Achievement: Potato Pizza

If you're not local you may be wondering what the hell is potato pizza?  I'm going to tell you right now it is delicious.  I am fortunate to grow up in an area with an absolutely amazing pizza place with the generic name of Antonio's that exists in this tiny shop space in the center of town.  A little bit on context about Antonio's from a business class I took in 2006:

• only one McDonald's in the US has ever been driven out of business, and that was the one next to Antonio's 
• their net profit exceeds $1 million
• they eliminated their advertising budget because they didn't need it

If you drive through town around last call they are the one business open with a line of customers going down the sidewalk.  For years they actually paid for the police officer who would stand by to keep people out of the streets (since then the sidewalk in front of Antonio's was expanded into the area of several parking spots and benches added).

So their pizza is tasty, they are wildly successful operating in a space that has table space for maybe 20 people, and they have some fantastic pizza options.  They've expanded a bit over the years, now with a handful of other locations (two in MA, one in RI, one in IL, and one in TX).  I'm still not sure how to deal with the fact that they have locations that resemble restaurants.

Potato Bacon is one of my favorite of their offerings (up there with Portabella Fresh Mozzarella Basil, BBQ Steak and Mushrooms, and Mac Attack), so I decided to see if I could make something similar in my own kitchen.

Now, my end result is not exact, but it turned out damn tasty.

The Supplies:

• 1 container of garlic & herb Boursin Spread
• 1 hunk of mozzarella
• pizza dough, ideally at room temperature
• 5 or so strips of bacon
• potatoes
• flour
• cookie sheet/pizza pan/pizza stone

The Process:

1. Preheat oven to 450 F
2. Clean kitchen counter because it probably needs it.  Once dry, dust counter and pan with flour.
3. Roll/work out dough to approximately the size and shape of your pan.  Remember that the dough is elastic and will shrink back a little and work it to slightly larger than the pan size and make it fit in pan.
4. Put dough in oven for ~10 minutes to partially cook.  Warning, dough might puff up and need popping.
5. Dice bacon
6. Slice potatoes thinly
7. Grate mozzarella (or even better, make your other half do it while you work on these other steps, that's what I did).
8. Dough is likely cooked enough, we're just trying to avoid soggy crust, remove from oven, let cool if necessary.
9. Use the Boursin Spread as your pizza sauce.
10. Sprinkle some of the mozzarella over the pizza
11. Cover pizza with your thinly-sliced potatoes
12. Anoint liberally with bacon.
13. Top off with more mozzarella
14. Put back in the oven for at least 20 minutes, poke at the potato slices with a fork to test if they are done.  Fork should go in cleanly without really any resistance, bacon should look cooked.

This came out pretty damn tasty.  I knew it would not match exactly for a number of reasons, including their menu lists a "butter sauce."  I used a Boursin Spread because it was airy enough to spread well and because Boursin is fantastic for making a lazy alfredo sauce.  I also should have let the crust pre-cook a little bit longer.  But while it doesn't match the original, I did create a tasty substitute.

Rabbit Ginger

Most of the cooking we do at home is experimentation and recipe modification. A large portion of this for us is that we raise rabbits for meat. Due to that, and since other ethical meat is WAY too expensive for us to get our hands on much, we eat mostly rabbit when it comes to our limited meat eating. At some point I'm going to go in to the theory of substituting rabbit for most purposes, but I figure, start with the best recipe I've kludged together from other sources so far. Something you'll probably find about my recipes is that I don't do things like precise measurements.

I keep intending to take photos in process, or at least at the serving phase when I cook, but I never remember to sadly. I thought about including a cute rabbit photo, but this is a food blog not a cute blog!

This recipe was based loosely off a combination of chicken ginger, and chicken terriyaki recipes.

Most of them looked something like:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/indonesian-ginger-chicken-recipe/index.html
And
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/chicken-teriyaki-recipe/index.html

Recipe: Rabbit ginger
Ingredients:
1 Fryer weight rabbit butchered out and jointed

Marinade:
~ 3 Tablespoons soy sauce
~ 3 Tablespoons honey
~ 3 Tablespoons clear alcohol. We used hard apple cider, you could also use sake or other similar alcohol.
1 Tablespoon grated fresh ginger.
Other spices to taste.
I used:
2 generous pinches tarragon
1 generous pinch chipotle

Mix all of the marinade ingredients in a medium mixing bowl thoroughly. A whisk works best, but a fork would also do the trick in a pinch. Once they are thoroughly mixed, place the pieces of rabbit in the bowl and coat them fully with the mixture. Ideally the mixture will nearly completely cover the rabbit as it sits in the bowl. Place the bowl with the marinade and the covered rabbit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. During this time I'd recommend starting rice if you will be using it as the starch.

After 30 or more minutes heat a medium sauce pan so it is hot, but not oil smoking hot and coat the pan with the oil of your choice. You probably won't need more than a tablespoon. Once the pan is hot and coated take out the rabbit, and brown each piece on both sides in the pan. When you do this just take the rabbit piece by piece, and put it down. As you brown it you should also be caramelizing the marinade on it. Don't cook it, just brown each piece and remove it, placing it on a plate to the side. Don't crowd the pieces in the pan, or they won't properly brown.

Once all of the pieces are browned and set aside put 3 tablespoons of water in the remaining marinade, and place all of the rabbit and the marinade in the medium sauce pan over low medium heat to finish cooking the rabbit. This should take 15 - 20 minutes if you cook it slowly, basically simmering it. Check the thickest piece of rabbit to make sure it is cooked fully before serving. One note about rabbit is, since it has zero fat if you don't slow cook it or do something to keep the moisture in it will dry out and be not so good. The marinade helps, as does the browning, but don't over heat.

I recommend serving with rice, broccoli, and maybe some sweet potato.

Enjoy in good health

-Coureton

Maple Bacon Cookies

Why not kick this blog off with a recipe that I got lots of requests about, and ultimately inspired starting this.  Also these were damn tasty and bacon is bacon.


Here's the original recipe (from The Republican Extra, June 19, 2013):
1 lb maple bacon
1/2 c unsalted butter, room temperature
1 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c maple sugar, plus additional for sprinkling
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t flake sea salt, plus additional for sprinkling
1/2 t maple extract
2 eggs
2 3/4 c all purpose flour
11.5 oz bag milk chocolate chips

Cook bacon until browned and crispy
Transfer bacon to paper towels to drain and cool, reserve bacon grease in skillet
When cool chop/crumble bacon
Preheat oven to 375, line baking sheets with parchment paper
Mix together butter, 1/2 c bacon grease, brown sugar, maple sugar, baking soda, salt, and maple extract until light and fluffy
Add eggs one at a time, beating and scraping the bowl in between
Mix in flour, then chocolate chips, then bacon
Scoop onto baking sheets in 1 T mounds, sprinkle lightly with maple sugar and sea salt
Bake 10 - 12 minutes

What I did:
Lets start off changing the first ingredient, used regular thick cut bacon rather than thinly sliced maple bacon.  Hey, I like my bacon thick, don't judge me.  Diced bacon before hand and then cooked.  This change is likely more stylistic than anything, but I might as well make note of it.  Had I cooked the strips whole until crispy I would have likely gotten more crumbling, but I'm fine with the little bacon chunks my method produced.  I wanted a softer bacon rather than a crunchy bacon anyways.

I didn't have maple sugar or extract, but I had a gallon of maple syrup.  I mean really, why would I want to use maple extract?  The conversion for maple sugar to syrup is supposed to be 1/2 c sugar = 1 c syrup, and reduce other liquid by 1/4 c.  Only there wasn't really any liquid, so I added a random amount of flour until it looked good (possibly 3.5 c instead of the 2.75?). 

A small difference in flavor in what I bake is I use turbinated sugar not white. I also used some of the bacon greased when I was cooking dinner, so I put in maybe a quarter cup at most of bacon grease.  I swear this is not at all because I failed to properly read the entire recipe before getting started. 

Copious sampling of the cookie dough inspired the addition of vanilla extract (no, I did not measure) and a little more syrup.  If you wish to follow my example add until it tastes good.  Just don't use the mixer to mix in the chocolate chips.  I also completely failed to sprinkle anything on top of the cookies before (or after) baking them.

Recommendations:
Parchment paper is awesome.  Don't skip that step

Refrigerate your cookies.  They're not going to exactly spoil right away, but after 2-3 days I can say I enjoyed the cookies that I stored in the fridge over the ones in a tin in the break room at work.

I'm no expert, but I think the biggest reason to watch how much cookie dough you eat here is to not over ingest unreacted baking soda.  I totally felt like I something was bubbling away in my tummy, but maybe that was my imagination.  Still totally worth it.

If you seriously deeply care about losing weight or a diet don't eat these cookies.  Yeah, I totally wish I could be a bit slimmer, but then I eat cookies like these and decide my squishy bits are totally worth it.

What I would like to do next time:
I'm totally candying the bacon with maple syrup next time, maybe a little bourbon or whiskey as well.   This stands even if I do use a maple bacon to start.

I also think this would go better with dark chocolate chips.  In fact I meant to use dark chocolate chips than discovered the chips on hand were milk chocolate.

Further reduction of grease, I actually was craving a less smooth, chunky textured cookie.  I had a very smooth buttery cookie.