I can do romantic sometimes!

Betsy and I had a whirlwind month over the last four or fives weeks. We were both out of town a lot, but not traveling together. When we are in town together, we’ve both had really busy work schedules.

So it kind of felt like we were two ships passing in the night.

We decided to right the problem a few weeks ago by having a dedicated date night. No movies or dinner out though because that’s exactly what we had been doing too much of over the last few weeks. So we stayed at home, came up with a fun menu together, and just relaxed.

I thought I’d share some of the stuff we ate on our very fun date night!

It Was Betsy’s Idea

Betsy came up with a great idea for a date night menu. Instead of having one big meal, she wanted to have a bunch of smaller plates. Kind of like tapas I guess, but mostly appetizers that we could just kind of snack on all night long.

This sounded like a great idea to me! We went to a few stores together during the day and shopped for fun snacks that we would eat later in the night. Betsy never goes grocery shopping with me so it was a nice change to shop together.

For kind of a starter dish to our meal of starters, I set out some olives, roasted, marinated garlic cloves, a wedge of soft truffle cheese (Betsy loves truffles), and some crackers.

Basic starters

I also prepped one of my favorite appetizers: Radishes and butter.

It might sound strange, but it’s really good. Make sure to use a really good European style salted butter. It’s an awesome dish.

Simple but good.

The Mosto Cotto

One of the fun things you can do if you want to plan a night like this is pull out special foods that you might have from trips. We pulled out a small bottle of this stuff called “Mosto cotto” from our honeymoon to Italy.

From what I could tell, to make this stuff they just take a bunch of Sangiovese wine and slowly simmer it down for about 18 hours. The result is a thin syrup that’s sweet and tangy at the same time.

Hard to find... sorry.

You could pour this stuff on your shoe and eat it, but it’s really tasty on cheese.

I cubed up some romano cheese and drizzled the mosto cotto over the top. Tasted just like it did in Italy!

One of my favorite things!

The Crostini

The most substantial parts of our date night meal was a bunch of different crostini that I made. I pretty much took most of these ideas from the most recent Bon Appétit issue which gave six or seven really great crostini ideas.

One of the most important parts of making good crostini is to make sure the bread is cooked well.

Ideally, you want a very crusty exterior and a soft interior. The best way to do this, that I’ve found, is actually on the grill.

Just get your grill super-hot, rub the grates with some olive oil, and toss on the sliced bread. Any baguette will work great for this.

Important!

I made three different kinds of crostini. The nice thing about these is that they all took just a few minutes to prepare once the bread was ready.

The first was a Mexican inspired crostini with Mexican crema (basically sour cream except a bit lighter), grilled corn, and fresh cilantro.

The second one was a standard caprese style crostini with mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes.

Light and tasty!

The most ambitious one that I made had fresh ricotta cheese, ripe peaches, prosciutto, and honey.

It was pretty amazing.

Set all these plates out with some fresh cherries and a big bottle of red wine and date night is served!

Quite the spread!

I was worried that I wouldn’t be full after this, but it worked out fine. The crostini were all pretty filling and since we had been snacking all afternoon on cheese and olives and stuff, it was the perfect amount of food.

The nicest thing about doing a date night like this is that all of the dishes were really quick to make (and clean up). I wasn’t toiling away in the kitchen for hours or anything.

Hopefully, this gave you all some ideas that you can use for a date night or just as a fun appetizer for a party or something!

The secret is the goat cheese!

If there’s one appetizer I think I could eat with pretty much every meal, it would be olives. Some people aren’t into them, and that’s cool, but for me their briny saltiness is just the bee’s knees… or, I guess, the olive’s pimento.

Speaking of pimentos, that’s what’s stuffed inside of probably 99% of olives these days. While pimentos are okay, they are very far from my favorite when it comes to stuffings for olives. My two absolute favorite stuffings are pickled garlic and jalapenos.

And you can find olives in the store these days stuffed with both of these things. Here’s the problem though. First, they jack up the price. You’d think they were stuffing these things with gold or something. Second, most stuffed olives in the store are wussy. They have a tiny sliver of garlic or a fleck of jalapeno.

That’s not my style. So I decided to do some of my own olive stuffing a few weeks ago and they turned out awesome.

Stuffed Olives

Yield: 50 olives

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

50 pitted, but not stuffed green olives. The bigger the better.
6 ounces goat cheese
2 Tablespoons fresh herbs, (I liked dill, but you could use almost anything)
1 Teaspoon fresh black pepper
Pickled garlic (1 clove per 4 olives)
Pickled jalapenos (1 slice per 2 olives)

Directions:

1) Mix fresh herbs with goat cheese and fresh cracked pepper.

2) Slice garlic cloves into quarters and jalapeno slices into halves.

3) Using fingers, stuff olives with goat cheese mixture until it's full. For garlic/jalapeno, add a tiny amount of goat cheese and then press in the filling.

4) Serve them up!

The Fixins

Obviously, you don’t have to make 50 olives to do this recipe. The nice thing about it is that you can pretty much customize the amounts down to the exact number of olives you need.

Besides using large chunks of garlic and jalapeno for my olives, I also did some with an herbed goat cheese. I used some of the goat cheese with the jalapeno and garlic olives as well. So goat cheese was in every variety. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Some good flavors...

The Olives

When it comes to picking olives for stuffing, I like the green kind. Ideally, if your grocery store has a well-stocked olive bar you should be able to find some green olives that are pitted, but not stuffed with anything. If not there though, you can usually find a jar of them.

It doesn’t matter if they have herbs or spices with them, just make sure they are pretty good sized and pitted.

Mine had a Greek style pickling, but it doesn’t matter. You can use whatever you can find.

Get the big ones!

For the cheese filling, I just chopped up a few tablespoons of fresh herbs and mixed it with my goat cheese along with a good amount of fresh pepper.

Not only is it a great filling, but it works well in the jalapeno and garlic olives also.

Yum.

The Garlic

The key about the garlic is that you don’t want to use fresh garlic. That would be a bad idea.

You should be able to find pickled garlic though in your olive bar also. These are whole cloves and the pickling just takes off some of the bite. They are more mellow, but still pack plenty of garlic flavor.

I quartered my cloves and used one quarter per olive.

Quartered cloves.

The Jalapenos

As far as jalapenos go, any pickled jalapeno will work.

Half a jalapeno slice per olive should do the trick. You’ll have some of the jalapeno sticking out of the olive, but that’s fine. It acts as a warning for all those trying them!

Spicy!

Filling the olives

I wish there were an elegant way to stuff an olive, but it’s pretty much a hands and fingers job.

I thought about using a pastry bag with a fine tip and I think I might try that if I did them again, but fingers work just fine.

Just get some of the goat cheese mixture on your finger tips and work it into the olive until it’s coming out the other end. If you’re doing the garlic or jalapeno variety, I just put a tiny amount of goat cheese in the olive and then pressed in the stuffing.

Worked like a charm!

Fingers work best...

These are kind of messy and maybe not the prettiest things in the world, but the flavors are awesome. They’re really ramped up over the store varieties.

Really stuffed.

I used some pretty standard olive stuffings for these. I’d be curious if you guys have any ideas for other stuffings that might work in an olive.

Leave a comment if you have a good olive stuffing idea!

My cure.

Happy 2011 everybody! I hope everyone had a safe and fun night! It’s at least in the realm of possibility that you woke up today with a bit of a headache. At least for me, champagne always gives me killer hangovers.

And this, my friends, is the best cure I know.

I used to bar tend at a spot in DC that offered all-you-can-drink Bloody Marys for brunch. I was determined to make my Bloody Marys from scratch. No mix for me thank you. After a year or so of this, I’m pretty sure I’ve nailed the best Bloody Mary mix you can make. I’d put it up against any store bought mix any day of the week.

I recommend keeping a jar of it on hand if you’re in for a long drinking weekend!

Bloody Marys from Scratch

Yield: 7-8 large drinks

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

46 ounces pure tomato juice. If you use from concentrate, be sure to shake it well.
1 lemon, juice only
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 Tablespoons Horseradish
1 Tablespoon hot sauce
2 Teaspoons celery salt
1 Tablespoon fresh black pepper
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
Vodka

Garnishes:
Celery
Pickles
Olives
Old Bay
Oysters or Shrimp (Fancy Schmancy)

Directions:

1) Mix all ingredients in a large bowl with a whisk. If you're unsure about an ingredient, add just a bit and taste it. Then add more until you get the flavor you want. Remember that the mix should be pretty strong since it gets diluted with vodka and water from ice.

2) To make a drink, add 1 part vodka to 3-4 parts mix over ice and stir well. Garnish with your choice of garnishes and enjoy!

Making the Mix

Ok. So I claim this as the best Bloody Mary mix out there, but that’s a pretty subjective statement. I like my Bloody Mary’s to be really spicy, really peppery, and have lots of horseradish. If you don’t like those things, then this probably won’t work for you.

A popular ingredient that I don’t add to my mix is clam juice. I’ve found that people are pretty split on it, so it’s something that I add to individual drinks if people like it.

An army of flavor.

Basically, I just pour all this stuff in a large bowl and whisk it well to combine everything. A few tips:

- On the Horseradish, make sure to get just jarred horseradish, NOT horseradish SAUCE. That stuff won’t work. Most supermarkets have grated horseradish next to the pickles and olives or near the mustards.

- If you’re in doubt about one of the ingredients, start with a tiny bit, mix it together and taste it. You can always add more, but it’s impossible to remove it once it’s in there!

- The mix should be almost too strong to drink straight. If you taste it by itself it should be really strong that way when it’s mixed, it still has plenty of flavor. Remember that the mix is going to be diluted by vodka and also water as the ice melts.

You know you’re in business if you can see specks of stuff in your tomato juice.

Specks are good.

Garnishes

Half the fun of Bloody Mary’s is putting in a lot of fun garnishes. Celery is pretty much a given. I’m not sure I would trust a Bloody Mary without celery in it.

I also like a pickle spear and olives in mine, but you can go crazy. One of my favorite variations is to dip the rim of your glass in Old Bay which gives the drink a certain Maryland feel.

If you want to get really high class you could add a shrimp or two to the drink!

My favorite parts.

Mixing the Drink

My general rule for Bloody Mary’s is 1 part vodka to 3-4 parts mix with lots of ice.

You can very much eyeball this, but if you want to be specific, use a shot glass to measure it. Mix all the stuff over ice and give it a good stir.

Add in your garnishes and you’re good to go.

Cure in a glass.

Now, of course, it would be best to have some foresight so you can have this already mixed up when you need it. I usually just pour my mix back into my tomato juice bottle and write over the label.

It should go without saying that a good Bloody Mary goes great with football which also happens to be in season.

Have a great weekend everyone and happy 2011!

The pita just dove right in.

This is one of those special dips (you know the kind) that takes practically no time to prepare but gives the impression that you were slaving away for hours peeling artichokes and chopping olives. It also won the poll last week!

OK. Actually, if you can convince someone that you peeled like 20 artichokes then you are partying with the most gullible person on the planet. But still, people will be impressed because it’s a delicious thing and the flavors are fairly complicated considering it’s really only a few ingredients tossed together and baked up.

Artichoke and Olive Dip

Yield: 8x8 dish

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 (15 ounce) can artichoke hearts, chopped
1 (8-10 ounce) jar olive tapenade, no specific brand needed
1 Cup grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese
1 1/2 Cups grated Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 Cup fresh basil, chopped (plus some for garnish)
1 Serrano pepper, diced (optional)
Salt and pepper
6 pita breads
Olive oil

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut pita chips into sixths and peel apart each side. Each pita should make 12 chips. Lay out chips on two baking sheets and drizzle with oil and a pinch of salt.

2) Cook pita chips for 10-15 minutes, stirring once until they are a light golden brown. They will continue to crisp up out of the oven as they cool.

3) Drain and chop artichokes and chop basil and pepper if using it.

4) Add veggies in a medium bowl with olive tapenade and grated cheese. Stir to combine and pour into a 9x9 baking dish or a 2 1/2 quart round or oval dish.

5) Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes until bubbling and browned around edges.

6) Let cool for a few minutes then serve immediately with pita chips.

Making the Pita Chips

This dip is so simple to make that the least you can do is make some nice, homemade pita chips for your guests. Of course, if you’re in a crunch, you can buy some or also just serve the dip with crusty bread.

But homemade pita chips are so easy and delicious that it makes sense to me to make them any time I get the chance.

Just chop up 5 or 6 pitas into sixths and then peel apart the two sides of each sixth. So each pita should make 12 chips. They won’t all be perfect and that’s okay.

Then lay them out on a baking sheet (probably need two) and drizzle the pita slices with olive oil and a pinch of Kosher salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, stirring once halfway through.

It's the little things...

Just be sure not to burn the chips though. They’re done when they are slightly golden brown. They will continue to crisp up as they cool out of the oven also.

Literally, that’s about the hardest part of this dip. Good thing we got it out of the way.

Making the dip

This could be an incredibly hard dip to make if you peels all the artichokes from scratch and made the olive tapenade from scratch, but we’re going to do neither of those things.

Oh. And if you don’t love olives, you can cut back on the tapenade or replace it with sun-dried tomatoes. The original recipe just called for like 1/2-3/4 of a cup of tapenade, but I wasn’t going to keep a tiny jar of tapenade which would quickly get lost in my fridge so I just used the whole jar.

It's okay to cheat here.

Chop up your pepper and basil and grate your cheeses. If you’re using the Serrano pepper, dice it pretty tiny so someone doesn’t get a big bite of heat.

For the artichokes, just drain them and roughly chop them up. Easy enough.

Again, canned or jarred is what you want here.

Combine everything in a big bowl and stir it together! There should be plenty of salt and oil from the tapenade but give it a quick taste anyway and adjust.

I used two kinds of cheese (Asiago and Monterey Jack) for this dip. I figured the Asiago would give it some nice flavor and nothing melts like Monterey Jack so it’s always good to throw into a dip.

Just stir everything together!

Already smells good!

There’s enough oil in this dip that you don’t need to worry about greasing your baking dish at all. Just fill it up!

Bake it up!

Bake this guy at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes until bubbling and browned around the edges.

If you want to get fancy you can sprinkle some more chopped basil on top just to make it pretty.

A sprinkle of basil to make it pretty.

You’ll want to let this cool for a few minutes before diving in, but man is it good.

Dip on a chip.

This is a really nice fall dish. It uses mostly canned/jarred stuff and is completely warming.

If you make this though, I highly recommend the homemade pita chips. They’re maybe the perfect chip for this dip.

Don't mind if eye do!

There’s no way I could let this week go by without trying something fun for Halloween. Unfortunately I have very few kitchen supplies so I had to get back to basics and try to jazz up something that everybody needs on Halloween: ICE.

I tried to come up with a few different ice cubes that would be spooky. Some turned out better than others and I had some more ideas after I photographed the post which I’ll mention through the post!

Bloody Eyeball Cubes!

I saw this idea first on a Martha recipe. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly though because I didn’t want to go buy green olives just for this. So I just used some tiny black olives that I had. I think they worked fine although maybe not quite as dramatic as the green guys.

There’s no doubt about it though – this is kind of a time intensive situation considering that we’re just making ice cubes.

The most important thing about this recipe is to make sure you have a pretty good paring knife. I really like the Wustof paring knife. It’s a great deal for $11 on Amazon right now.

To start with the eyeballs, get some small/medium radishes and wash them well. Try to get nice round ones and make sure they fit in your ice cube trays before you start cutting.

Slice off one end and dig out a little hole for the olive. I left my olives whole which gave the eyeballs a kind of bulging effect.

A bit labor intensive...

Next, take your paring knife and carefully scrape off sections of skin. You don’t need to peel the radishes. The skin is really thin. Just take your knife and gently scrape. The skin should come off in thin layers so you’ll be able to leave red streaks.

It took me one or two radishes to get the hang of it but then I got pretty good at it.

Pop the olives back in and freeze them in a tray!

These guys would be great in any clear or light colored cocktail where you could see the eyeballs easily.

Turned out pretty cool!

Slime Cubes!

This one is substantially easier. My goal was to make an ice cube that looked like it had streaks of snot in it!

All I needed was some grapes and limes!

Also sangria!

Turns out when you mush a grape, it kind of looks like the biggest booger in the world.

Makin' boogers

I used the lime juice just to keep the snot green and also figured that lime juice goes well in a lot of cocktails so it might actually taste good as well.

I just mushed up a few grapes well and added in some fresh squeezed lime juice. Looks like snot to me!

A big bucket of slime.

I should’ve photographed these in liquid because they looked a lot better in a glass. They turned a bit more transparent so you could kind of see through them.

Also, if you let them melt you’d end up with snot in your drink which is great for Halloween right?

Looks great in clear drinks!

Bloody Rat Droppings!

Ok. So this was kind of my fail of the day. My original idea was to make a bloody bits ice cube with pomegranate seeds and cranberry juice so it would kind of look like guts.

The pomegranate I bought at the store though was completely rotten so I had to change directions.

I went with rat droppings which happen to look a lot like whole black peppercorns.

Rat droppings...

Just add these to some ice cubes with a red liquid and you’re all set!

I think this one might be more about delivery…

One idea I had after the fact was to use tomato juice for the liquid and use the ice cubes for Bloody Marys! Of course, you have to be kind of careful with these because it’s not very pleasant to accidentally bite down on a whole peppercorn.

Bloody rat droppings.

I actually had a lot of fun making these up. The radishes might be a bit advanced for kids, but the others would be pretty fun and easy – especially the slime ones.

Pick your poison!

For Halloween this year, I won’t be making any of these unfortunately because I’ll be in the middle of Indiana driving to Colorado.

But you should make them!

I’m sure there are dozens of other cool things you could do with ice cubes. If you have any good ideas, leave a comment of course!

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

Yield: 2 pizzas.

Prep Time: 50 minutes + rise time

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes + rise time

Ingredients:

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.)

Directions:

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

2) In a mixer, beat dough for 5-6 minutes with the dough hook on medium.

3) Let ball of dough rise in a lightly oiled bowl for about an hour or until it doubles in size.

4) Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out to roughly a 16 by 12 rectangle.

5) Spread on softened butter leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges of the dough.

6) Roll up the dough like a cigar. Cut the dough roll in half. For each half fold into thirds. Pinch the seams around the dough to form a ball.

7) Let dough rise a second time in your fridge for 60 minutes.

8) For sauce, melt butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Then add onions (grated with a box grater, not chopped) along with dried spices and pinch of salt. Let cook for a few minutes until the onions are slightly browned.

9) Add garlic, tomatoes (including juice), and sugar. Bring to simmer and let it reduce for 25 minutes or so on low heat. Once it is reduced, stir in chopped basil and olive oil and ground pepper. Set aside to cool.

10) Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

11) Roll dough ball into about a 15 inch diameter circle.

12) Add 2 Tablespoons of oil to cake pan and then add pizza crust. Mush the dough into all the corners of the pan and crimp it around the edges.

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

14) Bake 425 for about 30 minutes. Let this cool for 5 minutes before chopping into it!

Adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recipe.

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 15 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.

Two Halloween Appetizers

Yield: Serves 8.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

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

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

Directions:

For eyeballs:
1) Drain red peppers and then give them a spin in a food processor.

2) Cut your olives into slices.

3) Cut a little divet out of each mozz ball so olive fits snugly on top.

4) Put eyeballs together and secure each olive with a toothpick.

For cheese log:
1) Combine blue cheese and cream cheese in a bowl and mush it all together with a fork.

2) Once it is all combined well, then add a few drops of food coloring and work it through the cheeses.

3) Then scoop cheese mixture out onto some plastic wrap. 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.

4) Let this sit in the fridge for a few minutes just to firm up.

5) Meanwhile, toast sesame seeds (if you want) over high heat in a dry pan. They should take about 10 minutes to toast up nicely.

6) 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.

7) Serve it with crackers!

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.

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.

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

Yield: 1 loaf

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes + rising time

Ingredients:

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.)

Directions:

1) Drain the olives and pat them dry. Roughly chop and make sure that all the olives actually don’t have pits.

2) Mix yeast and flour together in a large bowl and then toss in the chopped olives

3) Add water and mix everything together using your hands or a large spoon.

4) Cover this and let it sit at room temperature for 14-18 hours.

5) 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.

6) Scrape 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. Turn this onto floured towel with the seam side down on the towel.

7) Cover with the towel and let the loaf ferment and proof for another two hours.

8) Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Let a cast iron 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.

9) Once the 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!

10) 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.

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

From Jim Lahey's My Bread.

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.

Nicoise Salad

Yield: Serves 2-4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

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

Directions:

1) Add all the dressing ingredients in the order listed above to a jar and shake it up! Really go to town on it. Be sure to taste it and adjust accordingly.

2) Get a large pot of water boiling with a Tablespoon of salt. Once the water is boiling, add the potatoes first to the dish. After five minutes, carefully lower the eggs into the boiling water.

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

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

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

6) Put a skillet over high heat with a bit of oil in it.

7) Coat the tuna with oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Once the oil is very hot in the pan, toss in the tuna.

8) Cook it for 3 minutes on one side and 3 minutes on the other. If you don’t like the tuna rare (blasphemy), then cook it a bit longer on both sides.

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

10) Put the salad together and enjoy!

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!