Secret Recipe Club: Baby Bok Choy with Shitake Mushrooms

Baby Bok Choy with Shitake Mushrooms

It's that time of the month again: Secret Recipe Club time! I must admit I get a thrill out of getting my blog assignment, pouring through the assigned blog looking at recipes, and then waiting with anticipation to see who picked what recipe from my own blog to make. It's a rush. Are you interested in joining in on the fun? Head on over to The Secret Recipe Club to sign up!

Double Take: Red Thai Duck Curry via The Pioneer Woman

Thai red curry with duck over jasmine rice

I don’t know what it is about Thai food, but I start salivating just thinking about it. What I would give to have a plate of spicy noodles from Thai Sawatdee in Winston-Salem or a bowl of green curry from Yum-Yum Thai in Tucker! Words cannot describe my love of these dishes. But alas, Thai food is quite different here in Germany, and I have yet to find something that really makes my taste buds sing. Since Bender doesn’t care for Thai food, I don’t make it much at home either. But he’s out of town. Woot! Which means I get to make whatever I want for myself for two whole weeks (I’m desperately hanging onto this silver lining. Our tiny apartment feels ever so empty right now)! So when Tabitha pointed out this recipe for Red Thai Duck Curry, I immediately jumped on it. I’ve waxed on about my love of duck before, so I won’t bore you with the details again, but that just added to my willingness to make the dish. I was slightly put off by the peppers, and even more put off by the pineapple, but at the last minute I decided to throw in both (Amazingly, I found a pineapple for 1€, so I didn’t feel like I had a good excuse not to include it.)

Daring Cooks February Challenge: Cold Soba Salad and Tempura

This challenge made me very happy. I finally had an excuse to use purple potatoes!

Today is February 22, not February 14. Oops. I’m a little late posting this challenge, but it just seemed easier to make this one when Bender was out of town. I tried making it twice when he was in town, but my tasters kept bailing on me at the last minute (for very good reasons, not because they were averse to tasting it) and I wasn’t about to make this one for me and Bender only. So I decided to wait an extra week and make it for myself only when Bender was away at a conference. And boy, am I glad I did.

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl.  She challenged

Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.

Double Take: Beef Stroganoff

Are you ready for a bowl of comfort?

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, you know that my all-time comfort food is beef stroganoff. Full of mushrooms, onions, beef, and sour cream, how can you go wrong? When I first saw a recipe for beef
stroganoff in the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, I was excited. Until I actually read the recipe. It called for beef tips instead of ground beef. I don’t dislike beef tips, but I just prefer my comfort food to be the way I grew up eating it: with ground beef.

Double Take: Bistro Grilled Chicken Pizza (sort of)

Don't have access to hot Italian sausage? Make your own! Instead of grinding it myself, I buy it pre-ground and just add my seasonings. 

I miss Americanized pizza. Hubby misses Americanized pizza. Delivery pizza is just not the same here. The crust is blah. It make the normal delivery pizza companies in the US taste outstanding. There are a few Italian pizza places in town, and they have great pizza, but it's not Americanized... it's Italian. Which is all well and good, but I've grown accustomed to lots of topping, a choice between thick, thin, and pan crust, and lots of cheese, and that's not traditional Italian. So when I order from a delivery pizza place in town, I generally order Indian food (yes, you read that correctly, most of the delivery joints deliver pizza and Indian food... and beer and wine). And Hubby has given up on ordering from the delivery places.

So when I noticed this week's challenge, I was a little nervous. I've only made pizza once before, and Hubby wasn't around for that. On top of that, he eats at the local Italian place quite frequently since it's so close to his work and has free wi-fi, which means he can work and eat lunch at the same time (such discipline, I would spend the whole time surfing the net instead of working). So, I was nervous about making pizza for him. So much so that I didn't tell him that I was making it until about an hour before I got home from work. I mentioned that the recipe called for chicken, but he asked for bell peppers and Italian sausage instead. I obliged.

If you'll notice, the subtitle of this blog is Bistro Grilled Chicken Pizza (sort of), but I didn't use my grill or chicken. The broiler function here is called the grill function instead, so I took that as license to use my broiler instead of making Hubby get out and light up our tiny charcoal grill that the pizza dough probably wouldn't fit on. Since Hubby doesn't like chicken on pizza (and frankly there is only one chicken pizza I really like and it's only available at the Domino's in the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center), I begged Tabs to let me change up the recipe a bit. Considering I've always been the stickler for sticking to the recipe, I knew it'd be fine. And that's how my Bistro Grilled Chicken Pizza turned into Semi-Homemade* Broiled Italian Sausage Pizza (2 ways).

Hubby's pizza ready to go back in the oven for the final broil.

Semi-Homemade Broiled Italian Sausage Pizza (2 ways)
(heavily adapted from the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, original recipe here)

2 containers refrigerated pizza crust
2 tsp olive oil
2 (14 ounce) cans hot pizza sauce, gently warmed on the stove
10 ounces hot Italian sausage, castings removed, browned and drained (see photo note above)
1/2 green bell pepper, thin sliced
4 ounces mushrooms, sliced
1/2 small onion, sliced into half rings, submerged in water and chilled at least 30 minutes
1 pound shredded mozzarella
12 fresh basil leaves
yield: 2 pizzas

Method:
Preheat oven on high heat (as high as it will go), positioning rack in the middle of the oven.

Unroll one crust and brush evenly with 1 tsp olive oil. Invert dough directly onto cooking rack, peel off the baking paper it came on, and broil using top heating element only 3 to 4 minutes or until the top of the dough is browned. Turn dough over (I used two sets of tongs for this step) and broil 2-3 minutes or until top is set. Carefully remove crust from rack to an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet.

Spread half of the sauce evenly over crust; sprinkle evenly with 8 ounces of mozzarella. Sprinkle with 7 ounces crumbled Italian sausage and the bell pepper. Return to hot oven and broil 10-12 minutes or until cheese is melted and slightly brown on top.

While the first pizza is on it's final broil, unroll the next crust and brush with remaining olive oil. When the first pizza is done, remove from oven to large cutting board and serve immediately. Repeat initial broiling process with the second crust.

Once the second crust is set and out of the oven, spread the rest of the sauce evenly over the dough. Sprinkle evenly with remaining cheese. Top with 3 ounces crumbled Italian sausage, the sliced onion (drained), sliced mushrooms, and fresh basil. Return to oven and broil 10-12 minutes or until cheese is melted ans slightly brown on top. Serve immediately.

You might notice that the upper right corner of the pizza is... weird. I might have had trouble flipping it the first time because one of my sets of tongs focuses all the pressure on one point instead of spreading it out. Nicely, I had this issued worked out by the second pizza.

THOUGHTS:
Hubby's pizza was gone before I pulled mine out of the oven. However, in the future, I'll use my own pizza crust and sauce because the crust available in the refrigerated section was absolutely tasteless. It made me yearn for Mellow Mushroom's springwater crust. So now I have to learn how to make pizza crust. Wish me luck! As far as the original recipe goes, I like the method and it translated easily to the oven. I've been waiting to get a pizza stone before I made pizza in the oven, but this method allows me to get a nice crispy crust without burning the cheese and other toppings. If you don't have a pizza stone, I highly recommend this method of mostly prebaking the crust directly on the cooking rack before adding the toppings.

VERDICT:
Please-make-me-Americanized-pizza-again-but-with-better-crust-and-sauce: 1 vote
Yay-I-actually-got-to-eat-a-mushroom-and-onion-pizza: 1 vote

 For Tab's take on Bistro Grilled Chicken Pizza (sort of), head on over to Double the Garlic!

* Is it bistro because it uses store bought crust and sauce?

My favorite pizza: heavy on the mushrooms and onions, light on the Italian sausage

Do you have a great crust recipe? Please share! And what is your favorite pizza? Restaurant pizza? (Mine's the Magical Mystery Tour from Mellow Mushrooms with added onions)

Comfort Food

The other day I was inexplicably craving ground beef. To me, sauting ground beef just smells like home, so it was no big surprise that I was craving it, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about it. I didn't want burgers. I suggested spaghetti sauce made with beef instead of Italian sausage to Hubby, but he vetoed it. It finally dawned on me... I wanted beef Stroganoff. Knowing Hubby wouldn't go for a mushroom and sour cream laden dish, I graciously offered to make him whatever he wanted if I could make Stroganoff for me. He was kind and asked for blackened chicken (rub chicken with spices. grill.), and I set off to recreate the dish I was craving.

A slew of mushrooms and onions... how could this dish not be perfect?

Double Take: Yukon Gold Mash with Morel Sauce

Ew! I'm not making that! 

This week's Double Take challenge with feature a different recipe on each blog. Tabitha and I have a list of many of the recipes from the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, and we've rated them: Yes or No. (It actually even gets a bit more complicated than that b/c I also rate what Hubby will eat.) All items marked Yes by both people have to be made at the same time, but all items marked No can be made by the other person at any time. We will feature these recipes every-so-often, and here is the first one! (Do you like the title?)