor to match. You can also use it for pasta like traditional pesto (it’s excellent with seafood ravioli or cheese tortellini) and makes an unusual dip for crudités--- just be sure to let everyone know it’s NOT guacamole! It's still National Pizza Month, so I thought I'd share my recipe for mornay sauce for pizza. It's a little thicker than the sauce you might use for vegetables, and is a great alternative to tomato-based sauces. I use it for this asparagus and ham pizza, but it also goes great with broccoli and chicken, any veggie pizza, or even sun-dried tomatoes and slivered almonds on a thin crust as an appetizer pizza. Mornay Sauce
1 cup milk 1 quarter of a small red onion 1 bay leaf 2 Tbs. butter 2 Tbs. all-purpose flour ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese ¼ cup shredded white cheddar salt and pepper to taste Place milk, onion and bay leaf in a small pan over medium heat; simmer for 10 minutes but do not boil. Remove from heat and discard onion and bay leaf. In a separate small sauce pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add flour and whisk until smooth. Cook until a light tan color, whisking constantly—about 2 minutes. Gradually add the milk and continue to whisk over medium high heat until mixture is thickened and coats the back of a spoon, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in cheese until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Notes: ---Mornay sauce is traditionally made with Parmesan and Gruyère cheeses, but I find that Gruyère is expensive and often hard to come by, so I use a white cheddar. Swiss cheese can also be substituted. White pepper is generally preferred for a white sauce such as this one, but use whatever you have at home. A pinch of paprika is a nice addition, too. ---You’ll only need about half of this sauce to make a 12” to 14” pizza, but the remainder can be refrigerated and used to dress up your boring microwaved vegetables for lunch at work. When used the next day it may need a little milk or half and half to thin it. Or use the whole batch to make a rather elegant mac-and-cheese. When asked about it, you can shrug and say, “Oh, it’s just a little Mornay sauce I whipped up last night.” Try not to sound too smug. Eddie and Courtney are getting married in October and I'm the presider, so as I often do with marriage prep couples, I invited them out to make pizza with me. Little did I know (until I check my Twitter feed) that today was National Cheese Pizza Day! Here they are with the sausage and pepperoni masterpiece that Ed made (rolled AND tossed the dough), but we also made one of my favorite pizzas of all time, the Four Cheese Tomato Top. Our Fr. Ron grows a bountiful crop of heirloom tomatoes every year, with astonishingly diverse colors, shapes and flavors. I used some of the smaller ones to make my Bruschetta Topping Pizza (recipe HERE) and the rest were used on the Four Cheese Tomato Top Pizza pictured below. This photo hardly does it justice, but I didn't have time to set up a tripod and lighting, with a dozen hungry monks waiting at haustus upstairs! We pizzaolos did reserve a couple of pieces for ourselves and the flavor of these heirloom tomatoes really makes the dish special. I don't even attempt this pizza after the garden tomatoes are spent. Here's a slightly better photo from last year. But I'm sure you are wondering what the cheese combo is. It's my variation on the classic quattro formaggi pizza: 6 oz. shredded mozzarella 4 oz. ricotta 2 oz. shredded provolone 2 oz. grated Romano 1 egg ½ tsp. nutmeg ¼ cup fresh snipped chives, garlic chives, or other Italian herbs Mix thoroughly and spread evenly over a 12" to 14" thick crust, then top with tomatoes. I always bake mine on a preheated pizza stone at 500 degrees F. Don't wait until September 5th of next year---bake a Four Cheese Tomato Top Pizza this weekend! Since Mardi Gras is this Tuesday, I thought I'd share the recipe for Muffaletta Pizza. The Muffaletta is a tradtional New Orleans sandwich invented by Italian immigrants that uses deli meats and provolone topped with a garlic olive salad. Unfortunately, every time I've made it, the pie never stays on the table long enough to get a photo! If you like salty foods, especially olives, you'll love this pizza. The printer friendly recipe is HERE. Muffaletta Pizza (for a 14” to 16” pizza) ¼ cup pizza sauce (optional) 3/4 to 1 cup olive salad (see below) 3 to 4 oz. each cappocola, mortadella, and genoa salami slices, cut into strips 8 to 10 oz. shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese blend Roll dough out into a 12” to 14” crust with a thicker outer edge. Place on a pizza peel well-dusted with cornmeal; par-bake, if desired. Spread pizza sauce evenly over the crust, if desired. Layer the olive salad, meats and cheese in that order, and bake pizza on a preheated stone at 500 degrees for about 10-12 minutes, or until cheese begins to brown very lightly. Notes ---The muffaletta is a sandwich made popular in New Orleans by Italian immigrants. Originally the name was associated with a round loaf of bread but has become synonymous with a sandwich made with Italian deli meats and cheeses with a garlic olive salad condiment. ---Another option for the cheese is to take whole round slices of provolone and lay them over the pizza, slightly overlapping, which gives the pie an interesting appearance. Remember that provolone won’t brown as much as mozz, so don’t overbake. Olive Salad ¾ cup medium pimiento stuffed green olives ½ cup medium black olives ½ cup Italian mild gardiniera ¼ cup minced red onion 2 tbs. capers, drained 2 or 3 large garlic cloves, mashed and minced 1 Tbs. fresh minced Italian parsley 1 Tbs. fresh minced oregano ½ tsp. red pepper flakes 1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar 2 Tbs. olive oil 1 Tbs. grated Parmesan Drain and coarsely chop the green olives, black olives and gardiniera, and combine them in a bowl. Add remaining ingredients, give it a couple of twists from the pepper mill and toss until blended. Cover bowl and refrigerate until use. Notes ---This is the traditional condiment on a New Orleans muffaletta sandwich, although some recipes have more ingredients: thinly sliced celery, roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, etc. I simplified by using gardiniera (an Italian mix of cauliflower, carrots, celery, peppers, etc., usually pickled). You can experiment with whatever is at the market or coming out of your garden at the moment. ---Don't have fresh herbs? Use 1 tsp dried for every Tbs. fresh. K of C events went great last weekend, but I don't have any photos to show for it except the crew from the pizza night at Godfrey and the tables set up with the free goodie bags generously provided by Hodgson Mills. The other photo below is of me with the brothers from the OMI house of formation, which is where I spent the night---beautiful old house (1920's) built on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi. But on my way out of Godfrey on Sunday morning I took a wrong turn which turned out to be a right turn, because I turned up in the parking lot of the LAST MISTER DONUT IN THE UNITED STATES! Yes, and they still get the same Mister Donut coffee blend from a supplier in Massachusetts, which tastes just like the coffee I used to get on Sunday mornings along with an old-fashioned sour cream donut. The fellow in the picture is one Caesar Blanco, who bought the franchise in 2004. At that time most Mister Donuts had already been bought out by Duncan Donuts, and there were only 9 left in Illinois. Today, he says, his franchise is the very last one left in the U.S., although Mister Donut still has a very strong presence in Asia, especially Japan. (I should note that I don't have any independent verification of the "last Mister Donut" claim, and I'm not sure how I'd go about that anyway, but I can say that I haven't seen one for years.) If you have fond memories of Mister Donut coffee and their giant cinnamon rolls, or maybe want to try a newer product like the croissant with sausage, egg and cheese (I tried it and it's better than a lot of other fast food breakfast sandwiches, IMHO), I recommend you make a road trip to 2720A Grovelin St., Godfrey, IL 62035 (618) 466-6327. Worth it just for the notalgic smell of the place, especially when they're frying the cake donuts. Ask for Caesar and tell him Fr. Dom sent you! Caesar says he got into the donut business right after retiring from the Navy in '93, and by doing so he was following in a noble tradition. Donuts were not always as universally popular (or common) as they are now. What made them so was the Salvation Army serving them to "doughboys" in WWI and the Red Cross serving them to GI's in WWII--the young ladies who served them were called "Donut Dollies". When the WWII vets returned home, many used their GI Bill grants to open donut shops. There used to be a donut shop in San Jose with a WWII museum attached to it that chronicled this little piece of Americana, but sadly, Lou's Living Donut Museum was closed in 2006 due to family illness. I don't know what happened to all the memorablia, but it certainly was a unique shop and I hope the displays were preserved somewhere.
Pizza night with the new crop of Stage Rats last night, and home grown tomatoes were the stars of the night. We made the four cheese tomato top and a bruschetta pizza (left) that had terrific flavor. I was a little short on flour when I made the dough, so it was wetter than usual, more like Italian style dough than my usual American, but the results were excellent. As usual, I made more dough than I needed so I could make Magic Bread. I don't think I've blogged about this before, and I'm going to give you a bonus by printing the entire section on Magic Bread from my book Thursday Night Pizza (Reedy Press, 2010): One Thursday night I had about a pound and a half of dough leftover and didn’t feel like making par-bakes, so I thought I’d just make a large round loaf of bread to serve at breakfast. I formed the dough into a smooth round and set it on a pizza peel well-dusted with cornmeal. It rose while I cleaned the kitchen and my students did the dishes, and then I slid it onto the pizza stone in the oven. Not wanting the oven quite so hot, I turned the temperature down from 500˚ to 375˚ F.
And promptly forgot completely all about it. As Divine Providence would have it, however, some helpful Stage Rat came along a minute later and saw the oven had been left on, and helpfully turned it off. The students all went home with leftovers for their parents, and I went to bed. The next morning at about 5 a.m. I awoke out of a deep sleep with the nagging feeling I had forgotten something. The big loaf! I dressed quickly and ran down to the kitchen, half expecting it to find it enveloped in smoke or completely in flames. To my surprise, no smoke alarms, no fire trucks. With fear and trembling I opened the door to the oven . . .discovered a perfectly baked, slightly crusty loaf of bread that was still warm. I wasn’t just surprised, I was stunned. I expected disaster and got a miracle instead. It was like being a sorcerer’s apprentice who makes a spell work by accident. Since then, I have managed to work this spell dozens of times, and it reliably transforms leftovers into breakfast without fail. My fellow monks, like any good audience, express amazement at the trick. “This is still warm!” they marvel as they cut thick slices and slather them with butter for breakfast; “What time did you get up to make this?” But a magician never reveals his secrets. I just smile and say, “I just took this out of the oven.” I also like the fact that the Magic Bread is an efficient use of energy and time as well. Your oven is already at 500˚--why waste all that heat? The loaf rises quietly out of the way while you’re cleaning up, it goes into the oven, and you’ve already started breakfast before you go to bed. Since you, dear reader and pizza lover, are a fellow magician, I’ll share a few secrets to the trick, as a professional courtesy. First off, you have to have at least 20 ounces of dough, about a pound and a quarter, and always under two pounds. Any less than 20 ounces and the bread will begin to dry out in the interior and not just on the crusty outside; any more than two pounds and it won’t bake in the middle. It’s worth it to make a double batch of dough at the start and plan for leftovers. Secondly, the dough may be a little sluggish to rise if it’s already been through two or three risings, so the finished loaf can be a bit dense. That, however, has never prevented my fellow monks from devouring every crumb the next day. Remember, by the time the Magic Bread comes out of the oven, it’s monastic-fast-and-abstinence Friday—toast is all we’re going to get, so it might as well be made with a hearty homemade bread! I’ve never made the Magic Bread (or pizza, for that matter) without a pizza stone, which retains the heat of the oven for a long time. So I don’t know if this would work on a baking sheet or metal pizza pan. Also, I make pizzas as a night time snack rather than at suppertime, so my Magic Bread goes in the oven about 10 p.m. If yours goes in at 8:00 p.m., I’m not sure if you’ll get the same results. I do know that as long as you have a pizza stone to bake on, the type of oven (gas, electric, commercial, etc.) doesn’t seem to matter. Lastly, the Magic Bread has a tendency to split while baking because the initial temperature is so high, so a couple of slashes on the top with a sharp knife before it goes in the oven might not be amiss. But be warned—if you let the dough rise too long , the dough will completely deflate when you slash it, never to rise again. So let the dough rise until nearly doubled in bulk but no more. If it’s gone farther, just put it in the oven without the slashes and take your chances. Br. Luke is bringing in about 20 pounds of tomatoes every day, so it's the time of year I start thinking about storing the harvest from my herb garden, which I generally do by canning them in the form of pizza sauce. (The only other herbs I store are fennel seed and hot peppers, which I dry and grind up for hot Italian sausage, but that's for another post). So I took about 50 pounds of tomatoes, washed and cored them, cut them into quarters and ran them through the food processor for a rough chop. Then, as I often do for larger culinary endeavors, I enlisted the help of my Stage Rats, who ran the tomatoes through a Foley food mill, which yielded a pulpy, fragrant tomato puree. Every kitchen ought to have a food mill, which can rice, grate, mash and puree foods while removing skins, peels and seeds. Mothers use them to make homemade baby food, canners use them to process fruit for jams and jellies, and they're handy for applesauce and even cracker crumbs. They can be a bit fussy to clean and a food processor might be more efficient for some jobs, but its ability to screen out skins and seeds makes them a valuable tool. Unfortunately, a food mill will set you back anywhere from $35 to $80 when you buy them new, so I recommend you keep an eye out at garage sales, flea markets and the Goodwill store. I've gotten all of mine (I own four of different sizes) for less than $10 each. Look for a mill that isn't too rusty or dented. The center shaft should turn smoothly without being wobbly, and the interior blade should press firmly against the screen. Get the largest you can find and afford, and pretty soon you'll be making homemade applesauce without having to peel all those apples! We finished processing the tomato puree about 9 p.m., so after some discussion the Rats and I determined that we ought to make homemade donuts, featuring some real vanilla that one of them brought back from Mexico for me. Naturally I had an old-fashioned donut batter press (made by the Popeil Bros., the predecessor of Ronco) obtained at a flea market for 75 cents, so we fired up the Fry Daddy and had a grand time. Notice the modest size of old-fashioned donuts---much more reasonable than the tractor tire-sized treats in many bakeries. Next experiement: red velvet donuts with cream cheese frosting---I promise I'll share the recipe! This afternoon I'll add some wine and garlic to the tomato puree, reduce it to the correct thickiness and add fresh minced basil, oregano and rosemary, salt and pepper. Then we'll crank up the biggest steam kettle to can about 20 quarts of pizza sauce tonight. Is my life great or what? UPDATE AT 10:30 p.m. The pizza sauce turned out to be very flavorful indeed (plenty of herbs, practicially a whole bulb of garlic in 16 quarts) but far sweeter than usual, although I didn't add any sugar. So I suspect that's due to the type of tomatoes Br. Luke grew this year, which I have found to be deliciously sweet in a salad or on a smoked turkey sandwich, but I'm not sure how it will play out on a pizza. Secondly, I tried a recipe off the Internet for red velvet cake donuts, and it did not turn out at all. I won't reveal what company website I found it on, but let me say that Queen Guenivere should be looking for a new baker. The cream cheese frosting rocked, so if we can find a red velvet recipe to match, we'll be in business. I may try baking the donuts instead of frying, since I have the special pans needed for that. Somewhere . . . I've been working in the herb garden every afternoon, so when pizza night rolled around on Thursday, I decided to make sausage with my own herbs. Last year I saved some fennel seed and dried a few red peppers, so I crushed those in a mortar and pestle, then used my mezzaluna (the "half-moon" knife in the picture) to mince garlic chives, basil, oregano, rosemary and a tiny bit of sage to add to the mix---and don't ask me about amounts because this was all by eye. Salt, garlic powder, black pepper, all into the mixer with a pound of ground pork and a pound of ground turkey. Wow! SO much better with the fresh herbs. My two kitchen workers were eating it out of the bowl like it was snack mix. I also added some garlic chives to the dough, and used My House All-Purpose Seasoning for the salt. I found out about this great seasoned salt at a food show in St. Charles many years ago, and I love it! It's a mixture of coarse salt and seven herbs, with no MSG, artificial flavors, oluten, oils, sugars, preservatives or additives. Does wonders for foods on the grill, and I would make vegetable beef soup without it. Full disclosure: I know the guys who own the company, but I don't get any free product or anything. I just really like this product: check out their website here. The dough made a great pizza crust, but I also baked a loaf of it and it made a fine breakfast the next morning, toasted and lightly spread with cream cheese. More work in the garden this afternoon, and maybe a little baking tonight. Once finals start on Tuesday I won't have much free time! |
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