Pizza 4-23-11

I had the day off from work so I made pizza again.  This time the dough turned out quite well.  I made the usual Supreme with pizza sauce, pepperoni, sausage, onion, pepper, mushroom, and cheese.  I also made a BBQ Ham and Pineapple pizza.  The Supreme was great, like always.  The BBQ was okay.  It would have been better if I had used better BBQ sauce.  I used some BBQ sauce that I made and it was too sweet.  Too sweet for on pizza.  My mission now is to change my BBQ sauce recipe and make a better pizza with it next time.

Supreme

BBQ Ham and Pineapple

Supreme

BBQ Ham and Pineapple

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Corned Beef with Mustard Sauce, Sauteed Kale, and Champ

We recently got lots of beef from Dad's employer as part of his pay for working at the farm.  So today I made corned beef with a brisket.  I made corned beef before and cured it for like a week in water, pickling spices, sugar, and salt.  Then I cooked it after the week of curing.  When we make corned beef at work, we do it differently.  We put all the water, spices, salt, and sugar in a pot with the brisket and simmer it for about two and a half hours.  Each way turns out wonderful.  The way we do it at work is much faster.  So today I made it the quick way.

Now you may say corned beef is an Irish thing and meant for St. Patrick's Day.  I scoff at that.  It doesn't have to be St. Patrick's Day to enjoy a fine Irish meal.  It is so good, I had to make it today.  I looked online to see how they serve corned beef at McMahon's Irish Pub & Restaurant in Warrenton.  They serve it with cabbage, Gaelic champ, and a creamy horseradish sauce.  So I tried that.  We didn't have enough cabbage, so I used another Irish vegetable, kale.  Mom cleaned it, then I chopped it a little and sauteed it with oil, salt, garlic powder, and onion powder.  I also made champ, which is basically just regular mashed potatoes with milk, salt, pepper, butter, and chopped spring onions.

The corned beef was good.  It could have been saltier though.  Should have added more salt to the pot when cooking it.  Now I know for next time when I make it like that.  I didn't have all the right ingredients for the Irish mustard and horseradish sauce that I made, so I improvised.  It turned out pretty good, but kinda salty.  That was okay though, because the corned beef wasn't all that salty, so the salty sauce with the not-so-salty meat evened it all out and it was very good.

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Caramel Banana Pudding

I love pudding.  Caramel pudding is the best.  Banana pudding is good too.  I made caramel pudding last night.  Then I saw bananas and had an idea, actually I had thought about it earlier.  The best of both worlds...Caramel Banana Pudding!!  It is caramel pudding, yet it is banana pudding at the same time.  It is quite wonderful.

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Pizza 4-16-11

I had the day off from work today, so I made our Saturday tradition, pizza.  Now, we make pizza every Saturday.  We always make a supreme of sorts.  The second pizza is something else like chicken and ranch, or what we have been doing lately, Hawaiian.  All this is good, but I was feeling we needed something different for this week.  I made one of the supreme version with sausage, onion, peppers, pepperoni, and cheese.  Mom suggested a potato and bacon for the second one.  She saw it online recently and copied it down.  Sliced baked potato, bacon, onion, peppers, and cheese.  They were good.  Much good.  The potato and bacon was different, but much good.  I am now going to search out different pizza versions and make them Saturdays.

I made the crust from scratch.  Halfway through making it I realized that I was supposed to have doubled the recipe.  Uh oh!  The dough wasn't mixing right in the mixer either.  Maybe because it was just a small batch.  So, with Mom's help, we fixed it.  It was a pain in the neck.  I hate baking.  We got the yeast working in a separate container, then added it to the mixer.  Mixed that up, and then added the rest of the flour.  It actually turned out good.  Real good.  However, I still hate working with dough.  I will still work with doughs and bake stuff, because I want to master it, but for now...I HATE BAKING!!

Supreme

Potato and bacon

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Chicken with Garlic Cream Sauce, Risotto, and Honey Ginger Carrots

   The other day I got some chicken out of the freezer and put it in the oven for dinner.  I made a garlic cream sauce for it.  The sauce consists of garlic minced and cooked in butter, cream cheese, and chicken stock.  It made the whole house smell like garlic.  I like it.
   I made risotto for the first time.  We have made it at the Bistro before, but I never made it at home.  I looked online and found a recipe for creamy risotto.  It turned out pretty good I think.
   For the vegetable and cut some carrots, blanched them, then sauteed them with oil, honey, and ginger powder.  It was supposed to be honey ginger carrots, but didn't really taste like it.  They were good, though.  More sweet than anything.
   Mom made a salad.  It was a good dinner.  I should have though about it though...white chicken, white cream sauce, and white risotto.  White, white, white.  Oh, well.  The carrots added color.  Dad hates garlic, or so he says.  He loved the chicken with garlic cream sauce.  Said it was the best stuff I have made in a while and when I open my own restaurant it needs to be on the menu.  Okay, I have an idea.  Somebody buy Napoleon's for me, renovate it, and let me open a restaurant/music club there.  Haha!  I'm joking.

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