Bringing inspiration and ideas to better manage your home kitchen
In a previous post on blackberries, I covered the idea of gathering versus buying. Nature and community (friends, acquaintances, neighbors, etc.) can provide opportunities for free wild & whole food. As good managers of our homes, we should absolutely take advantage of these opportunities! I …
Minestrone soup. Where to begin? I have so much to say on minestrone and on soup alone. I’m going to be doing a series on soup as the weather continues to cool. For this reason, I’ll hold my thoughts on soup for later posts. Back …
If you’ve read my previous pizza post on sourdough Neapolitan-style pizza, you know how deeply I love pizza. Detroit-style pizza has become trendy lately. A number of chefs, YouTube channels, and food blogs have tried their hand at this craze. I had to join in on the fun. I’m a newb and have only recently discovered this style of pan pizza. So, for our mutual benefit, here’s a brief history of what separates Detroit from Sicilian & Chicago (listed chronologically.)
What I really like about his pizza, especially when compared to my personal favorite – Neapolitan pizza:
This is a classic Detroit-Style pan pizza with an open, chewy crust that crisps well along the edges.
Timeline Example (if I wanted to have pizza ready to bake by 6pm Saturday)
Following the timeline above, make the dough the evening before you want to make the pizza. Mix the dough ingredients together with a spoon and when you can no longer mix, wet your hand and kneed for 1-2 minutes in the bowl.
After resting, the stretch & fold technique may require that you stretch the dough holding both ends. The idea is to develop gluten in the dough so ensure you are adequately stretching. Prior to covering, you can round and tuck so that the dough ball is clean in the bowl. Eventually, it will sit overnight in the refrigerator, cold fermenting.
The next day, while the dough is resting at room temperature, make the balsamic glaze. Place all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the star anise and let cool on the counter. Once cool, pour into a bottle that allows you to drizzle the glaze.
Next, make the sauce. Slice your fresh tomatoes in half length wise and remove the core. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt & pepper, and tope with fresh garlic and lime. Bake the tomatoes cut side down in a casserole dish for 45 minutes at 375F. Flip the tomatoes over and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Using a blender or food processor, blend the tomatoes with all the pan juices and set aside. In a small saucepan, add a large drizzle of olive oil, then add in minced garlic and begin to brown the garlic over medium heat. Once fragrant and beginning to brown, add the tomato paste. Cook until the tomato paste also begins to brown, turning a dark brick red. Next add blended tomato mixture, sugar, oregano, dried basil, and chili flakes. Simmer and cook down for 10 minutes or until reduced by half. Set aside.
Once the dough is rested and ready, preheat the oven to 500F and press the dough into the bottom of the pan, using the tips of your fingers. The dough should cover the bottom, edge to edge. Next top with the caramelized onion, roasted garlic cloves, cheese and then dollops of tomato sauce and layer with cooked ground sausage. Bake at 500F for 14 minutes. Remove the pizzas from the oven and top with basil and drizzle with the balsamic glaze before serving. Cut into squares.
Inspired by: Brian Lagerstrom & Mile Zero Kitchen
Pans: There's definitely some flexibility here. You can play with different pans and pan sizes and see what thickness of crust you like best. Initially I used one 8x10 and one 9x13. It was fun to compare the two. Now for consistency and ease of cooking, I just use two quarter sheet pans (9x13). There are pans made specifically for pan pizzas (I have heard Lloyd's out of Spokane are the best), I just haven't yet used them.
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We love Summer for an endless list of reasons. One of the big ones is Summer is harvest and Summer is abundance. All throughout history, before our supermarkets had global reach and fresh produce became available year-round, Summer was the busiest season of the year and it bustled with the activity of not only harvest but also food preservation. Food sources are available in the Summer and the goal then was to put up a years’ worth of food items when they were available for harvest. This is a good way to live. What you’re eating year-round shifts to what’s available, either in the form of preservation from previous seasons, or what is locally fresh and available in season. I don’t do this completely today, but I aspire to.
One of the ways to take advantage of this abundance and manage your budget simultaneously is to jump on opportunities when seasonal items are available at a fraction of the cost or even for free if you’re willing to do the work of gathering versus buying. Blackberries are a great example of this. Ever notice that blackberries are expensive at the store? They’re a delicious berry for adding to your yogurt in the morning, making a quick berry cobbler for a dessert to accompany a meal, or turning into jam. They’re everywhere in the Pacific Northwest and they’re free! Summer affords us the opportunity to put up as many blackberries as we want. At the end of this post, I’ll share a few tips I’ve found helpful for preserving blackberries.
Gathering and preserving food takes time and it may not be worth your time if you don’t enjoy the work. It’s not for everyone. But for many of us, there’s something innate inside of us that loves the process of preserving food and even more so when there’s a limited season that the food is available, the food you procured was of high quality, or the food is something that you’ll use a lot of in your kitchen and cost you nothing other than time. These are great motivators for us to get our food preservation game going. In this series, I’ll share a few more food items I’ve been able to gather versus buy, which means all it cost me was time.
Back to the blackberries. Here are a few tips:
It’s summer! Which means there should be some ice cream in your summer evenings, especially with soaring temperatures. Watching the prices of ice cream soar made me question why I was buying it. And then looking at the ingredients of even “quality” ice cream, again, …
It’s August, the temperatures are at some of the highest of the year, grilling is preferred to avoid heating up your kitchen, something cold like a salad, yet filling with protein and carbs seems like a great dinner option. If you feel like Thai but …
August is one of my favorite months of the year. Just the mention of it drums up an image in my mind of completely dry lawn the color of straw, ripened wild blackberries, salmon filets, salmon running in local rivers, fresh corn from local farms, sun-ripened tomatoes, and ripe, juicy peaches. All of which, except the peaches, come from a less than 50-mile radius around our home. The peaches coming from the other side of the cascades, but still in Washington. Summer provides a bounty. Everything is growing and harvest is beginning. Summer vacations hit the calendar, trips to the lake, swimming, tank tops, sun dresses, grilling outside, fans on all night with doors and windows cracked open, early morning and late night garden watering sessions. Summer is such a gift.
My list this month includes putting up some produce while it’s at its peak. Why not? Why buy things later that are of lesser quality when I can get the best now and freeze, dehydrate, preserve, and put away things we’ll enjoy all throughout the year. So be on the lookout for upcoming posts seizing the bounty of August.
Week 5 of the summer salad series brings us to a classic – the wedge salad. Although not an entrée salad, it is my favorite accompaniment to steak. Blue cheese and red meat are a rich and decadent combination. For this reason, the wedge is …