Avgolemono is probably the easiest, tastiest and most delicious soup we made. It’s a classic Greek soup that everybody should have in their wheelhouse. A real pleasant egg lemon flavor profile that just goes on. It’s the best version of chicken soup we found.
Ingredients:
This is the Broccoli Gruyere Soup. When I found the soup in the Modernest Cuisine at Home cookbook, it seemed an easy cook. You pretty much use a pressure cooker. You put the floweretes from 3 broccoli stems into the pressure cooker with butter, backing soda and water, then blend it and pass it through a sieve, after that, you incorporate the cheese and add any broth needed to get the texture right. Finish it with roasted hazelnuts and fresh thyme and a few of the flowerets fried.
Ingredients;
One of the things that happens when you make a series of different pizzas, is that you accumulate a fair number of leftover ingredients. After we spent a week making pizza, a really great way of eating by the way, we found our fridge beginning to fill up with a lot of small leftover cheeses and sauces especially. So, on Sunday night, we made the “What do we have left over in the fridge” Pizza. What did we have? We had pepperoni sausage, some two week jalapeno pickled pineapple, along with feta, fresh and grated mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, and arugula. Heather built the pizza she was craving. It was absolutely delicious
This one is the best pizza I have ever tasted. Ever. And it’s not even close. This is a Thai Peanut Shrimp pizza, with spinach, ricotta, peanuts EVOO and Thai peppers, then finished with a squeeze of lime juice. It’s hard to describe the experience of eating this pizza, it’s moreish, it’s delicious, it’s divine, it’s spicy, it’s pure umami in every bite. One of the ways it was so much better was that I kept more dough on the base to it was slightly more chewable than crunchy (which I also like).
Ingredients:
After enjoying Chris Bianco’s Rosa Pizza, we made the choice to try his Bianco Verde, Fresh Mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, Ricotta, and Arugula to finish over a red sauce. We used a spicy marinara. The pizza definitely has legs, the ricotta offers a creaminess, so we need to experiment with the red sauces to find the right combination, especially since his version does not use a red sauce. He is innovative in rethinking what pizza is. In any event, we enjoyed it, especially because the arugula wilts and tastes to yummy on top of the pizza, offering a pepperiness that is needed to offset the cheeses.
Next we went simple. The Burrata is a pie on the menu of Ken’s Artisan Pizza in Portland. It’s basically tomato sauce, basil leaves and fresh Burrata after it comes out of the oven. My first thought was, “Well, this is going to leave me hungry,” but, it was really filling and super delicious. Definitely the simplest pie we have ever made. Pizza perfection.
Ingredients:
Next up we went back to the menu from PDX of Portland, a passion project of Chef Miriam, a NYC raised chef with good ideas. The pizza we chose to make was her Yum Yum Hawaiian which we modified by using a spicy tomato sauce, and peperoni (which we had in stock) rather than salami. We also used the jalapeno’s from the pineapple pickle and finished with hot honey. It was so delicious that we will make it again, but this time with Salami instead of peperoni.
Ingredients:
A bit easier to see the ingredients before the bake
We made the “Jersey Girl”, this one is inspired by the ingredient list on the website of Yum’s of Portland, including Imported East Coast Burrata, romano, tomato sauce, garlic, oregano, extra crispy pepperoni, basil, hot honey. It’s a real winner. Really good.
Ingredients:
Here it is before the bake. Note that I crisped the fresh peperoni before we made it. You can also see the way we tried not to overload it.
Our next effort took us in a totally different direction. Heather wanted to try the pizza she calls “Figgy PIggy Pie”. It’s a fig jam base with mozzarella, thin prosciutto, and finished with Feta. For me, its a tad too sweet, although the saltiness of the prosciutto carries it quite well. Next time we make it, we will add lemon juice to the fig jam to add the acidity I think it needs.
Ingredients:
One of the joys of meatballs, esp that there are two of us, and the recipe makes 20 meatballs, is that we get multiple meals! We are both meat sandwich people, so as soon as we chose to make meatballs, Heather said, “Meatball Sandwiches!” we pretty much do everything the same in preparing the meatballs, that is to give them a sauce bath for 3 minutes to finish cooking them, and we toast the rolls too. FIrst we layer a thin slice of mozzarella onto the toasted bun before slicing 3 meatballs per person in half, placing them on either slice. We cover them in sauce, then layer another thin slice of mozz on top before putting them under the broiler! What you have is a delightful open face sandwich.
As the sauce ages in the fridge (about 4 days is the limit,) and as we get to the end of the meatballs, the best thing to do to finish it all up is another round of meatball sandwiches. This time we used the mini-baguette’s and only a slice of provolone on top (caramelized under the grill.) Once again, absolutely moreish!
My Life: A Memoir 