This recipe was seriously a game changer for me.  This deep dish pizza was the first thing I’ve made out of my new Cook’s Illustrated subscription and they hit this one out of the freakin’ galaxy.  The toppings are perfect, the crust is flaky, and the whole deal is just scrumptious.

The dough on this pizza is amazing.

When you think about it, even if you are making this from scratch, it’s really only a few steps! Make the crust.  Make the sauce.  Grate some cheese.  Bake the pizza!

How hard could that be?  As you can imagine, the devil is in the details as they say.

The one thing I would not recommend skipping for this recipe is the crust.  It really makes it happen.  If you had to save time, you could buy jarred sauce I guess.

Deep Dish Pizza with Ricotta and Olives (Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated Recipe)
Makes two deep dish pizzas

Dough:
- 3 1/4 Cups (16.25 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/2 Cup (2.75 ounces) semolina flour (original recipe uses yellow cornmeal)
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons salt
- 2 Teaspoons sugar
- 2 1/4 Teaspoons instant yeast
- 1 1/4 Cups water (10 ounces), at room temperature
- 7 Tablespoons unsalted butter, (3 melted, 4 softened)
- 1 Teaspoon olive oil for bread
- 4 Tablespoons olive oil for baking pans

Sauce:
- 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 medium onion, grated in grater
- 1/2 Teaspoon dried oregano
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- Pinch of salt
- 1/4 Teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (my addition)
- 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
- 1/4 Teaspoon sugar
- 2 Tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh basil
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- Ground pepper to taste

Toppings: (Remember this is enough for 2 pizzas)
- 1 pound whole milk mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 1/4 Cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 Cup kalamata olives, coarsely chopped (I really like olives. Original recipe is half this much.)
- 1/2 Cup ricotta cheese (same as olives)
- 1/2 Cup chopped arugula (optional. I left this out.)

Helpful Equipment:
- Cake Pan (If you have a real deep dish pan you can use it, but this recipe is written for just a 9 inch normal cake pan.)

Kind of looks like a lot of ingredients, but the dough ingredients are pretty basic and I had most of the sauce ingredients on hand also.

The basics.

Making the dough. Deep dish pizza dough has a reputation of being very bready.  And not in a good way.  This recipe takes a page out of the laminated doughs department (think pastry and croissant!) to produce a good dough that can hold all the toppings, but also is very flaky.

To make the dough, add all your dry ingredients to a bowl and mix well, then slowly add your water and melted butter until the dough ball comes together.  Knead this for 8-10 minutes until the dough is glossy and smooth.

Now allow me a minute to gush.  I We got our first wedding gift this last weekend from Betsy’s mom, a KitchenAid stand mixer!  I put it to work immediately for this recipe!

My precious!

Beat it for 5-6 minutes with the dough hook on medium and the dough was perfect!

Next let your ball of dough rise in an lightly oiled bowl (that’s what the 1 Teaspoon of oil is for in the recipe) for about an hour or until it doubles in size.

Laminating the dough.  This is an amazing technique.  I was a bit skeptical that it would work, but it worked perfectly.

Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out to roughly a 16  by 12 rectangle.  Then spread on your softened butter leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges of the dough.  Roll up the dough like a cigar!

Then cut the dough roll in half.  For each half fold into thirds (think of a business letter – lower left photo).  Then pinch the seams around the dough to form a ball.  If you wanted you could freeze your dough at this point for future use or return them to your lightly oiled bowl to rise again.

I froze one and used one.  For the dough you are using, let it rise a second time in your fridge for 60 minutes.  This will get the butter cold which will make the final crust even flakier!

Get it?

Making the Marinara.  This is a pretty standard marinara.  The one trick they used is to grate the onion using a box grater.  This was much harder (and produced many more tears) than just mincing the onion normally.  I see their point though.  It did make the onion almost melt into the sauce and gave it a great consistency.

To start, melt your butter in a pan over medium-high heat.  Then add your onions along with your dried spices and pinch of salt.  Let that cook for a few minutes until the onions are slightly browned.  Then add your garlic, tomatoes (including juice), and sugar.  Bring that to simmer and let it reduce for 25 minutes or so on low heat.

Once it is reduced, stir in your chopped basil and olive oil and ground pepper.  Set aside to cool!

Very good sauce!

Making the Pizza! Get all your toppings ready and preheat your oven to 425 degrees.  No need for a pizza stone for this recipe!  Then pull your dough ball out of the fridge.  Roll it into about a 15 inch diameter circle.  Mine was really easy to work with actually.

Add 2 Tablespoons of oil to your cake pan and then add your pizza crust.  The oil is really important.  It lightly fries the crust which produces a crispy layer on the outside while keeping the inside moist and flaky.

Mush the dough into all the corners of the pan and crimp it around the edges.  It’s okay if it isn’t perfect.

Then add about two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese to the bottom, followed by 1.5 cups (or about half) of your marinara sauce.  Then add a thin layer of grated Parmesan and dot the top with olives and ricotta cheese.

This part is easy.

Bake this guy at 425 for about 30 minutes.  The crust should be golden brown around the edges and the cheese should be melted.

It’ll be hard, but let this cool for 5 minutes before chopping into it!

Chicago. You are onto something. I admit it.

The first piece is kind of hard to get out, but man was this a good piece of pizza.  Honestly, I had pretty low expectations and they were completely blown away.

I almost just ate it straight out of the pan.

I still think I might prefer the thin crust variety of pizza over this, but this version at least reminded me how it’s possible to like deep dish pizza.

It put deep dish pizza back in the mix of awesome possibilities.  And that’s all you can ever really ask from a recipe!

So this post is all about quick stuff you can throw together 20 minutes before the party.  Both of these appetizers are cheese-involved because cheese is a great way to bring some quick flavor to an appetizer dish.

Mozzarella Eyeballs

This is a really simple dish that you can make in about 15 minutes.  In dark lighting it kind of resembles a bloody dish of eyeballs.  Always a crowd pleaser.

Mozzarella Eyeballs

- 1 pound fresh mozzarella balls (you can find this in the deli section normally)
- 1/2 Cup Kalamata or black olives, sliced
- 1 Jar roasted red peppers
- Toothpicks

You can probably see where I’m going with this.  First, drain your red peppers and then give them a spin in a food processor.  Heck, if you are really in a rush, you could just use tomato sauce here people.

Quick and easy sauce.

Next, cut your olives into slices.  Is this even a recipe?

I used kalamata because I'm fancy like that.

The only tricky part about this, and I’m pretty sure it is optional, is to cut a little divet out of each mozz ball so your olive fits snugly on top.

Make a little divet for the olive.

Then put your eyeballs together and secure each olive with a toothpick!  If I were to make this again, I think I would serve it in a shallow bowl rather than a plate so the sauce would cover more of the eyeballs.

Easy and quite tasty actually.

These are pretty classic flavors that go really well together so it’s a surefire win for an appetizer.

Putrefied Cheese Log

This is kind of an odd one, but basically it’s a flavorful cheese spread formed into a log and coated with sesame seeds which somewhat resemble maggots I guess.  I will say that it’s very tasty.  Especially if you are a blue cheese lover like me.

Putrefied Cheese Log (Adapted from Martha Stewart.  I know her recipe is called “Petrified” but Putrefied is a much better Halloween name in my opinion.)

- 5 ounces Blue Cheese (honestly you could use any cheese you wanted here I think. Just grate it up if it isn’t crumbly.)
- 5 ounces cream cheese
- Blue and/or green food coloring (just a few drops)
- 1/3 Cup Sesame seeds.  Black work best, but are also hard to find.  I just used regular and toasted them.
- Crackers

Can't go wrong with blue cheese!

Just combine your blue cheese and cream cheese in a bowl and mush it all together with a fork.  Once it is all combined well, then add a few drops of food coloring and work it through the cheeses.  I think I added a bit too much green, but you get the idea.

Then scoop your cheese mixture out onto some plastic wrap.

Looks Gross but that's the point.

Gently fold the plastic wrap over and roll the cheese into a log.  Try to compress the cheese really well so it forms a solid log.  Sometimes it helps to twirl the ends around which tightens the plastic wrap around the cheese log.

If you’ve ever made compound butter, it’s the same idea.

Kind of like making compound butter.

Let this sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes just to firm up.  Meanwhile, you can toast your sesame seeds (if you want) over high heat in a dry pan.  They should take about 10 minutes to toast up nicely.  Toasting sesame seeds is not as finicky as pine nuts or something with a lot of oil in them.

Let your sesame seeds cool after toasting and then just roll your cheese long in them and press to down so they stick to the outsides.  Serve it with crackers!

Maggots!?

Mine kind of looks more psychedelic than putrefied, but whatever.  It’s pretty darn delicious.  The sesame seeds make it in my opinion.

Totally gross dude.

The best thing about going to a Halloween party (or hosting one) is seeing lots of little appetizer dishes all around that you can sample throughout the night.

You could make both of these dishes in under an hour and they would be pretty well received at any party.

Have any other quick appetizers? They don’t have to be Halloween specific, but if you do, leave a comment!

Pretty much all of them are way superior than anything you can buy in the store though.  That said, I must admit that I’ve been getting a bit bored lately with the standard recipe.  That’s why I was very excited to get my hands on My Bread by Jim Lahey, the founder of the No Knead Method (My Review).

There are a lot of great recipes in the book, but the one that slapped me across the mouth right away was the olive bread recipe.  Maybe it’s just because I love olives so much, but I had to make this as soon as possible.

I’d never had olive bread before, but I think it was probably the best loaf of bread I’ve ever made.

I think my favorite loaf ever!

The crust on this loaf was great.  Really crunchy and delicious.  And the interior crumb was chewy and had a really nice structure.  Then every other bite or so you’ll run into an olive which has made a rich, briny, salty pocket of flavor.

I think this is not something that most people are used to when they think of bread.  I’ve talked to a few people about it and they stare at me… “So there are olives?  In the bread?  Weird.”  Maybe it’s a tough sell, but I promise you won’t be disappointed if you try it (assuming you at least somewhat like olives obviously).

Olive Bread (From Jim Lahey’s My Bread)

- 3 Cups Bread Flour
- 1 1/2 Cup Kalamata Olives, pitted, drained, roughly chopped
- 3/4 Teaspoon active dry yeast
- 1 1/2 Cups cool water

Helpful Equipment:
- Heavy enameled cast iron pot. (That’s a link to the Ferrari of pots. Here’s another with great ratings.)

Simple Ingredients.

If you’re a regular bread maker, you might note that this recipe is missing salt – a normal staple in bread.  That’s because the olives have plenty of saltiness and over the long fermentation time, that saltiness creeps out into the bread.  It’s seriously amazing.

Making the dough. The dough for this is just like making a normal no knead loaf except that you need to chop up some olives.  Use good olives that are kept in a salt brine. Divina makes a great product.

Drain the olives and pat them dry.  Then give these guys a rough chop and make sure that all the olives actually don’t have pits.  Sometimes the pitting machines will miss one or two per jar.  Be on the lookout!  You don’t want Broken Tooth Bread.

Chunks are good.

Mix your yeast and flour together in a large bowl and then toss in your chopped olives.  Don’t worry.  The olives won’t turn the bread a strange color.  Then add your water and mix everything together using your hand or a large spoon.

I prefer the clean hand method myself.  After just a few seconds you should have a pretty moist ball of dough.  It should be very wet.  You wouldn’t be able to knead this even if you wanted to.

Just a few seconds to pull this together.

Cover this and let it sit at room temperature for 14-18 hours.  I let mine sit for the full 18 and this is what resulted!

After 18 hours...

It’s a big bubbly mess.  That’s good.  That means the yeast has done its job.

Next, take a large tea towel and sprinkle it liberally with flour and corn meal.  If you don’t have corn meal you can just use flour, but corn meal adds a great texture to it.

Don't make fun of my ugly 70s towel please.

Scrape your dough (you’ll need to scrape it) out onto a floured surface and just fold it a few times, liberally flouring both sides if it is sticking.  Eventually you want to form a ball or loaf with it.

This was not the best one I’ve ever made.

Not my best shaping job. Whatever.

Turn this onto your floured towel with the seam side down on the towel.  The seam side by the way, is the side that’s on top in the above photo.  So I flipped it so that was down on the floured towel.

Cover that towel and let the loaf ferment and proof for another two hours.

Baking the bread. After your bread has been proofing for about 90 minutes, preheat your oven to AS HOT AS YOU CAN.  For me this was 500 degrees.

The traditional way to make no knead bread is to use a heavy enameled cast iron pot.  If you don’t have one of those though, I’ve shown a few other ways you can bake this loaf in this post.

Assuming you do have a proper pot though, you want to get it blazing hot also.  I usually let my pot heat in the oven for at least 30 minutes so it is as hot as can be.  Don’t preheat the lid in the oven. Just the pot itself.

Once your pot is blazing hot, pick up the towel with the dough on it and roll the dough into the pot so the seam side is up again!  It should look something like this:

It all evens out in the pot.

If it’s a bit uneven that’s okay.  The dough will spread out and even out as it cooks.

Baking the bread. Put the lid on the pot and cook it for 30 minutes.  Then take off the lid (be really careful of escaping steam).  Cook it for another 20 minutes or so until the crust is a dark, walnut brown.

Let it cool on a wire rack for an hour before slicing it.

Crusty and Delicious!

One of the worries I had with this loaf is how it would be for a sandwich.  No worries there!  I’ve made a few turkey sandwiches with it and it is so good.  The olives are fantastic.  It’s ends up being a really subtle flavor throughout the bread.  It’s not the overpowering briny flavor that you get when you actually eat an olive.

It’s subtle and salty and delicious.

I’ll be completely honest.  I think this might be one of the better loafs of bread I’ve ever eaten.  Definitely the best I’ve ever cooked.  I just can’t say enough good things about it!

If you’ve tried olive bread before, leave a comment and confirm its amazingness.

Oh sorry. I mean Niçoise salad.  And as I was corrected on many times, it’s pronounced [niˈswaz].  Not Nicoozy.  Or Nicweese.

Anyway, the point is that Niçoise salads are delicious.

I'm embarrassed to say I ate all of this by myself.

Let me start by saying that I may offend some French readers by messing with this classic dish.  I substituted asparagus for the traditional green beans in the dish and I completely left out capers by accident.  That said, I thought my version was pretty darn tasty.

Niçoise Salad
Makes enough for 2 Dinner servings or 4 appetizer salads

- 1 8 Ounce tuna steak
- 12 new potatoes
- 1 bunch of asparagus
- 4 hard boiled eggs
- 1/2 Cup Niçoise olives
- 2 ripe tomatoes, sliced (or use cherry tomatoes)
- 1/2 red onion, sliced thin
- Anchovies (optional)
- Capers (I left these out but they would definitely be good in the dish.)
- Lettuce or greens (apparently the use of lettuce or no lettuce is also debatable.  I like a bed of lettuce so I used it.)

Vinaigrette:

- 1 shallot, minced
- 1 Tablespoon minced oregano (you could also use basil, thyme, or a bit of all of them)
- 1 Teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 lemon, juice only
- 2-3 Tablespoons red wine or balsamic vinegar
- 1/2 – 3/4 Cup olive oil
- Salt and pepper

Making the dressing. Anytime I have a mustard jar, I hang onto it after all the mustard is gone.  Turns out that the jar is perfect for making a vinaigrette.  You need a bit of mustard to help emulsify the olive oil and vinegar so by using the jar to shake up your vinaigrette you get a bit of mustard and also can store any leftovers in the jar.

Basically, add all your ingredients in the order listed above to the jar and shake it up!  Really go to town on it.  Be sure to taste it and adjust accordingly.

To anyone who called me weird for keeping empty mustard jars.

Prepared ingredients.  There are a few ingredients in this salad that are already prepared for you.  Things like the anchovies, capers, and olives should be ready to go.  If you can’t find Nicoise olives, I think you could probably use kalamata olives.  I wouldn’t use black olives.  You should be able to find Nicoise olives in most stores though.

Small and flavorful.

Blanching the vegetables. Besides the tuna, there are only three things you need to cook for this salad:  the eggs, the potatoes, and the asparagus.  Luckily, you can do them all in one dish.

Get a large pot of water boiling with a Tablespoon of salt.  Once the water is boiling, add your potatoes first to the dish.  After five minutes, carefully lower your eggs into the boiling water.  Some people have a very specific way that they like to make hard boiled eggs, but I opted for simplicity over perfection for this.  It might mean that some of the shell sticks to the egg, but it isn’t the end of the world.

After about 10 more minutes, your eggs and potatoes should be done at the same time.  Take them out and toss in your asparagus.  Be sure to clip off the ends on the asparagus.

The asparagus will only need about 4 minutes.  Pull them and rinse them with cold water to stop the cooking.

Peel your eggs and toss your asparagus and potatoes (cut them in half after cooking them) with a few Tablespoons of your dressing.

Blanched and tossed.

Searing the Tuna. Put a skillet over high heat with a bit of oil in it.  Coat your tuna with oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt.  Once your oil is very hot in the pan, toss in your tuna.  Cook it for 3 minutes on one side and 3 minutes on the other.  If you don’t like your tuna rare (blasphemy), then cook it a bit longer on both sides.

Pull off the tuna and let it rest for a few minutes before slicing it up.

Good lookin' seafood.

Then watch this helpful animation on putting together the whole thing!

Making the salad!

I’m not kidding that I ate this entire salad by myself.  This was probably 2/3s of the whole recipe.  I put it all together for the photo but then was going to take part of it for lunch along with some of the other leftovers.  I ended up eating all of it in one sitting.  It’s a really awesome pairing of flavors.

Lots of flavor going on here.

I thought this was perfect for the summer.  If I had a grill, I would’ve grilled the tuna, asparagus, and potatoes.  Blanching them was the more traditional way to go though.

If you are looking for a flavor-packed salad, you can’t lose with this.

I browsed through the new Bon Appétit a week or so ago and I must say I was really impressed. I think it was maybe the best issue I’ve seen so far this year.  Lots of really interesting recipes in it and cool summer time party ideas.  If you don’t subscribe already, this issue might be worth a look the next time you are browsing the magazine section or something.

This was a dinner that I made using a salad and salmon dish out of the magazine.  Absolutely delicious and darn healthy!

Healthy!

This salmon is packed with flavor because it is actually cooked wrapped in fresh bay leaves and lemons.  The wrapping keeps it super moist and the flavor of the bay leaves is really incorporated into the salmon but not in an overpowering way.  As always, I don’t recommend buying the farm raised stuff.  It isn’t worth the few bucks in savings in my opinion.

But before we cook the salmon, let’s talk about that pretty salad!

Fennel and Arugula Salad (From Bon Appétit)
(Serves Four easily)

- 1 large fennel bulb or two small/medium sized bulbs
- 5 Ounces washed arugula
- 1/2 Cup pitted Kalomata olives
- 1-2 Cups Shaved Parmesan

Dressing:
- 3 Tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 Teaspoon red wine vinegar
- 1 Teaspoon anchovy paste (I didn’t include this because I was sharing the salad with a vegetarian and it was fine.)
- 1/2 Cup extra virgin olive oil
- Coarse salt

Not so hard to prep after all.

My fennel bulbs were a bit smaller than normal so I went with two of them.  Also, I freakin’ love the stuff so I wasn’t worried about having too much.  To prepare, chop off the green stems and the root end and then slice down the middle.

There will be a small semi-leafy core in each bulb that you should cut out with a paring knife.  Then turn the 1/2 bulb so it is flat (face-down) on the cutting board and dice horizontally to make the slivers.

The completed deal.

Add these slivers to your arugula and olives (which should just be sliced in half and de-pitted if they have pits).

In a separate bowl, whisk together your dressing ingredients and then add that to your salad.  Top the salad with shaved Parmesan cheese and some crushed black pepper.  You can make this an hour or so in advance if you want.

Lookin' good!

The Salmon.  Ok.  This salmon was delicious but I paid quite the price (in pain) for it that you can easily avoid.  The original recipe calls to wrap the salmon in fresh bay leaves and lemon and then grill the whole package.  I, however, do not have a grill handy, so I decided to try it in the oven.  This was a mistake.

Turns out that bay leaves are very strong.  I actually knew this, but it just didn’t occur to me that if I was cooking 50-60 bay leaves, the fumes created by that might burn like Hades.  That is one reason why doing this outside on a grill is a fantastic idea!

But if you think you can handle the fumes then by all means try it in the oven I guess.  Let me warn you though.  It is not worth it.  My nose and eyes burned for like two hours.

GRILLED Salmon Wrapped in Lemon and Bay Leaves

- 2-3 packages fresh bay leaves (The original recipe calls for 4, but I only used a little over 1 package when I made my version.)
- 6-7 lemons, sliced into thin rounds
- 3 pounds center cut salmon (I only used about 1.5 pound cut.  I still don’t know why you would need 4 packages of bay leaves.)
- Kosher Salt
- Olive oil

For the prep on this guy, I must admit that mine was a bit sloppy.  Trust me trust me trust me.  If you were actually grilling this fish, you would need to have a fish grilling basket to keep everything contained.

Also, I thought the best way to show how to prepare this for cooking is to do a little animated piece.

I’m not even going to tell you what temp to cook this in the oven because it seriously shouldn’t be done.  On a medium heat grill through, it should take about 15-20 minutes per side or until the skin is crisp and the internal temperature is 135 degrees.

It will probably look much better than this:

At this point my eyes were on fire.

The second reason why this dish would be much better on the grill is that the skin on the salmon would get very crisp.  That didn’t really happen in the oven.

A healthy meal!

Once I got past the intense bay leaf fumes, the salmon was actually delicious.  It was moist and flaked apart.  Even though the bay leafs were really strong, the salmon only had a hint of bay leaf flavor.  The salad was killer also.  The arugula and fennel paired perfectly with the fish.

The moral of the story: If you have a grill and want to try something original, this is a good dish.  In the name of everything sane, do not try this indoors!