Believe it or not, I actually have a better reason than the usual, “Sorry, we’re busy” for not posting much lately. If you keep an eye on the flickr site, you might’ve noticed that food pictures have been appearing there but never migrating over to the site. Well, the reason is that I’ve had a side project going on — I’ve been making a cookbook! My good friend Jessica is getting married today, and as a wedding present for her, I gathered recipes from her friends and family and put them together in a cookbook that I had printed over at blurb.com. I didn’t have time to make everything myself, but we did test out and photograph some of the recipes, so those are what you may have seen show up on flickr. I wanted to share some of these delicious recipes with you, too, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for Jessica, who I think might read this here blog occasionally. But the beautiful wedding was yesterday today, so the cat’s finally out of the bag. The next several posts will be recipes shared by Jessica’s friends and family.

First up is this Irish cream poundcake from Katrin Baker, an advisor to both Jessica and me when we were in the Honors program at NCSU. I couldn’t resist adding some chopped chocolate to Katrin’s recipe, though I’m sure it would be delicious either way. As Katrin says, this cake actually gets better after it sits for a day or two. I especially liked it toasted. Thanks, Katrin!

Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Poundcake
adapted from Katrin Baker, originally from Cooking Light, she thinks

2 3/4 cups cake flour (about 11 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup low-fat or fat-free cream cheese, softened
10 tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup dark chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chip (optional)
Cooking spray
2 tablespoons powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat together cream cheese and butter with a mixer at high speed. Beat in granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs, 1 at a time; beat well after each addition. Beat on high speed 1 minute.

With mixer on low, add flour mixture and liqueur alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mixing well after each addition. Stir in chopped chocolate, if using.

Pour batter into a 12-cup Bundt pan coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 325 F for 55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack. If desired, sift powdered sugar over cake.

As anyone that knows us knows, we like to make pizza … a lot … mostly as a result of my parents’ wood-fired pizza oven in Raleigh.  While we miss that dearly, we’ve found that a very hot oven or, even better, a grill make decent substitutes.  I’ve posted a bunch on pizza in the past, but I decided it might be time to put everything together in one place.  I’m probably the only one that has this problem, but when I look back and try to find a combination of toppings I’ve tried before, I end up having to sift through a bunch of posts to find out which one it is.  In the future, I’ll try to keep this up-to-date so all our favorite pizza dough recipes and topping ideas are synthesized in one place.  Enjoy!  And I’d love to get more ideas in the comments!

Grilled Pizza

We use the recipe from Mugnaini pizza dough, which you can get from that link, enough for 6-8 pizzas. I’ve got the ingredients list below, but I’ll let you read her instructions, and I’ll pick up on what I did after making the dough.

Mom thinks that having nice flour really makes a difference in how easy the dough is to work with. She recommends Giusto’s High Performance Pizza Flour, which you can buy online (another trick she learned from Mugnaini cooking school — do you see a trend here? I promise they aren’t paying me anything!). But it also works fine with regular or bread flour.

4 c flour
1 t salt
1 1/2 c warm water
2 t yeast dissolved in 1/4 c warm water

Making the dough: Follow the instructions for making the dough you can find here, all the way through. You will then end up with 6 or 8 balls of dough. (Basically you are going to mix everything together and knead, let it rise for 2.5-3 hours, cut it into balls, and let it rest another 20 minutes. I find I usually have to knead it a bit longer than she says to make sure it’s smooth and elastic, which makes it easier to work with, and to incorporate a bit more flour.)

Par-baking: If I’m going to grill the pizzas, or if I’m making pizza for a big crowd, I then par-bake the dough. It’s very convenient since making crusts is the most time consuming part, and this way it can be done ahead and the crusts can be stacked on top of each other to save space.

To start, turn the oven on as high as it will go (for me that’s 525) and place a pizza stone in the oven.

Roll or stretch out the crusts. (I’m hoping to persuade my mom to do a more detailed instructional post with me on this one. Throwing around pizza dough like the professionals is much harder than it looks, and she’s much better at it than I am! You can leave her comments here to urge her to participate in this effort. )

Once the oven is hot, slide the rolled/stretched out dough onto the pizza stone. Let it bake just a couple minutes, flip it, bake it a couple minutes more, and pull it out of the oven. The idea here is to only barely bake the dough, making it a lot easier to work with when you put it on the grill. This is also nice for entertaining because you can take care of all the messy dough-making before people come over. The crusts can even be frozen for a few weeks after they are par-baked as well.

Grilling: To grill the pizza, first start a medium-high to high fire in the grill (we used charcoal, which I think adds to the flavor). Top the par-baked crusts however you like. Slip the crust directly onto the grill rack and cover. Grill about 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the crust is done but not burned on the bottom. (Keep an eye on them. They may cook more quickly/slowly depending on your fire, and honestly, we didn’t time it, so we’re going on our memory from a few weeks ago here.)

Some of our favorite toppings:

Creme Fraiche and Smoked Salmon
(or as my uncle David nicknamed it, “The Stinky Frenchman”)
adapted from Mugnaini
Top pizza with creme fraiche, lemon zest, and dill; bake. As soon as it comes out of the oven, top with smoked salmon, cut into strips.

Wilted Spinach, Fontina, and Truffle Oil
adapted from Mugnaini
Top pizza with barely wilted spinach and fontina. After baking, drizzle with truffle oil.

Blue Cheese and Caramelized Onion
adapted from Mugnaini
Caramelize onions by slicing them and cooking them over pretty low heat until they turn golden and sweet. Top pizza with chopped thyme, caramelized onions, and maytag blue cheese.

Prosciutto and Roasted Red Pepper
adapted from Myth, San Francisco
I know honey sounds kind of strange to put on a pizza, but don’t be too sparing. It nicely cuts the saltiness of the prosciutto and gorgonzola.
Make a sauce by roasting red pepper and then pureeing it. You can mix this with a bit of creme fraiche for a creamier texture. (We are not on agreement over which was more like the one at Myth.) Top this with prosciutto, crumbled gorgonzola, chopped chives, parmesan cheese, and a generous drizzle of honey.

Potato Pizza
Chop some fresh herbs (e.g. basil, parsley, oregano, etc.) and garlic together. Add salt and pepper to the herb/garlic mixture and make into a paste. Let sit for at least a half hour or so if possible to let the flavors meld. Spread the crust with crème fraîche. Top with the potatoes in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the herbs and a bit of extra salt. (Remember how much salt potatoes need and don’t be too cautious!) Bake a few minutes in as hot an oven as possible, until lightly browned.

White Pizza
Combine 1 T chopped fresh basil, 1 T dried oregano, 6 minced cloves of garlic, and 1/2 t ground black pepper. (This make enough for more than one pizza.) Spread dough with olive oil then herbs. Top with shredded mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced fontina cheese, and grated parmesan cheese. We often add chopped prosciutto and/or pine nut, too. Possibly my favorite kind of pizza!

Pesto Chicken
Top with pesto sauce, grilled chicken, feta cheese, pine nuts, and parmesan. Bacon is also a good addition.

The original pizza posts:
Daring Bakers: Pizza
Grilled Pizza … and an apology
Wood Fired Appetizer Pizzas

It does require a bit of advanced planning because of the brining step, but you don’t want to leave that out. I used to never cook pork chops because they always seemed to dry out on me, but the brining keeps them juicy and tender. (Interestingly – I recently learned that the way this works has to do at least partly with the motor protein myosin, which I’m studying; if you want to know how, ask me about it sometime.) It’s similar to marinating, but in a very high salt solution. Because it’s so much salt, you only leave it for a couple hours, instead of the several hours or overnight that you might normally marinate something. I haven’t tried, but I think it would probably get too salty if you left it longer than that. (If someone tries it and it works, let me know.

Another nice thing about this recipe is it’s easy to scale up or down — I first made it for just myself when Matt was in Taiwan, but making it for several folks is easy too. The pork chops are great with some sauteed greens, perfect for this time of year!

Pork Chops Saltimbocca

adapted from Gourmet
The butter and lemon sauce is optional (though mighty tasty), but don’t skip the brining step. It makes cooking the pork chops so much more forgiving.

Serves 2

2 1″ thick boneless pork chops
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon Kosher salt
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 Tablespoon grated lemon rind
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 slices of Fontina cheese
2 pieces of Prosciutto
4 sage leaves
2 Tablespoons butter (optional)
2 Tablespoons lemon juice (optional)

Combine 1/2 cup water, sugar, and salt in a bowl, stirring with a whisk until the sugar and salt dissolve. Add lemon juice, lemon rind, and basil. Pour over pork in a zip-top plastic bag. Marinate in the fridge for about 2 hours, turning occasionally. (Because this is a brine, I think it may get too salty if you leave it much longer than that, although I’ve never tried.)

Cut a deep pocket halfway through the pork chop. Stuff with a slice of fontina, a piece of prosciutto, and a couple sage leaves. Season with freshly ground pepper. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in an ovenproof skillet over medium high, and sear pork chops on one side for a couple minute. Turn and place in the oven. Roast at 450 for about ten minutes. If desire, deglaze the pan with the butter and lemon juice, and serve as sauce on top.