Licordoodles

My Christmas cookie baking is knocking pizza off the table for a few days.

I recently found anisette sugar, the kind you would use for fancy coffee drinks, at a gourmet shop. Anisette is one of my favorite holiday flavors, giving a licorice snap to my favorite holiday bread, to my husband's favorite biscotti, and to pizzelles. But this sugar gave me another way to use it.

Snickerdoodles have always been one of my favorite cookies. My grandma's snickerdoodles were so sweet and cinnamony, they were even better than chocolate chip, and that's saying something. So this licorice-flavored sugar made me wonder if I could reproduce them with an anisette punch.

I could. I did. OMG.

I started with this light recipe for snickerdoodles from Betty Crocker's website.

All I did was add 1/2 teaspoon anise extract to the dough, and swap out the cinnamon sugar mixture at the end for 1/2 cup of my anisette sugar to roll the balls of dough.

Heaven. Crackling, sweet, licorice-flavored heaven.

This actually makes me determined to try other variations. Almond, perhaps, or citrus. Yum.

Welcome to my family tradition

For some families, Christmas smells like cinnamon, or peppermint, or cloves. Maybe your holiday is about fudge, or sugar cookies, or fruitcake. It might be German stollen, or Italian pannetone, or an English plum pudding.

In my family, Christmas smells like licorice.

To be precise, the smell of Christmas is anise cooked with dried fruit, in a dark bread, best served cold from my grandma's enclosed but uninsulated back porch, which served as a poor man's deep freeze during the Minnesota winters. Christmas, my friends, is bittebrot.

Technically, it should be birnebrot, as it is really Swiss pear bread. My great-grandmother's recipe has it spelled correctly. But I've never heard anyone say anything but "bitte" which I've always found appropriate, as bitte is kind of the German version of aloha or shalom, a word that might mean both please and thank you.

Sometime as we approached the holidays, Grandma would make up massive batches of bittebrot, and it would fill every pan she could find. Loaf pans, cake pans, pie plates, casseroles, free-form loaves on cookie sheets. You never knew what shape the bread might take.

Grandma Marie often lamented that hers didn't taste exactly like her mother-in-law's. Grandma Dehn Sr.'s would have a bread lighter in color, that rose higher. Grandma's was denser and deeper in flavor. Both were wonderful, but I always preferred Grandma Marie's.

Mine is somewhere in the middle...and something kind of different.

When I first stepped up to try my hand at our family tradition, it was the same way it had been made forever. Mixed by hand in a giant bowl with a wooden spoon. Kneaded by hand. Shaped by hand. And it was delicious. It was also hard and time consuming, and frankly, I'm a fan of quick and easy.

Enter the bread machine.

It took some trial and error. There were some failures. There were some spectacular failures. But ultimately, I succeeded in translating my grandma's big-batch bittebrot into a single loaf recipe that all but makes itself. (And Aunt Patty? I'm sorry it's taken this long to get the recipe to you.)

It starts with simmering apples, raisins, and other dried fruit into a juicy compote. Traditionally, it should be dried apples, dried pears, prunes, raisins, and maybe some apricot. I use what I've got. Today, for example, was fresh apple, raisin and dried cranberry.

Cover with apple cider and simmer for 30 minutes or more. Cool to about 100 degrees. (Don't break out a thermometer or anything. If it feels a little warmer than your skin, it's fine.) Measure out a cup and a half, and make sure the liquid, and not just the fruit, comes to the top of your measuring cup. If you don't have that much liquid, add enough warm water to make it up.

The secret, of course, is the anise. I double it up, putting a teaspoon of extract in the liquid, and adding another couple of teaspoons of ground anise (or crushed seed, but crushing anise seed is a tedious business that may also crush your soul) with the dry ingredients.

The rest is simple. Three cups of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and a package of yeast. (To be honest, I don't use a package of yeast. I buy my yeast in gigantic two-pound packages. I use about a tablespoon.)

Now, you may be asking yourself, why won't she just write this like a regular recipe? Well, I'll tell you. This recipe, since it's a tradition, isn't a formula. It's a story. You should learn it the way you would learn it from your grandmother, in explanatory steps.

And also...all bread machines are different. Some want the liquid first, like mine does. Some want the dry ingredients first. If you've got a liquids first, add the fruit and juice, with the anise extract, then top with flour, salt, ground anise, and yeast. I use my machine's sweet dough setting, like you would use for cinnamon raisin bread, with a light crust.

What you get is a loaf that is chewy but light, with the sweetness of fruit and the strength of anise. And Christmas just isn't Christmas without it.

Apple of my eye

This is my son, Joseph. He is 3 feet of pure energy. Whoever said perpetual motion was impossible never met my kid. If we could harness what makes him go, we could end our dependence on foreign oil.

I'm not entirely sure what it is that makes him tick. I know that right now, a large part of his energy source is apples. He loves them. He eats them in any way, shape or form. He likes them with pork roast, or baked in apple cake, or roasted into a chunky baked sauce, but he's really a purist at heart. He particularly likes them stolen whole out of a big basket when he thinks no one is looking.

And if one apple is good, two apples are obviously better.

Oh, and if you come to my house, and feel like an apple, make sure you take a good look at it before you take a bite. He likes to stake his claim, taking a surreptitious bite, before putting it back in the fruit bowl for later. I try to stay on top of this, but he's stealthy.

He also has a special place in his heart for apples in their liquid form. Fresh cider from Way Fruit Farm in Stormstown, PA is his new best friend. (It used to be my favorite fall indulgence. This year, I have yet to finish a cup. Someone keeps drinking it when I'm not looking.)

And so, for Joseph, I give you my favorite recipe for pulled pork. With apples. Because it's damn good together.

First, you take a pork roast. I don't care what cut it is, except to say tenderloin is a complete waste of money here. Where other cuts will get more buttery and succulent as they cook, tenderloin will go from juicy to tough to sawdust, an unappetizing progression. So get yourself a nice hunk of cheap pig and throw it in the crockpot with lots of pepper and some salt. Then slice up one onion and one large tart apple. I like Cortlands, but Granny Smith is good, too. Add them to the roast with a cup of good cider. (Will apple juice work? Yes. So will a can of beer. But I think cider gives the best flavor.) Cook on low heat for 8 hours. Or longer. I like to put mine on before bed on a Friday night and by gametime on Saturday, I'm ready to eat pulled pork while I watch the Nittany Lions.

When it's done, shred with forks and return to the crockpot. This is where you can get creative. Some barbecue sauce is good. So is some spicy mustard and honey. But my favorite way to enjoy this is with just a few tablespoons of brown sugar, which plays up both the sweetness of the cider and the richness of the meat. It's good on crusty rolls, plain white bread, on a hot dog bun sharing star billing with a smoked sausage. But it's also good spread on a pizza crust, topped with some jack (or pepper jack) cheese, and cut into thick, drippy wedges.

It might give you as much energy as Joseph. And if you get that much energy, let me know. You can babysit.

Say CHEESE!

The difference between a bad pizza, a good pizza and a really fantastic pizza can be summed up in one simple word.

Cheese.

If you go out and have a really good pizza, and can't really pinpoint what this one has that another one doesn't, chances are, it's the cheese. Good pizzarias guard three things jealously: their crust recipe, their sauce recipe, and their cheese blends.

Most people assume that "pizza cheese" is mozzarella, but mozz is only a part of the story.

See that? That's the good stuff. Fresh mozzarella. But I've got a secret. Not that great for pizza. Oh, it's got a place in the pizza pantheon, namely on the Margherita pizza, with sliced uber-fresh tomatoes and basil leaves. That's divine, but it's also high art, not really the kind of thing that goes with movie night or tailgating.

The more familiar mozzarella is what we know from the inside of a million pizza boxes and tubes of string cheese and molten hot crunch coated sticks of deep-fried goodness. It's drier than fresh mozz, and melts into delicious webs of stringiness.

And then, there's provolone. Shredded and mixed with the mozzarella, it's a fantastic way to add more flavor to the mild taste of the other cheese. Provolone has a slight nuttiness, and is sometimes smoked. As it ages, it becomes more sharp. Sliced provolone is great for creating layers of flavor in your pizza. Place a blanket of slices over your crust, then top with sauce and shredded cheese to keep crust from getting gummy.

Shredded parmesan is very different from powdery grated parmesan. It melts like mozzarella, but has a real flavor punch. A little goes a long, long way. I buy a quarter pound chunk of fresh parm every month. I use it in a lot of stuff, but those four ounces last and last.

A simple cheese pizza is one of my favorite things. Nothing extra. Nothing fancy. Just a couple kinds of cheese, tossed together on some bread with a little sauce. I can give you this easy formula for pizza success:

1 crust + 5 slices provolone + sauce + 1 c. shredded mozzarella + 1/2 c. shredded parmesan.

Easy to add any topping you want, but trust me. Just once, keep it simple. Stop and savor the cheese.

Vampire B-Gone

For some people, the best part of an Italian meal is the pasta. Or the sauce. Or the antipasto. Or the salad.

For me, it is garlic bread. The kind that is absolutely saturated with butter and smells like a can of vampire repellent. Covered with a melted blanket of gooey cheese? Even better.

My husband is unnatural and wrong. He doesn't like garlic bread. He's a very bad Italian, in my opinion, but I'm willing to go with it because he is content, even happy, to eat naked slices of plain bread while I retain possession of all the butter-soaked goodness.

In my opinion, there is no better example of garlic bread the way God intended it than Schwan's Five Cheese Garlic French Bread.

Isn't it lovely? Sigh. The crust is basically just a vessel to contain the butter, and a platform for the cheese. It should come with a vial of nitroglycerin, and I just can't bring myself to care.

It's hard to get exactly the right effect at home. Too much butter and it gets soggy. Too little and it's light on flavor. Not the perfect bread and it falls apart. I've tried it a dozen different ways, and it's always paled beside my ideal. Until now.

My recent forays into the doctoring of store-bought pizza have had an unforeseen benefit. I may have made the best garlic bread ever.

I started with a plain cheese pizza. I used a store-brand rising crust. A DiGiorno knock-off. I followed the package directions for oven temperature.

And then I got out the butter. I melted 2 ounces in a small saucepan, and added the same amount of olive oil. Before it was too hot, I threw in two cloves of chopped garlic, and cooked over low heat. I threw in a tablespoon of fresh parsley from my garden, and a half-teaspoon each of dried basil and oregano. I added a dash of pepper. (I might throw in some crushed red pepper next time, just for kicks.) And most important, I watched it carefully and pulled it off the flame before the garlic turned brown. Burned garlic makes for nasty garlic bread.

When I heard Dracula pass out cold on the porch, I drizzled the fragrant mix all over the frozen pizza. Then I popped it in and...

Yeah, don't be ridiculous. Like I'd stop there. That's when I broke out more cheese. A cup of mozzarella, and a few tablespoons of parmesan. The shredded kind, not the grated stuff in a can. I'm not usually a big ingredient snob, but everybody has the hill they choose to die on, and decent parmesan is mine. At least in this instance.

Then in the oven it goes. No pizza pan. Just straight on the rack, or if you are lucky enough, on a blistering hot pizza stone, like this one.
                                                                














I've actually got a professional restaurant kitchen pizza oven, a souvenir from the days when my husband actually offered some of the finest pizzas in the greater Pittsburgh area. I love it. But I find it easier to just use my regular oven with a pizza stone most of the time, and a good stone gives you almost exactly the same quality. If you can get the effect of a $1000 oven with a $36 stone, go for it.

When you're done, you get something that looks like this:

It's got everything my favorite garlic bread does, with the added punch of extra herbs and pepper, and the slight background tang of the smattering of pizza sauce, which is reduced to a condiment instead of a starring player by the garlicky butter.

There's also another perk. Eating garlic bread for dinner can get you some side-eyeing. But pizza is clearly a meal, even if it's one that will keep the Twilight crew at bay.

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.

Yoo hoo! Food Network!!!!

So...here's the story.

I auditioned for the Next Food Network Star on Tuesday. They said that they would contact people in 24-48 hours.

As it is now four days since I bared my bubbly soul to the casting chick in a banquet room at the Loews Hotel in Philadelphia, I am guessing that I will not be giving Guy Fieri a run for his money anytime too soon. (Although I do hold onto somewhat futile hope. When I was on Food Network Challenge, they said I'd hear by the end of the week. I actually heard from the production company more than two weeks later.)

But one of the things they wanted people to do for the show was to start creating original recipes. At least 30 original recipes, actually, to take into semifinals and callbacks and the thrilling last stage...the month of intense final competition with other contestants in January/February 2011.

Well, I might not be getting called back, but damn it, that call for original recipes has spurred some real creativity in me.

And therefore, you aren't getting any pizza today. Nope, today, the good people (okay, person) at The Pizza Principle bring you...French toast.

I start with an admission. While I adore French toast, it's something I hate to order out because it isn't my French toast. And my French toast is weird and stems from the fact that I am too impatient to fry things properly.

I soak my bread completely in the custard, so saturated with egg that it's almost impossible to take out of the batter without a spatula. And I come damn close to deep frying it. I can't just lightly grease a griddle and let it go. Why? Because I don't let it cook long enough if I do that, and then I end up with grilled bread filled with raw egg. Blech. No, I heat half an inch of oil to a blistering temperature, then ease in the bread and turn once. The result is a crispy slice with a pudding-like interior.

Now we get to the original part.

I spread it with a hearty portion of pumpkin cream cheese filling, top with another slice of crunchy custardy goodness, and then pour on my grandma's homemade brown sugar syrup, pumped up with a little toasted pecan.

Now, if NFNS calls me, I can't use this recipe. But you can. Try it. Sooooo good.

Pumpkin Cheesecake French Toast

Toast:

8 slices good bread (Hey, use what you've got. If that's Sunbeam, that's fine. But if you've got acces to some really yummy brioche or challah, you'll be really happy you tried it.)
4 eggs
1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. cream
2 T. sugar
1 t. vanilla

Filling:

8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. pumpkin
2 T. brown sugar
1/4 c. powdered sugar
1/4 t. cinnamon
1/8 t. nutmeg

Syrup:

1 c. brown sugar
1 T. corn syrup
1/2 c. water
1 T. rum
1/4 c. chopped pecans, toasted

Mix all toast ingredients except bread. Soak slices thoroughly. In a large skillet, heat 1/2 inch of oil (I like canola) to about 350 degrees. Gently add slices to oil, cooking until golden brown on one side and turning carefully to finish. Remove.

Mix all filling ingredients. Place one slice of toast on plate. Add a scoop of filling. Top with another slice of toast.

Mix all syrup ingredients in a small saucepan. Heat until brown sugar is dissolved. Pour over toast.

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.

From the garden

Okay, my garden happens to be under two feet of snow and ice at the moment, but there's someone out there supplying the world with veggies right now, and thank goodness! Because I'm in the mood for a little vegetarian extravaganza right now.

There are two problems with a veggie pizza most of the time, but those problems have the same root. A lack of imagination.

Problem #1? Often, a veggie pie just isn't very good. Usually, it consists of the four basic vegetables in any pizza joint: mushrooms, onions, peppers and olives. There's nothing wrong with those vegetables at all, but are they fresh? Frankly, I believe canned mushrooms on a pizza should be a hanging offense. Black olives must be canned, but they also can't be old. And the onions and peppers are also a conundrum. Raw, and the pie can cook before they do, giving an unpleasantly jarring difference when eaten. Cooked, or more to the point, overcooked, and you've got a wet, limp mess.

Problem #2? Mushrooms, onions, peppers and olives may be the four things on a pizza menu, outside of anchovies, that are hardest to convince a kid that can't even be helped by melted mozzarella. And all the reasons in Problem #1 are exactly why.

There is also an intrinsic complication to a vegetable pizza, should you break outside that mold and embrace new and interesting plant life. When you cook a vegetable, it releases water. The only thing worse than water on dough is water on bread. Sog sog sog.

So what do you do? Give up the idea? Abandon vegetables entirely? Let the kids win? Don't be silly.

Roasting your veggies solves all your problems at once. A drizzle of oil and seasoning, a trip through the oven, and you've got tender, sweet bites of vegetables your kids love, maybe one or two new ones to try, plus you've tamed the liquid inside, preventing a pie that needs a life preserver.

"Where's the Meat?" Pizza

1 pizza crust

2 c. mixed fresh vegetables (Use your imagination. There is a world of vegetables that work just fine on pizza outside of the your standard peppers, onions and mushrooms. Tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, snow peas, even fresh green beans all work beautifully.)

3 T. olive oil

Salt and pepper

1/2 c. tomato sauce

1 c. shredded mozzarella (This is also a good place to use the fresh stuff, but only if the kids are going to appreciate it. While pushing veggies that might be a stumbling block, you might want to stick with the cheese that won't be a struggle.)

¼ c. grated parmesan

1 T. parsley, chopped

1 T. fresh basil, chopped (or 1 t. dried basil)

1 T. olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Clean and cut vegetables into bite-sized pieces. What veggies are you using? Harder varieties like carrots should either be in very small pieces, like the pre-cut, pre-washed matchsticks for salads. Cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, etc., don't need tons of cooking, so they can be left slightly larger, but it's nice to have all your veggies in a uniform size. Also, don't forget to take into consideration how much your kids like a vegetable cooked. My son, for example, likes his broccoli raw or cooked to death, nothing in between. Oh, and if you are using fresh tomatoes, make sure you seed them to keep your pie from getting soggy.

Toss the veggies with 3 T. oil and salt and pepper. You can experiment with more seasoning if you like and your kids will tolerate it. I like dill, garlic and rosemary. Spread on a sheet pan (make sure this pan has sides or the oil could cause problems) and roast in oven. This is the part I can't give you numbers for. Depending on the veggies you pick and how cooked you like them, this part could be 10-15 minutes or more than 25-30. Check them regularly, and remember they will get more cooking time on the pizza, so don't let them brown too much.

Spread sauce on crust. Start with half, adding more if necessary, or saving some to serve with the pizza. Top with vegetables. You can either arrange one variety at a time, or toss them together and scatter them evenly. Add the cheeses and finish with herbs. Drizzle crust with olive oil.

Bake about 15-20 minutes, or until cheese is melted and golden and crust nicely cooked.

EXTRA EXTRA!!!

Deadly Dinner – For hundreds of years after being discovered in the New World, Europeans and American settlers believed the tomato was poisonous. Not only was it closely related to the deadly nightshade plant, but the highly acidic tomatoes actually did kill wealthy diners who ate off pewter plates. (The acid caused lead to leach out of the plates. It was really the lead that did people in.) The tomato’s reputation was saved by Colonel Robert Gibbons Johnson, who munched a ripe, red fruit publicly in Salem, N.J., and lived to tell the tale. (Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica)

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)

Bigger than a bread box?

Not everyone who wants fresh homemade pizza wants to deal with mixing and kneading with her own two hands. Frankly, just thinking about the sticky, gooey feeling of a yeasty dough on my hands, where it dries into a tight, plastery mess makes me frantic to wash my hands.

But I love to make fresh bread. Oh, the quandry.

And that is why I love my brother. In a Christmas related tangent, several years ago, he bought me one of my favorite kitchen tools. My bread machine. (Insert delighted sigh here.)

My bread machine lets me make fresh bread on an almost daily basis. Everything from crusty Italian for my husband to "school made" rolls for my siblings to my updated version of my grandma's traditional Swiss pear bread, bitterbrot. And it doesn't require anything more than throwing things in the pan and pushing three buttons. No mixing. No kneading. Absolutely no icky hands.

Now...should I want to make rolls, or sticky buns, or...oh, I don't know...pizza? Then I have to get up close and personal with the dough, but by that point, it's an elastic, springy mass, perfectly pliable and non-gooey.

Making pizza dough in the bread machine doesn't just mean less mess. It can mean more flavor. Even a simple cheese pizza can get an influx of flavor by adding great ingredients to the bread dough itself rather than putting on toppings. And picky eaters might be more likely to try olives in the crust than seeing black polka dots on top of their cheese.

1 c. warm water

¼ c. milk

1 T. sugar

1 t. salt

1 T. oil

3 c. bread machine flour

2 t. bread machine yeast

Layer ingredients in bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Place on dough setting and let the machine work its magic. In about an hour or so, depending on model, you’ll have all the benefits of homemade dough without the work or sticky hands.

Variations are even easier in a bread machine since most models have a built in beeper that tells you when to throw in extras. You can try the ones here, or go for something different. There are things I will attempt with a bread machine that I never do by hand.

Variations:

Olive Pizza Dough - Add ¼ c. sliced black olives to dough when your machine permits, or during the second kneading.

Red Pepper Dough - Add 2 T. coarsely chopped roasted red pepper.

Spicy Pizza Dough - Add 2 T. crushed red pepper flakes, ¼ tsp. cayenne pepper and 2 T. grated parmesan cheese.

Pepper Jack Dough - Add ¾ c. shredded pepper jack cheese.

Extra Extra!!!

The Best Thing Since What? – What’s the big deal about sliced bread? Well, until the 1928, nobody ever saw a whole loaf of sliced bread. Bread, if you didn’t bake it yourself, came to you from the bakery in one whole unsliced loaf. Otto Frederick Rohwedder initially built a machine in 1912 that sliced bread, but no one was interested because of fear the slices would quickly become stale. Sixteen years later, his upgraded model that both sliced and wrapped the loaves was first used in a Missouri bakery. No one is quite sure when “the best thing since sliced bread” was first uttered.

Grandma's Old Red Devil

Welcome to Saturday, the first in The Pizza Principle's "Special Request" series.

I got a lot of great feedback after yesterday's post on the day-by-day reformatting of the blog. So thanks so much for that.

The girls at the NestBump (Hi, Nesties! Hi, Bumpies!) have asked to see some of my non-pizza recipes. With Joseph's birthday (The Big 2) coming up next weekend, I mentioned the chocolate cake he'll be having for his special birthday dinner, and it's going to be our first "request."

My grandma made this cake ALL the time when I was a kid. And when my dad was a kid. And probably when she was a kid. It's a really old recipe, and as far as I'm concerned, it's absolutely perfect.

Grandma's Red Devil's Food is plain and simple, a moist, chocolaty cake that isn't too rich or too heavy, and is utterly perfect with a simple white icing. Grandma usually made hers with melted New York vanilla ice cream instead of butter and milk, just thickening it to a spreading consistency with powdered sugar. Absolutely divine.


Grandma's Red Devil's Food Cake

1/2 c. cocoa
1/2 c. boiling water
1 c. butter
2 c. sugar
1 T. vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 c. sour milk (I've also used sour cream. It's good, but a little richer. Not a bad thing, but not Grandma's. If you don't have sour milk, add a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk.)

Just mix together, a step at a time. The batter will be a little thinner than your typical box of Betty Crocker. That's okay. Butter a 9x13 cake pan, pour it in, bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, until the center is springy.

Frost how you like. I've had it with Grandma's frosting, cream cheese frosting, 7- minute frosting, canned Pillsbury frosting...there's really no bad way to go. But give Grandma's ice cream icing a shot. It really is worth it. (And flexible. Whatever you've got in the freezer will be fine.)

No bones about it

What is the deal with buffalo wings?

For some strange reason, frat boys and sports fans the world over seem to love sucking teensy-weensy bits of meat off unwieldy bones while tossing back great quantities of beer. I just don't get it.

It’s not the sauce, or the dressing, or even the beer I’m questioning. It’s going through all that trouble for such a tiny return with wings that have been cut in half to make them even smaller.

Besides, we’re not living in caves anymore. I think humankind has evolved beyond the point where we need to gnaw on bones. If you must gnaw on something, make it a pizza crust.

1 pizza crust
¼ to ½ c. wing sauce (as hot or mild as you like it) or…
3 to 7 T. melted butter
2 to 5 T. hot sauce (depends on how hot you like it, and how much butter you are using)
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
1 pound chicken fingers (Deli are best; frozen are fine.)
1 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
½ c. matchstick carrots, raw
½ c. diced celery
2-4 T. blue cheese or ranch dressing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Toast in oven about 5 minutes.

Paint crust with wing sauce. (Making your own? Mix the butter, hot sauce and Worcestershire, and spread it on as thick as you like.) Cut your chicken fingers into bite-sized pieces and scatter on pizza. Cover with cheese. Top with carrots and celery. Bake about ten minutes, or until cheese is melted but veggies are still fairly crisp. Drizzle with dressing. Slice and serve.

EXTRA EXTRA!!!

One hot chick – Clarence, N.Y., takes its poultry seriously. Home to the National Buffalo Wing Festival, the town crowns a “Miss Buffalo Wing” every year. How do you decide who carries this honor? With three criteria: personal appearance, a chicken wing taste test, and off course, buffalo wing trivia.

Mangia, parmagiana!

In honor of our upcoming traditional holiday, we have a somewhat traditional pizza.

And a clever way to get a kid to try something that might otherwise make him run screaming from the room.

You should remember from our meatball sojourn that I dislike actually "tricking" someone into eating something he doesn't like. Sorry, Jessica Seinfeld, but pureeing things and hiding them in cake batter doesn't teach a kid to like spinach. It teaches him you'll lie to him for your own purposes.

But parmagiana can make a kid receptive to a style, just enough for you to change up what that style might cover. The Parmagiana Principle, anyone?

Chicken, veal or eggplant, a crispy cutlet of something sautéed until golden, then sauced with rich marinara and smothered in melted cheese is a classic staple of any Italian restaurant. Just the name conjures up images of checkered tablecloths and Chianti-bottle candleholders.

Parmagiana is how my mom got me to eat both veal and eggplant for the first time. Both are favorites of mine today that I would never have experienced otherwise. She didn't trick me with a fried slice of eggplant and tell me it wasn't chicken after I swallowed the first bite. She told me up front it was something new, but it would taste kind of like the chicken parmagiana I loved, so I was willing to give it a try.

Admittedly, I don't have to do this for my son. At almost 2 years old, eggplant is just about his favorite thing on the planet. But I have gotten other kids (and a few adults) to expand their culinary viewpoints in a few easy steps via a good parmagiana. My picky niece and nephews actually volunteered to try it at Alfredo's in Epcot. (I was so proud.)

And since it’s already two thirds of a pizza, why not go the extra step and settle the whole succulent mélange on a crust? As a pizza, parmagiana goes from retro-restaurant chic to casual culinary fun.

Got a particularly picky picky eater? Don't use the fancy Italian word. Call it Chicken Nugget Pizza. What kid could possibly say no?

1 pre-baked pizza crust
1 pound breaded chicken fingers (Does your deli counter have chicken fingers, the good all-white-meat kind? That’s what you want. You can also use homemade or frozen breaded chicken cutlets cut into strips.)
1 c. spaghetti sauce (or see the Classico sauce recipe)
1 green pepper, sliced
1 c. shredded mozzarella
¼ c. parmesan

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

Cut chicken fingers crosswise into bite-size chunks and arrange over crust. Pour sauce over chicken. Place green pepper in microwave-safe bowl with about ¼ c. water. Cover and cook on high 1 minute. Drain. Scatter peppers over chicken. Combine cheeses and sprinkle over crust. Bake 20-25 minutes. Cheese should be melted and chicken heated through.

Variation:

Veal – Substitute one pound of breaded veal cutlets for the chicken.

Eggplant – Slice one small eggplant crosswise into even slices. Season with salt and pepper. Dredge in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. Fry quickly in hot oil (part olive for flavor, part vegetable, peanut or canola for high temperature cooking). Substitute for chicken.

Extra Extra!!!!

Foreign Food Facts: In Italy, veal Parmagiana is called cotolette alla Bolognese. Loosely translated, that means Bologna slice. (Source: About.com)

Make a Break, Fast

Ask any frat boy. Pizza is great breakfast food. More tests have been passed and early morning classes reached with cold pizza fuel than Wheaties have won Olympic gold. But a half-empty box lying on the coffee table under a pile of Intro to Psych books isn’t the only way pizza and breakfast can come together. There is definitely room for pizza in your morning routine after you’ve given in and become a full-fledged grown-up.

Still, the kid-friendly idea of pizza for breakfast is a great way to appeal to the real kids in your house. While you might have to arm-wrestle your offspring to convince him to sit down and eat an egg before rushing for the bus, what self-respecting ‘tween is going to turn down a slice of pizza as he’s running out the door?

Even better, it’s a breakfast that doesn’t have to be a nutritional compromise on your part. It isn’t a fatty drive-thru meal. It’s not a sugar-soaked, ultra-preserved dessert in breakfast’s clothing. When you make a breakfast pizza, you are tailoring it to exactly what your children will eat without scrimping on what you want them to eat.

Petrified of what they’d say at the PTA? Don’t worry about it. After all, bread has historically been a part of breakfast. Topping it with some typical breakfast foods is a natural way to go.

Huevos Rancheros Locos

Okay, I confess. Real honest-to-Pedro huevos rancheros feature fried eggs, which I love. However, whole eggs just don’t work as well on a pizza. In experimenting with different breakfast pizzas, I came to one conclusion very early. Scrambled is the way to go. And with rancheros, it’s a perfect pairing. The spicy sauce and melting cheese meld better with the soft, forgiving scrambled egg. The result is easier and less messy, but with familiar flavors kids will appreciate. (And I found it much easier to get kids to eat scrambled eggs with extras than fried eggs on their own.)

1 pre-baked pizza crust
¾ c. salsa (as hot or mild as you like it)
2 T. butter
6 eggs
2 T. milk
1 c. cheddar cheese
½ c. sour cream
½ c. salsa
Optional: crushed corn chips, jalapenos, chopped green chiles, bell pepper, onion, cilantro, parsley,
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Bake 5 minutes. Spread with salsa.
Melt butter in large skillet. Beat eggs with milk and cook, stirring frequently, until soft set. Spread over salsa. Top with cheese. Bake 10 minutes.
Drizzle with sour cream and remaining salsa. Finish with optional extras. Slice and serve.

Extra Extra!

To Beak or Not To Beak – While “salsa” means something very specific in America, in Spanish, it simply means sauce. That could mean almost anything, from the chocolate-enriched mole to a rich French béarnaise. But what most people associate with the word salsa is actually pico de gallo, a chunky tomato, onion and pepper concoction that translates as “beak of the rooster.” Sounds weird, but today, salsa has really cut the mustard, replacing ketchup as the number one condiment in America.

A German-Italian alliance is forged!

Okay, that might sound a little scary to some. But this isn't about keeping the trains running on time or going after the rest of Europe with a whip and a chair. It's about introducing delicious German food through a classic Italian staple.

You see, my husband is Italian. Both sides, all the way back to the Naples and Calabria. Me? I'm a Germanic mutt. My family tree has a German trunk, with major branches from Switzerland, Austria, and Prussia. Our kitchen is a metaphor for our marriage, alternately producing veal Milanese and wiener schnitzel.

My husband loves German food. My father-in-law doesn't particularly trust anything that isn't a steak or a bowl of pasta. This pizza was a way to produce the ethnic flavors I love in a comforting, familiar form for him.

Oktoberfest!

You don’t have to wait until fall to appreciate juicy German sausages cooked in beer, or mustard with a spicy kick different from Dijon or hot English varieties. A pizza crust topped with Deutschland delicacies is a welcome slice of October any time of year.

1 pizza crust
1 pound bratwurst or kielbasa (Yes, I know, kielbasa’s Polish.)
1 beer
1 sliced red onion
¼ c. spicy German mustard
1 c. sauerkraut
1 c. shredded Swiss cheese
1 c. mozzarella cheese

In a large skillet, combine sausages, beer and onions. Simmer, covered, until sausages are plump and cooked through. Remove lid and continue cooking until beer is just evaporated. Remove from heat. Let cool about 5-10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Spread crust with mustard. Slice sausages into bite-sized pieces. Scatter onions and sausages over crust. Top with sauerkraut. Combine cheeses and sprinkle on pizza. Bake 15 minutes or so, until cheese is melted and starting to brown.

EXTRA EXTRA!!!

The gang’s all beer – When most people ask for a beer, they don’t think about what kind of drink they really want. For most people in the U.S., a beer is really a pilsner, a clear gold drink with bohemian roots. But that isn’t the only lager on the loose. A beer by any other name might be an ale, a stout, a wheat, a porter or a lambic. Each has characteristics as different as varieties of cheese or wine.