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CHINESE STYLE SHRIMP AND BROCCOLI

Posted: April 26, 2023 in Food, Recipes, seafood, shrimp, Uncategorized
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There are some dishes I crave more than others, and Chinese shrimp and broccoli is one of them. But it’s really quite easy to make it at home, and it’s surprisingly low in calories if you’re really careful with the amount of oil you use. Oil is the biggest culprit when it comes to calories in Chinese cooking.

Second on the list of calorie culprits is rice. It looks innocent enough, but a cup of rice has 170 calories, and if you’re limiting yourself to a daily calorie count of 1500, like I am, that becomes pretty significant.

The good news is that shrimp is actually one of the lowest calorie foods you can buy, checking in at only 1 calorie per gram. Broccoli is also low in calories, so if you skip the rice, you can really eat your fill of this delicious dish.

 

 

I’ve come up with what I call my “Asian Mix,” which is a combination of five ingredients commonly found in the supermarket in the Asian food section. Add these to your shrimp and broccoli, and you will never need to leave home for really good Chinese food!

Asian Mix…
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (unseasoned)
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon chili garlic sauce

Combine these ingredients in a bowl, mixing well. Set aside.

 

 

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 or 2 large heads broccoli, chopped into smaller, similar-sized pieces
1 lb. wild-caught American shrimp, peeled and deveined
Asian Mix, as listed above
peanut oil

I prefer peanut oil when cooking Asian dishes.

Heat a non-stick pan and add 1 tablespoon of peanut oil to it. Add the chopped onion, and cook until translucent.

Add the chopped garlic and stir for about 10 seconds.

Add the chopped broccoli and cook until the broccoli turns bright green but stays crunchy.

Empty the pan out into a bowl and, without wiping the pan down, add the shrimp to the pan (no more oil!), returning it to the heat. Let the shrimp heat in the hot pan for 30–60 seconds on one side, then flip the shrimp over and let them heat through for 30–60 seconds on the other side. That’s all you need to cook them, unless they’re really large. Just keep flipping them until they’re pink and firm, but don’t overcook them.

Remove the pan from the heat, and add a tablespoon of the Asian Mix to the shrimp, tossing them around to coat them with it. Don’t let them burn!

Now bring back the onions, garlic, and broccoli to the shrimp in the pan, tossing everything together, and adding more of the Asian Mix until everything is nicely coated.

 

 

 

Serve immediately…over rice or not!

 

 

 

HOMEMADE STUFFED CRUST PIZZA

Posted: April 20, 2023 in cheese, Food, pizza, Recipes, Uncategorized
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It’s Pizza Week here in Providence, RI, but most of the time, I prefer to make mine at home.

So let’s not talk diets right now. Let’s talk about what is probably the greatest invention since pizza itself: stuffed crust pizza.

I mean: first, there was the simple margarita pizza. Then someone thought of “extra cheese.” After that, where could we go? And then, someone who in my mind deserved the Nobel Prize for Food, came up with stuffed crust pizza. Originally the brainchild of Pizza Hut, it boldly put cheese where no cheese had gone before.

 

 

So for me, since I love to make my own pizzas, the next step was to figure out a way to make stuffed crust pizza at home. Turns out it wasn’t really that difficult.

If you’re not into going through the hassle of making your own dough, most supermarkets have pre-made pizza dough balls in the refrigerated section. Grab a couple of them, and save yourself some time and effort. (If you want to make the dough from scratch, see my recipe at the bottom of this blog.)

Same thing with the sauce: I prefer to make my own from real San Marzano tomatoes, but if you have a brand of jarred sauce you like, use that.

The rest is pretty straightforward: cheese!!

 

Let’s get started…

You bought or made the dough. If you bought two balls, you rolled them together to make one larger one. You poured a little olive oil in a bowl, and placed the ball of dough in that, covering with a clean towel, to let the dough rise for a few hours.

After a few hours, you punch the dough down to get rid of the air bubbles, and roll it into a ball again, putting it back in the bowl, covered, to rest for another hour or so.

Preheat the oven to 500 or it’s hottest temperature, with a pizza stone on the middle rack.

Now the dough is ready to work. Place your pizza peel on the counter you’re working on. Sprinkle the peel with a large-grained flour, like corn meal or semolina. (That acts like little ball-bearings to let the dough slide off easily.) On top of the pizza peel, stretch the dough out to a size that will be about 2 or 3 inches bigger in diameter than the peel or pizza stone you have in the oven.

 

Made the mistake of stretching the dough out on the counter rather than the peel, which made it hard to lift. Perhaps it was the influence of the bourbon in the background! I fixed the problem later. (I kept the bourbon.)

 

Buy a firm mozzarella that slices nicely into sticks. (If you use fresh mozzarella, it will get mushy in the crust.) Cut it into pieces the size of the average mozzarella stick. 

 

 

Place the sticks of mozzarella around the dough in a circle, about an inch away from the edge.

 

 

Now fold the dough over the mozzarella sticks. You might need a touch of water to make the dough stick to itself.

 

 

Now make your pizza like you normally would. Sauce it…

 

 

Cheese it…

 

 

Add toppings…

 

 

And bake!

 

 

You can never have too much cheese!

 

If you want to make your own pizza dough, here’s my recipe…

The key ingredient is 00 flour, and it can be found in specialty stores,  or online. Ratios for this recipe depend on the humidity in my kitchen on any given day.

4–5 cups 00 flour
1 cup tepid water (100 to 110 degrees)
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
a squirt of extra virgin olive oil

I mix all the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer, then slowly add the water as it mixes. After the ingredients are well mixed, and the dough pulls from the side of the bowl, I remove it to a floured board, where I knead the dough by hand for another 5 minutes, until it is smooth and elastic, shaping it into a ball. I rub a little olive oil over the ball of dough, place it in a bowl covered with plastic wrap or a clean towel, and let it rise at room temp for 2 hours, punching it down after that. I roll it back into a ball again, and let it rise, covered, for at least another hour.

 

 

Boroughs Marketplace

Posted: April 16, 2023 in Uncategorized
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Burough Market is said to be London’s oldest. We only had about 30 minutes to walk through the whole thing, but if we had a free day, we easily could have spent it here, eating. Everything you can imagine from cheeses to truffles to meats and fish, to olives and wine. And inexpensive!

Abbey Road!

Posted: April 16, 2023 in Uncategorized
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The street can get busy at times, so you have to jump out with your camera person and do the walk as quickly as possible. The locals are used to having people at the crosswalk, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are patient about it! We did our stroll several times before we got all the shots that we wanted. There is usually a cluster of people standing on the side of the street, waiting to do the same. It’s all a matter of who’s got the most guts to jump out first!

Ave Mario in London

Posted: April 12, 2023 in Uncategorized
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If I was to totally steal a concept for an Italian restaurant and open my own, Ave Mario would be it. Great food, incredible atmosphere, loud music, everybody laughing, and having a great time. Look at that bar! Several levels of restaurant with an open kitchen. Fantastic! I’ve seen nothing like this in the United States.

Acropolis Museum, Athens

Posted: April 11, 2023 in Uncategorized
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The Acropolis Museum in Athens was spectacular! They unearthed ancient ruins while digging the foundation, so they had to completely redesign the museum to stand on poles, so that people could view the ruins underneath. Several areas of the museum floors are glass, so you can see the ruins from above as well. Beautiful, spacious, lots of natural light.

Ouzo!

Posted: April 9, 2023 in Uncategorized
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Discovered this place in 2004. Surprised that I found it again! Wonderful Ouzo still served out of the barrel! Plaka, Athens, Greece.

Athens, Greece

Posted: April 9, 2023 in Uncategorized
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The Daughters of Athens were removed from the original location and replaced with copies. The originals are on display at the Museum of the Acropolis. One daughter is missing, because she is still in England, and the Greeks are fighting to get her back.

ONE-PAN ROASTED CHICKEN AND VEGGIES

Posted: April 3, 2023 in Uncategorized
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I recently saw what I thought was a pretty clever idea of taking a cabbage and slicing it into thick, steak-like pieces, laying them flat in a pan, and then placing marinated chicken on top of them to roast in the oven. The juices from the chicken would flavor the cabbage as it all cooked. I decided I’d try my own version of that recipe.

You can use any part of a chicken you like, even a whole spatchcocked chicken which would lay flat in a larger pan if you’re serving a group of people. But cooking for myself, I choose leg quarters (which are the thigh and drumstick together) or simply chicken thighs. They’re full of flavor, and have the fat content you need to drip down into the veggies below to flavor them as well. Something like chicken breast would simply be too dry.

I wanted to use what I had in my fridge, so instead of cabbage, I had Brussels sprouts–baby cabbages, in essence. I cut them in half and layer them flame-side down in a roasting pan covered with non-stick aluminum foil. I wanted more veggies, though, so I sliced up a half-onion I had in the fridge, and I also added a package of frozen organic sweet potatoes I had in my freezer. Now the bottom of my pan was full.

I buy humanely-raised pastured chicken, which means the birds are usually smaller than what you’d find in a supermarket (no steroid monsters here!), so one package contained 5 small chicken thighs. Once thawed, I placed them skin-side down in a glass container. Then it was time to make the marinade.

I chose a marinade that would give a beautiful caramelized color to the dish, using some of my favorite marinade ingredients.

3 oz (6 tablespoons) maple syrup
2 oz (1/4 cup) extra virgin olive oil
2 oz (1/4 cup) balsamic vinegar
1 oz (2 tablespoons) soy sauce
1 oz (2 tablespoons) Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 teaspoon powdered rosemary
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

I combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and whisk well to mix.

I brush the tray of veggies with some of the marinade just to give them a head start on flavor.

I use about a 1/2 cup of the marinade on the chicken thighs, tossing them around in the marinade to make sure they’re well coated. Then I pour the rest of the marinade in a saucepan that I will cook on the stove top.



I like to place the thighs skin-side down and then poke some holes into the meat with a fork to really let the marinade soak in. I let them marinate at room temperature for about an hour. Any longer than that, and they need to go into the fridge.

Once I’m ready to cook, I pre-heat the oven to 325. I place the marinated thighs skin-side up over the veggies in the tray. I discard any leftover marinade in the bowl with the chicken.

While the thighs and veggies are cooking, I take the reserved marinade and heat it over medium heat in a saucepan until it reduces by half to make a nice glaze that I will brush onto the chicken when it’s done cooking.

It’s important to remember that once any of the marinade touches raw chicken, to avoid salmonella, you have to cook it before you can taste it!





PIZZA MONTANARA

Posted: March 31, 2023 in Food, frying, Italian, New York City, pizza, restaurants, Rhode Island, Uncategorized
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Despite the large Italian community we have here in southern New England, there’s no exceptional pizza to speak of. I suppose you could say “them’s fightin’ words!” but if it’s here, I haven’t found it yet. (Fellini Pizza is about the best in Providence.)

So where is the excellent pizza? New York City, of course. OK…maybe I’m prejudiced because I’m a Brooklyn boy, and worked in a variety of pizzerias in my younger days, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if you want the best pizza–or bagel, for that matter–you’ve got to go to the Big Apple. (Even “Frank Pepe’s” in New Haven, CT is a mere stop on the way to the real deal.)

Pizza in the Big Apple can be confusing, as there are many different varieties to choose from. Brick oven pizzas abound, but there are pizza lovers who won’t settle for anything less than an old-fashioned pizza baked in a coal-fired oven. The extremely high heat of a coal-fired oven cooks the pizza in just a minute, and imparts a crusty, charred flavor you can’t get any other way. There are only about a dozen coal-fired pizzerias left in New York City, and many of them have been around for a hundred years or more, so it’s definitely a matter of making a special trip to enjoy this style of pizza. (Providence now has its own coal-fired pizza, but it just can’t compare.)

There’s plenty of good, basic pizza in New York City, too: the traditional thin, round Neopolitan pie, and the thicker, square Sicilian pie, baked in that Blodgett pizza oven we all knew in our early pizza-making days.

Many years ago, when I heard through the pizza lovers’ grapevine that a “new” pizza was out there, one that was gaining a cult following, I needed to know about it. And more importantly, I needed to taste it!

It’s called Pizza Montanara, and there’s still only a few pizzerias in New York City that serve it. The one I go to without fail is PizzArte, on West 55th, and I have to say it’s the ultimate pizza.

 

Pizza Montanara, sitting next to me in the car, just waiting to be devoured.

 

What makes Pizza Montanara so spectacular, quite simply, is that the dough is fried in oil for 30 seconds, flipped and fried another 30 seconds, before they put the sauce and cheese on it, and then they cook it in a wood burning oven. It is not greasy. The frying process puffs the dough up and creates a beautiful pillow-like softness that I’ve never experienced in a pizza before. Imagine a pizza cloud and you’ve got Pizza Montanara.

Where to get Pizza Montanara.

 

I’ve made Pizza Montanara at home, with limited success. I poured a few inches of olive oil in a large cast iron skillet, stretched my dough into a small pie, and gently floated it into the pan. Using a spatula and tongs, I was able to flip the fried dough over after about 30 seconds, then removed it from the pan after another 30 seconds. It was golden and puffy. I quickly sauced and cheesed it and in the oven it went. But it’s a messy process that doesn’t always come out just right. I need more practice!

 

Frying the pizza dough. I use olive oil for better flavor, but I have to watch the temperature, because the smoking point is low (about 375 for extra virgin olive oil) and burnt oil is not what anybody wants!

 

 

A homemade Pizza Montanara, with buffalo mozzarella and pepperoni.

 

A four-cheese Montanara, with mozzarella, sharp Provolone, Parmiggiano Reggiano, and ricotta…and lots of garlic!

 

Every time I post a photo of Pizza Montanara on Facebook or Instagram, my friends don’t believe that this could possibly be a life-changing pizza experience. It is. After a trip to Manhattan, we’ll devour 3 pizzas on the ride home. Nothing makes New York traffic easier to bear than a Pizza Montanara in the seat next to you!

Pizza Arte also makes one helluva gluten-free pizza.

 

 

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