Camera Cleanup #12

I know, I know, I'm a bad blog guy. I haven't been posting like I said I would and this time I even have a few things I could post about. But instead it's more random pics I'm afraid.

This was a buffalo chicken pizza, it was fricking awesome. I had a roasted chicken breast in the fridge and I just pulled it into chunks and tossed it on some pizza dough with buffalo instead of tomato sauce. And some onions, because why the hell not?

This was a sub I made for breakfast, I'm working on using up the last of the bacon I have in the freezer since I'm really not supposed to be eating it much anymore. But I'm not throwing it away, that would be criminal. It's cheese, sauteed onion, a couple sunny side up eggs and bacon. So very good.

Well, that's it. With any luck next week I'll be feeling it a bit more for writing and will post about the steak sandwich with greek yogurt sauce or maybe green chili shredded pork and bean casserole I made. They were both wicked good, I really should share.

I Know, I Promised

I made a shrimp related promise and after several days there isn't any shrimp to be seen. But you see, there's a reason. That's going to be a big post with one real recipe and a smaller, side dishy kind of recipe so when I do write it up I want to be in better form than I've been the last few days. I need to wait until the muse strikes me, which now that it's on the screen instead of in my head sounds more painful than inspiring (not to mention pretentious, heh.). So while I'm waiting for that to happen, here is a piece of pizza. It's meatball, bbq sauce and onion. It was quite good. Here is the same flavors, except with Swiss instead of mozzarella and cheddar, in a calzone. It too was quite good. Hopefully that will at least slightly make up for my grievous miscarriage of shrimpitude.

Rachel Pizza

It's one of the great debates. Like Democrat vs Republican, Coke vs Pepsi, fries vs onion rings, light beer vs good beer. Reuben vs Rachel. I'm guessing most people are familiar with the Reuben, a hot sandwich with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing. A Rachel is similar only instead of sauerkraut you put cole slaw on it and sometimes swap pastrami for the corned beef. Personally, I'm on the Rachel side, mostly because I'm not a big sauerkraut fan. I do, however, love cole slaw. So, as I have a want to do, I decided to make a pizza version.

I figured I'd use the cole slaw and dressing as the "sauce" part of the pizza. Seemed fitting plus I thought this might help the slaw from getting too soft. Then some Swiss cheese, I decided to skip mozzarella since Swiss melts fine and has more flavor anyway. Now, corned beef. You could also do pastrami of course, it's also really good on pizza. But I had corned beef, so.

But how was it? Well, you know I like to be honest, I've admitted recipe failures in the past. Which is why I'm glad this was so fricking awesome. The cole slaw didn't get too soft, the corned beef didn't get dry and Swiss is a great melting cheese. And if anyone sells the idea I expect a cut. Now, if I were going to pair a wine with this I would suggest beer. Because it's pizza. I mean, really.

Homemade Spicy BBQ Deep Dish Pizza

Sorry I haven't been posting much, since I don't have any prep space right now most of the stuff I've been cooking really isn't very exciting. But I did make deep dish pizza recently with my 8" cake pan. Looks good, huh? It's the simplest one I make I think, it's pretty much my go-to pizza when I'm just cooking for me. It has bbq sauce, hot sauce and onion. Got a good crust on the bottom, too. I used store bought dough, but if I had had someplace to knead I would have made my own recipe. Man, I want one now. 8:30 in the morning isn't too early for spicy pizza, right? Heh.

Steak and Sauteed Veggie Pizza

This pizza is fricking amazing. For real.

I remembered seeing this post over at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother some time ago and wanted to try something similar. One thing I wanted to change up though was I wanted some vegetables on there, specifically peppers and onions. I also wanted them sauteed, which if you've never done for pizza I highly recommend.

I didn't get any step by step pictures because my girlfriend was home when I was making this and she was all up in my cooking space.

"When's it going to be ready?", "Is it ready yet?", "Why aren't I eating it now?", and so on.

But I have this one showing how the steak is mostly raw before I put the pizza in. See? Exciting, I know. Heh.

Ok, this is what I did. First I took some steak tips and seasoned them with some salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Then I just seared them real quick, just enough to brown the outside and put a little fond in the pan. Next I sliced them very thin.

Then I sauteed the peppers and onions real quick in the lovely mess that was left in the pan. Not enough to make them real soft, just enough to coat them in the flavors and oils. Then I made a pizza with it. And it was wicked good.Keeping the steak mostly raw meant it was nice and tender, if I had thoroughly cooked it first it would have been like jerky. I used barbecue sauce for my girlfriends pizza, because she likes that the best, and a spicy tomato sauce for mine.

As for the veggies, not only does sauteing them give them that extra flavor, but the oil coating them helps them brown a bit in the oven and just makes them extra good.

This method is great for steak since even if it doesn't quite cook all the way it's no big deal, but I don't think I'd recommend it for chicken or pork. You know, just in case.

Pizza Quick Tip: Less Greasy Pepperoni

Hands up, who has made a pizza that looks awesome before you pop it in the oven? Then you cook it and the pepperoni, salami, linguica or whatever fatty thing you slapped on there in a brazen fit of excess has turned it into a pool of molten grease?
(not pictured: lots of grease)

I know it's happened to me plenty of times. Then I learned a trick, although I don't remember from where, and now my pizzas are better for it.It's easy, just microwave the pepperoni, or in this case salami, between some paper towels for maybe ten-fifteen seconds. Not only does this make the pizza less greasy but it helps the stuff crisp up really nice, which is a good time. I don't know why you couldn't do this same thing with any kind of already cooked, thin sliced, fatty meat and cut down on the grease. If you're into that. For those wondering, this is a salami, green pepper and red onion pizza (heh, randomly and appropriately seasonal) with a spicy tomato/roasted red pepper sauce (like this one, without the sausage). It was wicked good.

I usually make it several times a week, how often do you folks make homemade pizza?

Mexican Pizza #1: Shredded Beef, Beans and Sour Cream

Yep, that's right, sour cream on a pizza. Or were you perhaps more concerned about the beans? Well I assure you, both were wicked good. Unfortunately this was done on a whim and with various leftovers so I don't have anything approaching a recipe for it, but I can tell you basically what I did.

I had made the beef and beans some time ago and had a little bit leftover that I had frozen. What it was was a couple pieces of seared steak tips that was leftover from something else (heh, this is like a third generation pizza) which I cut up into smaller chunks, then I tossed a can of beans (pinto, I believe and rinsed of course) a bit of chicken broth and some Mexican seasonings (cumin, cayenne, cilantro, oregano, garlic, onion, etc) in a pot and let it simmer for several hours, until the beef was shreddable. Then I shredded it and at the time we just scooped it up with tortillas.

Like I said, I froze the bit that was leftover and one day decided to make a pizza out of it. To add a bit of something different I decided to dollop some sour cream on there and it worked out really well. The little bursts of tangy sour cream went perfectly, although not surprisingly, with the spicy beans and beef and the whole thing just came together really well. While I can't give you a specific recipe (yet, that is) I strongly recommend trying out the concept, it was a lot of fun and wicked good.

Double Garlic, Blue Potato and Egg Pizza

-herbed pizza dough
-1/4 cup olive oil
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-baby blue potato, sliced thin
-red onion, sliced thin
-shredded mozzarella and Dubliner (or whatever you like)
-eggs

Heat the oil and garlic on low in a small sauce pan for 10-15 minutes. You don't want the garlic to brown. Roll out the dough and dock it. Brush it with just the infused oil, then top it with the cheese, potatoes, onions and bits of garlic from the oil. Bake in a very hot, preheated oven for 10 minutes then pull it out, crack the eggs onto it and get it back in the oven. Let it cook until the eggs are as done as you want, 5-10 minutes.

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You heard right, double garlic. There's some onion on there too, so I don't suggest making this for a date. Unless of course you're both into garlic breath, then hey, have at it. Heh.

This was quite possibly the strangest looking pizza I've ever made, but I guess that's not too surprising considering there are blue potatoes on it. The potatoes in question came in a "baby potato medley" and I didn't feel right mashing them up like I was doing with all the others. So I decided, completely out of character, to make a pizza with them. I had some herbed dough and figured I'd make a white one, since the crust would have so much flavor already.

I don't have a mandolin or particularly awesome knife skills, so I figured I'd slice the potato on the large slice side of my box grater. Worked alright, even if the slices aren't particularly pretty. Then I rolled out my dough and docked it. For those who don't know, docking is when you stab the dough with a fork or something of the sort to help keep air bubbles from forming. I find I get many less mutant pizzas when I do this. While the oven was preheating I had left a metal measuring cup with a quarter cup of olive oil and two cloves of minced garlic on the stove top.

See, my oven is wicked inefficient, lots of heat escapes while it's going. Over the course of the half hour or so that I preheated the oven the oil got nicely infused. You could also just do this over the stove on a low heat, if you have a quality oven. Anyway, then I brushed on some of the garlic oil (not the chunks, just the oil). That's garlic number one. Then just a whisper of cheese.Heh. I know, I know, it looks like an awful lot. And it is. That's just how I get down sometimes. It's a mix of mozzarella and Dubliner, the latter of which I've been enjoying a lot lately. Goes great with tuna salad.

Then I put on the potatoes, which had soaked for a while in salted water. I'm told that removes starch and a little moisture, letting them brown better. I wanted some onion on there so I sliced some red onion into thin slices. Thin enough to see though slices, even. And that was by hand, kids. Although they weren't all that thin. Heh. Then I took some of the oily garlic chunks and dolloped them around. That would be double garlic.

Then I stuck it in the oven for ten minutes or so, pulled it out and cracked a couple eggs on top. None of that got photographed though, I wanted to do it as quickly as possible.

But these are the eggs, they're really small and really fresh. I got them from the same source as last time I got fresh eggs and they were just as awesome. I left it in for another five or ten minutes, I don't remember exactly I'm afraid, I pulled it out when the whites were set.

And this shows you how bad my oven is. See the egg on the right? The yolk is cooked solid. See the egg on the left? Yeah. Slightly less so.

This is why I don't bake a lot of cakes in this apartment.

But solid or runny, it was awesome. The garlic crisped up and mellowed out really well, the potatoes didn't brown much, but they softened nicely and added a good earthy flavor. I did prefer the runny egg, I love runny yolks, but both added an excellent richness. That I suppose it didn't really need, what with all the cheese. But hey, it was most of what I was eating that day. Heh.

So who else has had eggs on pizza? What do you think of them?

Burnt End Pizza

Just a quickie, another pizza. This one was made with some burnt ends we got from a bbq place a while ago (that's the end bits of a smoked brisket, in case anyone doesn't know.).

I had thought when I ordered them it would just be chunks of burnt end but it was shredded and in sauce, which was kind of disappointing. So I took it home and made it into a pizza, which was awesome. Pizza is one of those things that can save so many less than thrilling situations. How many of you have used pizza to rescue something that turned out lackluster? C'mon, tell me a story.

Huli Huli Pizza

1 cup shredded pork
1 cup huli huli sauce
~1 lb pizza dough
pineapple chunks
chopped onion
mozzarella

Preheat oven to 450. Combine the shredded pork and huli huli sauce in a small saucepan and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Roll out the dough, cover it with the pulled pork mixture and top with cheese, pineapple and onion. Bake until browned and crispy.

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I have to admit a certain amount of surprise that no one guessed I would be making pizza with the huli huli sauce, although Joanne did say pulled pork so that counts for something. Heh. But pizza is what I made and it was good, although honestly I like regular tomato sauce better. This was a bit too rich and sweet for my taste. My girlfriend liked it, although she also thought it rich too. Maybe the half pound of pork had something to do with that... hm.

A while ago I slow cooked and shredded a pork shoulder that was seasoned with just salt and pepper. Then I froze most of it in various portion sizes, one of which was about a cup worth. That's what I'm using here.

I poured the huli huli sauce in a skillet and heated it up a bit. Then I just plopped in the frozen pork, even though I really should have defrosted it first. I tossed it around over low heat until it had thawed and the sauce had thickened a bit. At which point it would be great for a sandwich or burrito. Just saying. But what I did was spread it on some pizza dough, generously topped it with cheese, onion and pineapple and tossed it in the oven. A short time later, I took it out. Lovely, isn't it? I did it in a pan because my peel broke some time ago and I was out of parchment paper. But it gave it some nice crust bits and really it's all good. This pizza was serious business, I could only eat half of it and that's really not that much for me. I've done pizzas with shredded bbq stuff before and it's always been good. And there was nothing really wrong with this one, it's just not a "why don't I sit down and eat an entire pizza by myself" kind of thing. More a "I'll have a couple slices, a salad and a nap"situation.

So I've met people who can't even take the thought of pineapple on pizza and people love it, where do you guys stand?