Test Kitchen #17: Grilled Pizza

In the same Recipe Zaar newsletter that I got the instructions for last week's stuffed peppers, was a hot topic section asking, "Can you grill a pizza?" Clicking on the link led to a chat forum led by a woman named Rita who posted her steps and pics for grilling a pizza. Totally amazed that you could actually put raw dough on a hot grill and not have it drip through the grates to certain doom below, I just had to try it for myself.

Arriving at Dad's on schedule, we spent a few minutes brainstorming what type of pizza we should make before heading off to the store for ingredients. I definitely wanted to make a traditional margarita style pie with fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil leaves. Dad already had some sweet Italian sausage in the house, so the obvious combination was a sausage, peppers and onions pie. We also picked up some mushrooms, pepperoni and a block of Parmesan for grating.


I was completely surprised by not only how easy it was to make a pizza on the grill, but how it tasted so much better than your average homemade oven pizza. The crust is thin and crispy, but still holds the weight of your toppings without bending. It's summer's perfect answer to the homemade pizza dinner. Why bother sweating to death in a hot kitchen with the oven cranked to 450° when you can be outside sitting on your deck, enjoying a cold drink, and a nice breeze?! Your own personal pizza is just minutes away.

We used a refrigerated dough from the supermarket and divided it in half to make two 8" pies. For the dough that would become the margarita pizza, I kneaded in some oregano and rosemary. Making sure the grill surface was clean, we greased it up some olive oil and spread a little on one side of each of the doughs. Very carefully, we placed the dough on the grill, oil side down and hoped for the best. With large grilling tongs, we peeked under the crust to see if the grill marks had appeared and then with one quick flip, turned the crust over.


Once the crust had been flipped, the race was on to get the sauce and all the toppings on the lid closed. The hardest and longest part of the entire process is all in the prep work. As Rita, instructs in her forum post, it's a good idea to have all your toppings within easy reach of the grill, cooked and ready to go. Once the toppings are on, the pizza only needs about five more minutes to melt the cheeses and re-warm the other toppings. With each pie the size of a small dinner plate, we took a break from our remaining kitchen chores to enjoy our lunch outside on the deck.

The verdict from Dad, "This is a winner." Enough said.

If you need a recipe for some easy guidelines, check out Rita's instructions for a Grilled Sausage and Peppers Pizza. Obviously you can put just about anything on your pizza, but I found her recipe very helpful for prepping tips and cooking times.

This one will definitely make another appearance on the summer menu. Could be a great crowd pleaser for company; just slice them up into bit-size pieces and you've got a great picnic appetizer.

Test Kitchen #16: Beef & Cheese Stuffed Peppers

After working freelance on site for a few days and then enjoying our vacation, I'm finally able to get back in the test kitchen. Every week, my mom sends me cooking e-newsletters from a few different sites like Eating Well, McCormicks and Recipe Zaar. This week's meal came from the third one offering up Ground Beef Stuffed Green Bell Peppers With Cheese.

The last stuffed peppers I enjoyed were cooked by Matt's father. He used a combination of pork, beef and ground veal for the stuffing and cooked them in a large pot of tomato sauce for hours. They were really good, having steeped in the flavors all day long, but what always struck me funny was that no one in Matt's family ever ate the pepper. As we sat down at the table everyone sliced off the pepper, dumped out the meat filling on their plates and tossed the pepper aside.

"We never eat the pepper." said Matt
"Why not?" I wondered
"We just don't."

That explains everything.

Could it be possible that after hours of cooking all the flavor had been zapped from the pepper and the best part of the meal was in fact the savory filling? Perhaps the rationale was just to get straight to best part of the dish and let nothing stand in the way. I can respect that.

When I told Matt that this week, Dad and I were going to try a different stuffed pepper recipe, he said:

"Ok, but I'm still not going to eat the pepper."
"We'll see."

Even though I wasn't booked to work any on-site assignments this week, I still had home office clients to attend to with a promised deadline of Wednesday. Dad had called the night before and needed to drop Mom's car off for service at the garage down the street from house. His plan was to walk up the hill and then I could give him a ride back to the his house. We he arrived, we decided to go to the grocery store early, cook in the morning and then I would have the rest of the afternoon free for work. The peppers could be easily stored in a dish and wrapped up to be popped in the oven for dinner later on.

As always, we added a few tweaks to the recipe. Mom had been on a zucchini bread baking kick the week before and still had a little bit shredded, left over from the recipe. We decided to add that to the meat mixture for added bulk and fiber. Even though there is already a little shredded cheddar in the recipe mixed in with the filling, we decided to kick it up and procured a 1/4 pound of thin sliced provolone from the deli counter. One slice would top each of the peppers in the final minutes of baking.

Beef & Cheese Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:
6 large green or multi-colored peppers
1 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 (16 oz) can of diced tomatoes, low salt
1/4 cup of shredded zucchini
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup long grain rice, uncooked
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of black pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup of reduced-fat Mexican shredded cheese
6 thin slices of provolone cheese

Steps:
1. Cut tops from the peppers, discarding seeds and membranes.
2. Dice up pieces from the tops so you have about 1/4 cup of peppers and set aside.
3. Cook the whole peppers in a large pot of boiling water for 5 minutes. Remove from water with tongs, invert to drain and set aside to cool.
4. Sprinkle inside of peppers lightly with salt.
5. In a skillet, cook ground beef, onion and the 1/4 cup chopped pepper until meat is browned and veggies are tender.
6. Drain off excess fat. Stir in garlic. Add undrained tomatoes, uncooked rice, water, salt, black pepper and Worcestershire sauce.
7. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for 20 minutes or until rice is tender.
8. Remove pan from heat and stir in shredded Mexican cheese.
9. Using a small ice cream scoop, stuff peppers with meat mixture. Place in a deep baking dish.
10. Bake, covered with foil in a 350° oven for 30 minutes.
11. Uncover and top each pepper with a slice of provolone. Switch oven to broil and with the oven door cracked open so you can see in, leave the peppers in just long enough for the cheese to melt.

Notes:
If you use the original recipe from the link above don't put too much stock in the nutrional facts that they supply. There's a note that says those nummbers were calculated without considering the ground beef and it's hard to believe you can get up to 560 calories a serving on just veggies and a little rice. If you're a calorie counter, you're going to have to do this one the hard way. Add up the calories of all your ingredients and divide by six.

The recipe directs to bake the peppers for 30 minutes, but if you make them ahead of time like we did and store them in the fridge all day, 50 minutes is needed to cook them through.

The Verdict:
I thought this recipe came out quite good and I found it easy to make for any regular week night since the prep time wasn't too long. Even better was that, one this particular day, since we started earlier, dinner was made by noon and all I had to do was pop it in the oven later on. I love when the oven does all the work for me.

The reviews for this recipe on Recipe Zaar said that it could have used a little more heat, so they added some hot sauce to the meat. I think our addition of the garlic and some heavy-handedness with the Worcestershire sauce solved that problem nicely.

The provolone as a great touch, mostly because I just like the way it melts beautifully on food. (Gotta think with the camera's eye, too!)

I took a little of my Dad's homemade tomato sauce home because I knew Matt would want to pour some over the top of the meat. We both really liked the flavor of the meat mixture and decided that it could be used for multiple dishes, like the filling for the Stuffed Cabbage or maybe some Chili Macaroni.

Oh yeah, and Matt? He ate the pepper after all.

Melted cheese works everytime.

Fear Factor: Year-Old Cake

After returning from vacation, we ended our one year celebration by watching our wedding video and taking our wedding cake out of the freezer to defrost. After carefully peeling back the layers of aluminum foil and parchment paper that I had so carefully wrapped it in, we found our strawberry shortcake, fairly intact. The cake and the butter cream frosting was still pretty good, but the strawberry pink filling in the center was little on the gamey side. Perhaps headed towards, if not already a permanent resident of Curdletown.

So after I got in one ritual shove of cake into my hubby's face, we sent the cake to meet it's maker and carried the trash bags to the curb.

My husband the cinematographer.
Getting the facts with hard-hitting interviews.
Please, honey, don't quit your day job!

The Anniversary Spot

On June 6th, Matt and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary with a trip to York Beach, Maine and Newport, Rhode Island. In a way, it's like a one year birthday for The Belly Spot, too. A little more than a year ago, I started a small web site to house information about our upcoming wedding to share with our family and friends. For those family members on each side who lived far away and weren't going to have a chance to meet Matt or me before the big day, the site was a fun way for people to get to know our better half. We included little bios about ourselves and picture albums of our travels with food pics letting people see who we were as a couple.



After the wedding, I continued to grow the site, adding a place for restaurant reviews and recipes. Late last year, I started the blog and we continue to add fresh material about food and travel as often as we can. This silly little hobby of sneaking pictures of my dinner at restaurants has evolved into so much more and I really appreciate all the support from you, our friends and family. Please keep posting your comments and sending me any recipes or suggestions.

In keeping with the spirit of travel and food, here are some pics from our anniversay trip.

First stop: Lunch!
We got into the York Beach area on Friday just in time for lunch and stopped at the Surf & Sand. I knew that this trip would be filled with seafood, hence the steak dinner we shared with our parents the night before leaving. Anxious to dive into the delicacies of the area, Matt enjoyed this battered filet of haddock sandwich. I opted for a BLT, saving my seafood choices for dinner later that evening. The side of pasta salad was definitely a welcome change of pace as opposed to the standard greasy fries that seem to accompany every fish sandwich.

Dinner: The Grill at The Union Bluff Hotel
We were very fortunate to arrive in Maine during the last few days of Southern Maine Restaurant Week. Many of the area's restaurants had three-course dinner menus for a flat fee of about $29 per person. Most of the options on the three-course menu were also available on their regular menu so it was easy to see the savings we were getting. Matt started out with the Cream of Five Onion Soup (above) that had yummy crunchy onion rings garnished on the top.

For appetizer, I tried the Crab and Portobello Cake with a small scoop of savory ice cream on top and a corn relish on the side. A special creation for restaurant week, the cake was filled with large pieces of crab and the ice cream topping was definitely an interesting experience. I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to order it off a regular menu, but since dinner was a flat price, I took a chance. The cold milky flavor was a little odd on top of the warm cake, but Matt liked it and stole most of it from me. Just fine, since I think I took one of the last of the crispy onions from his soup.

Matt's Dinner: Lobster Ravioli including Bang Island Mussels, Gulf Shrimp, Maine Lobster and a Parmesan Cream Sauce. I had a lovely Lobster Risotto with a Vanilla Bean Cream Sauce. It was so rich, I was left feeling satisfied, sleepy and stuffed after our first and long day of vacation. I even passed off my dessert choice from the three-course menu to Matt, whose went with a new invention from the chef: A Chocolate Salami!

This creative dessert consisted of dark chocolate pressed together with lady fingers, almonds, and cherries to create a log shape and finished off with powdered sugar. We had to cut it with a sharp knife in slices in order to eat it and the cross-sections did kind of resemble that of a salami. I doubt we'll ever hear the words "chocolate" and "salami" in the same sentence again.


Breakfast! Clara's Cupcake Cafe

We stayed at the Atlantic House, just a quick walk from the beach in York. I'd say that we would highly recommend York as a great trip for couples or families. The small town has an old-fashioned charm with a boardwalk Arcade next to the beach attached to a small bowling alley. At the other end of town is the York Beach Zoo and small amusement park. If you need a reco for lodging, you'll have to email me for a private chat about our experiences at the Atlantic House. All be it a lovely, recently renovated hotel, some of our experiences were less than stellar so in the spirit of improving my good karma, I'll leave it at that.

One of my favorite parts of staying at the Atlantic House was Clara's Cupake Cafe. Housed in the same building next to the elevator, the air was constantly filled with the smell of warm bread and sweet crosiannts. Matt and I spent our first and last breakfast here after our morning walks along the beach. Flaky croissant filled with ham and cheese and a hand dipped chocolate donut were some of the treats we induged in. Upon leaving the hotel on Monday, I wished the hotel gift shop sold a bakery scented candle. I didn't want to leave that smell behind.

The Anniversary Dinner: The Blue Sky

For our big 1 year dinner, we had reservations at the restaurant attached to the Atlantic House. The staff there did an awesome job at helping us celebrate our anniversary with a custom printed menu reading , "Happy Anniversary!!" at the top. They were also featuring a three-course menu for Restaurant week. Along with a bottle of champagne, I ordered the Crusted Haddock with Green Onion Souffle. I believe Matt had the Lobster Linguini Bolognese, but the romantic dim lighting prevented me from getting a good picture of it. I did, however, capture his dessert, a special Bread Pudding a la mode.



Fare of Newport: The Mooring


The Bag of Doughnuts

After much searching for a restaurant in downtown Newport with some decent chowder and a variety of other goodies to choose from, we finally docked at The Mooring. After five days of wining and dining, a simple sandwich and a classic New England clam chowder was all I needed to make me happy. I had the Tuna Crab Melt, a traditional cold tuna salad sandwich on a kaiser roll server with pancetta, swiss cheese and fresh tomato. Not looking to break from pattern, Matt went with the Lobster Croissant sandwich and the Bag of Doughnuts for appetizer. These were awesome! Quite possibly my favorite treat of the trip, these lobster, crab and shrimp fritters were served with a chipotle-maple aioli. The cajun seasoning in the crispy batter was just the right amount of spice. The dough was hot and fluffy and not greasy like one might expect from most fried foods. Had I known about these little devils, I would have skipped the sandwich entirely and just had chowder and fritters for dinner.

To next year, many more to come!

Test Kitchen #15: Beef & Chicken Kabobs

As the weather gets warmer we've been trying to come up with new ideas for summer cooking. We hadn't grilled anything in test kitchen before, so Dad suggested making kabobs. We've made kabobs in previous seasons, so we decided that the experimental part of this week would be the marinades we used on the meat and veggies.

We made one marinade recipe and "tested" two other pre-made bottle brands. The Peanut-Ginger Chicken recipe is available from allrecipes.com. I halved the marinade ingredients because I only had 1.5 pounds of chicken available and we were planning on making some beef kabobs too. I really liked the creamy and spicy flavor of this marinade and I think it would probably work great with the chicken stir-fried in a wok and served over rice. For the beef, we used an A-1 marinade and a herb and garlic flavor from Lawry's. Both had excellent flavor even if we could tell which was which after grilling.


Our only hiccup was I left the recipe at home and thought everything only needed to cook for 8-10 minutes total. This seemed reasonable since the pieces of meat were so small. After about 15 minutes, we took everything off the grill to find very rare beef and a few squishy pieces of chicken. So back on the grill they went until we were certain that there was no clucking or mooing left. Later that night at home, I checked the recipe to find a recommended 8-10 minutes per side. Yeah, that makes a little more sense! The meal was complemented by Mom's delicious macaroni salad and the Banana Split Cake for dessert.


(Test Kitchen will return June 16th as we will be temporarily interrupted by work and vacation.)

Chocolate Therapy

Once in a while I bake. It doesn't happen often because the exact measuring and chemistry needed to make baking a success usually trips me up in some fashion and the end result is less than stellar. When making a tomato sauce or inventing a casserole no one's really going to suffer if you decide to add a little more milk here or a little less garlic there. But accidentally mix in too much salt or get baking powder confused with baking soda and it's goodbye dessert, hello garbage disposal.

In regular cooking I also like to switch up some lower fat or calorie ingredients to lighten the dish. I'll swap butter for margarine or use reduced fat cheeses, but it's trickier to make these switches with baking unless the recipes were written that way from that start. That's why I stick to very simple dessert recipes where small substitutions can be made with out major consequences.


I found this recipe for a Double Chocolate Cheesecake on the Kraft foods web site. Their dessert center is really neat with an iTunes-esque interface that allows you to "flip" through the recipe cards. With a few tweaks to healthify the recipe, I made a sweet treat that Matt loved. I swapped in sugar free oreos for the crust and used 1/3 Less Fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese. The texture was thick and rich, just like a real New York Cheesecake. It all held together so well, you could eat small squares of it with your fingers like a brownie or a piece of fudge. I also halved the recipe so that all the ingredients would fit into an 8" x 8" pan instead of a 9"x 13". No need for 16 full servings of cheesecake for a family of two.


I passed the link onto Mom, the real baking enthusiaist in the family, who chose the Banana Split Cake for Tuesday's Test Kitchen dessert. I'm not a huge fan of pineapple, but the banana and pudding was good. Next time go with the sprinkle of chocolate shavings on top instead of the nuts.

Everything's better with a little chocolate!

Test Kitchen #14: Pancakes!

This week I wanted to try a couple of the pancake recipes that we did not get to make during our cooking class at the culinary school. Our group made the Blueberry Yogurt pancakes, but they were primarily worked on by the other two team members since Matt and I were busy with the crepes and waffles.

I like blueberry breakfast goods, but I don't care for whole pieces of hot fruit in the middle of my pancake. I want the blueberry flavor more equally distributed throughout the pancake. Plus, I thought it would be really fun to play with the recipe a little to make the pancakes much bluer. I thought by processing the berries up a little and stirring them into the batter that we could achieve a bluer pancake. I went a little overboard when I decided to also sub in blueberry yogurt. They were REALLY BLUE!

Mom's blueberry plates were very appropriate this week!

Strangely enough with all that extra blueberry content, it didn't really seem to dial up the blueberry flavor much. They were also very moist inside, which could have been from the yogurt and the extra water content in the frozen blueberries. The original recipe calls for fresh blueberries but when the market is charging $3.99 for 4 oz. of fresh berries and $3.99 for 12 oz. of frozen, your wallet makes the call for you. I will continue to tweak this recipe because I still love the idea of blue pancakes. Maybe strawberries next time for some pink pancakes!

I also brought along the recipe for the Dutch Style Pancake. I thought Dad would really dig this one because it's a little different and you can make it with sauteed fruit. We used apples, but the recipe also suggests pears, bananas or blueberries. The recipe we used in class is taken from a New York restaurant supposedly known for their brunch, Prune. What I like best about this 8" pancake is that it fluffs up to about and 1 1/2" thick and is great to share at your breakfast table. At Prune, you can order the entire thing for yourself and it is served with pears, maple syrup and a side of Canadian bacon. City dwellers might appreciate the walk home after this meal, because though delicious, after all those carbs and butter, we were ready for a nap!

The recipe below makes 3 large pancakes, but we only made two. If you need help with the calculations to revise this recipe for only two pancakes, I'll send you Dad's email address. Unless you already know how to measure 3/32 of a cup of sugar. Good Luck!


Dutch Style Apple Pancake
Makes 3 large 8" pancakes

Ingredients:
8.25 0z. all purpose flour
3/4 tablespoon baking powder
1/8 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
4 oz. butter, melted and cooled
2 apples, peeled and sliced thin

Preheat oven to 375°
1. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl.
2. Mix eggs and milk in a separate bowl.
3. Add wet ingredients into dry and whisk well.
4. Add melted butter.
5. Melt some butter into an 8" non-stick skillet.
(Be sure your skillet if safe for oven temps of at least 375° or more.)
6. Add apple slices to skillet, sauteing until soft with light brown edges.
7. Add 8 oz. of batter (about a third) to the skillet, evenly covering apples.
8. Leave on the heat for a few minutes until edges begin to set.
9. Bake in oven for about 15 minutes or until golden and firm to touch.
10. Remove from oven and flip pancake over so fruit is on the top side.
11. Slice into pie shaped pieces and serve.




Blueberry Yogurt Pancakes

1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 egg
1/2 cup of plain yogurt (or blueberry yogurt)
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons oil
3/4 cup Dole frozen blueberries (resealable bag)

1. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg into a bowl.
2. Whisk the egg, yogurt, and milk in a large bowl. Beat in oil.
3. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until well combined.
4. In a food processor, pulse blueberries until fine. Add to batter and mix well. Batter may be a little lumpy, but extremely BLUE!
5. Heat griddle to approximately 350°. Pour batter on hot surface to form 4" rounds. Pancakes are ready to flip when bubbles begin to form in the center.