Monday, October 28, 2013

Pizza Dough, Two Ways (Plus a bonus recipe!)

It is hard to believe that it’s time to start planning for Thanksgiving already, and this year is the added bonus of a joint Thanksgiving and Chanukah celebration. While I was poring over my stack of Thanksgiving themed food magazines, I came across a welcome distraction. In the November 2009 issue of Food & Wine there was an article entitled “Asia Comes to America.” Joanne Chang from Boston’s Flour CafĂ© and Bakery (and Myers and Chang) contributed a handful of recipes for traditional Chinese items made from non-traditional ingredients. The one that caught my eye was for scallion pancakes using store-bought pizza dough. Since I have been eating scallion pancakes almost every Thursday for the past few months (maybe year...), I thought I would give the recipe a try. (Recipe here, I quartered the recipe to make 1)



Does scallion pancakes every Thursday seem a little odd? Not when the delicious Mei Mei Street Kitchen truck parks across from your office every Thursday. When dumplings aren't on the menu, my next choice is whatever they are serving on a hot griddled scallion pancake. Some week’s it is braised beef, cheese, and pickles others it is roast beef, potato salad, cranberry hoisin and Swiss chard, or sometimes the double awesome. I know I can’t recreate the full Mei Mei experience at home, but the scallion pancake seemed like a good thing to try.



With a 22 oz. ball of pizza dough from the store, I didn’t need to use all of it for the scallion pancake. Earlier in the day I turned 3 pounds of local apples into an apple butter flavored with maple and pumpkin pie spice. This apple butter was packed with as much New England fall as I could find! Apples from Shelburne Farm (Stow, MA), pumpkin pie spice and apple cider from Bolton Spring Farm (Bolton, MA), and granulated maple sugar from The Warren Farm and Sugarhouse (North Brookfield, MA). I thought about making a batch of warm biscuits to slather it on, but then I remembered the leftover pizza dough in the refrigerator. Perfect for a no-fuss dessert!



I tore up the remaining dough and tossed the dough balls in a generous amount of cinnamon sugar. After arranging them in a Bundt pan they got smothered in a mix of my fresh apple butter and melted butter. Thirty minutes and a flip later, maple-pumpkin pie spiced-apple butter monkey bread! There is no recipe for this one, tear up your favorite pizza dough (or even refrigerated canned biscuits), toss in cinnamon sugar, top with melted butter and apple butter, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Cool for a few minutes, invert onto a plate, and watch it disappear in no time at all.



One ball of dough plus a few great sources of inspiration equals a delicious day in the Good Cook Doris kitchen. Hope your fall is just as tasty!

Maple Pumpkin Pie Spiced Apple Butter
Inspired by Overnight Apple Butter, Domenica Marchetti, Cooking Light, October 2004

1/2 cup granulated maple sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup apple cider
1 ½ tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
10 medium apples, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into large chunks (2 ½ - 3 pounds apples)

Add all ingredients in a Dutch oven or large, heavy bottomed pot
Cover and cook over medium-low heat 1 – 1 ½ hours or until apples are very tender, stirring occasionally
Place a large fine-mesh sieve over a bowl; spoon one-third of apple mixture into sieve. Using a spatula, press the apple mixture through sieve. Discard pulp. Repeat with remaining apple mixture.  (This took a little while to do, you want to get as much apple goodness as possible in the finished product)
Return  the apple butter mixture to the pot and cook over medium low for approximately 15 minutes, or until desired thickness.

Time: 
10-15 minutes prep time, depending on your apple peeling speed
10-20 minutes sieve time, depending on your arm strength
Total cook time: 1 ¼ hour – 2 hours

Equipment:
Peeler, measuring spoons and cups, knife, Dutch oven or heavy pot, and spatula

Notes:
This recipe is not sweet – if you like your apple butter sweeter you can add up to double the amount of sugar and honey. I prefer a less sweet apple butter, to let the apples’ natural sugars determine the final sweetness.  

I used a variety of apples from our recent apple picking outing: Cortland, Red Delicious, Empire, Golden Delicious, Rome, and a few others I can't remember. 

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Smoke Siege BBQ Team: Inaugural Competition Season (Part 2)

This is the second post in a series about my first experience with competition barbecue. Last summer I helped my brother at a barbecue competition in Indianapolis, Indiana. This second installment in the series is quite delayed, but seems appropriate as I head out for barbecue season 2!

I am getting ready to head to Indianapolis for Smoke Siege BBQ Team's second season on the competition barbecue circuit. My brother's team has already completed one competition this season. This event will be number two of the season. We will be participating in the Wine, Brew, & Bar-B-Que, Too event hosted by the New Palestine, Indiana Lions Club. To get in the barbecue mindset, and ready for a crazy weekend, I am continuing the story of our competition day activities from last year's event. You can read about the event and our initial preparation at http://www.goodcookdoris.com/2012/11/smoke-siege-bbq-team-inaugural.html.

Official team photo

For this post I will focus on Friday at the competition - the preparation day. Turn-in and judging happens on Saturday. Friday is spent getting organized, prepping all the meats, and of course a little beer and schmoozing with the other competitors. Depending on Saturday's turn-in times, actual meat smoking doesn't start until somewhere between midnight and 2:00 am.

Once we got our work area set-up and ready, the prep work began. Rules stipulate that you can only trim meat before arrival. Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) judges have to inspect your meat and give you the all-clear to get to work. With four meats and sauce to prepare, we started around 2:00 pm. My first task was to season and prepare the chicken thighs. For smoking chicken, dark meat is going to stay more moist and hold up to a few hours in the smoke. The chicken gets a nice rub down both under and over the skin before being put in the cooler to absorb the secret spice mixture.



About halfway through the chicken prep a huge thunderstorm rolled through. We covered the meat,threw a wool blanket over our wood pile, held tight the tent, and rode it out. Thankfully we were just a little soggy and didn't lose any of our supplies.

Chicken thighs, prepped and ready to chill.
Me, a little soggy from the rain.

Note: Even though you only turn in 6 portions of each meat, you cook a lot of extra. This allows you to select the best looking and tasting pieces for the judges. And it feeds all of the friends who come out to help you during the competition. 

While I was busy massaging chicken, my brother Marc was tackling the larger cuts of brisket and pork shoulder. The meats need time to absorb flavors and you want them to stay moist throughout the cooking process. To achieve this cooks use a variety of techniques. Marc injects the meat with liquid and seasoning and then gives it a generous spice rub. I think we cooked 2-3 briskets and 2 pork shoulders.Ribs aren't treated to the injection process but do get a good helping of spice rub. Between 2:00 pm and 4:30 pm we were able to prepare all of the meats and clean up our work space.


One of the perks of this particular competition was a complimentary dinner following the mandatory cook's meeting. All 50 pro teams listened to the rules and regulations before being treated to what I would describe as a very rich dinner. I am fairly certain that everything was cooked in butter. And if it wasn't , there was a giant vat of butter in which you could dunk your corn (or burger buns...).


After swapping stories with fellow competitors and clogging our arteries, the rest of the evening was open. The opening ceremonies of the Olympics were on TV, competitors were checking each other out, and the beer was flowing. As the 11:00 pm hour approached, I bunked in to our overnight facilities and rested up for the long night ahead.


Many other experienced teams had queen size air mattresses with full sheets, others had cots, some had fully loaded RVs. For our inaugural season, we had reclining seats in the car. Around midnight the wood went into the smoker and started a slow burn to reach 250 degrees. Meats got a final prep and around 2:00 am the cooking began.

Midnight pitmaster in action.

Seasoning the meat one more time before going on. 

After the temperature was satisfactory and the meats were on the smoker, I took over the overnight pit watch duty. This entailed trying to stay awake and making sure the temperature stayed constant. Sometimes the smoker needed to be fed a little extra wood, sometimes the smoke valve needed to open up a little.

Stoking the fire around 3 am.




We made it through the night and as the sun rose over the smoker we were a little weary, but energized to face the competition head on!

Ribs, awaiting their dawn cooking time. 

Next up in the series are final cooking, presentation preparation, and a lot of good eats. I'll close by showing our schedule for the competition. To have a successful cook,  you have to start with the turn in time and work backwards. The meat needs time to rest before slicing, and everything has a different cooking time. As you can see below, Marc had a grid for the meat to go on, get wrapped in foil (prevent too much smoke flavor), if it need to be sauced, and when to take off the grill.


I'll wrap up this series, and then have a recap of our second year. I hope it is as fun as the first! I'll be tweeting & putting pictures on Instagram over the weekend. Follow along!

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Boston Brunchers: BOKX 109 American Prime in Newton, MA

Brunch might be my favorite meal. I love finding new and interesting takes on brunch food - and our trip to BOKX 109 American Prime delivered! Thanks to the Boston Brunchers, the hubby, little guy and I headed to Newton for a delicious brunch experience.

BOKX 109 American Prime is located in the Hotel Indigo right next to Riverside Station. It is easily accessible by the Mass Pike, Route 16 and Route 30 (perfect for us suburbanites). For city-dwellers, it's an easy ride out on the Green Line D branch. The restaurant is located on the lower level and opens out into the pool area. 

We started with a round of drinks - mimosa, fresh squeezed orange juice, and water. As we settled in to our comfortable seats overlooking the pool, it was hard to decide on our meal choices.



Our server was attentive, but laid-back, giving us time to decide if we were going to go with lunch or breakfast items. We ordered and then sat back to relax and wait for our food to be freshly prepared. We did not have to wait long, the chef sent out a special amuse bouche that definitely woke up our palates.



The pear and mascarpone sacchetti (handmade purses of fresh pasta) were the perfect mix of sweet and savory. The adult plates were presented with a smoke-filled glass bowl on top, which let out a wonderful smell when lifted. The little guy's plate was sans-smoke, but that didn't seem to get in the way of his enjoyment.



For entrees, the hubby and I chose two different egg dishes. For my entree, I opted for the Filet and Eggs Benedict. There were so many good flavors - the perfectly medium steak, rich runny egg yolk, white truffle, and bearnaise on top of grilled ciabatta. I am not normally an eggs benedict fan, but this won me over. The confit potatoes were rich and creamy.








The hubby normally opts for a sweet breakfast, but the pancake and french toast options were a little over the top for him. He chose the Steak Bomblette - a frittata style omelet with tenderloin, smoked gouda, mushrooms and carmelized onions. The bomblette was also topped with a drizzle of balsamic. This was an eight inch flavor bomb! The only thing missing was a good piece of toast on the side.



The little guy didn't need his own entree. But if we let him, he might have eaten all of that bomblette! An order of the fresh fruit plate rounded out his meal. The large square plate had melons, grapes, berries, and pineapple. On the side was a seasonal sorbet (peach/mango) and an unnecessarily large bowl of Champagne sabayon. We  thought maybe they gave us the whole batch instead of an individual serving because the label was still on the serving bowl! Either way, it was wonderful.




To our surprise, the meal ended with a huge green apple cotton candy!! As soon as we saw it coming, the hubby and I looked at each other and thought - parenting dilemma! How can we explain to a toddler that this is mommy and daddy's pure sugar treat, and you can't have any. 


Well, we let him touch it but told him he couldn't eat it. Below is what happened when he put his hand in his mouth and figured out we were trying to pull a fast one on him.


Thanks to Boston Brunchers and BOKX 109 for a great brunch! The service, food, and atmosphere were wonderful and we hope to make it back again soon!

Disclaimer: I entered a contest to win free brunch for two at BOKX 109 through Boston Brunchers. The meal was free, but we tipped our excellent server. All opinions are honest reflect our experience at brunch during this visit. 

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