A few days before the birthday food day, I started gathering ingredients. The first food stop was Whole Foods, where I picked up a few necessities. Next I made my way to Kansas City's East Bottoms district, the site of shabby riverside warehouses, factories, and railroad tracks. This trek was made for the purpose of procuring the best slab of bacon in town. The Local Pig is a charcuterie and butcher shop that specializes in working with local products.
On the actual day of our food fest, my sweetie and I headed out to the Overland Park Farmers Market. I love this market because it's not too big but is still bustling with people and the vendors are diverse in experiences and offerings. We picked up a bag of heirloom tomatoes, a box of sungolds, some sweet banana peppers (which by the aroma they give off, I'm guessing they've got some heat in addition to the sweet), a bunch of crisp green kale, a radiant eggplant, chives and scallions, some red onions and garlic, a bouquet of summer flowers and of course some perfectly ripe summer peaches.
We made two meals that served to fill us up and tire us out. Enjoy the recipes from our day!
Bacon-ey Pancakes
(Recipe adapted from 1964 e. Joy of Cooking, by Rombauer & Becker)
Yields 10-12 cakes
1 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. sugar
1 3/4 tsp. double-acting baking powder
Sift the dry ingredients into a medium sized bowl.
2 eggs
3 tbsp. melted butter
1 to 1 1/4 c. 2% milk
Bacon fat
Make bacon to eat with your pancakes and then add some bacon fat to the griddle. Beat the eggs. Mix together the milk and melted butter in a small bowl. Add the eggs to the milk mixture. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir until mixed thoroughly with no lumps. Turn the griddle on to medium high heat.
When the griddle is hot, spoon the batter onto the griddle. When cakes begin to form air bubbles, carefully flip the cakes. (Note, the cakes will turn a dark golden brown because of the bacon fat. Be careful not to burn them!). As you continue to make the cakes, turn the griddle heat down to low.
Serve hot and enjoy!
We ate our cakes with Local Pig jalapeno, brown sugar, bourbon bacon, fresh Chemex coffee, grapefruit and Minnesota maple syrup.
Birthday Pizza
(Adapted from Cooks Illustrated magazine and Fresh from the Garden)
Yields 1 pizza
(We made a second pizza, shown in some of the photos, from the Smitten Kitchen blog: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2010/03/breakfast-pizza/)
For the Crust
1 c. warm water
2 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. active dry yeast
3 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp. slat
Dissolve the honey in warm water. Add the yeast and stir until combined. Let sit for 5 minutes (you will notice froth on the surface). Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and combine until dough is formed (stir at first with a spatula and then use your hands once it gets too sticky for the spatula). Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes (shout out to Greg for doing all of the hard work!). Grease a medium bowl with olive oil and then add the dough, in a ball, to the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let rise for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, making sure to coat all sides with a thin layer of flour. Press the dough into a flat disk. Make a fist and drape the disk over your fist. Gently pull the dough down by the sides, rotating as you go, stretching the dough into a 12 inch circle (if you are afraid the dough will tear, you can roll it out after initially stretching).
For the Sauce
1 14 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes, salt free, drained
1 1/2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. red wine vinegar
1 large clove garlic (or 2 small)
1/2 tsp. table salt
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/8 tsp. ground black pepper
Place all ingredients into a food processor and mix for 30 seconds or until smooth.
For the Toppings
1/4 c. finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 c. shredded whole-milk mozzarella cheese
6 large basil leaves, torn into pieces
1/2 c. cherry tomatoes, halved
3 figs, sliced
5 slices prosciutto, torn into bite sized pieces
1 medium onion, caramelized
1/2 c. fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced into coins
30 minutes to an hour before baking the pizza (depending on how long it takes your oven to heat), place a pizza stone about 5 inches below the roof of the oven. Preheat the oven to 500F (and in our case, take the battery out of your heat activated smoke detector!). Place the stretched out pizza dough onto a pizza peel that has been slightly sprinkled with flour and cornmeal. Add 1/2 c. of the sauce and spread it around with the back of a spoon, leaving about a 1/4 inch border around the edge (the rest of the sauce can be frozen for later or used for dipping). Add the Parmesan and shredded mozzarella cheeses. Next add the basil, tomatoes, figs, onions, and prosciutto. Finally add the fresh mozzarella cheese.
Once the oven is preheated and the stone has been in the preheated oven for at least 20 minutes, slide the pizza from the pizza peel onto the hot stone. Be careful! This step is tricky. Use any sort of improvised maneuvers necessary to get the pizza in one piece from the peel to the hot stone without causing yourself harm! The end result will be worth it!
Bake the pizza at 500F for 8-10 minutes, rotating half way through.
Remove the pizza and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Slice, serve and enjoy!
Note: These pizzas were definitely "thick crust". I tend to prefer thin crust pizza, so next time I will make the dough 2 days ahead of time using less yeast. I'll cold ferment the dough in the fridge. This way, there is less carbon dioxide produced leading to a thinner, less airy crust (due to less yeast), but just as much flavor in the dough (due to the cold ferment). For that recipe, I plan to use 1 1/2 c. flour, 2 tsp. sugar, 1/2 tsp. yeast, 1 1/2 c. ice water, and 1 1/2 tsp. salt. I'll update you with the results.
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