Epic Portions

Category: Other Recipes

  • The FrankenWeber

    For the last few years, I have been fascinated in finding a way to construct some sort of pizza cooking “apparatus”(?) for myself to use at home.  My dream is that one day I will be able to make my own dough, sauce, cheese blend, and whatever else I feel like adding.  No more ordering Dominos, as great as their on-line ordering system may be.  I guess you could say that I long for pizza freedom.  Unfortunately, I live in the third floor of an apartment complex so not very many options are available to me that don’t involve the possibility of burning down my apartment complex.  I guess I could go the easy route and just purchase a pizza stone, but that’s just too easy.

    This dream really began when I found that Dan from Thefoodinmybeard had constructed a brick pizza oven in his back yard, which just happened to be in Bermuda.  This would be ideal, but once again I live in an apartment complex, and I’m sure McKinley Management wouldn’t be too happy to find an enormous brick pizza oven constructed in the middle of their property, even if I was feeding the residents delicious DIY style pizza.  Seriously though, check this thing out.  Who wouldn’t want one of these things in their back yard?

    And the result, things like curry pizza.  Amazing.  Check out the entire brick oven pizza series on Thefoodinmybeard.com Great stuff.

    Realizing that building my own pizza oven would not be possible for another year or so, I decided to search for other options.  I had a gas stove, shouldn’t that count for something?  I came across a couple guys who decided to line their oven with fire bricks to simulate the brick oven.  Kind of a pain in the ass, but it sounded like a good idea.  Unfortunately my roommates declared this a horrible idea and that was the end of it.  It never happened but if I get stuck in an apartment complex for another year, my roommates might just come home to delicious brick oven style pizza.  How could they be mad?  eHow also has pretty detailed instructions on how to complete this.

    The solution that probably makes the most sense to me currently is constructing a FrankenWeber, which may or may not have been first developed by street vendor in San Francisco called The Pizza Hacker.  The basic concept is to contruct the Weber charcoal grill into a mini wood burning pizza oven.  With the heat covered by the hood, it is easy for the grill to reach temparatures of up to 1000F, which is perfect for Neapolitan style pizzas.  Oh, and did I mention it’s portable?

    Watch the Pizza Hacker work.  He simply has a table with jars of his sauce, buffalo mozzarella and a basil plant.  After he has constructed the pizza, it goes into the oven for only about two minutes, and then is topped with olive oil and additional cheese.  This is cool stuff:

    If the video didn’t do enough for you, or you simply ignored my request, here’s a great picture of probably the best pizza will you will ever see offered by a street vendor.

    After learning about the Pizza Hacker, I took my quest to Google to find out if the man was the only one doing this.  I found a few people that have been constructing their own FrankenWebers out of throwaway Weber grills and making delicious wood oven style pizza at home in minutes.  I think this is the solution for my brick/wood oven style pizza dream.

    From the Pizzamaking.com forums

    To summarize, I leave you with quite possibly the most delicious looking, and sounding, pizza I have ever seen/heard of in my life.  On top of this pizza is Cured Wild Boar Belly, pickled hot peppers, Calabrian chilies, Dry Farmed Early Girl Tomato Sauce, Buff Mozz, Grana Padano, Angelo Garro’s Homemade Olive Oil, parsley, and smoked salt.  Baked for only 75 seconds by the Pizza Hacker in his FrankenWeber.

  • Shepards Pie Burgers

    I’ll admit it, I visit The Food in my Beard daily hoping there’s a new recipe.  When there’s not, I usually cry uncontrollably for an hour before I’m ready to resume my day. Recently, my emotions were under control because he put up a recipe for Shepards Pie Burgers.  I am in love.  If pierogie burgers weren’t already enough to convince you that potatoes go great with burgers, hopefully this will.

  • Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Bacon S’mores.

    Yeah, that’s right: Bacon S’mores.  Chocolate-covered candied bacon smothered in marshmallow in a graham cracker crust.

    I can’t take credit for this idea, and actually I’m not sure I would want to.  A friend tweeted about The Complete Sale of Selma Lee posting about Chewbacca Bars, which they also call Chunky Chewies.  I immediately started telling my friends about them, calling them bacon s’mores, until someone pointed out the lack of graham. So of course,  I added graham! Below is my own recipe, which is extraordinarily similar to others’ recipes, except where I made some changes.

    Start with one pound of thick-cut, peppered bacon. Cut the uncooked slices into quarters or even sixths, and marinate the pieces for a few hours (in the fridge!) in equal parts balsamic vinegar and maple syrup (the real stuff, none of that Mrs Jemima gunk.) Coat with brown sugar and more pepper, and bake on a wire rack on a LINED baking sheet at 350F until delicious. I didn’t time it. If you are someone who can leave baking bacon well enough alone, good for you. I stuck my head in there to smell it every, oh, ten seconds, so it took a while to bake but it was easy to tell when it was done.

    Here is some delicious, marinated bacon ready to bake:

    And here is what happens if you don’t line your baking sheet with tinfoil.

    SERIOUSLY, I have been soaking and scrubbing my baking sheet since Sunday and it hasn’t come clean yet.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you to line it.

    When the bacon is done, remove it from the oven and move it to a plate to cool.  Melt about 2 1/2 cups chocolate – I used dark, but it’s up to you – in a double boiler, and when the bacon is sufficiently cool, dump it in and fold it in to coat. Really coat it. No wimpy half-coated pieces here. Place a greased wire rack on a large amount of newspaper in an area of your kitchen that you don’t much need to make other things, and dump the chocolate-covered bacon onto it to set. Let it set. Stop eating it, just let it set.

    Meanwhile, take 2 of the 3 packets of graham crackers that come in a normal sized box, and make really fine crumbs out of them. I did this using freezer bags and a rolling pin and beating them into submission. You can also use a food processor, but the rolling pin method is actually quite fun! Place 1/2 of the crumbs into a glass 9×11″ baking dish, and set the other half aside.

    Now, you make marshmallow. Yes, you make it from scratch, because homemade marshmallow is god’s gift to the world and about 427times better than store-bought. Really. I used Joy of Baking’s recipe and I used it verbatim*, because everyone warned me it was really gooey and kind of difficult. It is really gooey, but it actually cleans up pretty easily with just water, and it is not that difficult.

    1 cup cold water
    3/4 oz unflavored gelatin (usually comes in 1/4oz packets, 4 packets in a box)
    2 cups white sugar
    1 cup light corn syrup
    1/4 tspn salt (I use popcorn salt)
    2 tspn vanilla extract

    Put 1/2 cup cold water into a large, clean metal bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let stand until gelatin softens, about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, place the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup cold water into a saucepan. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and boil on high heat until the syrup reaches 240F, about 10 minutes.  With mixer running (it helps to have about three hands at this point) pour the hot syrup into the water-gelatin bowl. Add the vanilla. Gradually increase the speed of your mixer to high and beat the mixture until it turns into marshmallow cream. Try not to cut off your fingers with the mixer when you are sticking them into the bowl to taste it.  Be prepared to stand there for awhile – the recipe says 10 min, but mine took 15 min or more. It will grow, so be sure to use a big bowl.  It will also taste really good, like even better than you are expecting, so don’t eat it all with your fingers (if they’re still attached.)

    NOW – chop the chocolate covered bacon into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Pour 1/2 of the marshmallow cream into your crumb-prepared baking dish, and put the chocolate-covered bacon on top. Add the remaining marshmallow and sprinkle the other half of the graham crumbs on top.  Allow to set for a few hours – I gave it four hours but sped it up a bit in the fridge, and it was fine.

    It will look delicious and pretty like this:

    … and it will be divisive.  My sister says chocolate-covered bacon is the most disgusting thing she can think of;  fair-goers across America think it’s a wonderful treat.  Everyone who tried a piece liked it, but only one went back for seconds. I thought it was good.  I think most things made with bacon and most things made with marshmallow are good.  Chocolate doesn’t hurt.

    Will you like bacon s’mores?  Only one way to find out! 🙂

    *verbatim? OK, so not really. I don’t really do verbatim. But I came pretty close this time… I doubled the recipe because I needed extra to make s’mores cakes for the vegetarians and the Muslim (blog post to come) and I also used a hand mixer instead of the recommended stand mixer, because I don’t own a stand mixer. But otherwise: totally verbatim.