Get your gooey on

Cheese was a great thing to happen to bread for centuries before peanut butter and jelly got in on the act. There is a reason why almost every sandwich is made just a little bit better by the simple addition of a slice of cheese.

But my favorites are always when cheese is the star of the show. And nothing does that like a good old grilled cheese sandwich.

Now, I will pause here to address some issues for sticklers. To me, a grilled cheese sandwich is cheese (classically, in my childhood, American or, better yet, Velveeta) between two slices of the whitest white bread to be found, slathered on the outside with butter. My grandmother insists that this is called a "dream sandwich" and that a real grilled cheese isn't buttered, but fried in melted butter. I think this is a semantical argument that doesn't matter to your clogged arteries. Then there are the people who call it a toasted cheese, which I say is a cheese sandwich on toasted bread and has nothing to do with a griddle at all.

Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, we can proceed. Kids love grilled cheese. I defy you to find a kid's menu that doesn't feature them. (TIP: you can even get them at Burger King if you ask nicely.) And the humble grilled cheese is, like pizza, a great vehicle for getting kids to try things they might not like.

Take me for example. When I was a child, I'd have eaten my left foot before I ate a tomato. Unless you put it in a grilled cheese sandwich. Grilled cheese with tomato and bacon was my mother's secret weapon when our garden overflowed with tomatoes that I looked at with distrust and contempt. (It also helps if you make the experience special. I remember many a late-night movie date with my mom: just us, some grilled cheese and tomato, and something wonderful on TV late at night while everyone else was in bed.)

But cheese and bread are adaptable, and turning a diagonally cut sandwich into wedges of pizza is a lot easier than putting square pegs in round holes.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich Pizza for Mom

1 pre-baked pizza crust

1 T. butter

½ pound provolone cheese, sliced

½ pound sharp yellow cheddar, shredded

1 large ripe tomato, sliced

½ pound crisp cooked bacon, crumbled

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Rub bottom of crust (yes, the side that touches the pan) and 1-inch edge of top with butter. Place on pizza pan. (If you are using pizza dough, melt the butter and pour into pan, just painting edges. I actually don't recommend this for this pizza because it makes it harder to shape.)

Top crust with provolone slices and cheddar. Bake 5-7 minutes, until cheese just starts to melt. Scatter tomato slices and bacon over cheese. Return to oven for another 7-10 minutes, or until cheese is bubbling and starting to brown.


Color conundrum – How do you like your cheese? Yellow or white? Many people will argue the point, saying one tastes better than the other, but anyone from a cheese-producing area will tell you, there’s very little, if any, difference. Most manufacturers add yellow dye to their cheese because they know some people won’t buy white. Others, like Cabot Creamery in Vermont, refuse to add dyes to their cheese on principle. While some people say the color was originally added to distinguish where the cheese came from, it really comes down to the seasons. Cows eat differently during the summer months pastured in a field than they do in winter stabled in a barn. Anyone who read the Little House on the Prairie books can tell you how Ma had to ring the juice out of a carrot to make the butter look better in the winter, when the fat didn’t have the same pretty yellow color.

Taqueso

Yeah. That's my word. What about it?

I know it's not hard to get a kid to eat a taco. No harder than getting him to eat a pizza. Tacos are fun. It's a salad wrapped up in a big Dorito, for crying out loud. What's bad about that?

Well, some of these recipes aren't about getting a kid to eat something he wouldn't normally eat. They are about opening a kid's eyes to trying new things and exploring new ways of doing things.
I do recipe contesting. That means that a big part of my life is spent looking at one thing and figuring out how to recreate it in a new, unusual, and hopefully appetizing way. I think I'm pretty good at it. For Steak-umms, I rebuilt barbecue using steak. http://www.delish.com/food/award-winning-recipes/steak-umms-recipe-contest
For the National Beef Cookoff, I reinterpreted my husband's favorite Caprese salad as a burger with my favorite grilled polenta instead of a bun. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/caprese-polenta-burger-small-plates-big-taste-recipe/reviews/index.html (And yes, having a recipe listed on http://www.foodnetwork.com/? One of the highlights of my life.)

Looking at things in new ways doesn't just open you to trying my Taqueso (get it? Taco + Queso?) Pizza. It can be the start of seeing how you can take something good and make it something great. Looking at things from a new perspective is creativity at its most basic, and has taken us into space, into microchips, into the DNA of the human body.

So make some pizza. It's good for your brain.

Taqueso Pizza

Tacos are really just little pizzas bent in half. Already sporting meat, sauce, cheese and toppings, the dish is perfect to make the leap from crispy tortilla envelope to flat bread shell.

1 pizza crust

1 pound ground beef

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small can green chiles

½ c. tomato sauce

2 t. chili powder

1 t. cumin

1 ½ t. sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

Cayenne pepper or hot sauce (optional)

1 c. shredded cheddar

1 c. shredded mozzarella

¼ c. pickled mild banana pepper slices

1 T. chopped fresh cilantro or parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

In a large skillet, brown ground beef over medium heat with onions and garlic. Add chiles, tomato sauce, chili powder, cumin, sugar, salt, pepper and, if desired, cayenne or hot sauce. Simmer 5-10 minutes. Spread on pizza crust and top with cheeses. Scatter with banana pepper slices. Bake 20 minutes. Garnish with cilantro or parsley.

Serving suggestion – Instead of topping your taco pizza with lettuce, salsa and sour cream, serve them alongside. Wedges of iceberg lettuce drizzled with salsa and topped with a dollop of sour cream make a great salad accompaniment to a fun pizza.

Going for a dip

January is a time for Crock-pots. And nostalgia. Here, we bring you both.

When I was little, we always had roast beef on Tuesdays (yes, today IS Tuesday, isn't it?) because I had Brownies after school, and Mom had been tricked into being Scout Leader. Throwing a roast in the Crock-pot made sure we had dinner ready when we got home. That was great. I loved my mom's pot roast, with those beefy potatoes and carrots that soaked up all that lovely broth all day. But the best part wasn't until Saturday.

That was when we had leftovers, yummy hot roast beef sandwiches dripping gravy. I still feel all gooey inside when I see them on a diner menu, but it wasn't long before I discovered something just as good in a different way. The French Dip. All the steamy heat of the sliced meat, piled on crusty bread instead of sliced white, with your own little cup of broth to dip in.

Sorry...I have to wipe off my keyboard. I'm drooling.

This would be a time where making a pizza doesn't just make a cute presentation and a convenient dinner your kids will eat without protest. I mean, sure, it does all that. But it also lets you create a hybrid between the comfort food of your childhood and the sophistication of what you've found since you grew up.

Oh, and the best part? With deli roast beef, you don't have to wait for leftovers.

Hot French Beef Pizza

1 pre-baked pizza crust

1 T. butter

1 large onion, sliced thin

Salt and pepper to taste

¼ c. beef stock or apple cider

1 t. sugar

1 pound thin-sliced deli roast beef

1 ½ c. beef gravy (homemade or bottled...I use homemade but I'm not a snob. Better to use a jar than miss out on a great pizza. But give your grocery store deli a check. Wegmans has great prepared sauces, including a lovely beef gravy, with its ready-to-go foods.)

½ pound provolone cheese, sliced

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

Melt butter in skillet. Sauté onion over medium heat until translucent. Add salt and pepper to taste, beef stock (or cider) and sugar and reduce heat. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until mixture is reduced and onions fully cooked.

Slice roast beef into ribbons and place in a bowl. Pour ½ c. gravy over beef and toss. Spread over pizza crust. Arrange cheese slices over beef, and top with onions. Bake 15-20 minutes, until beef is hot and cheese is melted. Heat remaining gravy and serve drizzled over each slice.


EXTRA EXTRA!!!

The Best in Beef – While shopping for steaks and roasts, many people look for the most lean meat, with very little white fat, but they might wonder why restaurant steaks taste so much better. It’s all about the fat. The very best grade of beef is Prime, a quality sold almost exclusively to restaurants. It is well-marbled with the fat, giving the meat a tender quality and rich flavor throughout. Choice and Select grades available at grocery stores have less marbling. The most expensive beef in the world, Kobe beef, has the most marbling, and it should. The pampered Wagyu cattle are fed beer every day, massaged, and brushed with Japanese sake! (Source: Giant Eagle, Inc.)

Pickin' on shrimp

For our Dinnertime Tuesday, I'm taking you all to my house on Christmas Eve.

Our dinner is a quilt of my husband's traditional Italian fish extravaganza, and the ironically Italian food my German family has made for Christams Eve for years and years.

For my husband, Christmas isn't Christmas without a table groaning under the weight of an ocean of fish. From fried chunks of succulent baccala to curly magenta tentacles of calamari, from salty anchovies to silvery smelt, there isn't a water-breathing beast safe while my husband is around. Especially juicy pink shrimp, which he pines to slather in a cocktail sauce so laden with horseradish it burns behind your eyes and makes you breathe so deeply you can feel the oxygen molecules in your blood.

At my house, Christmas Eve was usually lasagna or stuffed shells. Something more special than spaghetti, but easy to throw together hours beforehand and toss in the oven, forgetting about it until starving people gathered around the table. Then with a couple of quick steps, bubbling cheesy noodles are there like magic to satisfy the masses.

On Thursday, people will be gathered around my dining room table shoveling both traditions into their mouths as fast as they can. But in this post, you get the best of both in one lovely quick-to-make, easy-to-please pie.

Shrimp Scampi and pizza. Italian as the Mona Lisa, and great complements to each other. Shrimp, butter, garlic. What’s not to like? How about the expense? Instead of serving lots of pricey jumbo shrimp as a main dish, or using tiny, water-logged salad shrimp, stretch your shellfish budget by using good quality, middle-sized shrimp. Serving them on a crispy but filling crust means you can get away with fewer shrimp per serving, but everyone can have a real treat.

Buono Natale!

Shrimp Scampi Pizza

1 pizza crust

1 T. butter

1 T. olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 small sweet onion, chopped fine

1 lemon (zest and juice)

1 pound shrimp, peeled and de-veined (I use the 31-40 shrimp, meaning there are that many to a pound. If I can find bigger shrimp for a good price, I use that, but this isn't a place where you need the biggest you can find. It's also an easy recipe to cut down if you find good quality frozen shrimp in a 10-ounce bag. No one will really notice a few missing shrimp.)

½ c. white wine (No wine? Cheat. Use apple juice. It won’t be as dry, but it will still be darn good.)

Salt and pepper to taste

½ c. parmesan cheese

Fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

In a large skillet, melt butter in olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and onion. Add lemon zest, juice, shrimp, wine, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, until shrimp is pink and firm, about 3-5 minutes. Spread on pizza crust. Top with parmesan cheese and parsley. Bake 8-10 minutes, just until cheese is melted. Overcooking will make shrimp tough.


Extra! Extra!!!

Statistical Slices – Americans are eating twice as much shrimp today as they did in the 1980s, more than a billion pounds a year. The only seafood more popular is tuna. (Source: Earth Summit Watch)