Christmas Sauce

The day after Christmas, Sarah's brother-in-law, Mick, and I drove up to Cabela's. He had gotten a gift card for Christmas and I wanted hot sauce and barbecue sauce. I remembered going to Cabela's about a year or two ago and being surprised to find a small cache of unique sauces there. That first time, I had only bought a bottle or two. This time, I was going to buy everything I could get my hands on.

Iowa Style Pizza

You likely are familiar with the concept of New York style pizza and Chicago style pizza and maybe even the loose category of pizzas that might be considered California style. But what you may not be familiar with is the concept of Iowa style pizza. Thing is, neither are Iowans.

I define Iowa style pizza in two parts: First, it must be a standard midwest medium crust pizza that is inspired very literally by a sandwich. Second, the weirdness of the pizza must be matched by the normalness with which it is attributed amongst Iowans.

Kay's Meatloaf

This is the recipe that started our journey through the Western Dubuque Marching Band Cook Book. Sometime before Thanksgiving of this year, I had been craving meat loaf, as is not unusual for me once the weather starts to chill. The problem was, I had never made meatloaf before. And I had never actually seen anyone make meatloaf before, other than on TV. Growing up, the closest thing I had ever gotten to homemade meatloaf was the meatloaf sandwich at Boston Market, which used to be called Boston Chicken, if you recall. Today, the nearest Boston Market, as far as I know, is out in Brookfield or maybe LaGrange. Either way, much too far to be a viable option.

chriskindlmarket 2010

Earlier this week, Sarah and I went to the Daley Center to visit the Chriskindlmarket. In the several years that we have lived in Chicago, neither Sarah nor I had ever been. Being a good German, Sarah thought it was time to finally check it out.

Cooking for the in-laws

Every holiday, Sarah's family gets together at her mother's house. All of the other siblings bring something from their kitchens to share. Because Sarah doesn't really cook all that much, we would typically bring booze.

This year, since we have been cooking more, we decided that we would cook something. And to make up for lost time, we decided we would make dinner for sarah's parents and her sister's family. Except for when there's a grill involved, this was my first time cooking for a group this large: ten people, four of which were children. 

When they visited over the summer, pizza seemed to work out quite well. So Sarah and I decided we would make a triple batch of pizza dough. I also breaded some pork and chicken in panko for the adults. We served this with a side of acorn squash, a father-in-law favorite, and green beans. 

While I was busy cooking the meat, Sarah had the kids work on the pizzas with the kids. We pre-baked the crusts and let the pans cool down so the kids wouldn't burn themselves. Then we set out the crusts for the kids to do the work. It was a pretty awesome setup. If the kids would have been Asian, it would have looked like a small sweat shop. 

We bought extra extra toppings, thinking that the kids would be heavy handed. But, for some reason, they weren't. They would put some sauce on, ask if that was enough, I would tell them to add more, and so on. After the third time, I just told them that it was enough. The same happened with the cheese. 

Here are the pizzas we had:

1. cheese: pizza sauce, mozzarella ball chunks, shredded mozarella, and a shredded pizza blend (mozzarella and some other yellow cheese)
2. pesto: pesto sauce, mozzarella, shredded mozarella
3. chicken alfredo: alredo sauce, diced cooked chicken, shredded pizza blend
4. blue cheese and mushroom: pizza sauce, blue cheese, shredded mozzarella, baby bells mushrooms
5. pepperoni: pizza sauce, turkey pepperoni, mozzarella, shredded mozzarella, and pizza blend cheese

For the dough, I used my regular pizza dough recipe, although we used all regular flour instead of the flour and wheat flour mix I usually use.

Overall, I think things turned out fair. The pizza ended up tasting pretty doughy and definitely needed more cheese and sauce, but the kids seemed to like eating the pizzas they made. Also, I have made better chicken and pork before. I think it was the scale of the number of servings that threw me off. At home, I rarely have to manage more than a pan or two at a time.

Turning out a meal for that many people was an endeavor. I don't know how people do it on a regular basis.

It was nice to cook in a full sized kitchen, though. While prepping the meal, Sarah and I noted that our feet were getting tired. This, we hypothesized, is because we had to walk to and from the fridge, the counter, the sink, or the garbage can. Our kitchen at home is the size of a closet. We can reach all of these things by simply turning around. 

Dinner in a French Loaf

Sarah was in marching band in high school. I'm told that, in her high school, this is what the cool kids did.

As part of the fundraising for this marching band, they sold cookbooks. These cookbooks were filled with recipes that were submitted by marching band moms and other members of the community. The recipes were presumably then sent off to be printed and bound before being sold. Looking through this cookbook is like a time capsule's peek into a traditional midwest american kitchen. And for Sarah, many of these recipes conjure up memories of her dad's cooking, as the only things that he knows how to cook come from these pages.

Here is a recipe that got the father-in-law's seal of approval. Sarah and I made this shortly after Thanksgiving this year. It's a heavy dish, that's for sure. But it's wonderful. Eating this dish is like eating a cheeseburger for the first time. It's called Dinner in a French Loaf because you serve it like a soup breadbowl, but I really think it should be called Cheeseburger Casserole. It's savory, crunchy, cheesy, and really warms you up from the inside out.

Dinner In a French Loaf:

1. 1 lb. hamburger
2. 1 small onion, chopped
3. 1 can cream of mushroom soup
4. 1.5 C cubed Velveeta cheese (I know, right)
5. 1 loaf French bread

Brown hamburger with onions. 

Slice the french loaf in half and cut out the inside. Mix the crumbs of loaf with the hamburger. Add soup and cheese. Press into loaf. 

Place the top on the loaf. Wrap in aluminum foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes. Slice to serve.

--

This recipe serves a ton of people. Sarah tells me that this used to serve her entire family for dinner, which is six people. All I know is, we ate this for dinner, and then I ate the leftovers for lunch at work for about a week.

Like I said, the recipe is heavy. We are planning on going through and trying several of the recipes from the cookbook as is. Then, we are going to try and remake them in a slightly more modernized fashion. Should be an interesting experiment.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough Recipe

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough Recipe

1. 2 C regular flour
2. ~1/2 C whole wheat flour
3. 1 packet rapid rise yeast
4. 2 T olive oil
5. 1 C water at about 130 degrees

Makes two small/medium pizzas

Start getting the water ready. My tap water only gets to about 110 degrees, at best. To get the water to the right temp, I use a kettle. When it whistles, the water is boiling, which presumably means that it is at 212 degrees. However, I have found that when my kettle starts to make some creaking sounds, the water is about 120 or so. This is close enough for me. To check your water temps, I would get a kitchen thermometer, if you don't have one already.

Mix flour and rapid rise yeast together in a large mixing bowl. I don't have a fancy stand mixer, so I take the handle of a wooden spoon and try to simulate it. I rotate it in little circles around the outer circumference of the bowl. I know a lot of other bread recipes call for salt, but I have been skipping it. With the whole wheat, the dough doesn't seem to rise quite the same. And I heard that salt inhibits yeast.

Add the water to the flour and yeast. I like to add it slowly as I use the handle end of a wooden spoon to stir/mix - think spirograph, if you were nerdy enough to have actually played with that as a child. Once this starts to ball, it will be sticky. At that point, I add the 2 tablespoons of oil and start mixing with my hands in the bowl. You could pull the dough out of the bowl and mix as well, but I find this to be easier and less messy overall. Plus, my dog always barks when I knead dough on the cutting board. In the bowl, however, he doesn't seem to mind that.

Mix the dough around for about 5 minutes or until your arms get tired, whichever comes first.

Put the dough on a board or clean countertop. Most recipes call for you to use a clean towel to cover the dough while is rests/rises. This seems like a great way to create unnecessary laundry. Flip the bowl over and use that to cover the dough. Wait for about 20 minutes or so. The dough will get bigger.

At this point, lightly flour the cutting board and cut the dough in half. this will give you dough for two small/medium pizzas. lightly form one half of the dough into a ball and then start rolling the dough out. there are a million youtube videos on how to stretch out pizza dough. find a way that works for you. previously, i would toss the dough in the air to stretch it. this is fun, but it makes my dog bark, which makes my wife grumpy at me. so i hand stretch the dough. 

i don't have a fancy pizza stone, so i cook my pizzas on regular baking sheets lined with parchment paper. set the oven to 450, which is as high as i am comfortable setting my 30 year old oven. because i like a crispier crust, i bake the pizza dough with nothing on it for about 8 to 10 minutes. then, i pull them out of the oven, flip them over, and then top. there's really no wrong way to top a pizza, but unless you put down the sauce, then the cheese, and then the toppings, you're doing it all wrong. 

once topped, put the pizzas in the oven for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until other people in the house can start smelling pizza. these two events should occur at about the same exact time.

this pizza dough recipe is something i've been tinkering with for a little while now. the crust is not anything close to new york style, for several reasons. but it's serviceable. this dough prefers to be cut into squares rather than traditional slices. this is something that i have reluctantly come to terms with. 

Duck Pizza, Pesto Pizza

In anticipation of the binge eating to come over the Christmas holiday, I had planned to have a salad for dinner on the last night before we headed to visit my and Sarah's families. I had reserved the fat from the duck I had roasted earlier in the week and used that duck fat to cook up some chicken. It should have been really special. But once I put it in the salad, it just tasted like regular chicken. There were other things in the salad that I was rather excited about, but for some reason, it all just fell very flat. We finished dinner, and I was still hungry. Starving, really.

About an hour later, I made a second dinner. I put together a quick pizza dough and began to then empty out the fridge. On my pizza, I took the leftover roast duck and shredded/cut it up into topping size. On Sarah's pizza, I used pesto and all the rests of the various bags of cheeses from the fridge. It was a nice way to clear out the fridge, which is also something I have been working on in anticipation of travel over the holidays.

Each of the pizzas turned out to be very tasty, depending on who you asked. I am convinced that duck and pizza are a good combination. I am also convinced that pesto is not so good on pizza. Sarah, on the other hand, feels the exact opposite way, which, as it turns out, works out quite well for us.

If you make both of these pizzas, this should serve anywhere between 2 to 4 people, depending on how many dinners they ate earlier. 

Duck Pizza

1. some pizza sauce or marinara sauce
2. about 1/3 of a mozzarella ball or however much mozzarella is left over in your fridge. tear off little pieces from the ball and drop them on the pizza
3. some shredded mozzarella, about half of what is left over in the fridge. the kind i had for this recipe was a mix of mozzarella and provolone
4. some cherry tomatoes, halved. i think i used 12.  i would have used thinly sliced romas, but this is what i had in the fridge.
5. some shredded cheddar. you really don't need this, but i had it in the fridge.
6. some pizza dough. you want enough for a small pizza. this should be half of a batch of dough if you use my recipe.
7. some duck meat. i used the meat from two wings and a thigh, shredded and chopped. 

i don't have a fancy pizza stone, so i cook my pizzas on regular baking sheets lined with parchment paper. set the oven to 450, which is as high as i am comfortable setting my 30 year old oven. because i like a crispier crust, i bake the pizza dough with nothing on it for about 8 to 10 minutes. then, i pull them out of the oven, flip them over, and then top. there's really no wrong way to top a pizza, but unless you put down the sauce, then the cheese, and then the toppings, you're doing it all wrong. 

once topped, put the pizzas in the oven for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until other people in the house can start smelling pizza. these two events should occur at about the same exact time.

Pesto Pizza

1. some pesto sauce
2. about 1/3 of a mozzarella ball or however much mozzarella is left over in your fridge. tear off little pieces from the ball and drop them on the pizza
3. some shredded mozzarella, about half of what is left over in the fridge. the kind i had for this recipe was a mix of mozzarella and provolone
4. some shredded cheddar. you really don't need this, but i had it in the fridge.
5. some pizza dough. you want enough for a small pizza. this should be half of a batch of dough if you use my recipe.

Beer Batter Fish and Sweet Potato Chips

I had my annual intense craving for massive amounts of tartar sauce last week. We also had a couple of baramundi fish filets in our freezer that I have been trying to figure out how to eat. We also had some frozen peas in the freezer that I had been meaning to get rid of. So I decided I would beer batter up some fish and chips. I used miller light as the beer so that it would stay light for a tempura-like effect. Serves two.

Ingredients List

1. 1 Sweet Potato
2. 2 filets of fish
3. a bunch of flour, maybe a cup
4. 1-2 cans of light beer
5. 48oz of frying oil (I use canola or smart balance oil

Condiments

1. soy sauce
2. rice wine vinegar
3. tartar sauce

Put your oil into a dutch oven. Turn the burner on high to get things going, then adjust as necessary. Watch that it doesn't get above 350 or so. I am looking to fry at a temperature between 325 to 350.

With a mandolin, slice your sweet potato into thin disks. Or, if you no longer have yours because you threw it out after watching an episode of Hoarders, use a knife.

Cut your filets into small fish chunks. I like chunks that are between fish sticks and fried fish sandwich filets in size.

Pour a bunch of flour into a mixing bowl. I am not sure how much I used. Crack open a beer can. Drink some. Then pour the rest slowly into the bowl. Mix the batter until it gets a little bit looser than pancake batter.

Once the oil gets to about 350 degrees, drop some sweet potato slices into the batter to coat and then drop into the oil. They will float. Give them about 30 seconds to a minute per side. A spider works well for this. Remove to a cooling rack that will let the excess oil drain away.

After you've cooked the sweet potato slices, do the same for the fish. As long as your pieces aren't too thick, you should be able to take the fish out of the oil when the batter starts to crisp up.

With the fish, we used tartar sauce. With the sweet potatoes, a mixture of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.