Barbecue Sauce

As you could probably guess, the Curessa has been taking a little vacation from blogging (for good reason – apparently, this whole “dealing with an infant” thing is hard). Not wanting hers to fall to the petrified forest of dead blogs, she hired me to guest-post for a little while until the new-baby adventure starts winding down.

For a little background, I’m Micah. I’ve previously appeared in Curessa posts as Hungry Teenage Boy #2 and Train Carrier’s Assistant. I’m a 16-year-old boy, and, odd as it might sound, I really, really like cooking. Like anyone else who comes within a 5-mile radius of the Curessa, I’ve had occasion to try a few Ina Garten recipes. From what I can tell, Ina really likes butter and olive oil, but can write a darn good recipe. Like the Curessa, I’m known for “cooking by ear”, so to speak (much to my mother’s annoyance), but I rarely find the need to do that with Ina’s stuff. Unlike certain authors, she doesn’t use tons of unusual ingredients that can’t be found with a five-minute bike ride to the grocery store.

A few weeks ago, I started making Mark Bittman’s awesome/easy pizza dough, and I’ve always liked barbecue chicken pizza, so after a few tries with store-bought sauce, I decided to try to make a barbecue chicken pizza with homemade sauce.

After an aborted attempt involving Texas-style barbecue sauce that essentially firebombed the mouths of my entire family, I saw that Ina had a barbecue sauce recipe in her first cookbook. It accompanied a barbecued chicken recipe, but after my mom informed me that my dad would rather beat himself over the head with the Oxford English Dictionary than barbecue chicken, I opted for just doing the sauce.

I was skeptical at first, since the recipe called for an absurd number of ingredients:

Thankfully, though, they mixed together to a pleasant-looking sauce:

While the sauce cooked down, I let the dough rise:

Once the sauce was finished, I dressed the pizza before throwing it into a 500-degree (yup, 500-degree) oven:

If you look closely, you can see what the Curessa affectionately refers to as “Satan’s Herb”, or cilantro. At some point, I plan to make a cilantro, blue cheese, and raw onion salad when she comes over, just to see what happens.

Ten minutes later, this came out. It was pretty awesome, I have to say:

While the sauce was amazing on the pizza, it’s been great in the week or so after. The recipe says that the sauce can keep for “months” in the fridge, which I’m a bit skeptical of, but it certainly hasn’t lost any flavor in the last few days. The only way that I can describe the flavor is “intensely barbecue-y”. It tastes, really, how barbecue sauce should taste, with a little heat, a little sweetness, and an ability to enhance other flavors as well as assert itself.

Also, the recipe seems to make enough sauce to fill a small lake, so maybe cut it in half if you don’t think you’re going to use it quite so much. Trust me, though, you’ll probably end up using it more than you’d expect.

Worth the Wait

Remember this vanilla extract?

Now it looks like this, and gets used at least once a week.

And how about this raspberry vodka?

Now it looks like this.  It’s not only pretty, but it tastes good, too.  If you drink enough of it, you stop caring that there’s dust on the furniture, as evidenced by this photo.

What’s your favorite thing that’s worth the wait, or gets better with time?

For me, it’s this right here:

 

Tomato, To-mah-to

It’s tomato season!

We can’t seem to get enough of these beautiful tomatoes.  I can’t think of any other food that when it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad, it’s horrid.  Right now, they are very, very good.  We have a friend who says that there are some days that are so hot that all he wants to eat is a tomato.  I’ve never been that hot.  But I have enjoyed some of these fresh tomato recipes.

First, Tomato Mozzarella and Basil (Barefoot Contessa Family Style).  This might be my favorite tomato recipe, and we used the fresh heirloom tomatoes from our CSA box for this.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this salad, and this is probably the ugliest batch I’ve ever made.  But guess what?  Still awesome.

Next up:  Tomato Mozzarella and Pesto Panini (Barefoot Contessa at Home).  There’s a reason that this isn’t an actual panini.

My dad had a panini maker for his grocery store’s deli.  He sold the store, and kept the panini maker, and then generously gave it to me.  The catch?  It was an industrial-grade panini maker, which only plugged into an industrial-grade electrical outlet.  In other words, we’d have to unplug our dryer to plug in the panini maker.  Realizing how impractical that was, we sold the panini grill, and suffered through with an electric griddle for these sandwiches instead.  We didn’t even have any fancy crusty bread, so we used regular boring sandwich bread.  Even with all of those intervening forces, these sandwiches were amazing.

Finally (for now), Greek Panzanella (from Barefoot Contessa:  How Easy is That?).  This was simply amazing, and even though the leftovers were a little soggy a day or two later, I still gobbled them up, and happily.  I approached panzanella with some trepidation, since I’d never made or eaten it before.  I needn’t have worried – as it turns out, as weird as “bread salad” sounds, it tastes pretty good.  Think of a salad with more croutons and no lettuce, and there you go.  The oregano and red wine vinaigrette used in this recipe would make a great marinade for grilled chicken to top a green salad.  All of these vegetables came from our CSA box.

Bonus item:  This is not a Barefoot Contessa recipe, but maybe it should be.  I met my friend Amber during my first week of college, and we reconnected a few years ago.  Amber is one of the funniest, most delightful, interesting, and interested people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.  I love that we can keep in touch through her food blog, Awake at the Whisk.  I made her Roasted Heirloom Tomato Freezer Sauce last week, and it could not have been easier.  (If you’re keeping track of how many tomatoes we’ve eaten, add in some BLTs for four adults over the weekend, and yes, I had to go to the farmers’ market to buy more tomatoes.)  I used the marinara on Eggplant Parmesan, and we gobbled it all up.

Here are the tomatoes ready to be roasted.  We had a little extra excitement as I brought in the fresh basil from the back porch – a little green worm stowed away and tried to make it into our sauce!  Luckily I spotted it before I added extra protein to the recipe.  Yikes!  I must grow really good basil if even the worms want some.

I’d love to hear about your favorite tomato recipe.  During the summer that my husband and I first met, he told me “I just love a plain tomato.  With salt and pepper.  And white bread.  And mayonnaise.”  I had to break it to him that that wasn’t exactly a “plain” tomato.  What’s your favorite way to eat tomatoes?

Cocktail Hour

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I don’t really drink.  It’s not for any moral or philosophical reason – I just don’t care for the taste of most alcohol, and I’d rather eat my calories than drink them.  But, for the sake of this project (insert martyr sigh here), I decided to try again.

My husband and I try to get out for a date night whenever we can, but sometimes our schedules and our budget don’t allow for a babysitter and a night out.  So, we made our own date night on our screen porch.  We turned off the TV and turned on the baby monitors, lit some candles, and listened to the crickets.  We laughed.  We sipped.  We didn’t really talk about the kids for once.

He had the “real margarita” (Barefoot Contessa Parties!):

He said it tasted like a real margarita.  I remember wanting to buy margarita glasses when we first got married.  Now I’m glad we didn’t, because in almost 8 years of marriage, this was our first homemade margarita.  I’m glad I know how to make them at home now, though, because one of our favorite Mexican restaurants has gone downhill in recent months.  They always had cheap margaritas, but the food has become so bad there that we won’t go back for the drinks.

I had the whiskey sour (Barefoot Contessa at Home):

It’s pink because I added a little maraschino cherry juice.  Sadly, the maraschino cherries were my favorite part of the drink.  I remember trying (and liking) these in law school, so maybe my taste for whiskey has just disappeared.  I don’t know.  My husband tasted it and liked it, because I went light on the whiskey.  Blech.

I’m just going to have to try harder if I’m going to become a lush.  On the other hand, I highly recommend the stay at home date night.  Within an hour of these photos being taken, the baby woke up and we tended to him.  A few hours later, the 3-year-old woke up.  I’m glad we enjoyed our fleeting quiet time while it lasted, drink or no drink.

Summer Barbecue

Here in Minnesota, the summers are short, but beautiful and comfortable.  We try to squeeze in as many cookouts, outdoor activities, and casual entertaining opportunities as we can before the leaves start to fall.  Last week, we had a casual cookout with burgers, beans, and these beauties.

The crudite platter, which doesn’t exactly resemble the one in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, but isn’t it gorgeous?

Those are purple carrots from our CSA.  They are a deep red/purple on the outside, and light orange on the inside.  My 3-year-old thinks this is hilarious.

We also made the tarragon potato salad from Barefoot Contessa:  How Easy is That?

The best part about this cookout is that we got to spend some time with wonderful friends, whose family includes a few hungry teenage boys.  I love feeding hungry kids!

Farmers’ Market Finds

Even though our Community Supported Agriculture farm has been supplying us with a wealth of great produce this season, I still like to visit farmers’ markets to supplement our table.  You see, the CSA box provides just the right amount for what a normal family would want to eat.  But what if you want zucchini coming out of your ears, like a real gardener?  (There’s an old joke in my hometown that you shouldn’t leave your car unlocked in the summer, not to prevent theft, but to prevent zealous gardeners from giving you their surplus zucchini.)  I have neither the time, space, skill, nor inclination to actually garden, so I market instead.  I wanted more than what we could eat for dinner, so I could bake with some, freeze some, and just revel in the surplus of it.

Besides, the farmers’ market was on our summer list.

I brought home enough zucchini to eat some for lunch, freeze four cups of it, and bake this zucchini bread and these zucchini brownies.  (Trust me.  Zucchini brownies = good.)

While we were there, I couldn’t resist some ears of corn and these herbs.

Even though I have three healthy basil plants on the porch, I couldn’t resist that beautiful bunch of basil for $1.  This is what we had for dinner that night.  I had enough pesto to freeze, and enough leftover basil for salad dressing.

The recipe is for Spaghettoni Al Pesto (Barefoot Contessa Parties!), and you’ll probably notice that the picture doesn’t show spaghettoni.  That’s rigatoni, which rhymes with spaghettoni, and that’s good enough for me.

I had less of an idea of what I would do with the dill, but seeing those big, flowery bunches reminded me of my grandmother.  She grew acres of vegetables and herbs every summer, and I remember the dill on the edge of the garden.  The smell of dill always brings me back to her, and that garden.  Unlike a lot of people, I don’t have a lot of good food memories of my grandmother – she was pretty much insane, and not in a charming way – but the garden and the dill made me smile.
I brought it home and made a small batch of creamy cucumber salad, from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics.

Easy Strawberry Jam

I’m a jamstress!

I made this (from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics) on a weekday morning when I should have been folding laundry instead.  It was, true to its name, easy to make.  I only made 1/3 of a batch because I’m petrified of canning (botulism, anyone?), and I didn’t want to make any more than we can eat in a few weeks.

Plum Raspberry Crumble

Fruit crisp season continues here with this delightful dessert from Barefoot in Paris.  It’s like the older, more sophisticated sister of the strawberry rhubarb crisp.  We are not disappointed.

I’ve stopped measuring ingredients for the topping – I just throw together flour, sugar, brown sugar, oatmeal and butter until it looks right.  It always tastes right.  The raspberries for this came from our CSA, and the plums are ubiquitous in grocery stores this week.

Roasted Figs and Prosciutto

This is a newer, fresher take on bacon-wrapped dates, and they are divine.  If you like salty and sweet combinations, you will love these.  Notice that I didn’t even have time to take the photo before they started getting gobbled up.

The recipe is from Barefoot Contessa: How Easy is That?, but if you can read the title of the recipe, you can probably figure it out on your own.  I shopped around a little for the figs.  One grocery store had them for $25/pound, but Costco had them for less than $3/pound.  Guess which one I chose?  I’ll give you a hint:  my husband is still on speaking terms with me.

 

Fennel Salad

Hey look, everybody!  I’m cooking something that’s not in Barefoot Contessa:  How Easy is That?

This recipe comes from Barefoot in Paris, and it probably wins the award for the least-bad fennel preparation.  (See this post for the least-bad cauliflower award.)  I don’t care for fennel.  It’s too bad, because we get it every so often in our CSA box, and there are SO MANY Barefoot recipes that call for it.  I thought I’d give this one a shot.  It calls for sauteing the fennel in a little olive oil before adding a vinaigrette.  It wasn’t quite as licorice-y as raw fennel and it didn’t have that sharp bite to it, but it was still had a strong anise taste.  Bummer.