Saturday, April 18, 2015

Pizza friday with Neapolitan pizza dough!

Hello everyone!

So I have made pizza before on the grill but never gotten a good dough out or even given it a good try. So after reading and watching videos I thought I would try my hand at a "Neapolitan style pizza dough". Airy puffy sides and crispy outside and fluffy on the inside.

The "problem" is that you need to make the dough about 4 days before. So I made mine Tuesday for Fridays BBQ.

Neapolitan Pizza dough

This makes about 2 normal size pizzas that will make anyone full...

283 grams of flour, fine grain (if possible).
6 grams of salt
4 grams of instant yeast (torrjäst)
212 grams of water.

  1. Mix the dry ingredients
  2. Mix in water and combine until no flour remains on the sides or bottom of bowl.
  3. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap or something and let rest 8-12 hours in room temp
  4. Put into fridge for 2-4 days.
  5. Take out of fridge 2 hours before you are making pizzas and portion the dough into 2 equal balls and put under plastic wrap in room temperature.
  6. When you make your balls into pizzas, dont use a rolling pin, or you will squish all the air out, instead push gently with fingers and then stretch the dough! Check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD7Qusvea_Q

Pizza time!

So I make my own pizza sauce because it's easy, pure tomatoes, add garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, basil to taste. Heat on stove and you are DONE!

Spread sauce on pizza!

I added Ricotta and Mozzarella on my pizzas.


Then added caramelized red onions, some mushrooms  and minced meat with Italian spices (Parsley, Oregano, Basil, Salt, Pepper, Sugar, Paprika, Garlic powder, Onion powder, Thyme, Red pepper flakes. I kinda wing the amounts. Just mix it with the minced meat.)


The second pizza was tomato sauce, mozz, ricotta, mushrooms and covered it with thinly sliced salami.


Make sure your oven/BBQ is really really hot about 250-300 degrees Celsius. And buy a pizza stone!
Makes the pizza so much better, the heat transfers better to the dough and it cooks much more even.



Look at that pretty pretty pizza... mmm hungry again now..


And perfectl cooked underneath.




Obligatory side pic of the dough after cutting and chowing it down! :)



Salami pizza! We took this one of the grill a bit earlier and the dough came out even better, not as crispy and much fluffier.



All in all me and Sara were full and very very happy. Jesus this is much better than pizza you buy out. I mean you can't even compare. Sure it takes some time and when you are hungover this is not really what you start putting together but for a planned romantic dinner or just a fancy pizza dinner this is worth every effort believe me!

The only hard part is getting the dough right and there are a lot of dough recipes out there that are much easier to follow and make than this (Just search no-knead pizza dough!).

Yummy yummy!

//Stay full my friends!

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Homemade Chicken Curry and failed Roti

Hello everyone! 
As you know I was in India a few weeks back, and since then I have been dying to try my hand at a few recipes I got with me home with some of the spices I bought over there...
Both to try and see if I can get at least some of the awesome flavors from India into my cooking and to really awe Sara!

And oh boy did it go well!

Chicken Curry!

So here follows my recipe of my Chicken Curry!
First all the ingredients we will need:

4 Chicken breasts cut into rough pieces(Cubes kinda, not that important)
1 tablespoon Coriander seeds
1 teaspoon Cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
some oil for frying
4 Green whole cardamoms
1 cinnamon stick 3 cm large
1 yellow onion finely chopped
2 teaspoons garlic paste
1 teaspoon ginger paste
2-3 Green chilies (optional if you want spicy or not)
2 Tomatoes finely chopped or run through blender
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
Salt to taste
1 cup Yogurt
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup cooking cream
2 teaspoons Garam masala spice powder
Fresh koriander! (Lots of it, yummy!!)

Quite an extensive list and some ingredients are hard to find in Sweden, at least in smaller towns..
But you can order online or make your own garam masala spice mix and such.

1. First we roast, coriander, cumin and fennel to really release some of the flavors.. Smells delicious already! 

2. After toasting them in a pan, grind them to a fine powder... The smells at this point.. Got me excited in all the right ways :) 


3. Then we roast cinnamon and the cardamom in some oil, just a few minutes.


4. Add chopped onion and cook until browned.

5. Then add garlic and ginger paste and cook for a few more minutes on medium heat. (Add chopped chilies here if you are using them, Sara does not like spicy so I used none.)



6. Stir in tomatoes and cook for 5 more minutes. 


7. Then add turmeric powder, chili powder and your coriander, cumin and fennel mixture. Mix well


8. After about 5 minutes more it should look like above, some liquid has disappeared and it looks delicious!
Add your chopped chicken and mix well! Let it saute for about 2 minutes.


8. Then we add Yogurt and mix well. And half a cup of water and mix. 
Then we bring to a boil and let it simmer under a lid on low heat until most of the water has drained and the chicken is cooked. (Make rotis while waiting. Recipe, further down)


9. Add butter (or ghee), cream and Garam masala and stir. (Add water if you want more "sauce" or cream) And let cook for 5 more minutes.


No need for rice! Enjoy the bread and curry! :)
Serve with chopped coriander on top! If you don't like Coriander then grow up and put it on anyway, really enhances the whole dish!


Sooo good, probably one of the best things I have ever made and it really tasted like it did in India, even though I failed my rotis..

Does that not look dreamy?! Dammit now I am hungry again...

Roti recipe:

Failed my Rotis a bit, don't know why so they came out more like chapati... But were delicious none the less!

For about 8-10 breads, blend the following.
2 cups whole weat flour,
3/4 cups of water
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon of salt

Into a dough that easily comes out of the bowl.. And let rest under cover for about 20 minutes. 
Then divide into pieces like bellow.
Then on a surface dusted with normal white flour we roll the balls out into round shapes, quite thin.


Heat a skillet to medium/high and cook bread about 30 seconds on one side until bubbles start forming, small brown spots should appear but bread should not be burnt.
Then flip the bread and start "pushing" on it with your spatula, it should then puff up, do this for 30 seconds or so and then remove bread to a container where you keep all your done bread and put some ghee on the bread. 


Mine did not puff up.. Made the bread not as airy and fluffy as it should, still delicious but more like a chapati than anything else... I don't know, I think maybe I needed to let the dough rest more after making it before cooking... 
Also few were so thin they almost turned into papad... bah!

Next time will go better, I hope..
For instruction on how to make em "puff" I followed this guy, and quite a few others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esqgBv1AG1Q

Conclusion

It takes some time, about 1½ hour but makes 4 quite large portions and the ingredient list is quite extensive but it tastes wonderful and is really worth the effort!! The smells in the kitchen will knock you out alone! 
This will be one of my go-to dishes now when having people over, so flavorful and really good, and quite different from what you usually get in Swedish homes. Saras only complaint was that now I have ruined our Indian restaurants in town because this was so much better! :D Love to hear that!

If anything is unclear or if you got questions, don't hesitate to write here, I really want to spread this awesome taste, India fucking rocks!

//Stay full my friends!





Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Chicken Wings!

Hello everyone!

So easter was here in Sweden which means a lot of delicious food! Though I did not make any I still ate a lot. One thing I did make though was crispy, tender chicken wings without frying them!
Magical! And its quite simple...
Ingredients:
1 kg chicken wings, divided as below
 1 tsp Smokey paprika
2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Sriracha
honey
sesame oil

carrots
blue cheese
celery 
creme fraiche
mayonnaise

Firstly do your blue cheese dipping sauce... I don't got any meassurments here since I go by taste.. but mix crumbled blue cheese, creme fraiche, some mayo and salt and pepper to taste. Do this preferable 1 day a head so the blue cheese gets a chance to really spread it flavor to the entire dip!

Then we do the wings when its food time! (Takes about 1 hour to complete the recipe)
Put oven at 220 degrees Celsius.
Mix pepper, salt, paprika and baking powder.
Cover wings in mixture, thoroughly!

Put into oven and flip wings ever 20 minutes, everyone on of them!
For about 1 hour, until crispy deliciousness! They won't look good the first few times you flip them! But the baking powder will react with the fat from the wings and give them an awesome crust!

They should look like this when done:

Then take out your glaze ingredients!

And mix: 
1/3 cup honey
1/3 Sriracha
1/4 tsp sesame oil



Then coat your wings with that lovely, sweet, hot sauce that is perfectly balanced I think...


And serve with some carrots and celery to dip into the blue cheese dressing!



This was really really cool and good. The baking powder really crisped up that surface and the meat just fell off the bone while the sticky glaze was a perfect mix between sweet and spicy.
Really love to have a blue cheese dressing by the side like this as well, if it gets to spicy you can dip a cold vegetable into the dip to cool down your pallet and reset the taste buds a bit...

Will def be making again but next time 50% bbq wings and 50% honey Sriracha wings! :)

//Stay full my friends!