My youngest son is an idea man and a planner. I benefit from this nearly every day. Last night, while I was rattling around the kitchen, trying to figure out what to make for dinner, he offered to come up with a plan. Naturally I took him up on it and the result was a delicious summer meal that we all oohed and ahed over out on the front porch at dinner time.

In short, Michael created sandwiches with garlic sourdough buns, grilled honey-mustard chicken topped with melted asiago cheese and garnished with beefsteak tomato slices and butter lettuce. The flavors were just amazing and he’s given me permission to share his idea:

Did I mentioned that Michael made the garlic sourdough buns himself for this tasty dinner? The recipe for those buns is at the end of this post.

Michael’s Magnificent Munchable Melts

• hot, crusty garlic sourdough buns
• 4 chicken breasts, marinated in honey-mustard dressing, grilled and sliced thin
• thinly sliced asiago cheese
• beefsteak tomatoes, thinly sliced,
• butter lettuce leaves
• mayonnaise, horseradish sauce, or the sandwich spread of your choice

Marinate the chicken breasts in honey-mustard dressing. Grill and slice into thin slices.

Slice garlic sourdough buns. Smear the sandwich spread of your choice on the buns. Top with slices of chicken and slices of asiago cheese. Put under the broiler until the asiago cheese is melted. Top with sliced tomatoes and lettuce. Eat. Be sure you have plenty of napkins available for juices dripping down your arms.

Garlic Sourdough Buns

Stir together:

• 2 c. water
• 2 c. bread flour
• 1 c. sourdough starter
• 2 t. salt
• 2 T. sugar
• 2 T. yeast
• 2 T. oil
• 2 t. garlic powder

This is the sponge. Let it sit and froth up for about 35 minutes. Stir in 2 more cups of bread flour. Then knead in an additional 1-2 c. bread flour until the texture is elastic and thick.

Let rise for about 45 minutes or until doubled in size. Punch down dough and form round buns. Let the buns rise until doubled in size (45-60 minutes.)

Bake at 375° until golden brown (20-25 minutes). Cool on rack.

I LOVE having kids who can make delicious food!

Barb

PS: Michael and I agreed that our vegetarian friends could make this with grilled portabella mushrooms instead of chicken breasts.

A couple of days ago, I was showing a friend this nifty little trick I have for cleaning sticky gunk off of dishes. She stopped me mid-sentence and said, “You ARE going to write about this, right?” I hadn’t thought about it before then, but here I am, writing about it.

For years I’ve used my fingernails to chisel really sticky or crusty things off of dishes when it’s time for clean-up. There are some things that just won’t scrub off with a dishcloth or a scrubbie. More recently, I’ve spent a lot of time scrubbing very, very sticky sourdough batter off of bowls and measuring utensils. A few months ago, as I was struggling to clean out a really cheesy pan, I picked up my grocery store Most Valuable Customer Rewards card and used IT to scrape off some baked-on crusties that were clinging to my lasagne pan. I just slid the edge of the card up to and under the edge of the gunk and started chiseling. Wow! Like magic.

I seem to have a dozen of those little cards from grocery stores, pharmacies, and even the local bookstore. Each rewards card comes with a little keychain tab that I put on my keychain right away. But the cards…what to do with them? So I stick them in a kitchen drawer and never think about them again. At least that’s what I DID do until I figured out that those little plastic cards are actually extremely efficient cleaning devices!

Some good things: the cards are free and I seem to have a lot of them. So far, I haven’t even worn out the first one. I’m saving my fingernails. I’m saving my Pyrex baking dishes by not scraping them with a knife or metal spatula. Same thing with my non-stick pans. That plastic card doesn’t scratch either glass or non-stick coating, but it DOES neatly lift off any food that I’m trying to clean.

I’m always delighted when I can solve a problem and I’m always doubly delighted when I can do it for free!

Barb

As we’ve discussed in the past, fresh beets are an oft-maligned vegetable. Far too many people think of the little slivers of pickled beets next to the julienned carrots on the salad bar. Those are really not beets. Trust me. They’re not.

To my delight, I’ve learned of a new way to cook fresh beets to add to our repertoire: ROASTED beets. Roasting in the oven brings out the beets’ natural sweetness.

Start by peeling the rough outer skin of the beet off with a potato peeler. Cut into 1.5 inch cubes. Lay beets on a large sheet of aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil, toss handful of thyme on top, and season with salt and pepper. Fold up the foil tightly to make a sealed pouch and put it on a jelly-roll pan. Bake at 375° until the beets are tender when pierced, about 45 minutes. (Drop a knife in the center of 1 beet piece; if it slides out without resistance, they’re done.)

For a yummy variation, toss a handful of fresh rosemary on top of the beets before roasting instead of the thyme. I suppose that just about any fresh herb could bring out a slightly different nuance of flavor and would definitely be worth experimenting with.

Barb

My son Michael narrowed his eyes and scowled with concentration. He was standing in front of the open refrigerator, trying to help me figure out dinner on the hottest day of June. “Mom, is there any reason we couldn’t put those leftover red potatoes in a pasta salad?”

I thought for a moment and couldn’t come up with anything more convincing than, “Wouldn’t that make it POTATO salad?”

“Nope,” Michael replied decisively. “Tonight we’re going to pretend those potatoes are actually vegetables.” Since Michael seemed to have a plan, I wasn’t going to argue…especially since the plan looked to be leading to our favorite pasta salad.

This pasta dish is much more method than recipe. One of the great things about this salad is that I don’t need enough of any single ingredient to feed everyone. That’s very helpful in finishing off the tag ends of stuff in the fridge. The whole idea is to creatively use what’s already in the fridge or cupboard. One of the best things about this salad is that none of the veggies are cooked, so this is a great meal when it’s too hot to cook anything.

Here are the things we found to put into our salad. Obviously, what you’ll find in your refrigerator will be different.

Amazing Pasta Salad

• 2 pounds cooked and salted new red potatoes, cut into chunks
• 1 cucumber, cut into chunks
• 1 ½ c. broccoli florets
• 1/3 c. green onions, finely chopped
• ½ c. chopped cilantro
• 2 roma tomatoes, diced
• ¾ c. alfalfa sprouts
• 1 pound imitation crab meat
• 1/3 c. toasted pine nuts
• 1 pound pasta, cooked and drained (I finished off 3 different packages of pasta this time)

After stirring these ingredients so they were thoroughly mixed, we dressed the salad with a mixture of 3 half-empty salad dressing bottles: Caesar dressing, Honey Dijon Onion dressing, and Greek vinaigrette. Every pasta salad we make tastes unique because the bottles that I’m trying to empty are different from one time to the next.

We served the pasta salad in big soup bowls and topped it with shredded parmesan cheese (crumbled feta cheese or grated asiago cheese would also be delicious.) This salad was huge–perfect for the boys who had been at swim practice at 6:20 AM and for the boy who worked all day out in the sun. Definitely scale the ingredient list up or back to make a salad that fits your family’s size. If you’re of the vegetarian persuasion, leave out the crab and you’re good to go.

And sure enough, Michael was right! Those new red potatoes were just perfect and we all pronounced the salad to be the BEST pasta salad we’d ever had.

This post was cross-posted at High Country Mom Squad on Tuesday. For more ideas of what things you might find in your fridge for pasta salads, see this older post.

Barb

Night #2 of our Five Nights of Pizza experiment: Pizza Margherita.

This pizza takes us to the next stop in pizza history. Well, almost the next stop. First, tomatoes were imported to Europe by the early explorers in the 16th century. As the tomato is a member of the nightshade family, many people thought it was poisonous. But by the late 1700’s, peasants in the area of Naples, Italy had begun to use tomatoes as a topping for their flatbread meals. Initially, pizzas were sold by street vendors, who carried them in a big tub on their heads. The shop that lays claim to being the first pizzeria ever, Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, (which still operates in Naples a few blocks from where the original began in 1738!) started by producing pizzas for these street vendors, and later added a sit-down restaurant.

In 1889, a pizza maker by the name of Raffaele Esposito was asked to prepare several different types of pizza for Queen Margherita of Savoy. He offered 3 types, and the queen’s favorite he named after her. Pizza Margherita has as toppings tomato, mozzarella, and basil,   reminiscent of the colors of the Italian flag–red, white and green.

There is a government-regulated association in Naples that has established the “rules” on what can be sold as Neapolitan pizza. The Pizza Margherita that we made tonight would NOT qualify, as authentic Neapolitan pizza must be no thicker than 1/3 of a centimeter at the center, and ours was substantially more. We also didn’t bake it in a wood-fired oven at 485ºC for 90 seconds or less, and we used a mechanical means to mix the dough. All of these factors disqualify us as true Neapolitans. Oh well. We liked the pizza, and it was quite different from last night’s Pizza Alexander.

Pizza Margherita

Start with a basic dough recipe, like this breadstick dough.

While the dough is rising, make the sauce:

Sautée diced onions and minced garlic (I used about 3 TBSP of onions, and 4 cloves of garlic) in 2 TBSP of olive oil. When they are translucent, add 1 large tomato, diced, and a 15-oz. can of diced tomatoes, along with 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil, and 1/3 c. water. I also added (because they happened to come with the marinated olives and garlic mixture from which I took the garlic) a couple of minced marinated red chili peppers. These added a very tiny amount of kick to the sauce–if you decide to use fresh peppers, use only about 1/2 of one.

Let the sauce cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the fresh tomatoes are broken down, and some of the liquid has boiled off. (About 15 minutes or so.) Remove from heat, and blend in a blender (optional. If you’d rather have chunky sauce, let it cook a little longer and skip the blender. In my house, we have people who make ghastly faces and threaten to hurl if there is even a hint of tomato solids….so we blend.)

To assemble: stretch the dough over a lightly oiled pizza stone or cookie sheet. Spread the sauce over the dough, to within 1/2″ or so of the edge. Over that, put thinly sliced pieces of fresh mozzarella and fresh basil leaves. We did not entirely cover the pizza with cheese and basil, as you can see. We used an 8-oz. ball of fresh mozz., and about 1/2 c. basil leaves. Bake in a 400ºF oven for 20 minutes or so, until the crust is golden brown.

As an added bonus, we had too much dough, so we made a tray of breadsticks by spreading the extra dough on an oiled cookie sheet, brushing with more olive oil, sprinkling with sea salt, and baking for 12-15 minutes.

Buon appetito!

Laura

With Laura’s Pizza Research Extravaganza going on right now, this seems like the perfect time to share my recipe for sourdough pizza crust.

We’ve gotten rather hooked on sourdough pizza crust in the past few months. I’m not sure that it is historically accurate (i.e. I don’t think that pizza arrived in this country until AFTER the California 49ers immortalized sourdough as THE food for gold miners.) This recipe is pretty flexible but it does require sourdough starter and a little advance planning:

BK’s Sourdough Pizza Crust

Make a sponge with:

• 2 cups warm water
• 1 c. sourdough starter
• 1 T. sugar
• 2 t. salt
• 2 c. flour
• 1 t. yeast

When the sponge is bubbly and frothy, mix in 1 T. olive oil and knead in an additional 4 to 4 1/2 c. bread flour.

Let this dough sit for several hours. It will rise slowly. If it doubles in size before you’re ready to use it, punch it down and let it rise again. If the dough is too sticky to handle easily, flour your hands thoroughly and take a little extra time to work the dough slowly.

Spread the dough out onto 4 large pizza stones or pans. This dough makes a nice thin crust that bakes up nicely.

Yes, I know that four pizzas is a lot of pizza. That’s my standard pizza meal these days with 4 teen guys and a husband living in my house. Keep in mind that you can make half this much OR you can freeze half for later.

If you don’t let the crust rise all day because you don’t have time, it will still turn out fine. Sometimes I will make this recipe with about 1/4 t. yeast instead of a whole teaspoon of it. When it’s time for it to rise, I stick the ball of dough in a plastic bag, seal it, and throw it in the fridge. After 3-5 days in the fridge, the dough gets very sour. I bring the dough back up to room temperature and spread it onto pizza stones when it’s time to make pizza.

The slower the dough rises and the longer it takes for the gluten fibers to develop, the more sour the taste and the better the texture.

Add the toppings of your choice and you’re on your way to pizza heaven.

Barb

Here is our ancient Greek sweet pizza, which we made from the sweet ingredients we didn’t feel we could include on our dinner pizza on the first stop in pizza history.

We used the small lump of pizza dough left from our Pizza Alexander, stretching it to fit into a 9″ tart pan, which we greased with olive oil. A little more olive oil was drizzled over the top. Then we drizzled honey over the whole thing (and we feel that the mild-flavored basswood honey we used was very nice, and on the whole, a mild-flavored honey is probably your best idea.) We added a spare sprinkling of rosemary (just a pinch, really–less than 1/4 tsp–a little goes a long way!), as a nod to the Greeks’ herbs. Over this we sprinkled a handful of water-softened raisins (again, we just couldn’t stomach the idea of using dates, as suggested by the article we read.) Then we toasted a handful of slivered almonds and sprinkled those over as well. We finished it off by drizzling a bit more honey over it all, sprinkling just a teeny skosh of cinnamon-sugar, and popping it in a 400ºF oven for about 15-20 minutes, until it was golden brown. We served it in dainty wedges, and it was YUMMY! I’d recommend this as a breakfast bread, a dessert bread, or as a having-guests-in-for-coffee snack. In any case, my boys agreed that it was “the food of the gods,” so we named it Olympus Honey Bread.

Laura

Our first stop in the history of pizza brought us back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans that we studied this year in our History Explorers curriculum (written by a group of moms, so you won’t find it online–please email me if you are interested in hearing more about it.) We looked at a few different websites to research the history of pizza, most notably here and here.

We found that the common statement “Well, you know pizza was invented recently by Americans, not in Italy” was, in fact, not true. Things resembling pizza can be found in the literature of both Ancient Greece and Rome. In fact, Roman soldiers were known to make a focaccia-like bread by baking the dough on their shields! One of the above articles gave a list of toppings found in Greek literature for their version of pizza, which they called plakous: cheeses, dates, herbs, olive oil, and honey.

We took that list, and decided to give the dates a miss (Mom dislikes dates.) We also decided that our 21st century palates were just not up to including honey on the same pizza as cheese. So we separated the sweet from the savory–I’ll post the dessert pizza in a separate post, (and it was fantastic!)

The savory version, we called Pizza Alexander, after Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who conquered a huge part of the world to form an empire that came to be known as the Greek Empire, though it was never again completely ruled by any one Greek ruler. But the culture, language, and, presumably, the food of Greece extended across this vast stretch of lands and peoples, paving the way for the conquest of Rome and the spread of Christianity.

Here is the method for Pizza Alexander:

Dough:

To make the sponge, pour the following into a large mixing bowl (I use my Kitchenaid) and mix well:

• 2 c. warm water
• 1 TBSP dry yeast
• 2 TBSP honey
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 TBSP olive oil
• 2 c. all-purpose flour

Let sit for 15 minutes until frothy and bubbly. Start mixing on medium-low, and add more flour, 1/2 c. at a time, for a total of 3-4 cups. When dough is smooth and elastic, and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, (and is roughly the consistency of your earlobe), stop mixing, cover loosely with a towel or plastic wrap, and allow to rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

When ready, flour your hands, and take the dough out of the bowl. Divide it so that you have 1 large lump (approximately 2/3 of the dough) and 1 small lump (ca. 1/3 of the dough.) Set the small lump aside for the dessert pizza if desired. (Or make some breadsticks to bake and eat while you wait for the pizza to bake.) Spray a pizza stone or pan with cooking spray, or wipe a thin layer of olive oil on it. Stretch the dough to form an even layer on the stone or pan. (I wish you could see my husband toss the dough–he used to work at a pizza place in college, and it’s a wondrous thing to see him spinning and tossing the dough.)

Toppings:

First, drizzle a bit of olive oil on the dough, and use your fingers or a pastry brush to spread it evenly. Then add the following:

• Minced fresh onions and garlic, sautéed in olive oil (use the quantity you desire–ours worked out to about 4 TBSP)
• Thin strips of red or yellow bell pepper
• Kalamata olives, pitted and halved
• Toasted pine nuts
• Crumbled feta cheese (about 1/2 c.)
• Fresh basil leaves
• A sprinkling of herbes de provence
• Shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1/2 c.)
• Grated Romano cheese (about 1/4 c., just for flavor)

Bake in a 400ºF oven for 15-20 minutes, until the crust is golden-brown. Remove from oven, let sit for about 5 minutes, then cut and serve.

Mmmmmmm! Delizioso!

Laura

We have started an annual tradition in our homeschooling house: the Annual Family Research Project, held each May after we have completed all our academic work for the year. The boys and I sit down and brainstorm a list of possible topics, then select one of them, and research it together. Last year’s report was about Lego bricks. We learned about the history of the company, as well as the manufacturing process, and lots of fun facts.

Well, this year’s project is Pizza. We are busy writing a report that will include the history of pizza, the origin of the various ingredients, maybe a bit about the chemistry and science of yeast, and anything else that we find of interest. Of course, from the homeschool mom’s perspective, this is an ideal project, since it takes in history, geography, social studies, science, math (measuring ingredients!), writing, and plenty of hands-on learning! From the kids’ perspective, they are totally jazzed about Five Nights of Pizza. You read that right–FIVE nights of pizza. Starting tonight, we will be making a different variety of pizza each night, (and blogging about it, naturally!) What’s not to love about nearly a week of pizza?

So stay tuned! We will post pictures and recipes and our report as we go.

Laura

When we moved to the southeastern part of the US, there was one thing that I found totally incomprehensible: sweet tea. I grew up drinking large quantities of sun tea when I was a kid in Arizona. I GET that. It was so refreshing and we could drink gallons of it in a day.

In the last 2.5 years, I’ve learned something about iced tea: Southerners take their sweet tea VERY seriously–possibly even more seriously than barbecue! I’ve learned that if you want tea that isn’t sweet when you order iced tea in a restaurant, you ask for UNsweet tea–not unsweetened tea, but UNsweet tea.

Something disturbing happened to me about 3 months ago. I realized that a glass of sweet tea sounded…well…like a good idea on one particularly warm spring day. Then I actually ordered sweet tea to go with my Panera sandwich. A week later, my youngest son “caught” me serving myself some sweet tea at a potluck. A few weeks ago and to my enormous surprise, I found myself saying, “I need to learn how to MAKE sweet tea!” So I commenced to researching the topic and here is what I found.

First, I suspect that the simplicity of making sweet tea is deceiving. I’ve learned that it’s not hard to make good sweet tea…but it’s also not hard to make pretty nasty sweet tea. I’ve also learned that ordinarily gracious southern belles can get very uptight when people make sweet tea ALL WRONG.

My dear friend, Laura, (not the Laura who is my sister), was one of the first to notice my newfound addiction to taste for sweet tea. This happened because Laura is Very Serious about sweet tea. She maintains that all the ingredients in sweet tea are natural and just the way God intended them to be used–no chemicals or articially sweet things like you can find in sodas. She always has sweet tea in her fridge, ready to serve when I drop by her house. After being served perfect sweet tea every visit for several weeks, I finally asked Laura how to make sweet tea myself.

Like I said, it’s easy. Simple.

Laura Bee’s Sweet Tea

Laura runs a pot of hot water thru her coffee maker onto 3 large iced-tea sized tea bags and lets those steep for an hour or two.Then she stirs 1 1/3 c. sugar into the hot tea. She stirs this until the sugar is completely dissolved and then pours the mixture into a gallon jug. Laura tops off the jug with cold water from the tap and puts it in the fridge. She always serves her sweet tea over ice.

So, I’ve been practicing this newfound skill and doing a little reading online about sweet tea and I’ve learned a few things.

• Sweet tea is pronounced like one word. Say the word “sweetpea” and you have the right emphasis. It’s sweet tea, not sweetpea. You don’t ever say it like it’s two separate words: sweet.tea. Not done.
• In some places it’s considered very bad manners to serve lemon wedges in the sweet tea without asking your guest FIRST if they want lemon.
• Which kind of tea you use makes a huge difference. The two best brands to use are Luzianne or Tetley. I tried using the store brand from our local market and the difference in taste was noteworthy and negative.
• Most people say you should never EVER squeeze the tea bags after they’ve been steeping. It’s best to simply lift them out of the tea and discard. Personally, I HAVE squeezed the tea bags and had no trouble. No Sweet Tea Officials have bothered me…yet.
• You can add some variation to your sweet tea by using flavored teas. Green tea works too, but it won’t get as dark as black tea. I made a lovely batch of sweet tea with 3 bags of Luzianne tea and two bags of pear tea. Pretty much the sky is the limit on tea flavors. If you like a certain type of tea, try it.
• A lot of people recommend adding a pinch of baking soda to the steeping tea. This supposedly mellows out some of the tannins and makes the tea darker.
• Most people consider BOILING the tea to be a crime. Perhaps a federal offense.
• It’s very important to refrigerate sweet tea.
• Sweet tea should be served over ice.
• Sweet tea should be sipped, not chugged. Just because I can drink 3 quarts of sun tea in an afternoon does NOT mean I should drink that much sweet tea…unless I want to develop diabetes!
• Some people add fresh mint leaves to a glass of iced sweet tea.

Since I really AM a coffee gal at heart, I really can’t donate my coffeemaker to the cause of sweet tea, so I went hunting for other methods. The method I like best so far involves filling a medium-sized saucepan with water and 1 1/3 c. sugar. I bring that to a boil and remove it from the heat. I put three large tea bags into the sugar water and cover the pan tightly. This mixture should steep for an hour or two. I remove the tea bags (secretly squeezing the bags when nobody is looking.) Then I pour this syrup into a gallon jar and add enough cold water to top off the jar. I chill the gallon jug and serve the tea over ice, garnished with a mint leave…and possibly even a slice of lemon. (Of course, I wouldn’t serve the lemon without express permission from the one drinking the sweet tea!)

My next experiment is going to involve some fresh mint leaves in the steeping process. I’ll let you know how this turns out. Sweet tea today…what’s next? banana pudding?

Barb

NOTE: Laura tells me that she’s a Lipton girl and somehow only Lipton iced tea tastes exactly right. Also, she regularly enjoys Chick-Fil-A sweet tea when she’s out and about.