Happy Father's Day!

In honor of Father's Day, I decided to brave the grill for some pizza. Growing up, my father was cool enough to know that I can handle more than a cheese pizza. Pizza was the ultimate comfort food. My brother would often inject excitement to our lives by having an asthma attack, causing him to end up in the hospital on multiple occasions. My bratty self would be so jealous that he gets to skip school and I don't. Yes, I had great perspective back then. Ha! To appease my misery, and sometimes trick me into leaving the hospital so my brother can finally have his peace and quiet, my father would take me to Shakey's Pizza. I believe this place is still alive and well in the West Coast. My father's favorite pizza was called Manager's Special:my memory thinks it had onions, ground beef, green peppers, and I think ham. Take that cheese pizza!... Although, I would pick out the onions and the peppers, but I enjoyed the flavors that permeated the bite. I always thought that my father's bad-assery transcended beyond the walls of our home that they named a pizza after him. Yes, he is that bad ass. Another non-lame pizza my father introduced me to was this pizza called Mare: it had fish balls on it! No! It's not what you're thinking of sicko! It's fish meat processed into dumpling like balls. Again, in your face cheese pizza!

In honor of my father shielding me from a childhood of eating lame cheese pizza ( sorry cheese only pizza lovers), I decided to empty out my fridge and grilled up some barbeque, chicken, gruyere, feta, avocado, arugula, orange cranberry, flatbread pizza.
Phew! That was a mouthful, and indeed my mouth was filled with deliciousness. 

Thank you Papa  for exposing my palate early to the finer flavors of life ( and giving me the option to skip out on trying that goat wiener delicacy...maybe I'll try it now?) 

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers and father figures!

                                   

                                                             

Mission Pappardelle

 Mission: perfect the Girl and the Goat's Sugo with Pappardelle, which they have recently changed to cavatelli! Why?! Pappardelle has replaced my lasagna craze ever since Pappardelle and I met way back in college at Osteria via Stato, who also for a limited time, took it off their menu. Quit playing games with my heart! I'm glad they came to their senses, and brought it back. 

Speaking of my once insatiable appetite for lasagna, I used to pride myself in my lasagna baking skills, until The Great Dane and I decided to have a lasagna bake off. The votes swung my way, and I won by one or two votes; all thanks to the hard working sailors of America who miss home cooked meals. But I couldn't accept the victory. After tasting TGD's lasagna, I gave him the victory, and swore to never make my lasagna again. TGD's was just that good.

Now that I've banned myself from ever making lasagna, and the Girl and the Goat has messed with my sugo, I had to learn a new pasta skill... the Girl and the Goat sugo, O.G. style...with pappardelle. I got the recipe here:

INGREDIENTS:

½ pound goat meat

½ pound goat sausage

½ pound goat meat, braised

½ pound onion (¼ pound, diced and ¼ pound, small diced)

½ ounce garlic, minced plus 1 garlic clove, minced

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

⅛ cup canned crushed tomatoes

1 tablespoon aji amarillo purée

1 apple, cored and sliced

1½ cups dark stock

Looking at the recipe, I knew goat would be hard to come by so I substituted with beef. 

I decided to skip pre-braising the the cubed meat. Julia Child, I am not! I just went ahead and browned it to give it that caramelized flavor.  I used the same pot to brown the onions in. I have great difficulty dicing onions as I could not keep my eyes open, but have no fear my  friends, I discovered as I progressed into the cooking directions that all the onions were going to be placed in the food processor to be turned into mush!!! I wish I knew that before I cried my eyes out!  Now what the deuce is an aji amarillo puree you say? I found out that that it's reminiscent of cayenne pepper. So instead of going aji hunting, I grabbed my trusty cayenne pepper and used that. 

Now that all the components are prepped as logically close to what the instructions said, I dumped all of it in a slow cooker and kicked my feet up! 

And finito! I topped it off with mornay sauce and a pinch of parsley. I'm missing some caper gooseberries to make this look like the perfect pre-cavatelli Girl and the Goat sugo doppleganger; we eat with our eyes first after all. 

Pictured above the is the original Girl and the Goat sugo. What do you think? twinning? Twinning or not, the dish turned out a success for reasons like not burning my place down, not inflicting food poisoning on to the brave TGD, and most importantly TGD's tastes buds liking it so much, the pot was cleaned out!

Now that I've gone through the adventure of this recipe, and found the little shortcuts, I found this beyond easy to make, easier than lasagna! 

If you're wondering where one would find pappardelle noodles, your local Trader Joe's and QFC now carries it. I got mine from Eataly. Based on experience, I prefer the Garofalo brand from Eataly vs TJ, as it was thinner, but wider than the TJ brand. I have two more bags of pappardelle to use, so off to more cooking I go!

                                   

OhMyGosh! Cookie Dough Buckeyes!

Some people's passion are just so strong and infectious, you couldn't help but subscribe to their cause. Enter The Great Dane's love affair with the Ohio State Buckeyes. I however, have no affiliations with any of the Big 10 teams. Coming from a small private university gives me a lot of wiggle room to root for the team of whoever was throwing a party. Go Meat!

Ok, maybe TGD has infected me with a little bit of enthusiasm. I mean, look at this mascot! It's just waiting for a hug!

Scrolling through my Pinterest board of things to do, I came across Something Swanky's   Cookie Dough Buckeyes recipe! The traditional buckeye is made out of  peanut butter and chocolate. Call me crazy, but I'm not crazy over peanut butter and chocolate combinations. Wait! Don't get me wrong, if you present me with a peanut butter cup, I will gladly eat it!


So with the OSU kickoff extravaganza that TGD has planned, it was only appropriate to make some buckeyes...for breakfast! Oh the joy of before-noon games.

 Let the kitchen adventure begin! 

My personal twist on this adventure calls for the following ingredients:

-1/2 cup butter
-3/4 cup brown sugar
-1/2 tsp salt. I decided to be fancy, and used Cabernet salt
-1 1/4 cup flour
-1/4 cup milk. WHOLE milk is preferred. I just feel that it's how mother nature intended it.
-Approximately 1 cup of chocolate chips. It will help if you have a bag of it. Need I convince you?
-Splash of vanilla. I wish I had an actual vanilla bean.

Candy Melts for dipping.

This is how you do it...

Cream the brown sugar and softened butter together, then dump the rest of the ingredients in! Oh, if you need explicit instructions, don't dump the Candy Melts in!

I used my 70's style hand mixer to mix everything. It makes it so much more civilized than wrestling with the bowl and a spatula...just be careful about cranking the mixer up too high too soon. It's snowing...flour!

When everything is well combined,  go wash you hands and sing your ABC's, and start forming them into balls. I used a melon baller to get them as close to uniform sized as possible, and shaped them with my impeccably clean hands.

For the Candy Melt, since it's just chocolate colored and fake flavored, I added a few handfuls of the chocolate chips to give it a chocolatey kick. Approximately 2:1 Candy Melt to chocolate chip ratio. I used a toothpick as a dipping utensil, and then just smoothed out the toothpick holes after the chocolate has hardened.

O.H. I. O! Ready for kickoff! 

TGD was impressed by this arrangement.

Great success! OSU beat the Navy  37-17...and that this did not make it in the Pinterest fail club. So shocked! My addition of the Cabarnet salt balanced out the sweetness of everything. Sometimes, you get a flake of the salt, which was a welcomed depth of flavor. Adding the chocolate chips to the Candy Melt made the chocolate coating taste like I slaved over tempering chocolate.  It was a sweet pre-game treat...and post game celebration gorge fest. 

Time to scroll through Pinterest for more things to do in the kitchen that does not require fire.