Bonus Pictures: 4th of July

Just a quick note and a couple of pictures today. We're in the middle of packing up everything we own in preparation for movers to cart it all away so posting might be sporadic the next couple of weeks but will return to a more reasonable schedule by the end of July.

Until then, we'll be doing smallish posts heavy on pictures and stories about our drive across the country.

Below, there are a few pictures of how we spent our 4th of July weekend. So, some fireworks, graveyard strawberries, a fantastic barbecue, and generally awesome times.

This may have been our last 4th of July living in Ithaca, but I think we gave it an admirable sendoff.

Deep Dish Pizza

Zachary's Chicago Pizza is one of my favorite restaurants of all time but one I don't make it to very often, for a couple of reasons. First, it's all the way on the other side of the country (at least for the next few weeks. By this I mean that we're moving, not it) and second, with pizza this intense, a little goes a long way.

The thing that's amazing about Zachary's is that it's pizza unlike any other I've found. While it touts itself as Chicago style, it's really its own creature, visually similar to the deep dish pie that's been made so ubiquitous by the Pizzeria Unos popping up in strip malls all over the country but miles away from that in taste. Zachary's specializes in stuffed pizzas, essentially pies in which all the toppings are encased in a buttery crisp crust shell--thick on the bottom but thin on top--and then covered in beautifully red peeled tomatoes and basil. This is the ideological opposite of New York pizza, thick and hearty where New York pushes thin and light, bright with fresh tomato flavor and toppings like spinach and mushroom that explode in your mouth where New York slices are often cheese-forward, bubbling crisp and deliciously greasy enough to have you reaching for a fourth napkin before you're halfway through. They're both great ways to approach pizza but Zachary's is so unique, the taste so completely Zachary's, so complexly alive, that it's hard to think of it as a pizzeria at all. This is no simple hole in the wall with a hot oven burning little square scars into the arms of the staff, this is a real restaurant and the food you're being served is not just pizza, it's pizza heightened, it's pizza cuisine. So it's not something you eat everyday.
The trouble is, our cravings for a thick complex slice of Zachary's come more often than our flights to California. Much more often. So we find ourselves all the way on the other side of the country, far beyond the possibility of Zachary's pizza. Yet for some reason, we never really thought our way to the obvious solution: if we want Zachary's and we can't get it, we just have to make it.

So we tried.

This dough recipe comes from Peter Reinhardt's amazing American Pie which I can never appreciate enough. It's an absolutely phenomenal book on pizza that I get more from every time I look.

Chicago deep-dish pizza dough
from American Pie
(makes 2 18-ounce dough balls)

18 ounces unbleached bread flour (I used all purpose and it worked fine. I might actually suggest it because of the delicious tender lightness I encountered.)
2/3 cup fine-grind yellow cornmeal
2 Tbsp sugar
2-1/2 tsp kosher salt
2-1/4 tsps instant yeast
5 Tbsp corn oil
1-1/2 cups lukewarm water

Combine all ingredients in an electric mixer and, using the dough hook, mix on low for 4 minutes until a coarse ball forms. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes then mix again on low for 2-3 until the dough is tacky and passes the windowpane test. Form the dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap to rise until doubled. Divide into two equal pieces and round them into balls. Cover in olive oil and let rest, covered in plastic wrap, for 15-20 minutes.
When they've rested, roll out each dough into a disk about 14 inches in diameter. Lay each disk into a 10 inch round cake pan (or springform) and press into the corners and up the sides. The first time I did this, I thought the instructions were to make the dough stretch over the top of the pan so I did and the pizza turned out looking like it had a popped collar and very little substance. It looked like a douchebag is what I'm saying.

For a thinner crust, put immediately into a 400 degree oven, for a thicker crust cover dough-lined pans with a kitchen towel and let sit 30-60 minutes before baking. Either way, bake the crusts for 3-4 minutes to set them, remove from oven and let cool, then top. It should go cheese, toppings, (another layer of crust if you're going for the stuffed pizza which I didn't decide to do), sauce, and a richer cheese like parmesan. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, rotate pan, then bake for another 20-25 until the edges are golden and the cheese is browned.

We topped it with slices of zucchini, turkey pepperoni, onions and mushrooms sauteed in wine, mozzarella, fresh basil, and crumbles of goat cheese which was... a lot of stuff and in the future I think I will thin down the toppings list so we can focus on the actual flavors.
So here's the rundown: the dough wasn't as buttery as I wanted (next time I might try this actual recipe from Zachary's which Dana found ages ago and which was then lost among my bookmarks until, of course, today), the sauce a little over processed and not the rich whole tomato sauce Zachary's uses, the toppings kind of... muddled, but it was a good first step. And it reiterated a good lesson we seem to get over and over and are just beginning to retain: it's much easier to approximate a dish at home than we ever expect. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's close enough to quell the cravings for a while. Long enough, certainly, for us to make it back to California and have the real thing.

Cardamom Almond Biscotti

High up on my list of things I'll miss most about Ithaca are the Jane Austen tea parties Eisha and I have been hosting since last summer. It started with a screening of Pride and Prejudice with an incredible spread of tea, scones, marmalade, cheese, crackers and madelines, and from then on we were hooked. Accompanied by an always-changing assortment of people and ever-evolving spread of food, we plowed through the fabulous 2008 BBC Sense and Sensibility, hit a definite low with Mansfield Park (really, don't bother with that one), thoroughly enjoyed the 2007 Masterpiece Theatre version of Persuasion and, most recently, undertook a double screening of Emma and Clueless in a single afternoon.

In the past, I've contributed madelines, rice pudding, scones, and more scones to our tea parties, but this week I went for something different - biscotti - because I've been dying to try a new recipe since that awesome hazelnut chocolate batch. I needed something a bit more subdued, though, to pair with tea rather than coffee, and in the midst of packing I came upon a Martha Stewart Living from last July. Lo and behold, in the back there was a recipe for Cardamom Biscotti. Perfect.

What follows is my version of this recipe. I haven't changed much about the ingredients (I did go with toasted amonds rather than blanced), but the instructions were pretty hard to follow, so I've clarified them here. Personally, I think anyone should be able to bake, not just people with the experience to know that "mix flour into wet ingredients" means to replace the whisk with the paddle attachment, then add flour a little bit at a time. Come on, Martha. You're better than that.

Cardamom Almond Biscotti (adapted from Martha Stewart Living)

• 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 3 3/4 ounces toasted almonds, chopped fine
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg white, for wash
• 2 tablespoons sanding sugar
  

Directions

1. Put rack in center of oven and preheat to 325 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Pulse toasted almonds in a food processor until chopped fine. Whisk the following into the flour mixture: almonds, cardamom, and 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar.
   
4. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and vanilla until foamy. Make a small indent in the middle of the flour mixture, then pour in eggs and vanilla. Mix with hands or wooden spoon until all the flour is incorporated, and a soft dough has formed.
5. Lightly flour work surface, and transfer dough to it.
6. Using as little flour as is necessary, roll dough into an oblong log. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with either parchment paper or a silpat. Flatten the log out by gently pressing on the top with the heel of your hand.
   
7. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until the log is just the slightest bit golden and lightly cracked, then remove from oven.
8. Lightly beat egg white and brush onto biscotti. Sprinkle log with sanding sugar, and place back in oven for 15 minutes.
   
9. When log is golden brown and slightly hard to the touch, remove from oven and let cool on wire rack for 10 minutes.
10. Transfer biscotti log to a cutting board, and cut into it at an angle using a sharp, serrated knife. The slices should be approximately an inch thick.
11. Put a wire rack onto the baking sheet and arrange slices, flat side down, on the rack. Bake until crisp and devoid of moisture, 15-20 minutes.
12. Remove from oven and let cool. Enjoy with tea.

Even though this recipe will always remind me of Ithaca, it's also very connected to our future plans. Justin and I are moving to his hometown of Modesto, California in a few weeks, where we'll be very near to his parents, who live and work on an almond farm. And Modesto is known for its huge Portuguese population, including Justin's family, all of whom use cardamom in copious amounts when cooking. I'm interested to see how our cooking and baking will change, once we get there.

What the hell are garlic scapes?

Earlier this week, Alex strode into the studio carrying a huge cardboard box hoisted like a prize. "Garlic Scapes!" he declared, but honestly, he might as well have been speaking another language. I was convinced I'd heard him wrong, that actually the box he came in with would contain something from my known universe of food. Something that sounded like garlic scapes. Pickled scallops, maybe. Charles grapes. Dana and I were both throwing at the time, something close to a million sorbet bowls for me, a similar amount of spoon rests for Dana. We switched off our wheels and turned in unison to peer into the depths of the box from which tiny green tendrils were winding. This is when it became clear that these were not a known entity, not a gnarled plate or a licked date (I'm reaching). No, these were something else entirely.

Garlic scapes are the curly green stalks that grow from a head of subterranean garlic. They look like long green onions wound into loose ringlets; they seem like thin delicate little things but then resist like bedsprings when unwound. But most important for my purpose here is what they taste like. So lean back and imagine this: when you take a bite of raw garlic--come on, I know you've all done it at some point or another--you get this out of tune rock band of sharp flavors, pungent and overpowering, and lurking quietly beneath all that noise is the flavor that the garlic will cook down to, buttery and rich and very very... well, garlicy, but its hard to even detect it, let alone make sense of the flavor for all the raucous that the bitterness is raising on your tongue. Garlic scapes in their raw state are like that experience with the volume turned down and the talent turned up. You get some of that pungency, a virtuousic solo instead of a skull-splitting shred, and some of that buttery garlicness, but the disparate flavors are suddenly in harmony. There's still some bite, but it's not going to leave you with a headache, there's enough richness to bring you back for more. Cooked, they're somewhere between a green bean and asparagus, grassy and light with just the barest hint of garlic flavor. They're completely awesome and they're amazing in everything.

See, you probably know all this, you in your well stocked gourmet kitchen, you superstar with a whisk and a saute pan, but I didn't. I had no idea. I had never even heard the word garlic scapes before Alex sent some of that enormous box full home with us, let alone processed the flavor.
But since we did, they've been in everything that has come out of the kitchen. The photos here are just of the pizza we put them on (raw but chopped thinly on the bias) but this week we've braised them in turmeric with chicken breast, added to a fresh gardeny pasta sauce, tossed into quesedillas. Every meal lately has featured them in some form or another and while I can't get enough, I feel like the bag we brought home hasn't even changed in size. It's like a mass of wriggling squid in freeze frame everytime I look in the fridge but I swear to God I think they're multiplying.

Anyway, suddenly this thing I'd never heard of is an integral component (and one that, I know, won't last long). But maybe the weirdest thing about this discovery is this: learning about garlic scapes was like learning a new word and then finding that it's incredibly common. I hear them mentioned everywhere. I've suddenly tuned in only to realize that half the nouns in the language right now have been replaced with scape. Somebody goes to the farmer's market and brings home a bunch of scapes, somebody else has a long standing opinion on their proper use, a third person keeps a huge bag full in her fridge, half the world posts (far superior) blog entries about them. I mean, come on, world, how long has this been going on? And more importantly, WHAT ELSE DON'T I KNOW ABOUT!?

If there are suddenly garlic scapes all over the radar, what else might be just underneath the surface? Is there some sort of better heat? Is there a different water? Tell me! Wait, no, don't.

In essence, I guess this is the wonderful ecstatic thing about becoming a foodie. Food was always such a flat map for me, a known quantity, and suddenly in the last couple years I'm learning not only that I don't know everything about food but I'm constantly reminded that actually I might not know anything and, God willing, maybe I never will. I'm hard pressed to imagine anything better than continuing down this road and eternally finding nestled past every bend an entirely new way of thinking and feeling, a new experience that is always, inevitably, a game changer.

This week it was garlic scapes, but just imagine what could be peeking over the edge of the box next year, or ten years from now. What will I be discovering then? What will we be eating? I have absolutely no idea, not even the idea of an idea. Now tell me. Could there be anything more exciting than that?

Easy Peasy Rice Pudding

With only 26 days to go, Justin and I are officially in the "use up excess food items" phase of our move. In the last week, this has meant: 2 huge batches of hummus (to use up a giant jar of tahini and a pound of dried chick peas), three bowls of salsa (to get rid of the jalapenos we've had in our freezer since last summer's farm share adventure), and a big batch of rice pudding (to use up, well, rice). Still to go: that bag of frozen tilapia that doesn't really taste right, canned tomatoes and lots of chicken. On second thought, maybe we should throw out that tilapia.

Anyway, my go-to rice pudding recipe is actually from All Recipes, which does, occasionally, get things right. You probably don't want to be pulling any non-Midwest-centric recipes off there (these ladies will find a way to put cream of chicken soup in an enchilada recipe), but for home cooked staples? They know what's up. I like to throw in a few spices at the end, but otherwise I don't make too many changes. It's quick, it's easy, it's creamy and it tastes like childhood. What more can you ask for?

Easy Peasy Rice Pudding (adapted from All Recipes)

3/4 cup uncooked white rice

2 cups whole milk, divided into 1 1/2 cups and 1/2 cup

1/3 cup white sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

2/3 cup golden raisins

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cardamom
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1. Bring 1 1/2 cups of water to boil in a medium saucepan, add rice and stir. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until rice is cooked.
2. Add 1 1/2 cups of the milk you've set aside, sugar and salt to the saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat 15-20 minutes. The mixture should look thick and creamy.
3. Stir in leftover 1/2 cup of milk, beaten egg and golden raisins. Cook two more minutes, stirring constantly.
4. Remove from heat. Stir in butter, vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Or, if you don't like your rice pudding so heavily spiced, don't add those last three things. See what I care!

There's something wonderful and homey and not-at-all summer appropriate about warm rice pudding, but luckily (or unluckily) we've had dreary weather for all of June, so warm desserts are just fine. For the record, though, this recipe tastes great chilled, too. So go ahead, people. Make it. You probably have all of the ingredients in your pantry, and you know you want to.

note from justin!
Dana first made this rice pudding when I had taken swooningly ill with a little flu not long ago. While I was laid up on the couch half-heartedly watching Gladiator and The Matrix (you know, real visceral gettin' better movies) and occasionally retching into a purple bucket, she whipped into the kitchen and came out moments later with a bowl of warm rice pudding that made everything better forever. I cannot get enough of this stuff, it is a gift from God. I would eat it four times a day if I could but, thankfully, never remember it exists at the right time to actually bring home the ingredients. Luckily, Dana has no such mental blockage and trundled home the ingredients yesterday. It's a good life.

Oh, second note: this post is dedicated to Michele whose surprise birthday party we attended last night. Standing in her gorgeous yard, buried amid throngs of her adoring friends and family clamoring for attention, she actually found the time to single us out with a hearty "What, no posts this week?" So, Michele, from both of us, happy 50th, go make yourself some rice pudding!

Focaccia

Since I bought Dana that baking handbook, she's slowly been transferring her obsession with it to me. It's like a parasite, slowly creeping in to lay its eggs in my ear. Pizza, the larvae whispered a week ago, brioche, it's been saying today, focaccia it said earlier this week. This wouldn't be such a problem except that I listen; I can't resist. I am a complete and total sucker for savory baked goods, I acknowledge this and I do not apologize.

The focaccia we made was good but I felt like it didn't rise to its full potential. Some of this is just a technique thing, I'm sure. I don't think I was doing the kneading precisely right, and I added the salt too early, and I might have mixed in a little too much flour in the process but here's the real problem: I made kind of a little fire in our oven when it was baking. Like, a little one. Kind of.

See, here's the thing, we didn't have the right size pan. Ours was short in both directions by a couple of inches. When I realized the problem, early in the recipe, I just shrugged. What could possibly go wrong? When it came time to soak the dough in olive oil (yes, you soak it in half a cup of oil before you bake it, I'll get to that), though, and the oil came pouring up over the sides of the pan onto the counter, what could go wrong became very very clear.

When the oil-soaked dough--on top of which I'd dutifully poured the remaining 1/4 cup of oil against my better judgment--went into the oven on its oily pan, and I went into the office to kill time playing mafia wars on facebook, a funny thing happened: smoke went everywhere. I came out of the office to check on the bread about ten minutes into its baking time to find half the house filling up with acrid whitish haze and not more than fifteen seconds later the smoke detectors in the hallway caught on to the problem as well. So I whipped the nascent bread off its rack (noting, as I did so, that all the lovely oil I'd poured on top a few minutes before had disappeared and a curiously similar puddle of goop was now boiling across the floor of the hot oven). I did the best job mitigating the mess that I could by sopping most of it up with a sponge which promptly and surprisingly melted, but by the time I actually got the smoke to clear, the smoke alarms to quit their irritated bleeping, and the oil to stop emitting that noxious smell like burning paper and pitch, the bread had already been out of the oven for fifteen minutes. This when it had only been in the oven for ten. Afterward, I threw the troublesome little thing back in and estimated as well as possible the remaining bake time.

After some trial and error, the bread that I pulled golden and fragrant from the oven was I think much drier than intended but still incredibly delicious. Here's the recipe, but I strongly suggest against taking my advice on this one.

Focaccia
from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

7 cups bread flour
3.5 cups warm water
1 tsp active dry yeast
2 Tbsp coarse salt
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Sea Salt for sprinkling (which I found pretty unnecessary given that 2 tablespoons of salt in the dough)

Whisk together flour, yeast, and water, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until tripled (about 2 hours). Add the salt and, using the dough hook attachment of your mixer, mix for 3-5 minutes on low, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl as needed. When the dough begins to climb the sides of the bowl, raise the speed to medium and beat for 15 seconds then transfer to well floured surface for kneading. Fold the dough over onto itself a couple of times and transfer to a floured bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let double again.
I'm going to skip some steps here because you need to just go out and buy this book but suffice to say that after a couple more kneading/resting cycles, you have a dough heavily bubbled and slack. Preheat the oven to 450 and pour 1/2 cup of the olive oil into a 17 by 12 inch rimmed baking pan. Dump the dough ball into the oil and turn to fully coat. Then press it down to fill the pan, letting it rest for a few minutes if it starts to resist. When it has fully filled the pan, press your fingers into it to leave impressions and then pour the remaining oil over the top and, if you're using it, sprinkle with salt.

Pop it in the oven for 25-30 minutes (barring some disaster) and when it comes out it will be thick and crusty and the bottom almost fried from the pools of oil that, if you're lucky, will not have been flung from the bread by oven spring as if bounding from a trampoline.

Even with all the mishaps, it's a bread worth keeping. And today at lunch, finishing the last slice with ripe tomato, a poached egg, and fresh basil, I never would have guessed that anything had gone amiss. So it was a little toothsome, a little more dense than it might have been, it was still another pretty awesome showing from a cookbook that has yet to disappoint.

Good going, Martha.

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

When I ordered my first scoop of Gianduia ice cream from the Cayuga Lake Creamery, some ancient, golden seal split open inside me and I knew, in that moment, that chocolate and hazelnut were the most perfect flavor combination in the world. I also saw a gigantic, orange-tinged explosion in my mind's eye, and the number 2012 appeared on my ankle, whatever that means. Anyway, the cravings for chocolate and hazelnut haven't stopped since.

So when I found a recipe for chocolate hazelnut biscotti in my new Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, I knew it had to be mine. And oh, how it was coveted, and much easier than I would have thought.

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti
(Adapted from Martha Stewart)

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup Scharffen Berger unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups hazelnuts
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups graunulated sugar
soymilk, for brushing
sugar in the raw, for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, blend together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, chocolate chunks and hazelnuts until combined.
2. Using whisk attachment, beat eggs and granulated sugar at medium speed until light and foamy. Replace whisk with paddle attachment, switch to low speed, and add the flour/cocoa mixture a little bit at a time. Do not overmix!
3. Flour your work surface and turn the whole dough onto it. It should be pretty sticky at this point. Separate dough and roll into three logs of equal size. Transfer to baking sheet (I lined mine with a Silpat, but you can use parchment paper, too) and flatten slightly. Brush tops with soymilk (or egg white), then sprinkle with sanding sugar.
4. Bake 20-24 minutes, until firm to the touch. Transfer logs to wire rack and cool for 20 minutes.
5. Transfer logs to cutting board. With a nice serrated bread knife, cut each log into 3/4-inch diagonal slices.
6. Place a wire rack on your baking sheet and arrange slices (cut side down) on the rack. Bake until biscotti are firm and dry, 10-15 minutes. Let biscotti cool completely, store in an airtight container and enjoy a sinfully delicious treat with your coffee in the morning.

I mean, I'm not saying these biscotti are going to help you survive the inevitable apocalypse, but I'm also not saying they won't help you survive it. They certainly can't hurt.