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.

Mexican Chicken Soup

This recipe (Barefoot Contessa at Home) wasn’t so different from the Chicken Chili, but I don’t mind an excuse to eat avocados and cheese.

Caesar Salad with Pancetta

Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of this decadent salad (Barefoot Contessa Parties!) on the night I made it, so this is a photo of the leftovers.  The dressing was just lemon-y and garlic-y enough, and I’d definitely make it again, but I only used about half of it on the salad.  The dressing recipe allowed for a substitution of mayo for egg yolks, which I used, being a little nervous about raw eggs.  I also only used about half of the recommended amount of pancetta, and that was plenty.  I roasted the tomatoes per the directions, but I could have easily skipped that step.  I’m already looking forward to making this when the romaine starts showing up in our CSA boxes this summer!

Chicken Chili

I’ve made a white chicken chili for years, and was anxious to try out this version (Barefoot Contessa…..) for something different.  I made a half-batch, which still turned out to be plenty for at least 8 main dish servings. As you’ll see from the photo, I made some mistakes.  The onions were supposed to be chopped and not sliced, and the peppers could have been chopped more finely.  I roasted the chicken breasts as directed, and when I started adding the chicken to the chili, it looked like it would be heavy on chicken (perhaps given the size of these particular chicken breasts), so I added half of the recommended amount.  In retrospect, I probably should have added the entire recommended amount of chicken, or at least closer to 3/4 of the recommended amount.

All of that said, though, it still turned out well, and I would definitely make it again.  My husband preferred this over the white version of chicken chili, so I imagine it will be appearing again in our kitchen before winter is over.  The sour cream, as suggested on the side, was essential.

Barefoot Contessa Parties!  p. 232

Mac and Cheese

This is not your blue box stovetop mac and cheese, people – it’s the real deal.  I substituted Colby for Gruyere, because I was reminded recently that I really just don’t like Gruyere.  A tiny bit, sure, but not 12 ounces in one recipe.  The colby was serviceable, but I think I would have increased the cheddar-to-colby ratio to give the whole dish more oomph.  I was pleasantly surprised that the (out of season) tomatoes tasted as good as they did.  Barefoot Contessa Family Style, p. 202

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Are you tired of roasted vegetables yet?  We’re not!  I had several pints of sungold tomatoes hanging out in my fridge from a few weeks of CSA boxes.  They’re delicious raw in salads or just plain, but we’ve been a little bit flooded with them this summer, and so we were looking to try something different.  As with all of these roasted vegetable recipes, it’s great to try them when the weather is cool, so you’re not heating up the whole house with the oven.  We had these plain, as a side dish, but I think they’d be equally good with pasta.  The recipe is in Barefoot Contessa Parties!, p. 85.

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

We’re in a brief but wonderful intersection of seasons here in Minnesota, where the air is crisp enough to want hot soup for dinner, but the frost hasn’t gotten the last of the summer tomatoes yet.  During the first few days of cooking for this project, a dear friend asked if I wanted some of the extra tomatoes from her garden.  My answer was a definitive “yes.”  It just so happened that the beautiful tomatoes she brought were the perfect amount for Roasted Tomato Basil Soup (The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, p. 84).  This recipe also calls for a great deal of basil, which (despite my woeful lack of a green thumb) always seems to grow plentifully on my deck.  I’ve never been much of a fan of Campbell’s Tomato Soup, so I spent a long time thinking that I didn’t like tomato soup at all.  This soup changed my mind about that, and it’s especially good with warm rolls on the side.  The leftovers were great with grilled cheese sandwiches the next day for lunch.

The soup in the food mill

California BLT

When I was growing up, I remember BLTs as a special favorite dinner for our family.  My grandmother’s lettuce and tomatoes, picked from her garden that day, were delicious.  The thing I remember most was that we kept the toaster at the dining room table, so that we could all make our sandwiches while sitting down together for a meal.  Toast, it has been pointed out by my husband, is treated somewhat sacramentally by my family of origin.  My grandfather drove a bread truck, and often brought home a day-old loaf for his three growing sons.  They would sit at the kitchen table in the evening, toasting the entire loaf as a snack.  To outsiders, it might seem strange to eat toast after breakfast-time, but it’s definitely well within the range of normal at our house.  BLTs for dinner, however, were a different story.  Tomato season is a special time – somehow it signifies the end of summer, when you want to soak up as much sunshine and eat as much fresh produce as possible.  The salty-sweet combination of the bacon and the tomatoes, combined with the cool crunch of the lettuce and the chewiness of the bread, makes a perfect sandwich.  Add some corn on the cob and maybe a peach crisp, and you have the perfect summer evening meal.

I’m not particularly picky about bacon, but I like the thick-cut variety if possible, and Neuske’s is a great source.  As a native of Wisconsin, I’m biased, of course, but I think Neuske’s is pretty well known throughout the country.

The California BLT recipe (Barefoot Contessa At Home, p. 29) adds lemon juice and avocado to the traditional BLT ingredients.  Even though I didn’t think the original needed improvement, these additions really are delicious.  I used sourdough bread, and sent my husband back to the office bragging about his restaurant-quality lunch.  The recipe calls for baking/roasting the bacon in the oven, which certainly improves the (splattery, messy) experience of those earlier BLTs at home.