Outlook by the sound : Good Things In Life

A variation on a bacon pizza

OBTS — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:58:20 GMT

My wife was bringing home a really good pizza which was made on a round thin crust, and topped with just a little bit of cheese, green onionsm chopped tomatoes, and lots of bacon bits. I wondered if I could do something similar if I replaced the bacon with gorgonzola and blue cheese, and used a round of motzo for the crust. I never found the round motzo, so I used a square one. The result wasn't nearly so good, and certainly not as good as the fried motzo we used to have. So I googled fried motzo, and it offered me motzo brei and motzo brie. I picked one entry from the motzo brie:

http://www.chow.com/recipes/10899
Matza Brie Recipe
From: The Jewish Festival Cookbook , by Fannie Engle and Gertrude Blair

I read that thread; then thought about how I could do it differently.

My Matzo Brie doesn't use water rinses or squeezing the extra water out of the softened matzos, nor added salt. But I do use pasta sauce, a topping of tomato, redpepper, and green onion and a topping of pepper-jack cheese, crumbled gorgonzola, and crumbled blue cheese. Consequently, it is a savory dinner entree.

Ingredients:

2 matza squares, broken into 1 to 2 inch pieces, and smaller crumbles.
3 eggs plus some milk (I use original flavor soy milk- organic)
4 soup-spoons of pasta (I use TJ's Organic Pasta Sauce, but Hagens mushroom pasta sauce would work as well.)
A quantity of pepper-jack cheese cubed small
A quantity of crumbled gorgonzola cheese
A quantity of crumbled blue cheese.
The three cheeses make a respectable pile in a cereal bowl (but the proportions of each is definitely set to your individual taste. It takes some experimentation, though the ultimate taste is very forgiving. I think of blue-zola cheese as providing the over-riding taste and the salt.)
Some chopped tomatos-again to taste and preference. I have been using up the tiny green tomatoes that have ripened since the first cold night got the plants in September. I figure that they are mostly providing acid, and grapefruit sections would work as well, but I am not going to try that.
A chopped green onion, again to taste. I use a small, thin green onion that Ann is still finding out in the garden, even though most of the garden is frozen solid.
Chopped red pepper-a quarter of a small one, but I am sure you can use more of you really like them.
Enough margerine to keep it from sticking when you dish it up. I use TJ's Earth Balance Organic buttery spread, as that is all we have, but I don't know how much. I would estimate about half a stick, if it came in sticks, but it comes in a tub. I take a knife and carve out an angled section, chop it up in the frying pan and estimate if that is enough. If not, I add more.

Equipment:
A whisk
a soup spoon
a table knife, for cracking the eggs, and then slicing out the margerine.
a large mixing bowl for the motzo crumble and pasta sauce
a medium mixing bowl in which to whisk the three eggs
a whisk
a silicon spatula for the final mix of the egg and matzos, and helping with spreading of the toppings.
a pancake turner for lifting the omlette by the quarter out of the pan
And, most important, a heavy, well-seasoned 10-inch cast-iron skillet. (A stainless-steel skillet with an alluminum heat spreader stuck badly the first time I tried this. It might have just been too little margerine; but I switched rather than fight it.)
an oven

Putting it all together:

1: Dice the pepper-jack cheese so it is about the size of the crumbles of the gorgonzola. Then add the crumbled gorgonzola and the crumbled blue cheese in the cereal bowl. (I keep the gorgonzola and blue-cheese in the freezer and loosen the quantity I want with the salad fork.) Set aside.

2:) Chop the tomato, red-pepper and green onion into fairly small pieces (same size as the crumbled gorgonzola). Put these in a second cereal bowl and mix.

3:) Crumble the matzos into the large mixing bowl. Spoon the pasta sauce out of the jar and stir it all together.

4:) Crack the eggs into the medium mixing bowl, add the milk, and whisk it till there is froth and your arm feels like it is falling off.

5:) Start preheating the oven to 375 degrees f, or there abouts. Pull out the cast-iron skillet and put the margerine into it. When you can't stand it any more, turn on the burner at 6 (not 7 which is full heat all the time) to heat up the skillet and clarify the margerine.

6:) Add the eggs to the matzos crumble in the large mixing bowl and mix with the silicon spatula.

7:) Switch the preheated oven to bake.

8:) When the margerine has clarified, and there are only small bubbles popping here and there, swirl the fat all around and dump the matzos-egg mix into the skillet. Use the silicon scrapper to spread the motza crumble evenly.

9:) Quickly, spread the tomato mix evenly over the matzo-egg layer. And then, just as quickly, spread the cheese mix on top of that. Place the skillet into the oven. Make sure the oven is on bake. Set the timer for 8 minutes and start it timing. Turn off burner on the stove top before you burn yourself.

10:) Run hot water into the large mixing bowl, add detergent, and wash up all the utensils you have used except the pan cake turner, which you have used to spread the margerine in the skillet (yes?). Finish preparing the table. Place the plates near the stove top.

11:) Pull the skillet out of the oven when the timer goes off. The cheeses will have all melted, and the omlette will have a redish cast. Divide in quarters in the pan, and lift out each quarter separately, and in one piece, if you can. Of course, no harm is done if it folds or falls apart. Ann and I will each eat a half of the omlette with just a green salad afterwards. (You should prepare that first, if you don't have any left over, as I do.)

Preparation seems to be glacial while you are dicing the pepper-jack and the tomatoes. But it picks up when you turn on the oven, mix the eggs with the motzos, and start heating the skillet. Then it is bam-bam-bam and it is in the oven and you are cleaning up the mixing bowls. You can speed the start up by using a salsa mix, instead of chopping the tomato and onion, but I have never found shredded pepperjack, which would really be nice.

The salt, for which Matzos Brie is famous, comes from the blue cheese and gorgonzola cheese. So you do not have to add salt, even when using unsalted matzo. I would not serve this to someone who had been placed on a low-salt diet. I have never tried to determine how much salt is in the final product, but I scarf it down faster than french fries, so I think it is a lot more than I usually have in a dinner entre.

Yet Another Quick Pasta Sauce

OBTS — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:54:00 GMT

Mezzetta Brand, Napa Valley Bistro gourmet pasta sauce Porcine and Portabella Mushroom with Napa Valley Merlot
Trader Joe' Crumbled Gorgonzola Cheese
Trader Joe's Fresh Mozzarella Antipasto Salad with Artichokes and Tomatoes

The Mezzetta Brand pasta sauce is a mid-price product, about $5.00 per bottle at Tops Food and Drug. It is from the high mid-range pasta sauces. At Tops, the low-price pasta sauces, ie, the store brand flavors are on the bottom, just below where there eye can easily find them. I get them on sale at 2 for $5.00. The mid-range, including Paul Newman Pasta sauces, Bertolli, Ragu, etc, are from $3 to $6 a bottle, are above the low range up to eye-level. Above that, are the top-range, with the Mezzetta bottle a shelf down from the top, and not where we ordinarily look. On the top, were pasta sauces made with Vodka and wines and running for around $10 a bottle. We never shop from that shelf! Anyway, all this is to say that any fair to good grocery store should provide a bottle of equivalent pasta sauce that will do just as well.

The TJ's Fresh Mozzarella comes in a normal sized plastic container, about the same size as the crumbled Gorgonzola Cheese. At the bottom are little balls of fresh Mozzaralla cheese, 3/8 to 5/8 inch in diameter. They are whitish, with brownish stains, are topped with two whole baby artichokes, two strips of roasted tomato, and covered with Olive oil.

To make the sauce for dinner, I take a small soup bowl, fill it to near the top with the Mezzatta sauce from the bottle. Heat it in our old, weak microwave (only 600 watts) for three minutes, pull it out and cover the top with a thin layer of crumbled Gorgonzolla cheese, and then spoon in a layer of the mozzarella cheese balls, adding one of the whole artichokes for Ann, and the roasted tomato strip for me. Ann would have drained the olive oil first, but I remembered an article in the Smithsonian which reported that people on a typical Mediterranean diet consumed 6 to 8 cups of olive oil daily, and have little or no heart disease. The standard shape is another question. After adding the cheese, I put the cover back on and placed it on the table while I heated the pasta for 3 minutes in the microwave. The final sauce, when served, is all warm, very flavorful, and not overwhelmed by the Gorgonzola, which appears as sudden bursts every now and then. Of course, my tasting system was deadened by years of surviving on my mother's cooking, so I am not a good judge of what a normal person would perceive. I often wonder what a real cook would say of the total taste package of the things I put together. But, then again, when I hear wine experts talk about the subtle tastes of their product I suspect it is all for show. Hard to know about a range of perceptions that one cannot experience.

Hollis

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A truly Tough Wine!

OBTS — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:56:44 GMT

I asked for a wine that would complement my Blue Zola Pizza-caccio. The wine buyer at Food Emporium opined that it needed to be high in alcohol flavor and with fruity values that would stand up and slap the blue cheese flavors silly. She pulled out a bottle of a South Australian Merlot from Breakneck Creek, bottled in 2001 at the Tatachilla Winery. This is a wine that can dish it out. It is not for sipping. You want food in the mouth when it arrives. I finished off the bottle with Spinach pie, so the food doesn't have to have a strong taste. It just has to be there. It is, however, an excellent pairing with blue cheese and gorgonzola. I have always thought those two were simply devine, but this wine makes them even better. Try it, I am sure you will like it. But, do not make the mistake and try to drink some before the pizza is ready. No, no! That is not a good idea. You want a smooth pinot noir for that.

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A really good wine for Salmon

OBTS — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:29:19 GMT

Early in November last, we had my brother, his wife, their daughter and her newly announced fiance, over for a garden feast and general comraderie. The main entre was Salmon, and I went off to Food Emporium to find a good wine. Which is hard, because I don’t really know wines, and thought “Sideways”, the movie, was pretty much ado about nothing, but a twisted love story. Since I figured that we wanted to sip before hand, I asked for a new world beaujelais. The wine buyer quickly informed me that that California wineries were cashing in on the French Connection and did not ship their beaujelais wines ahead of the French. Troglidytic amphibians, one and all, I thought to myself, and asked for something that would do for before dinner sippping and also go with the salmon. She suggested a 2005 wine from J. Lohr. For identification purposes I have to describe the label. It is basically a black label on a black bottle, J. Lohr is there in big white letters. Above the winery name, there is a light bordered picture of vinyard country and the word “estates”, and under the picture is the word “Wildflower” in muted gold, so you don’t really see it. Under the J. Lohr are the words “Monterey Valdiguie”, which doesn’t mean a thing to me, but always trips me off into Valdaree, valdarah, val der hah hah hah until I run out of breath. But, in spite of all that, I think it is a great wine for the purpose. We guys mostly got tipsey before dinner, had herbal tea at dinner with the ladies, and killed the bottle at the end of dinner. So, I really do not know how it goes with Salmon, but I was happy. I also took it to Thanksgiving, and it worked with turkey just as well, only we did have the second bottle with dinner.

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A Quick-fix Spaghetti Sauce

OBTS — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:39:51 GMT

A Quick-fix Spaghetti Sauce

Menu Description: A low-salt, quick-fix, tasty spaghetti sauce that contains added protein from Tofu and Beans, and is redolent with herbs. It brings the amazing taste and olefactory components of High-bush Cranberry Ketchup to the mundane dinner of spaghetti.

Ingredients:

Firm Tofu 1 tub
European-Style Marinara Sauce 1 28-oz (1lb12oz) 794 g size 404 can
TJ’s Cuban Style Black Beams 1 15 oz (425 gm) size 202 can
US style Pasta Sauce 1 26 oz (1lb 10 oz) 737g jar
All your Favorite Chicken herbs Several of each pinches
Or Italian Seasoning 1 Tablespoon
High-bush Cranberry Ketchup 1 Heaping tablespoon Or
TJ's Pinjur* 2 heaping tablespoons for sauce for 2 people
Salt 1/8 teaspoon
Coarse-ground Pepper 0.5 Teaspoon

Preparation Steps:

Step 1) Place drained tofu block in a large 12-inch skillet and shave it with a chef’s whip. Cube-ing really doesn’t work well.
Step 2) Add marinara sauce, black beans, and pasta sauce. Mix thoroughly.
Step 3) Sprinkle herbs and pepper over the top. Mix into spaghetti sauce.
Step 4) Cover, not tightly, and heat over medium heat. When it starts to burp, stir and turn down the heat. Eventually, you want it to simmer at low heat for 15-20 minutes, with little volcanic action. The heating process moves the liquid from the bottom to the top, so stir regularly, as the beans will stick if allowed.

Note: I use a European-style marinara sauce from Trader Joe’s, because it adds a distinctive herb base to the mixture from American marinara sauces. I once used a European pasta sauce with it, but that was too much of a good thing. I use the store brand (Haggen) mushroom pasta sauce.

Note: The can of Cuban-Style black beans is really a coating agent and a source of herbs. I was disappointed that my sauces were not coating the spaghetti after it was coated with olive oil to prevent clumping.

Note: We have reduced the salt in our diet and the salt that comes with the canned sauces is quite enough for us. If you are still under the salt-addiction marketing strategy of American, and presumably, European food manufacturers, then you will probably want more. I also only use a ½ tablespoon of salt per pound of spaghetti, when I make that.

Finally, add the High-Bush Cranberry sauce when you spoon a quantity into a serving dish, and then heat in the microwave.

Again this late summer I wasn't much interested in doing garden magic, and so, it came to pass, that I ran out of High-Bush Cranberry Sauce. The spaghetti sauce has been noticably uninteresting. Then, our favorite checker at TJ's was sent to the demonstration table and when we stopped to visit, she was demonstrating a product new to TJ's--Pinjir. This is "a traditional Macedonian recipe made with roasted [red] peppers and eggplant". It is also piquant. I took a sample and waundered around the store and could still feel the pleasant hotness for 5 minutes or more. This is certainly more interesting than the standard American fare. So I bought some and added 2 heaping tablespoons to my next serving of spegetti sauce. Wundebar! Today, I bought a case. I figure that I can add two 12 oz bottles to my usual mix and not have to add it to each meal's serving.

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The Original Blue Zola Pizza-caccio

OBTS — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:54:31 GMT

From: HollisD Paul
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 8:53 PM
To: H. Beta Paul
Subject: The Original Blue Zola pizza

Today I made my first Original Blue Zola pizza. (Actually, it should be called a pizza-caccio, as it has properties of both a pizza and focaccio. You do not need garlic bread with this creation.) I have been experimenting with various changes on my way to today; but today it worked.

It is a two-layer pizza. You start with on 8-oz net can of Artichoke Hearts, from Trader Joe’s. Drain the chokes by dumping the can into a screen-type strainer which you have placed over a quart capacity pyrex measuring cup. Squeeze each ‘choke by the leaves to pop off the heart and release the liquid held between the leaves. Slice and dice the leaves and hearts and reserve for later. You wind up with about 1 cup liquid. Add enough water to make 2 and a half cups of liquid. Add 2+ tablespoons of Italian seasoning. Pop into the microwave and heat long enough so that the whole batch of liquid is hot enough to jump start the yeast-beasties. Add two tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of bulk yeast. Let proof for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, back at the appliance counter, put the food processor together, add 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and about two tablespoons of olive oil. Spin up. Pour in the steeped liquid and yeast beasties (assuming that they proved to be alive and kicking) and then dump in flour a cup at a time, scraping the edges of the chamber as necessary, until you have a loose dough that cleans the sides of the food processor. You will probably use a total of 6 to 7 cups of flour, including the 2 cups you put in originally. Dump the dough onto a floured board, and kneed till you have it at the consistency you like. Get a large, clear glass salad bowl, put about two tablespoons of olive oil in it. Plop the dough into it and work it around untill all the surface of the dough ball is oiled. Cover loosely with plastic wrap, a Saran Quick-Cover or a cloth, and let rise the usual double in volume standard. Time passes. Punch down, divide roughly in half, form into dough balls, put another 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the bowl, and oil the surface of the dough again. Let rise, etc. Time passes. Pull out a large pizza pan. Roll the smaller dough ball out until it fills the pan, or through it in the air, whatever it takes to make it fit the pan. Sprinkle the reserved artighoke hearts evenly around the pizza. Open the 8-oz container of crumbled gorgonzola cheese that you acquired from Trader Joe. Spread it around the pizza, best would put a higher concentration around the edge, rather than in the center; but not right up to the edge. Set the pizza aside while you roll out the second ball of dough. Place it over the first layer, coat the top with olive oil, and spread the container of 8 ozs of crumbled Salem blue cheese, also acquired from Trader Joe. You don’t want to get this too near the edge. With a small bowl of water, wet the edges of the two layers of the pizza dough and pinch together. Trying to be fancy takes too much time, and it really doesn’t improve the flavor. Let rise until you can’t stand it anymore. Bake about 40 minutes in a 400 degree oven; more or less depending on how high you let it rise. Anyway, it is like a hugh loaf of bread and you want it all to be golden brown when you bring it out.

I would serve it with a good Pinot Noir, but I don’t know what a good wine steward would recommend. It has a wonderful aroma and, as you might imagine, is quite salty. So, perhaps a different wine is called for. We actually just have herb tea with it. Combine with a large garden salad, and finish off with two Tripple Ginger Cookies, also from Trader Joe.

A note about taste: those of us who have cheap model palates, do not taste the artichoke hearts. Ann says that she does. I don’t even taste the Italian Seasoning, which is in the dough. Ann says she does, and that I would miss it if it weren’t there. Perhaps, but it is still a disappointment. This all started because Trader Joe has a three flavors of dough packages which are marketed as easy foccacia starts. One flavor is Italian, and I can certainly taste the Italian seasoning in that dough when I bake it. Strange. My series of experiments that led to this first Original Blue Zola piza began because Ann nixed the use of the TJ stuff on the grounds that it contains palm oil—equatorial oils being only slightly less posinous and un-healthy than trans-fats in her mind. But there is this product called Smart Balance, which is supposed to be composed of the right mix of fats (sans transfats) to boost the good cloesterols in the body and reduce the bad cloesterals. There is now Smart Balance microwave popcorn. I purchased a package and read the label, the fats therein are composed of some mixture of corn and palm oil. Perhaps the TJ dough packages are not so bad after all, and are certainly quicker to use.

A note on quantity: Ann and I typically consume an eighth of the pizza at a dinner. Todays was a bit large. We might have preferred splitting a sixth, but it is a lot harder to divide a pizza round in six even pieces, than four. Still, she saved some of the outer roll and the last of the salad for a snack tomorrow.

A note on texture: If you screwup like I did and dump too much flower for the amount of liquid, you get a very, very stiff dough. Cook it up anyway. So it is a bit like a cracker. It’s still just as filling and tastes great.

Now all I have to do is trademark the name, tell everybody to send me a quarter for each one they make, and I’ll be rich in two years.

**************************************

Subject: RE: FW: The Original Blue Zola pizza
Wed 10/25/2006

Helen,

Here are all the gory details about the Blue Zola Pizza. The difference between what you had and this is that the one you had was a single layer pizza. So, you don’t make the double amount of dough, unless you want to make two pizzas. The single layer pizza worked better than I thought it would, in that the crust at the edges rose up and contained the melted cheese.

Hollis

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Western-Style Crepes with Fillings and Toppings

OBTS — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:18:52 GMT

Western-Style Crepes with Fillings and Toppings

8 cups of water
6 cups of flour low glutin flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
add later: 6 eggs and oil

The Crepes: Start with a large bowl, put in 8 cups of water, heat to slightly above luke warm, add 1 tablespoon of salt, stir in 6 cups of low-gluten flour, add 1 heaping tablespoon of active dry yeast, cover, and place on an even larger plate or bowl in an out of the way corner of the kitchen. Let the mix rise and fall back--will take 3 to four hours, stir with a whip every hour or so. (Now, if you did indeed add the salt, you can get away with just two inches of free-space between the top of the mix and the top of the bowl. If you forgot the salt, you need twice the depth of the liquid, as it will double in volume before falling back. That's why you place it on an even larger bowl, so that when you do forget, you don't have to clean the resulting mess off the counter top, the cabinet fronts, and the floor.) Put in refrigerator.

When it is time to make the crepes, beat the eggs in a bowl, add as much oil as you think it will need to prevent sticking--depends on your griddle--to the eggs, then add the eggs and oil to the batter.

To bake: using a 1/2 cup ladle, put 1 full ladle plus a little more onto the hot, oiled griddle. I use a 11-inch griddle, so the crepe is probably 8-9 inches in diameter. I cook the first side till there is only a 1-2 inch puddle in the middle. Turn it over, and bake long enough to make it easy to get up. Transfer to a plate, spoon on some filling, and roll up. Place on the dinner plate that is in a warm oven. Have topping at the table. Two filled and topped crepes are enough for a light dinner.

The Filling: I have done a lot of experimenting with the filling. Straight yogurt is too loose. I then added dry curd cheese. Too bland. I then noticed a product called Quark, which is pressed yoghurt. It is thicker than plain yoghurt. Quark and diy curd cheese was too stiff. I thinned it with yoghurt. That worked with respect to spooning the filling onto the crepe. But it was still bland. Since I was serving it with a fruit topping, I thinned the Quark and dry curd mixture with 1 small licquor glass of Triple Sec. That was gooood. No impression of filling-blandness while eating the crepe. ( I suppose the extra half glass of Triple Sec for the cook didn't hurt, either.)

Portions: 4 heaping tablespoons of dry curd cheese and 4 heaping tablespoons of Quark, and 1 small liquor glass of Triple Sec are enough filling for four crepes.

There was still a problem in all this for me. I am cooking every other day. A 16-ounce container of dry curd cheese lasts between 3 and 4 meals. Once or twice, I made it through a container, but most were moldy by the third meal. Once it was moldy at the first serving. Bummer! Definitely not a reliable product. I wanted something else--the name gorgonzola popped into my head. That proved to be not just gooood, but Wonderful! But it is pricey at Tops. I found that Trader Joe had Gorgonzola bella giacosa, or something like that, at about half the price. And when that wasn't available, there was a crumbled blue cheese that was even more convenient. Again, four heaping tablespoons of crumbled blue and four of Quark make a stiff mixture--but the orange flavor is completely lost in the blue cheese flavor, so I loosen it with plain yoghurt.

The Topping: The best, all-time, superlative topping/sauce that I have found is the Highbush Cranberry Ketchup that I make from the bushes I planted. However, it is a lot of work, and I neglected to make more after the second year. So I haven't had any for the blue cheese filling. I first found an Apricot/Apple sauce at Trader Joe. But they have several others. I like the Mango sauce best, followed by apple-raspberry. But, to me, they are all substitutes for the true ambrosia of Highbush Cranberry Ketchup. I will make a couple of batches this summer, but you will have to fend for yourselves.

Details: You may wonder why I specify low-gluten flour. I found that when I used a high-gluten flour, the stirring with a whip step was really awful. The gluten coagulates along the wires of the whip, and it is really hard to cut it free. Now, all this time in the refrigerator is equivalent to making a sour-dough mixture. In fact, I used to get marvelous sour-dough flavor by the end of my batch, and I would save starter to get the next batch going. This yeast action is also good because it breaks up the gluten and smoothes the lumps out of the batter. Lately, the active yeast hasn't been doing well as a sour-dough starter. I haven't been able to detect the tell-tale smell of alcohol brewing. A great disappointment. They have changed the yeast variety to work better with bread machines, but have lost the alcohol production. I am going to investigate a commercial sourdough starter, and see if that works.

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