Meat pizzas 肉入りピザ

I occasionally make pizza but most of the time our pizzas do not have any meat as a topping. We are not intentionally trying to make vegetarian pizza, they just seem to come out that way. This time, I made two meat pizzas because we had leftover meat balls and pork chops cooked in BBQ sauce. Also, because of the Covid-19 related yeast shortage, my wife made a starter (biga/poolish) for me so I could make pizza dough. In addition to saving our yeast, this method results in a very flavorful and nicely chewy crust.

The picture below shows the meat ball pizza. I made the meat balls from the trimmings of pork tenderloin. After a week, I heated up the meat balls in some tomato sauce which I make from skinned Campari tomato. This reheating serves to make the meatballs last a little longer. But the time had come. We needed to use them up or we would be making an offering to the garbage-disposer god. This is a pizza similar to Margherita with the addition of the meat balls. After the pizza came out of the oven, I garnished it with a chiffonade of fresh basil leaves and grated parmesan cheese.

The picture below shows the pizza before baking. I brushed the dough with garlic oil (olive oil with crushed garlic). I then covered the dough with thin slices of fresh Mozzarella cheese, spread the tomato sauce on the cheese, placed on the sliced meat balls and basil leaves. I baked the pizza in a 480F oven on a preheated baking stone for 6 minutes.

The second pizza, shown below, is topped with shredded pork chops cooked in BBQ sauce my wife made several days ago. The cheeses are a mixture of Mozzarella, Double Gloucester and Monterey Jack.

The pizza is shown below before going into the oven.

This was evening so we had red wine with the pizza. We ate one quarter of each pizza and wrapped up the the rest to enjoy at other times. These leftover pizza heated up well in the toaster oven making a perfect snack in the evening with red wine. Because of the meat, the top was kind of heavy but it is quite satisfying and the crust was unbeatable.

Prune and coffee muffin プルーンとコーヒーマフィン

This is my wife's binge baking again as she is making her way through the quick bread muffin section of the  "Pastries from La Brea Bakery" during the Covid-19 induced yeast shortage. It has rum-soaked prunes and ground coffee which give really nice flavor. As you can see in the picture below the muffin has a nice oversized top.

Shown below is what happened to the "runt" muffin my wife always makes specifically for me, so I will leave the others alone when I can't resist a taste. This one had barely stopped steaming before I busted into it. See the inside with lots of rum-soaked prunes.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rum (original recipe calls for brandy)
20 soft prunes chopped up
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 tbs. finely ground coffee* (might recommend an extra tbs would further add to the coffee flavor in       the final muffin)
2 sticks (8 0z.) butting cut into cubes and frozen
1 1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
1 tbs. vanilla extract

*This happened to be home roasted coffee beans to FullCity plus for our espresso.

Directions:
Put the prunes and rum in a measuring cup and heat gently in the microwave until just warm. Cover and leave them to soak overnight. Drain the prunes and cut into pieces. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and coffee. Pulse to incorporate the mixture. Slowly add the frozen butter pulsing until the mixture has the consistency of fine meal. Put the flour mixture in a bowl and add the prunes so they are coated with flour (this will help keep them from sinking to bottom of the resulting dough or clumping together) (#1). Mix the yogurt, eggs and vanilla. Add the yogurt mixture to the flour mixture (#2). Using a medium sized scoop put the dough into a heavily greased muffin tin (#3 & #4). Cook in a 350 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes until they are firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. When they come out of the oven let them rest a few minutes (#5) then move them to a cooling rack (#6).

These are truly remarkable muffins. The coffee flavor comes through and is pleasantly surprising. As a result my wife said next time she might add a bit more coffee. The combination of rum, prunes and coffee is a perfect harmony. Even though the original recipe called for brandy we think the rum is excellent. (My wife said she doesn't know why she substituted the rum, maybe because the recipes usually call for rum when soaking dried fruit in liquor?) The texture is very moist. We will be making these again.

Banana chocolate muffin バナナチョコレートマフィン

As we endure the corona virus inspired yeast shortage, my wife has been focusing on quick breads made with baking powder and soda. Both of which, we have in abundance. Also, under "stay-at-home" directives, she has been baking to her hearts content basically making her way through all the muffin recipes in the "Pastries from the La Brea Bakery" cook book. While taking an inventory of items in the freezer, she came across a bag of frozen red bananas which she had prepared some time ago to make her usual banana bread. She remembered that the La Brea cook book had a recipe for banana chocolate muffin and decided to use the bananas in that recipe instead. These muffins turned out to be more like a cake than a muffin but they are certainly good muffins. Since my wife reduced the sugar it is perfectly suited for breakfast.

Ingredients (makes 2 dozen muffins)
3 3/4 cup AP flour
3 cups sugar
2 Tsp baking soda
1 Tsp baking powder
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 cup of ripe banana, mashed (she only had 1 1/2 cups but went ahead without further adjustment)
5 eggs
1 1/4 vegetable oil

1 Tbs. vanilla

1/2 Recipe (makes 1 dozen muffins)

1 3/4 +1/8 cup AP flour

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/4 cup of ripe banana, mashed 

3 eggs
1/2 + 1/8 vegetable oil

1/2  Tbs. vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowel mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and cocoa powder (# 1). In another bowel mix the bananas, eggs and vegetable oil (#2). Combine the flour mixture with the banana mixture (#3). Using a large ice cream scoop fill a heavily greased muffin tin (#4). Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the muffins are firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean (#5). Let them cool for a while and remove from pan (#6).

These muffins don't rise so much as spread out. Thank goodness we put a cookie sheet under the muffin tin. Otherwise, muffin mixture would have been all over the bottom of the oven making quite a mess. As seen in #5, the muffins bled together making the tops heavy relative to the bottom so we had to cool them upside down as shown in #6 so the bottoms wouldn't collapse under the weight of the tops. Once they cooled completely, however, the bottoms could "stand up" to the oversized tops. Also, if we make these again we would try using two muffin tins.

These muffins were a mixture between a brownie and chocolate cake. They also reminded us of wacky cake but that may be because the main chocolate flavor came from the Hershey's powder used in both. They had a very chocolate flavor but we didn't taste the banana at all. The top was nice a crunchy. With the ridiculous amount of eggs that went into the batter the inside texture was very tender and the contrast between the crunchy crust and tender interior was very nice.

Puff pastry loaf with roast beef, cheese and potato salad ローストビーフ、チーズ、ポテトサラダローフ

My wife invented this loaf which is a variation of egg and smoked salmon in puff pastry. She already made one variation using smoked salmon, cheese and mashed potato. This time, we were in cleaning-up-leftovers mode. Although we rarely eat beef, one weekend we made a beef roast on the Weber grill with hot smoke. We used thin slices of the roast beef for sandwiches during the week but still had some left over. In addition, I had made potato salad a few weeks ago and a good amount was still left.  (The potato salad is made with rice vinegar and strained yogurt i.e. Greek yogurt in addition to the usual mayonnaise, and these two ingredients act as a kind of preservative. As a result the potato salad lasts a long time but even so there is a limit so we had to use it up). My wife came to the rescue with this dish using roast beef, potato salad and her variation of cheese stuffing. This is like a "pasty", all inclusive--starch, veggies and proteins from the meat and cheese.

Ingredients:
sheet of puff pastry thawed

for cheese filling:
4 oz. feta cheese
3 oz smoked mozzarella cheese
2 oz. Monterey jack
5 oz. ricotta cheese
2 large eggs
sprinkle of red pepper flakes to taste

Other ingredients
roast beef cut into thin slices.
cup of potato salad (or amount needed to top the cheese filling)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Crumble the feta cheese into small pieces. Grate the mozzarella and Monterey jack cheeses. Mix the crumbled and grated cheeses with the ricotta, egg and red pepper flakes. Roll out the thawed puff pastry on parchment paper. On half of the pastry dough, add layers of thinly sliced roast beef, the cheese mixture and potato salad (shown below).

Fold the other half of the pastry dough over the filling and seal the edges by painting on a mixture of water and flour and pressing the edges using the tines of a fork.  Dock or prick the top of the dough with the fork. (This lets steam escape as the loaf cooks). With the loaf still on the parchment paper place it on a rack and put the rack on a cookie sheet. (This allows the bottom to cook thoroughly). Cook for 25 to 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.

Again, you can't go wrong with this combination of pastry, meat, cheese and potatoes--its a meal in itself. The potato salad was an interesting addition. It added a slight vinegar tang and the mayonnaise yogurt blended into the cheese mixture adding a creaminess. The onions and carrots in the potato salad were a nice dimension that was not present in previous versions of this loaf. The smokiness of the barbecued beef also added its "voice" nicely. (Although the roast beef was very nice, we decided that maybe we preferred the saltiness of the smoked salmon used in previous versions a bit better). Slices of the loaf heat up well in the toaster oven. This is nice to have after work with a nice glass of red wine of course.

"Rescued" sour cream bread "救助”されたサワークリームパン

Due to the shortage of yeast during the Covid-19 pandemic, my wife has been relying on biga/poolish as the leavening agent for bread. She has experimented with substituting preferments in various of her favorite bread recipes with great success. So she decided to try making sour cream bread based on a recipe in "Beard on Bread" using biga. She made the biga the night before and by morning it had puffed up nicely. She used it to make the dough; making adjustments for the moisture and flour already in the biga. She made the dough in the morning but by 5:00 PM basically nothing had happened. The dough sat sullenly in the bottom of the bowl just basically where it had been in the morning. We consulted each other about what to do with the recalcitrant dough. Should we give it a time out by just putting it into the fridge and letting it spend the night getting its act together and hopefully rising? Then I suggested, "Maybe we should just cook it now like a focaccia". That sounded like a plan to us so I rolled it out on parchment paper. (This is a new technique I read about recently for getting these types of bread in and out of the oven and found it works very well). We decided to top it with cream cheese and black olives.

This is the loaf after it was cooked. It had some rise, at least it wasn't flat like a cracker.

Ingredients:
Biga:
1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sour cream
1/8 tsp yeast

Dough:
biga
3 tbs. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3 to 4 1/2 cups flour

Directions:

The night before baking mix together the biga, cover it with towels and leave at room temperature overnight. Next day in an electric mixer with a dough hook combine the biga, sugar, salt, baking soda and flour into the smooth elastic dough. Knead on the dough hook for 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from the bowl and hand knead a few minutes more. Put into the bowel and lightly coat with oil. Let rise.

In this case it did not rise. After some consternation and discussion it was decided the bread had been re-designated as focaccia and I stepped up to "center stage". I  took the dough out of the bowl in which it had spent the day and transferred it to a piece of parchment paper (big enough to hold the final rectangle). I stretched the dough into a rectangle shape, then folded all sides inward and stretched it again to make the same sized rectangle. I repeated this 2 times and ended up with the focaccia shape shown above. I covered it with plastic wrap and a towel and let it rise (hopefully) for another hour. Meanwhile I preheated the oven with a baking stone in it to 390 F. After one hour, I pressed the dough with my finger tips like I would do with focaccia bread. I brushed the surface with olive oil. At my wife's suggestion, I put small cubes of cream cheese and slices of black olives on top of the loaf. I transferred it still on the parchment paper using a metal pizza paddle to the baking stone and baked it for 30 minutes.

Surprisingly this bread was very good! The texture was dense and chewy but soft at the same time. The basic recipe was slightly sweet with a slight tang from the sour cream. Those flavors came through and went extremely well with the saltiness of the olives and the creaminess of the cream cheese. This turned out to be a very good breakfast bread that went well with coffee. It is a prime example of how "forgiving" yeast breads can be. We have taken to calling it "rescued" bread.  We wouldn't mind making it again but we are not sure we could reproduce the "mistake" that resulted in this version of the bread rather than the one we were expecting. We think maybe the ratio of biga to flour was not correct and most of the gluten was eaten by the resulting yeast so the bread couldn't rise. (Just a theory. Who knows? We'll be working on this.)

Pickled grapes with Japanese style curry ブドウのピクルス添え日本風カレー

In order to use up some cooked pork tenderloin before it went bad I decided to make a Japanese style curry but I did not have any commercial Japanese style curry roux. So I "winged it" and made my own curry roux. In addition I also didn't have the usual Japanese curry condiments, so continuing the "winged-it" theme I made "pickled" grapes and served them on the side.

The pickled grapes have a sweet-sour taste with cardamon flavor which really made the whole thing special.

To make the dish a bit more decadent, I topped the curry with a sunny side up fried egg (using pasteurized egg).

Pickled fruit (This is from Milkstreet magazine).


Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups rice vinegar (unseasoned)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tbs kosher salt
6 wide strips of lime zest plus 1 1/2 tsp lime juice
4 wide strips of lemon zest plus 1/4 cup of lemon juice
3 white cardamon pods

Directions:
I did not have any lime so I did not use it. Put everything in a pan and heat to boil and dissolve the sugar and salt. Cool it to room temperature.  I only added grapes but  the original recipe also suggested the following fruits could also be pickled; apple, melon, pineapple, plum, and strawberry. Leave the mixture at room temperature  for 48 hours then refrigerate.

Japanese curry (my short cut method, makes about 4 small servings)


Ingredients:
Cooked pork, cubed (whatever amount you have, this is leftover control).
1 medium onion, small dice
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 small piece of ginger root, peeled and finely minced
2 parsnips, peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes (or more traditionally potato)
2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into cubes
10 green beans (I happened to have blanched green beans), cut into 1 inch segments
1/4 cup of AP flour
2-3 tbs olive oil
2 tsp Garam Masara
Salt to taste
2-3 tsp Japanese curry powder (I used S&B)
2 cups chicken stock (or more depending on the thickness of the curry)

Directions:
In a pot on medium flame, add the olive oil, onion, garlic and ginger and sauté until fragrant and onion slightly caramelizes (5-7 minutes). Add the flour and sauté until the bottom of the pan develops a brown crust, add the curry powder and keep sautéing for several more minutes. Add the chicken broth and using a silicon or wooden spatula, mix well trying to dislodge the brown crust on the bottom until, the sauce thickens. Add the pork, carrot, parsnip and simmer (This is usually cooked in a broth, before adding the curry roux, I am taking a shortcut). Simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Just 4-5 minutes before serving, add the garam masala, season with salt and pepper and add the green beans.

To make it more luscious, I topped this with a sunny side up fried egg with runny yolk (using pasteurized eggs). For a quick shortcut curry for leftover control, this was pretty good. The pickled grapes also added, a sweet and sour tang with a subtle but lovely cardamon flavor which really made the pickles something special.

Brined pork chops with homemade BBQ sauce ブラインドポークチョップとBBQソース

I usually do not get pork chops but, one day during the Covid19 pandemic, I could not find any other cuts of pork, so I ended up with fairly thin bone-in pork chops. After some thought about how to cook it, I decided to brine the pork (although we are not a true believer in brining). After brining I cooked the pork in a frying pan. My wife made her BBQ sauce to go with it. We served cooked baby red potatoes and sautéed green beans on the side; a classic American meat-and-potato affair.

Ingredients

Three bone-in pork chops (what I got was thin -1/2 inch-probably thick chops would be better).

For brine
2 cup water
1/3 cup Kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves removed and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Mix the above ingredients in a pan, boil to dissolve the sugar and salt and let it cool down to room temperature.

For BBQ sauce (my wife made this)
2 medium onions coarsely diced, sautéed in olive oil until soft and caramelized (15-20 minutes).
1 cup of ketchup, added to the pan and cooked,  until the sugar in the ketchup is caramelized (the color will change from red to more dull brownish color).
 2 tbs  rice vinegar plus 1/2 cup water (or chicken broth),
1/4 cup lemon juice,
1/2 tsp paprika powder,
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce,
1/2 tsp salt,
2 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs mustard

Mix the above ingredients and simmer for about 20 minutes.

I brined the pork for 5 hours in the  refrigerator. Just  before cooking, I took them out of the fridge, rinsed and patted them dry. Using olive oil and butter, I cooked the pork chops few minutes on each side. At the end I added some of the BBQ sauce to the pan and continued to sauté for a few more minutes until the sauce covered the meat.

I think the chops were too thin to make good brined pork chops. The sauce was good but the chops were just so so. Later we cooked the leftover cooked pork chops with chicken drumsticks in the BBQ sauce in the oven in a covered casserole dish for about 1 hour or until the meat was tender. I then removed the meat from bone and hand shredded it to make something like pulled chicken and pork.

This preparation was pretty good. The tang of the BBQ sauce permeated the meat and the meat was very tender. This is probably how we would prepare pork chops in the future.