Deep Dish Pizza

As a former resident of Chicago and partner of someone raised on Lou Malnati's, I must say this pizza is to Chicago-style as Arlington Heights is to Chicago: close, but pretty much an hour away. It's pretty much my best compromise between taste and hassle.

So I started with a sourdough crust. I used the usual amount of starter (about half a cup, or a heavy half cup) as I would for a loaf of bread. To this I added 2 cups of white flour, a good teaspoon or two of salt, about two tablespoons of melted butter, a few tablespoons of white sugar, and maybe half a cup of water (just enough for the dough to come together, no more). Like regular bread, I put this in the mixer to knead for 15 minutes, adding white flour as necessary. I put the dough ball in a sprayed, floured springform pan, and pressed the dough out to the edges. I sprayed the dough with cooking spray, covered the top in plastic wrap, and put the pan in the un-airconditioned laundry room to rise for about 14 hours (I made it at 7am, dinner is 9ish pm).

While the oven was preheating to 350 degrees, I cooked my ugly tomatoes (maybe about three cups, diced) in a saute pan with a tablespoon or two of oil. This is important because too much moisture from the tomatoes can make the dough soggy. I cooked them for about 8-10 minutes, until they released a lot of water but before they broke down into mush. Lou Malnati's tomato sauce has some texture to it, so I wanted to preserve this in my sauce. At the last minute (literally, for the last minute of cooking) I added a handfull of chopped fresh basil and oregano (but a tablespoon of dried would be fine), salt and pepper, and one chopped clove of garlic.

I set a strainer over a bowl, and poured the tomato mixture through this to get rid of excess water. I still wanted some structure to my tomatoes, so I couldn't cook all the water away. I had probably 1/3 c tomato liquid in the bowl; I'll use this in a soup or in a bloody mary, maybe. 

You can--and it's probably preferable to--use canned diced tomatoes here. I definitely will in the winter, when I don't have bowls of tomatoes on my kitchen counter. For canned tomatoes, I would still cook them with some herbs, and maybe some garlic.

At this point I drizzled a teensy bit of olive oil on top of the dough, and sprinkled a few good handfulls of shredded mozzerella cheese (just the kind from the bag at the grocery store) on top, enough to cover well. I put the tomato sauce on top of the cheese (this is how Chicago style works, people). 

I put this in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes; I then turned the oven up to 400 and cooked another 10 minutes.

The photos are noticeably better in this post because Christian took them.

Grape Pie

Yeah, I know. Grape pie? I was skeptical at first, too. But, with our grape vine in the back yard, we had too.many.grapes. (Well, too few for wine but too many for anything else.) I was drying them (into raisins that, unfortunately, did not dance and sing motown), putting them on savory flatbreads, pureeing them into smoothies, cooking them down into fillings for turnovers (more on this later), cooking them down to put into a coffee cake, eating them straight, you name it. A pie seemed like an easy way to consume mass quantities of grapes. And it turned out great, actually. You can use this as a blueprint for almost any fruit pie--you just need to adjust sugar and corn starch to the sweetness and water content of the fruit you're working with.

For the crust, I doubled Chow's pie crust recipe so that I could make a double-crust pie. A few things seem really important to making a truly outstanding pie crust: (1) don't overmix the dough--it won't all be fully incorporated until you add in the water; and (2) let the dough rest in the fridge before rolling it out; this was the first time I let pie dough rest in the fridge before rolling, and it made a HUGE difference in flakiness, texture, and overall deliciousness. Oh, and I ALWAYS use salted butter. ALWAYS. Salt is your friend; it enhances the sweetness of sweet things, the overall flavor of a dish, etc. There's practically no way you can consume an unhealthy amount of salt in a homemade, non-industrially-processed dish. I know unsalted butter is the "proper" butter to bake with, but I do not give a frack. Other things to note about the pie crust process:

A. I didn't want to waste a whole egg on egg wash, so I used some half-and-half instead (milk and eggs are both protein, right, so they'll both brown the top); this actually worked very well.

B. Dusting the top with sugar is really necessary. The pie crust itself is not very sweet at all, and the sugar on top is a huge help, especially since the grapes are not too sweet, either.

So, while the crust dough was resting in the fridge, I cooked down a few cups of grapes. I put them in a skillet with some butter (maybe 1-1.5 tbsp) and upwards of four tablespoons of sugar. I cooked them until 60% of them were broken down. At this point I added some spices (pumpkin pie spice mix, I think) and about 1/4-plus cup of cornstarch to sop up all the juices and prevent the filling from making the bottom crust mushy and soggy. The cornstarch is essential. It sops up all the juices from the grapes and prevents the bottom crust from getting soggy in the oven. After the cornstarch addition, I cooked the grape mixture for 2-4 more minutes.


While the grapes were cooking, I divided the dough in half, rolled out the bottom crust, and put this in the pie dish. I put the grape mixture in the dish, and then topped with the second, rolled-out, crust. I crimped the edges, put on the milk wash and sugar, and then cut several vents in the top crust.


I put the pie in a 350-degree oven for around 30 minutes. I then covered the edges of the crust with some foil (to prevent burning) and baked for another 10ish minutes. The top of the pie should be golden brown, and there should be some grape juices bubbling out in places.

Zucchini Gratin

I have a zucchini plant the size of a Lay-Z-Boy recliner. Unsurprisingly, I have zucchini the size of my forearm, and a desperate need to find easy, creative ways of preparing zucchini.

Sunday I made a gratin out of a one-to-two pound zucchini, a medium vidalia onion, a red bell pepper, a clove of garlic, some nutmeg, and cumin.

 Ingredients:

1     tremendously large zucchini
1     medium onion
1     sweet bell pepper
1     clove garlic
.25-.5c half and half
.25-.5c sour cream
       a few tbsp water
2tbsp flour
1     brick white cheese (swiss, jack, whatever), shredded
.25  brick cheddar, shredded
       nutmeg, cumin, or other spices to taste
1.5c panko
3tbsp butter, melted
fistfull of herbs, finely chopped

First, I sliced the onion into half-circle strips, and sauteed this for a few minutes in a little canola oil. I did this all on about a 6 on my electric stove, which is high medium-ish (so, not enough to really brown anything). Before the onion was fully translucent, I added the zucchini. I sliced it into 1/4 inch half-moons/circles. The moons come from scooping out the seeds and pulp from the lower sections; the upper section without mature seeds I just sliced into half-circles. I let this go while I sliced the red pepper into 1/4 inch strips; these went on top of the zucchini, and I covered the pan to help the veggies on top steam while the ones on the bottom sauteed. I stirred things around a few times to circulate pieces from top to bottom and back.

As the zucchini started to cook all the way through, I added one clove of chopped garlic. After a few more minutes, I put the veg mixture into a 9x13 pan, wiped out the saute pan, and put about a heaping tablespoon of butter in the pan to melt. 

To this I added about a scant quarter cup of half and half, and then maybe another quarter cup of sour cream. Ideally I would have used either all half and half or all whipping cream, but I had too little half and half, and extra sour cream, so, that's what I used. I stirred these together, and then added a bit of water to loosen things up a bit---maybe another scant 1/4 cup total of water? I stirred in 2 tbsp of flour, and then grated in half a block of monterrey jack cheese. I stirred in the cheese till it melted, then added about 1/4 tsp nutmeg and 1/2 tsp cumin. I poured this over the vegetables in the baking dish, and then grated some more monterey jack and cheddar over the top.

At this point I stirred about 1.5c of panko and a few tablespoons of chopped fresh  herbs into about 3tbsp melted butter. I sprinkled this mixture over the top of the gratin, and then put it in the oven for 20 minutes at about 400 degrees.

To Many Tomatoes: Salsa

Every summer I grow some Roma tomatoes and some Yellow hybrids. I originally got the seeds from Burpee, but I've been saving my own seeds for two years now. 

Anyway, around this time of the summer we're inundated with tomatoes. I often make caprese sandwiches and FLT (Facon Lettuce Tomato) sandwiches, but those don't really make a dent in the tomato flood.

C, my partner, really likes the salsa I make, so I always put together a batch or two each summer. I often vary the process, but I stick to some basic strategies.

1. I begin with toasted corn. I take a can of corn--yes, a can: it's cheap, tasty, and easy--drain it, and then toss it into a dry skillet. I toast it until the kernels start to get golden brown. Once the kernels start to make small popping sounds, I know I'm done. It's important to get the corn out of the skillet so it doesn't overcook, so I put it in the bowl, which at this point has some:

2. Finely, finely chopped onions. It really doesn't matter what kind of onion you use; I've used red, white, yellow, and vidalia. It's summer, I live in the South, so vidalia onions are cheap and available at Aldi's, so that's what I used this time. I used one onion slightly larger than the size of my clenched fist.

3. LOTS of salt. Like a heaping tablespoon. Salt is what draws the liquids out of the onion and tomatoes, and what makes that watery sauce that helps bind the salsa together. Salt is essential.

3. Finely diced tomatoes. I keep the seeds and all the insides. I know that's bad form, technically, but whatever. I like it, I don't want to waste anything, and this is not a professional kitchen.

4. Herbs. Cilantro is common, but C HATES cilantro, so I used oregano this time. We have a ton of oregano out back, so this was also a good way to use up some of that. I've also used basil before.

5. Ground Cumin. It adds some nice depth to the salsa.

 I stir this all together and keep it covered in the fridge for at least two weeks. It tends to stay pretty fresh--I'm assuming this is b/c of all the acid in it. I would think the addition of some lime juice would both brighten the salsa and help preserve it. You can eat it straight, with some tortilla chips, or use it to top eggs or fish.

Sourdough Bread

Now that I have a sourdough culture, I make a loaf of bread about once a week. Before this summer, I'd never made a yeast bread before--I felt that yeast was too fussy, too particular, too delicate a process, and that's just not my thing. I like forgiving recipes I can experiment with. And this sourdough culture lets me do just that. With my KitchenAid mixer to do the kneading for me, the breadmaking process is actually really, really simple. The only thing I really need to attend to is the scheduling: because it takes such a long time to rise, I just need to make sure I plan enough ahead of time to allow for that rise. And that's the hardest part.

So, I start by taking the culture out of the fridge 18-24 hours before I want to mix the dough. I pour off the hooch, feed the culture (.33c flour, .33c water), and let the yeast feed for a while.

The starter after being fed 36 hours ago and sitting on the counter.

18-24 hours later (so, in the evening if I fed the culture at breakfast, the next morning if I feed it during the afternoon--I don't keep a strict timing here) I pour off the hooch, mix together the culture, and pour about half of it into the bowl of my mixer. It's probably between 1/4 and 1/3 cup--maybe even up to 1/2c sometimes. I then feed the starter again to replace the volume I just took out.

Starter in the mixing bowl.

To the starter I add, in this order: 2c whole wheat flour (measured using dump and sweep), 1tsp-ish salt, up to 1/4c sugar (I've been using brown sugar lately, but I've also used plain white granulated sugar before), and 1-2tsp spices (usually cinnamon, or chai spice mix, or pumpkin pie spice mix, or nutmeg).

Dry ingredients. I used pumpkin pie spice mix this time.

To the dry ingredients plus starter, I add half a cup of water and a good squirt of honey from the bottle, and stir with a silicone spatula. I observe how well (or not) the batter is coming together, and then slowly add more water until all the dry ingredients are sufficiently incorporated. I never add more than another half cup at this point, for a grand total of up to a cup of water.


Now that the ingredients are all incorporated, I knead the dough for 15 minutes on low speed in my mixer.  I add white all-purpose flour throughout the kneading process, basically enough to keep the dough from sticking to the sides of the bowl. The dough should stay in a coherent lump around the kneading arm; it should not stick to the sides or bottom of the bowl. I guess I can add anywhere from 1/3 to 3/4 cup of flour in the kneading process.

When kneading, the dough should form a ball and not stick to the sides of the bowl.

After 15 minutes of kneading (but I've kneaded for up to 20 minutes at times), I add in any raisins, nuts, or whatever other mix-ins I want.  I then knead on low for another few minutes, just long enough to incorporate the mix-ins.


At this point, I cover the dough in a light dust of flour, just to make handling easier. I take out the kneading arm, scrape the dough out of the bowl, and form it into a ball (following the method Bridget from Cooks Illustrated/ATK uses). I put it into a sprayed loaf pan, spray the top of the dough, and cover loosely with plastic wrap.

Ready to rise.

Now it's time to hurry up and wait. Rising takes between 12 and 24 hours. If I start the rise at night, the dough is not ready to bake until 8ish or 9ish (dinnertime) the next day. If I start it in the early morning before breakfast, it is usually ready to bake after dinner. The daytime heat helps the rise along, I assume. I leave the dough to rise in the laundry room; we have the vents closed in this room (to save energy), so in the summer it's the warmest part of the house.  It's probably in the mid 80-degree range during the afternoons.

(Once I intended to bake it at night, but ended up going out for dinner and drinks instead. So, I got home around 1am and the bread was really, really risen, and I was not going to stay up to bake it. So, I pounded the pan on the counter, releasing a lot of the air in the bread, and let it do a second rise overnight. The second rise thing is a standard technique; it makes the sourdough flavor more prominent, though the bread did not rise as much the second time through.  So again, this recipe is really forgiving.)


I consider the bread fully risen once it is between 1/2" and 1/4" from the top of the loaf pan.  At this point, I put it into a 350-ish degree oven and bake for around 30 minutes, taking it out whenever it looks done enough. One "tell" is the sides of the loaf: if they're amber and have pulled a bit away from the pan, the bread is done.

I take the loaf out of the oven, and let it cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes. I scrape around the edges of the pan with a spatula, and then invert the pan on a cooling rack. I let the bread cool a loooong time, often overnignt, and then put it in a bread bag (what sliced bread comes in from the store, saved and neatly folded in one of my kitchen drawers). It sits there on the counter for storage.

These photos are of a cinnamon brown sugar honey whole-wheat raisin loaf that I made last weekend. The raisins are from grapes we grew in our garden; I'll post about those later.

Sourdough Culture/Starter from Beer

At the beginning of the summer (so, late May), I started a sourdough culture from the yeast left at the bottom of a bottle of Unibroue Grande Reserve 17. (The beer is a dark ale, very spicy and warm, with a combination of toffee and pumpkin pie spice mix smells and tastes.) I've always been hesitant about working with yeast--it seemed too temperamental and too, you know, fussy and unforgiving. But, I thought, we drink a lot of bottle-conditioned beer at my place, and there's a big colony of live yeast at the bottom of a bottle-conditioned beer. Regular beer doesn't have live yeast, but bottle-conditioned beers have another addition of yeast right before they're sealed (that's what makes them bottle-conditioned). Keeping live yeast fed seemed much easier than blooming dried yeast, or trying to colonize wild yeast. So, I started a sourdough colony from beer yeast.

This is the starter with a little hooch on top. It's been sitting in the fridge a few days.

I took the dregs of the bottle and poured them in a pyrex storage bowl, mixing in 1/3 cup all-purpose flour and 1/3 cup water. Whenever I feed the culture, I use this amount of flour and water.

I put a cover loosely on the bowl, and set it out on the counter for 24ish hours. I then poured off the "hooch" (the liquid that forms on top of the mixture--technically it's the yeast's waste), and fed the culture with flour and water. I waited 24ish hours, poured off the hooch, and fed it again. I repeated this for about seven days total. 

After seven days, I tried to make a pizza dough; it really didn't rise much at all, so I continued the daily feedings for another three days. 

On the tenth day, I made my first loaf of bread. Its rise was okayish, so at this point I considered the culture established enough to put in the fridge to hibernate between loafs.


Not surprisingly, the starter smells like beer.

A top view of the starter. You can see a bubble or two.

So now, 18-24 hours before I want to start making a batch of bread, I take the culture out of the fridge, and feed it flour and water. I put it on the counter for 18-24 hours, divide it (half in the mixing bowl), and feed it again to replenish what I took out. At this point, there will be a little hooch, and lots of bubbles throughout the starter (the hooch and the bubbles are signs that the yeast is alive and metabolizing). I leave it on the counter for another 18-24 hours, and then back in the fridge till next time. It will develop more hooch as it sits in the fridge (maybe about a quarter inch or so on top of the culture?). Apparently one needs to feed it about weekly to keep the yeast alive, but I've been making bread about once a week, eliminating the need to do a maintenance feed. 

I'll post later about my bread-making process. It's really, really easy to make a sourdough culture from live beer yeast. And it will make bread that tastes like the beer from which you made the culture.

About this blog

I'm not a chef. I'm just a cook; a home cook at that. I approach food from a "maker" perspective--I hack ingredients, recipes, all the leftovers in my fridge. I'm interested in food that tastes good, that's healthy, and affordable. I'm not into precious presentation, painstaking preparation, or any other hipster-foodie-scenesterism. I definitely have a maximum amount of fussiness; I'm not into difficulty for its own sake...the end (taste) had better justify the means.

This blog is a catalog of my projects, experiments, and everyday attempts at making something tasty and healthy out of basic, affordable ingredients.

In a way, this blog is sort of the goth vegetarian cook version of black metal vegan chef. 


The title of the blog refers to a Peter Murphy song.