Pizza Four Seasons - a Gutsy Cooks Selection

Homemade pizza is so delicious--the trick is getting a good crust. I have several excellent pizza crust recipes, one from The Bread Bible and one from The Bread-Baker's Apprentice. I was going to use one of these recipes instead of the easier one from The Illustrated Kitchen Bible, but then I decided I might as well try this recipe out. I opened my new bag of King Arthur Italian flour, which I suspect is what made this crust so delectable. Although I don't ordinarily give recipes when I'm cooking my way through an entire book, having an aversion to being sued for copyright violations, I'll give this simple recipe at the end of the post.

You can see that the dough is still quite sticky and recalcitrant as it goes into the bowl for rising.

But a couple of hours of proofing and about 20 minutes more of resting make it docile enough to be shaped.

This "4-Seasons" pizza's ingredients are almost all from cans and tins, so you could keep the ingredients on hand and make it whenever you had a mind to: roasted red peppers, anchovies, capers, artichoke hearts, crushed tomatoes for the sauce. Not always kept on hand (at least at my house): pepperoni, mushrooms (better to omit than use canned), Kalamata olives, and mozzarella, although you probably have some kind of cheese in your refrigerator, and no law says it has to be mozzarella.

Once you get the various ingredients sliced, it's a cinch to put them together.

I just spread plain crushed tomatoes atop the dough and sprinkled with sea salt and oregano. You could add garlic, onion, or other herbs.

The recipe tells you to put the mozzarella on top of the tomatoes, but I forgot, so I put both grated mozzarella ane parmesan on top of everything. If I'd followed the recipe, you'd be able to see the various ingredients on top, which might be more photogenic. On the other hand, you wouldn't have as much browned cheese.

One quarter of the pizza is topped with sliced fresh mushrooms; one quarter with sliced roasted red peppers and anchovies; one quarter with pepperoni and capers, and one quarter with marinated artichoke hearts and Kalamata olives. You're not bound to these ingredients, but they are good. Even the anchovies tasted good.

I put the pizza together over parchment paper, which I slid onto a preheated baking stone in a 450-degree oven. Baking the pizza crust directly on the stone (or as close to directly as possible) gives you the best shot at not having a soggy crust.

TASTE-O-METER

Jim: "I give the red pepper and anchovy part a 10. The others get a 9.5." (He loves anchovies. He also said he'd probably never give anything a 10 because something could always be better, so this 10 is quite an honor.)
Me: "I'd say 9 to 9.5. The crust is really amazing and all the sections taste wonderful. With the olives, capers, artichoke hearts and sea salt, it might be too salty for some people, but not for me."


PIZZA DOUGH

3 2/3 cups bread flour (I used King Arthur Italian flour)
7 grams instant yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups tepid water
2 Tblsp. olive oil, plus more for the bowl.

1. Combine flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Add water and oil, and stir to make a soft dough. Knead on a lightlyl floured counter until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. (The dough is quite sticky).

2. Shape the dougth into a ball. Place in a lightly oiled bgowl and turn so that all dough is coated with oil. Cover with plaswtic wrap and let stand until doubled in size (about 2 to 2 1/2 hours).

This dough makes enough for two 9- to 10-inch round pizzas. I cut the dough in half and froze the half I didn't use.

Paris Mushroom Soup - French Fridays with Dorie

It's a good thing I like mushroom soup.
Our neighborhood has a New Year's Eve progressive dinner; this year it was my turn to do the soup, and I made a huge pot of mushroom and chestnut soup with Parmesan cream, a recipe I got from NPR, of all odd places. It was delicious, but we'd just finished eating the leftovers when this soup came up for French Fridays.

So many mushrooms!

One stalk of rosemary packs a lot of punch when it's simmered in broth for 20 minutes. The recipe says that the rosemary sprig will lose its leaves after being simmered.

I doubted that; the leaves looked firmly attached. Amazingly, after 20 minutes, the rosemary stalk was a shadow of its former self.

The mushrooms cook down nicely. Every step of this soup took longer than I anticipated. It took at least 10 minutes (rather than the 3 suggested by the recipe) for the onions and garlic to soften, and at least another 10 minutes for the mushrooms' juices to boil away. So, although this is an easy recipe, it's not as quick as I thought it would be.

I love the idea of the "salad" at the bottom of the soup bowl: sliced mushrooms, parsley, and scallions (no chives because I'd already spent enough money on out-of-season herbs--I miss my little herb garden, now covered by two feet of snow).

I used my Christmas-present immersion blender to puree the soup. I don't know how I ever got along with it--so much easier than pureeing batch by batch in the food processor, especially if you have to wait for the motor to cool down between batches.

The salad is such a nice textural contrast to the smooth soup. And there are a lot of flavors too: the rosemary comes through in every bite. The parsley (an underused and underregarded herb, in my opinion) added brightness and the scallions a little bite.

The creme fraiche is a rather unattractive sinking dollop at first, but when it begins to melt, it makes pretty, creamy patterns.

This is just a wonderful soup. It's warm, comforting, delicious, and even interesting to eat. I'm not sure if it's better than the mushroom-chestnut-Parmesan cream soup than last week, but it's at least as good. And I love having two super mushroom soups in my repertoire. To think that I used to think that mushroom soup = Campbell's.

- - -

By the way, I never posted about Gerard's mushroom tart--but here's proof that I made it:

Croque Monsieur - a Gutsy Cooks Recipe

The entire Gutsy Cooks menu for this week was Croques Monsieur and Apple Charlotte. I've already made my apple charlotte for the decade, thank you, and I never get around to making more than one recipe from the suggested Gutsy menu anyway. Besides, if all I have time to make is a ham sandwich with leftover ham, I'm not likely to have time for dessert. And, of course, a Croque Monsieur is just a glorified ham sandwich. Croque, as you may know, means "crunch." "Monsieur," as you certainly know, means "mister." Mister Crunch? Mister, would you like a crunchy sandwich? Who knows. There are a lot of variations, including the infamous "McDo," found at McDonald's restaurants all over France.

This is pretty easy to make, and the outcome will depend on the quality of your bread, your ham, and your cheese. I had mediocre bread which I'd used to make French toast on Christmas morning, a spiral-cut ham which Jim's sister forced us to take away after Christmas dinner, and excellent Gruyere cheese.

The bread is toasted to make it crunchy, or croque-y. But you must toast it under the broiler because you want only one side toasted.

The sandwich is filled with sliced ham and Gruyere. Some recipes add mayonnaise, and there are many different possible cheeses to use, but Gruyere is the classic.

The sandwiches are covered with Bechamel sauce to which the grated cheese has been added. If I remember my sauces, I believe the addition of cheese turns a Bechamel into a Mornay sauce. Don't quote me on that, however.

After a few minutes under the broiler, they get brown and bubbly. Or black and bubbly, if they're under the broiler a mite too long. I'm not very familiar with the broiler setting on my stove. It has convection broil and regular broil options, with high, medium, and low on both. I kept experimenting with the settings and don't remember which ones I used. My guess is that I set it on "high" at one point, which would account for the burned cheese.

TASTE-O-METER RATINGS:

Jim: "I'd give it a 6. It's fine, but kind of blah. It just doesn't have much taste. Although that could be because I still have a cold."

Marie: "I think it's considerably better than a 6, and I think the cheese gives it lots of flavor. I'm giving it a 7.5. I think you'd like it better if you didn't have a cold."

P.S. We had one sandwich left. I was going to have it for lunch the next day, figuring that since Jim was so uninterested, he'd leave it for me, but he got to it first and ate it right up.

Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots - French Fridays with Dorie

When I think of glazed carrots with ginger, I think of a recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook that I've been making for years: it's just carrots, butter, brown sugar, and powdered ginger. It's nice, but I think I like this recipe even better--without the sugar, the natural sweetness of the carrots shines through. Good carrots are essential--it's worth paying extra for organic from the supermarket. (Better, of course, when you get them from your Farmer's Market or CSA, but in Minnesota, those options are long gone).

The fresh ginger adds a cleaner, sharper taste than powdered ginger, and smells nice too. Jim always claims not to like ginger, so I sliced it as thin as I could without cutting myself (always a plus).

Carrots, garlic, ginger, and smashed cardamom pods are sauteed in butter. Onions are supposed to be in the mix, but I had just used my last onion for something that needed it more.
How I love silicone spatulas, by the way. I always feel that I'm doing something wrong when I subject it to direct heat, remembering the times I have melted spatulas. But they've never failed me.

Then pour in some chicken broth, and simmer for about 15 minutes. If you didn't want to use chicken broth, you could use white wine, water, or vegetable broth.

The instructions tell you to remove the cover, raise the heat, and cook until the liquid has evaporated and all that's left are butter-glazed carrots. That seemed kind of like a magic trick, but it worked.

And there you have it--spiced, butter-glazed carrots. Naturally sweet, with an occasional bite of ginger, garlic, or cardamom interrupting the sweetness. A dish that a vegetable-lover will love and a vegetable-hater might just tolerate.

A simple supper paired with a gruyere tart with caramelized onions in a thyme-flecked crust.

Gruyere Tart - a Gutsy Cooks Selection

The Gutsy Cooks are an ambitious crew. They generally include two or three different recipes for their weekly choice, and I, less ambitious, generally choose only one. In part, it's because this is more food than I can eat: this week's menu included not only the gruyere tart, but also an orange and carrot soup and an arugula salad with shaved Parmesan. I might eat a three-course meal like this at a restaurant, but not in my own home. This might lead you to believe that the real reason I don't make all three choices is because I'm lazy. You're probably right.
At any rate, the pairing of the orange/carrot soup with the tart gave me a brilliant idea: I'd make Dorie Greenspan's spiced, glazed carrots as a side dish, and then I'd have two blog posts done with one meal.

This tart is not difficult to make, even though (not surprisingly), it requires the making of tart dough. As usual, the instructions in this cookbook are minimal--this wouldn't be the way you'd want to make your first pie crust--but it turned out to be a good, easy-to-make crust. I liked the addition of thyme in this savory pie crust. (I don't like the fact that the book never includes salt in recipes for pastry? What's up with that?)

Still, not only was the dough easy to roll out, it also fit neatly into the tart pan with no tears or bare spots, so perhaps there's a method in the minimal-instruction madness.

Love these pie weights! I used to weight the crust down with beans or rice, all of which had to be thrown away after one use. I can use these over and over again. They do make a terrible rattle-y noise when they fall on the floor.

There's plenty of time to whip up the filling while the crust is pre-baking. The $10-a-pound gruyere must be grated. It's less expensive than the tenderloin roast I made a few weeks ago.

Thinly slice an onion and slowly saute over low heat. After about 15 minutes, add a bit of sugar; that helps caramelize the onion. And grate nutmeg on top of the onions.

The instructions tells you to mix half of the grated cheese with the onions, and then scatter the remaining cheese on top of the onion. I did it, but I saw no point to this step, and still don't see one. I don't see why you'd end up with a noticeably better result than if you simply put the onions at the bottom of the tart and the grated cheese on top of the onions. Or vice versa. Or mix them all together. You end up eating them all in one bite anyway.

The onions and cheese are covered with a mixture of eggs, half and half, a little Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. Then it's baked.
It's supposed to cool for 10 minutes before serving, but my carrots were already done, so I cut into it, expecting a runny, gooey mess. It held its shape, though, and ended up looking attractive, as well as tasting good.
More on the carrots on Friday.

TASTE-O-METER RATING:

Jim: "8 and one-half. We've had a series of winners from The Bad Cookbook. I guess I really am going to have to stop calling it that."
Marie: "8 and one-half too. This must be why we've been married so long."

Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts - French Fridays with Dorie

With chili powder, pecans, and cashews, I'm pretty sure these nutty nibbles are not classically or authentically French. But the French know a good thing when they taste it, and I'm also pretty sure that any French person worth his or her salt would be more than willing to adopt these nuts as their own.

I used a mixture of whole almonds, pecans, and cashews. Although you could use almost any mixture, or even just one kind of nut, I fell entirely in love with the recipe exactly as I made it the first time. Dorie encourages you to play with the recipe--use a different nut mixture or spice mixture, but it's going to be hard for me to change anything.  To paraphrase Mr. Rogers, I like them just the way they are.

I also did the spice mixture exactly as written, except that I used one-quarter teaspoon of cayenne instead of a mere pinch. The result was definitely not too hot; if I changed anything next time, I think I'd up the amount of cayenne a little more.

Easy, easy, easy. The nuts are coated with a slightly beaten egg white, and then tossed with the sugar and spice mixture.

The most complicated step is separating the nuts as much as possible before they're baked so you don't end up with a glob. I baked them on a baking pan lined with parchment paper.
I can't think of any drink they wouldn't be good with. Because they're called "cocktail nuts," alcoholic drinks come first to mind, but I think they'd enhance the taste of most sodas as well.

Chicken a la King - a Gutsy Cooks Selection

Chicken a la King? I said to myself when I saw this week's assignment. Seriously? The bane of all banquet goers? Fodder for stand-up comedians? Well, I had been happy to sign up for a cooking group where I didn't have to do the choosing, so I figured I'd better just make whatever comes along without whining. The full menu also included spinach timbales and kasha pilaf, but all that together sounded like a massive dinner, so I skipped the sides.
And the chicken a la king? Well, it turned out to be pretty good, in its Plain-Jane way.

Although this recipe would be a fine way to use up leftover chicken, or turkey, for that matter, I didn't have any, so I poached a chicken breast. If you look carefully, you can see it at the bottom of the pan.

While the chicken is poaching, you cook some vegetables in a mixture of olive oil and butter. The idea is not to saute them, but just to let them soften a bit. I used onions, red pepper, and mushrooms. This is just a minor variation from the suggested onions, red and green pepper, and mushrooms if you're making turkey a la king. The book suggests substituting zucchini for the mushrooms if you're making chicken. The mushrooms sounded much better than the zucchini.

By the time the vegetables are softened, the chicken is done, cooled, and ready to cut up. You make a simple sauce by cooking flour for a few minutes (to get rid of the floury taste) in the vegetable/butter/oil, and then gradually adding a combination of chicken broth and milk. I added just a soupcon of heavy cream for a little extra richness.

Served over broad egg noodles, it was a nice Sunday supper on a snowy, cold December day. All my instincts told me to add some garlic or herbs or something. And you certainly could do that, but the mixture has a surprising amount of flavor just from the aromatic vegetables. We've become so used to cooking with Moroccan spices, or making authentic gnocchi, or choosing among ten different kinds of fresh chile peppers that we've forgotten about the recipes our mothers and grandmothers used. I think this recipe is a good example of how tasty plain food can be.
I would never make this for someone I was trying to impress, but I'd certainly make it if I actually had some kind of leftover poultry.
If you'd like the recipe, check out Monica's rendition, which she did fancy up a bit.

TASTE-O-METER RATINGS:
Jim: I'll give it an 8. Surprisingly good, but not great.
Marie: 8 for me too. A solid recipe. I'd like it with homemade biscuits.