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Dec 12 2012
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Shepherd’s Poutine – Top Chef Night

Last week, on Top Chef, one of the teams completely failed in their challenge to do justice to cheese curds. Seriously?!? In fact, all the dishes were judged to be so bad last week that there was no winner. So, we’re decided to ditch making one of those recipes home cook-friendly and just show the Top Chefs how to do cheese curds the right way. Quite awhile ago, K had the idea to fuse shepherd’s pie and poutine and shepherd’s poutine was born. BOOM!

If you’re unfamiliar with poutine, it’s a traditional dish from Quebec made with french fries topped with brown gravy and cheese curds to equal 100 percent awesome. Just gather your ingredients and get started.

Recipe serves two

Fries
Two russet potatoes
2 cups (approximately) canola oil (or another high heat oil)

Cut your potatoes into fries. Cut yours thinner than we cut ours — ours were too thick. If you want to cut down on the work, you could technically use frozen fries. Just be very careful when frying as little bits of ice can cause oil explosions (please don’t ask if I know this information from experience…).

potatoes for french friesHeat your oil in a large pot to about 320 degrees F. Fry the potatoes in small batches (don’t crowd) until golden brown and drain on paper towels or a wire rack. When your first round of frying is done, turn up the heat on the oil to no more than 370 degrees F. Fry the potatoes in batches again until even golden-er, browner and crispy. When you’re done with the fries, turn the oil back down to about 320 degrees F to get it ready to fry some cheese curds.

fresh french fries

Meat and Gravy

1/2 lb ground lamb
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 pint mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp fresh rosemary

1/2 carrot, small dice
1/2 celery stalk, small dice
1/4 onion, small dice
1/4 red pepper, small dice
1 TB garlic, minced
1/4 cup red wine
1 1/4 cup broth (vegetable, chicken or beef broth)
1.5 TB cornstarch
hot water
extra virgin olive oil

Brown the ground lamb in a bit of olive oil. In a separate saute pan, brown the mushrooms and add the fresh rosemary during the last minute of cooking. Add the mushrooms to the ground lamb and set aside.

baby bella mushrooms and ground lambHeat a bit of olive oil in a sauce pan. Add diced carrot, celery, onion and red pepper and saute until tender. Once tender, add garlic and lightly brown. Add the red wine and cook until it’s nearly evaporated then add the broth. Let cook for 7-10 minutes. Put the cornstarch in a small bowl and add just enough water to make the mixture liquid (aka a slurry).

mise en place

Add the cornstarch mixture to the gravy and stir until thickened. Add lamb and mushrooms to the gravy mixture. Add a splash more Worcestershire sauce and some balsamic vinegar for depth, to taste. Salt and pepper to taste.

Cheese curds
1 bag of cheese curds (you won’t use the whole bag)

1/4 cup + 1 TB rice flour
1/4 cup cold, lighter Pilsner-style beer (we used Kölsch)
1 egg (cold)
1 tsp smoked paprika

Pile the french fries on an oven-safe bowl and spoon a generous amount of meat and gravy mixture over the top. Dot the top with cheese curds. Put the entire bowl under the broiler until cheese is melted, bubbly and just starting to brown.

Mix the rice flour, cold beer, the cold egg and the paprika (it’s important everything is cold). Dip a few of the cheese curds into the batter and fry in the oil (temperature about 320 degrees F) until browned and crispy. Drain briefly on a paper towel and salt.

Put the fried cheese curds on top of the poutine and serve.

poutineTender french fries bursting with fresh potato taste, a tasty meat and veg mixture, melty cheese and smoky fried cheese on top. Now that’s how you celebrate a cheese curd, Top Chef!!

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Nov 28 2012
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Eat - Cooking

Rib-Eye and Morels with Tomato Fennel Reduction – Top Chef Night

Top Chef is back and we finally got back into the swing of things to cook up some Top Chef food after having Top Chefs cook for us in New York City. Did I use Top Chef enough in that last sentence?

We managed to catch the first episode of season 10 before we left town and some of the new contestants are doozies. They do, however, seem supremely talented and for one of their first challenges they were to make Wolfgang Puck the perfect omelet. I love omelets. K hates eggs. This posed a challenge in deciding what to make. So we compromised — instead of Eliza Gavin’s New York strip and morel mushroom omelet with fennel tomato reduction (original recipe here) we made a grass-fed rib-eye steak with morels and tomato fennel reduction.

BONUS: The good people at BlueStar sent us an amazing cookware set and we gave it our first go for this dish. We don’t review products very often, but when we do you can be sure it’s something we’d use “in real life” and endorse wholeheartedly and boy do we endorse this cookware! These pots and pans are the best thing to happen to our kitchen since… well, probably ever. BlueStar also makes professional-quality cooking ranges for the home and, my stars — if we had one of their ranges in our kitchen we might never, ever move. They are that nice, seriously.

So, we took the new sauce pan and saute pan out for a test drive and fired up the oven for some steak.

rib eye morels tomato fennelServes two

Steak
1 large grass-fed rib-eye steak
4-6 dried morel mushrooms (or fresh, if they’re in season)
1 TB extra virgin olive oil
2 TB water
2 TB red wine
1 TB dried thyme

Reduction
1 ripe tomato, medium
1/2 shallot, diced
1/2 cup fennel, diced
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar
5 TB butter, cold
1 TB chives, chopped
1 TB fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp fennel fronds, chopped

Side
1/2 bunch fresh asparagus
1/4 cup Emmental cheese, course grated

Get your steak started — sprinkle generously with coarse sea salt and pepper and let sit for 10 minutes so the salt “melts” in. Heat oven to 300 F. If using dried morels, just cover them in boiling water.

Heat about 1 TB extra virgin olive oil over med-high heat. We used our BlueStar 10″ fry/saute pan for this. Whatever you use, make sure the pan is oven-safe (no plastic, etc). When oil is very hot, sear steak briefly on both sides (about 2 minutes per side).

When the steak is nicely browned on both sides, put the pan in the oven for approximately 20 minutes (or until 120 degrees on a meat thermometer).

While the steak is cooking, make the reduction.

Peel the tomato by cutting an X in the bottom. Pop the tomato into boiling water for 2 minutes then put immediately into ice water. When tomato is cool, the skin should peel right off. Remove the seeds and tomato goop and dice the tomato flesh.

Put white wine vinegar, sugar and 1/2 cup water in a sauce pan over medium heat. As soon as sugar disappears, add diced fennel and shallot. Reduce the liquid almost completely. Whisk in the butter until it’s incorporated and the sauce is creamy. Add tomato, chives, parsley, fennel fronds and salt (to taste). Keep the sauce warm.

Boil water in a small saucepan and add asparagus until it’s just cooked through (3-5 minutes, depending on thickness of asparagus). Drain water, lightly salt and keep warm.

When steak is cooked through, let it rest for 5-7 minutes before cutting. While steak is resting, drain the morels and gently squeeze out the extra water with a paper towel. Reheat the pan juices in the steak pan over medium heat (add a little extra olive oil, if needed). Gently scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan and add the morels and thyme. When morels are tender, add red wine and 2 TB water. Reduce until sauce is almost gone.

Slice the steak, spoon the morels and red wine sauce over steak. Spoon the reduction over the asparagus and sprinkle with cheese. Spoon reduction around the plate then eat!

 

This new BlueStar cookware kicks ass! The pots and pans are weighty, cook evenly and clean easily. We only wish they made meat thermometers — ours broke and the steak overcooked, but it was still tender and delicious. The sauce was buttery and light with sweet tomato and slightly anise flavor of fennel. The smooth, rich mushroom sauce warmly enrobed the steak to great effect. And the fresh asparagus with a little creamy cheese bite was very complementary. We couldn’t ever imagine this full meal being part of an omelet and we’re sure glad it wasn’t.

Who’s your favorite to win this season of Top Chef? So far, our money is on Elizabeth (from South Africa) or Kristen (the former model) or John (the guy who keeps reminding us about all his restaurants).

 

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Aug 15 2012
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Chicken Fried Rice with Orange Guava Sauce – Top Chef Masters Night

Pardon me for being a food snob, but I feel that if Chef Lorena Garcia is going to compete on Top Chef Masters, she should NOT have a line of menu items at Taco Bell. The words “Top Chef Masters” and “Taco Bell” just don’t fit together. Taco Bell is about dehydrated not-quite food that gives you food poisoning (I can personally and painfully attest to this) and, as of the last episode at least, Garcia didn’t use fake soy and oat binders and fillers and rehydrate them to make a winning meal. Guess she only does that for Taco Bell.

While she might have sold out and be a shill for YUM! Brands (if you have to YELL it and include an exclamation point, odds are it’s NOT YUMMY!), we were interested in her take on fried rice with a twist. So we used *real* food to make her chicken fried rice with orange guava sauce (original recipe here). Here’s how we made it home cook-friendly.

Recipe serves two very generously.

Gather your ingredients.

For the rice:

1 chicken breast
1 orange
1 lime
1 egg (optional)
1 cup jasmine rice
1/4 cup shiitake mushrooms
2 TB garlic, minced
1/4 cup red peppers, diced
1/4 cup yellow (or green) peppers, diced
1/4 cup asparagus, chopped into large pieces
2 TB dried cranberries, chopped

Cilantro for garnish

For the sauce:

1/8 cup scallions, chopped
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup orange juice (from the orange in the rice ingredients)
1/8 cup guava juice (can be found in the juice aisles of most grocery stores)
1 tsp garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh ginger, minced (or finely grated)
1 tsp honey
1 tsp sesame oil

Using rice cooker or stove top, cook jasmine rice.

If your chicken has skin and bones, remove them so you’ve got a skinless, boneless chicken breast. Tip: Skin+bones=very inexpensive organic chicken breast.
Using a fine grater, grate orange and lime zest over the chicken and pat into both sides. Season with salt.

Using a wok pan or a large saute pan with deep sides, add a bit of oil and scramble your egg (if using). Remove egg, add a bit more oil. Let the oil get hot and saute the chicken breast until cooked through. Remove and let cool. When chicken has cooled, chop into bite-sized pieces.

Combine all ingredients for the sauce and mix thoroughly. Set aside.

Chop mushrooms, asparagus, peppers and dried cranberries. Blanch asparagus in boiling water for about 2 minutes. Drain.

With all your ingredients prepped, you’re ready to rock. Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in the wok/pan and add veggies. Saute until crisp tender and just starting to brown.

Add chicken and saute for 1 minute. Add cooked rice and mix thoroughly. Let saute for about 4 minutes.


Mix in scrambled egg, if you’re using it. Add sauce and mix thoroughly. Let heat through for about 2 minutes, mixing the entire time.

Garnish with chopped cilantro. Season with salt to taste.

With about 20 minutes of prep and five minutes of cooking, you’ve got dinner.

Despite my early reservations about the cranberries and guava being too sweet and Lorena Garcia selling out, this was really, really good. Lots of color and fresh vegetables, nice bite from the garlic and ginger, a little bit of funk from the mushrooms and just the all around tastiness that comes with a good pile of fried rice. A little sweet, a little savory, a little crisp, a little sticky — hits all the right notes.

Will we make this again? Yes. In fact we already have plans to make it again because we’ve got guava juice to use up (and because it’s that good)!

Soundtrack: K’s tribute to MTV’s 120 Minutes.

Are you keeping up with this season’s Top Chef Masters? Who’s team are you on?

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Aug 08 2012
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Sesame-Coated Salmon with Egg Noodle Cake – Top Chef Masters Night

Chef Mark Gaier got hammered for making this dish on Top Chef Masters, but we fixed his problem … we actually cooked the salmon instead of serving it raw on the inside. I love a good piece of salmon and I really love crispy Chinese noodle cakes. There was a restaurant in Minneapolis called Yummy that made *the best* crispy noodle cakes and I am still very, very sad it closed.  Those noodle cakes haunt my dreams. So imagine my delight when Chef Gaier made all of my favorites for the Top Chef Masters wedding episode! Here’s how we took his sesame-coated salmon with egg noodle cake (original recipe here) and made it home cook-friendly.

Serves two.

First, gather your ingredients:

Note: You see more (and different) ingredients in the photo than you see on the ingredient list. There’s a reason for this, read on.

Ingredients: 

Two salmon filets (or one large filet cut in half)
1 TB sesame seeds
1 TB black sesame seeds
1 TB salt
Extra virgin olive oil, as needed

1 package dried Chinese egg noodles
1/2 can bamboo shoots, cut into match sticks
1/2 bunch green onions, sliced
1/2 tsp Sriracha (more or less to taste)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp dried ginger

1/4 cup Ponzu sauce (we like Kikkoman Ponzu with lime) (If you don’t have ponzu, you can combine three parts soy sauce to one part lemon or lime juice)
1 tsp Sesame oil

Chopped cilantro, for garnish

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Boil water and cook Chinese egg noodles until *just* done (about 5 minutes). Whisk eggs together, combine all ingredients for noodles, toss everything into noodles using your hands.

 

Spread noodle mixture evenly onto sheet pan (we lined ours with nonstick foil) and put into oven until crisp and golden (about 20 minutes).

While noodle cake is cooking, sprinkle with salt and oil. Coat evenly with sesame seeds and press onto salmon with your hands.

 

Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes until just cooked through (be careful not to overcook).

When salmon and noodle cake are in the oven, mix ponzu and sesame oil and stir thoroughly. When the salmon is cooked through and the noodle cake is golden brown, remove from oven and cut the noodle cake into squares. Drizzle the sauce over the noodle cake and the salmon and you’re ready to eat.

 

This was … good. As I was mixing the noodles with the other ingredients I was kind of wondering where the flavor was going to come from and the cake was nice and crispy, but kind of bland. The salmon was nicely cooked, but lacked a punch beyond the crisp sesame seeds. We actually made the sauce that accompanied the original recipe and when K tasted it he said it was, “Interesting.” I took a bite and was less diplomatic so he stepped up and saved the day with his quick Ponzu sauce. That’s where the bulk of the flavor for this dish came from and that’s a lot of pressure to put on sauce.

Would we make this again? Probably not. It was good, not great and our time in the kitchen is precious. We strive for great whenever we possibly can.

Soundtrack: The Traveling Tap mix K made for our ride on the awesome contraption.

 

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Aug 01 2012
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Duck Lettuce Wraps with Corn Salsa and Peach Ricotta Creme – Top Chef Masters Night

Art Smith is back on Top Chef Masters! He’s skinnier and he’s definitely sassier. But it wasn’t just for that reason that we chose to make his and chef Lorena Garcia’s duck lettuce wraps with corn salsa and peach ricotta creme (original recipe here). We made them because it looked delicious. Sounds fancy, but this is absolutely a meal you (yes you!) can make on a weeknight and make your Wednesday (or Tuesday or Thursday) gourmet. Here’s how:

Serves two.

Gather your ingredients.

For the duck
2 duck breasts with skin
1/8 tsp cayenne powder
1/8 tsp chipotle powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chili powder (more if you like heat)
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup self-rising flour*
High heat oil for frying
1 head Butter lettuce

*NOTE: If you don’t have self-rising flour you can make your own. For every one cup of flour add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt.

For the peach and corn salsa
2 ears of corn, cut off the cob (or two cups frozen corn, if you can’t find fresh)
1 shallot, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 TB fresh ginger, minced (or 1 tsp dried ginger)
1/4 cup tomatoes, diced
3 TB cilantro, chopped
1 peach, pitted and finely chopped
1 lemon, juiced

For the peach ricotta creme
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 tsp each Aleppo pepper, dried chili powder and chipotle chili powder (more if you like spicy, less if you don’t)
1/4 cup ricotta
2 TB extra virgin olive oil
1 peach, pitted and rough chopped
1 tsp. buttermilk
Salt and pepper, to taste

To make the peach ricotta creme: 
Add all ingredients together in a blender and puree.

To make the salsa:
Take the corn off the cob. Here’s a trick: Put a small bowl upside down inside a larger bowl, rest the corn cob on the small bowl and cut carefully down the cob so the kernels fall into the larger bowl.

Combine the corn, shallot, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, cilantro and peaches in a saute pan with a splash of oil. When corn is cooked through add lemon juice to taste (may not need the juice from whole lemon).

To make the duck:
Sprinkle the duck breasts with garlic and chili powder and soak duck in buttermilk. Heat oil in deep skillet (heat to approximately 350 degrees F). Mix the spices with the flour and, when the oil is ready, coat the duck on all sides with the spiced flour and fry in the oil until deep golden brown (8-10 minutes). When the duck is finished, remove from oil and let it rest on a cutting board. Lay out the lettuce leaves and construct your wraps. Dinner is served!

Lettuce wraps are often a go-to quick dinner in our household. Adding crispy fried duck breast to plain old lettuce really launches dinner into the indulgent zone. The salsa was really good, but a little bit too sweet and the tomatoes kind of melted into almost a sauce. Next time we make this, we’d replace the tomatoes with finely diced red peppers. We’d also cut down on the amount of sauce made (cut the recipe in half). When we tasted it alone, it was like a weirdly sweet and salty peach smoothie, but when drizzled on the lettuce wraps, it was a nice sweet/tart/salty complement.

Would we make this again? Yes, it’s actually a great (and not *super* unhealthy) weeknight dinner. It only took about an hour to make, start to finish.

Soundtrack: Quietdrive and more.

Who’s your favorite to win on this season of Top Chef Masters?!?

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Jul 25 2012
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Eat - Cooking

Hubert Keller’s Creamy Mac and Cheese with Prawns, Mushrooms and Herbs – Top Chef Masters Night

K and I had just started dating when Top Chef Masters debuted. We decided to cook along with the show, fell in love and the rest is history. So to say we’re excited about the newest season of Top Chef Masters is kind of an understatement. It’s been on my calendar since the premiere date was announced (months, people…we’re talking months here). So to celebrate the new season, we went back to the beginning — the very first Top Chef Masters recipe we ever made: Chef Hubert Keller’s creamy mac and cheese with prawns, mushrooms and herbs (original recipe here). We didn’t know this would become a “thing” for us so we didn’t have the wherewithal to document our cooking journey then, but we did this time so we could share how we made Hubert Keller’s mac and cheese home cook-friendly.

Serves two.

First, gather up your ingredients.

1 TB. butter
1 large carrot, diced
1/2 onion (or 1 shallot), diced
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup half and half
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 cup Swiss cheese, finely shredded
1/2 lb raw shrimp, large dice
1 cup crab (optional, canned is okay)
2 1/4 cup pasta (macaroni or cavatappi)
3 TB chopped Italian parsley
1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp. smoked paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook up your pasta to al dente (slightly firm, but cooked through) in a pot of boiling, salted water.

Prep your food: Dice the carrots and onion (or shallot). Cut the mushrooms. Chop parsley. De-vein the shrimp and cut up into large dice.

In a large pot, add butter, carrot and onion (or shallot) and sweat/soften over medium heat for about five minutes.
Add in half of heavy cream, salt and pepper and simmer until thickens (about 10 minutes).
While mixture is simmering lightly whip other half of cream until just thickened (do not form peaks). Do this by hand, not with a mixer.

To the simmering mixture, add the mushrooms and Swiss cheese, simmer on low heat for five minutes.
Saute the cut up shrimp in a bit of extra virgin olive oil and add the smoked paprika to the oil.
When your pasta is finished cooking, drain it and add the shrimp and mushroom/cream/carrot mixture. Gently add the crab (if using — be sure to drain if using canned crab).
Mix an egg yolk into the whipped cream then fold into the pasta. Garnish with parsley, season with salt and pepper and serve.

WOW, this dish is rich. But it’s also one of the tastiest, most decadent versions of mac and cheese you’ll ever have. There is a slight smokiness from the paprika shrimp and, while the crab didn’t add much in terms of taste, it did thicken the sauce. The gentle, creamy cheese got inside the cavatappi noodles for a ooey, gooey surprise and the fresh parsley helped cut through the hedonistic flavors of sweet cream and cheese.

Would we make this again? Of course! If we’re feeling calorie deficient and need a once-a-year treat, this is the mac and cheese for us.

Soundtrack: A special mix by K featuring some of my *favorite* tunes!

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Jul 20 2012
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Eat - Cooking, Life

Raspberries

The good people at Driscoll’s kindly sent me some vouchers for free berries (the best kind of voucher). The idea, I surmise, was to get me to remind you that biting into a raspberry is like tasting the essence of summer. And also that raspberries are super healthy. I had so many plans to use my raspberries, but I ate them too quickly for those plans to materialize. Here’s how I enjoyed my raspberries:

Because I failed to get creative with my raspberry bounty, I thought I’d turn to some of the brilliant bloggers from Fortify: A Food Community to inspire you to cook and bake with raspberries.

First up: This gorgeous savory recipe for Raspberry Risotto with Herbs de Provence and Chevre from Shari at MyFancyPantry.com. Shari always posts the most drool-worthy exotic recipes and I aspire to reach even a portion of the depth and breadth of her talent someday.

Second: A sexy (and would you believe healthy?!?) recipe for Raw Double Raspberry Lemon Dream Cake from Amy at Fragrant Vanilla Cake. Trust me, I *will* be dreaming about the beautiful swirls and colors in this cake.

Next: This dazzlingly decadent Chocolate Raspberry Tart from Amy at Amy on the Prairie. If I had a piece of this right now, I’d lick the plate clean. I wholeheartedly believe that raspberries and chocolate go together even better than raspberries and my breakfast cereal.

Finally: An ode to sweet summer raspberries from the venerable Kate in the Kitchen. She says it better than I ever could.

Summer. Plump, juicy raspberries. Happiness. Sigh.

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Jun 26 2012
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30 Days of Food Inspiration – Day 26

Day 26: Meatless Monday. 

Each week, we make it a point to go meat-free at least one day a week. Most often, that day is Meatless Monday. We eat delicious food that’s better for us, good for the planet and more humane. It’s often my favorite food day.

This week, inspired by a recipe in the most recent issue of Food and Wine magazine, we made a roasted red pepper relish with olive oil, basil, garlic and smoked paprika, spread it on a Ciabatta roll, topped it with goat’s milk feta and crisped and melted in the toaster oven. We served it alongside crunchy sweet potato chips. It was fast, filling, fabulously tasty and totally free of meat. Win.

Do you observe Meatless Monday? What’s your favorite meat-free recipe?

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Jun 25 2012
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30 Days of Food Inspiration – Day 25

Day 25: Summer salsa. 

The end of a long two weeks calls for something sweet, savory and celebratory. Enter summer salsa. Mango, pineapple, jalapeno, cilantro, avocado, lime juice, salt and rice vinegar. Honeyed and heat married with crunch and salt. Perfect on chips and on simple fish tacos. Thanks for the tropical flavors, summer.

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May 08 2012
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Kebab Pizza (or Calzones)

Flashback: Many years ago I was visiting Gothenburg, Sweden (home of Volvo) and a pizza was ordered. This was no ordinary pizza. It was a peculiar regional specialty — the Kebab Pizza. Kebab pizza is a hybrid of the best of everything a pizza has to offer PLUS kebab meat, spices and sauce. This may not seem like it goes together, but does it ever! Every once and awhile I think back to the deliciousness and wonder if it could be recreated.

Flash forward to a recent MN Food Bloggers event featuring the lovely Zoe Francois, co-author of “Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day.” It was a pizza party at Kitchen in the Market and Zoe brought the dough, a copy of her book, some bread flour and yeast. We had a blast and made the most delicious pizzas. Though neither of us was gutsy enough to toss the dough into the air, we did dimple and stretch until we had the perfect pies. We also won a really nice pizza stone, something we didn’t have in our kitchen (believe it or not).

Armed with the ingredients, the recipe in Zoe’s book and a hankering for kebab pizza, we set off to recreate this Scandinavian treat. Early in the day, I made half the recipe for bread flour pizza dough (you’ll have to get the Artisan Pizza book for the recipe — trust me, it’s worth it). When K got home, he stuck the pizza stone into the oven set at 500 degrees. Make note of this, it’s foreshadowing for the rest of this tale.

Pizza Sauce
1 can organic crushed tomatoes
2 TB organic tomato paste
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp garlic, minced
2 anchovies (or 2 tsp anchovy paste)
1 TB extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp Aleppo pepper (or smoked paprika)

Heat olive oil over medium heat, add garlic and saute for one minute. Add crushed tomatoes,  tomato paste, anchovies (or anchovy paste) pepper (or paprika) and oregano. Let simmer until tomatoes are falling apart (about 10-15 minutes). Remove from heat and set aside.

It was hot in the kitchen. Very hot. I was also working to get rid of the flu and still had a fever, which made it even more hot. I pulled a portion of dough from our dough pile and K wrapped and froze the other two portions. I attempted to dimple and flatten and stretch and make into a circle, but the damn thing just kept springing back in on itself. Then it would rip. After a few frustrating tries, my internal *and* external temperatures at a boiling point, I said, “Screw it. We’ll just have an unevenly shaped pizza.” Sensing my escalating anger, K agreed and we started topping our kebab pizza.

Toppings
1/2 onion
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup shredded Emmenthal cheese
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup (more of less to taste) fresh basil, torn
1 cup cooked kebab, gyro or al pastor meat (we got a take-out container of al pastor meat from our local taqueria) *Must be the kind roasted on a cone*

Slice the onion and saute in a bit of olive oil until soft and golden brown. Spread sauce on pizza dough, add onions, sprinkle cheese evenly over pizza, add oregano, basil and meat.

It was at this point we realized we had no way to get the pizza from the cutting board onto the extremely hot pizza stone. Numerous attempts were made to transfer the pizza and most just resulted in the dough falling apart or the toppings falling off. No matter what we put under the pizza, it stuck because it was so damn hot in the kitchen that every ingredient was melting (including the cheese before it even got to the oven). Two sweltering, angry and hungry people stared at what was supposed to be dinner and a decision was made. Hack it in half, fold it over on itself and toss it onto the pizza stone. We’d be having Kebab Calzones.

And, as you can see, they were ugly. But looks kind of stop mattering when you’re so hungry you could eat your own arm.

While the calzones were baking, I made the kebab sauce.

Kebab Sauce
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 TB fresh lemon juice

Mix all sauce ingredients together and set aside.

It only took about 10 minutes for the calzones to cook through and the crusts to become golden. We let them cool and used the kebab sauce to dip and, ugly as they were, they were also really tasty!

The crust was crisp and chewy, the flavors had a Middle Eastern hint, the meat was a phenomenally different touch and the sauce was tangy and cool. Not an exact match for that unusual pizza I remembered, but pretty close. Later, via Twitter, Zoe (and our friend Jen) recommended that in the future we use an upside down cookie sheet (or one without sides) in lieu of a pizza peel to transfer our pie to the baking stone. We’ll certainly give that a try, but if I have to endure an ugly, but delicious calzone in the pursuit of pizza perfection, I’m willing to take that one for the team.

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