What a coinkydink, I made pizza last night too.
Trader Joe's dough.
I had italian sausage from Snider's with homemade red sauce..
Mrs JPW had a white pizza with spinach and feta.

How is the Trader Joe's pizza dough? I have been thinking about buying some but I am always hesistant b/c I am not sure how long it is sitting in the cooler. I usually buy my dough from Vace.

Turnover is usually pretty good, so that's not a big concern.
The dough itself is serviceable but not a stand-out in any way.
Vace is one of my favorite pies in the area, if I lived near it, I wouldn't even think of buying TJ's dough.

Speaking of which, I'm feeling the need for a Vace field trip. It's been WAY too long.

I've used the Trader Joes dough numerous times with measured success. It's awfully convenient and can be frozen if you don't use it in a couple of days. I've also used it for quick calzones. However, if there was someplace like Vace near by, I'd certainly choose it over TJs.

Christened the new kitchen by making some awesome pasta using Mystery Sauce 1-7 (Which I think was the Fermano's butter sauce, but my score sheet is still packed somewhere), some hot Italian sausage, peppers, and onions, and half of the fettuccine I made at the tomato tasting event. Sauce turned out great, but the pasta was a little over done. It was in the water MAYBE 90 seconds.

Enjoyed with roasted garlic on bread, a la The Stinking Rose (Cut off the top of a head of garlic, season, drizzle with olive oil, or in my case butter and grapeseed oil because I had no olive oil but didn't notice until I needed it. Just figured I grabbed a bottle from the old place while moving out...guess not , then roast until soft), and some plonk++ merlot.

Guess it's true what they say: Give a man some pasta, he'll eat for a night. Teach a man to make pasta, and he'll want to buy lots of expensive equpiment.

Ding-ding-ding... you picked the overall winner... Hunt's.

We also had some of the leftover butter sauce last night (it was a mixture of the leftovers from making all the butter sauces). Combined it with some chopped bresaola, egg, mozzarella and leftover rice, formed the mixture into patties, which were then breaded and fried until crispy on the outside. Served with a bit more of the sauce spooned over the top. Mmmm.

I just finished up using some leftover sauce to make a big dish of baked ziti.

While not exactly dinner I have been making strawberry preserves. The batch currently cooking is the recipe for Strawberries with Black Pepper and Fresh Mint from Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber.

Mike are you canning or freezing the preserves?

I have not picked up Mes Confitures yet. It's on the list. Do you have Fine Preserving by Catherine Plagemann? It's worth picking up if you can find it used.

On topic: Dinner tonight is steak on the grill, corn on the cob, and haricots vert with vinaigrette. Some Jadot Morgon - Bellevue? - or another picked up at Sutton Place a while back.

Wanted to share a great salad recipe that is really simple, yet delicious. We peeled and seeded 2 cucumbers and chopped them roughly, then half of a vidalia onion chopped, a cup of grape tomatoes halved, a half cup of kalamata olives and a half cup of chopped radishes. Topped it all with a half cup of crumbled feta and a dash of oil based italian salad dressing. It was all the best parts of a Greek salad. I never think of making a salad wihtout lettuce, but I will from now on. It went great with the lemon garlic rotisserie chicken from Wegman's and some steamed veggies.

God bless the great state of Texas for producing some of the most amazing BBQ brisket and sausage I've had privilege to eat in a VERY long time. The gorge fest at my parents' house last night was definitely worth the extra 25 pounds my dad had to lug back with him on the plane from Corpus Christi!

By the way, for general knowledge, you can't bring dry ice on a plane with you, but if you "tip" the TSA agent $40, he'll let it through! (??????)

Ok, I'm game for hearing the details on this transaction, if you're willing to share.

Rigatoni with Basil and Walnut Pesto made from the first generous bunch of basil picked minutes earlier from my planter herb garden. As fresh as you'd imagine.

I bought some pizza dough at Wegmans yesterday to make tonight. To my dismay, when I got home from work the dough had expanded to three times its original size(so much so that it couldn't be used). I have bought dough many times at Vace before and this has never happend. Anyone had this happen to them or know what caused this?

Doughlusions of grandeur?

I have had the same thing happen to me with the Wegman's dough. I forged ahead, but the results weren't particularly good either.

You should post this in the chat with Furstenburg.

Short answer - Dough wasn't properly proofed by Wegman's

Is the Wegman's dough in the fridge when you buy it? I am also assuming that you kept it in the fridge at home too. My guess is that it was loaded up with yeast.

It is in an open cooler in the deli section. I stored mine in the fridge. It expands and becomes very soft and moist.

I'm sticking with the Trader Joe's version after having some limited success with it.

Have any of you all ever considered making your own pizza dough? Here is a recipe from “No Need To Knead” by Suzanne Dunaway, that is very quick and very, very easy. It can also be made ahead and refrigerated which is great for convenience and really adds to the flavor.

I use this recipe for my everyday pizza dough (if you are looking for a more complex company-quality crust recipe, PM me. I also have one for a spectacular thin-crust pizza and one for a really nice deep-dish pizza). The following recipe is originally written as a focaccia recipe, so you can also spread it out not quite as thinly, top it with some sea salt and herbs and use it that way also.

EASY PIZZA DOUGH
Makes one large pizza

2 cups water, warm
2 teaspoons dry yeast
2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

In a large bowl (or bowl of mixer), sprinkle the yeast over the water and stir until it dissolves. Stir in the 2 cups of flour and the salt and stir briskly until smooth, ~2 minutes (~30 seconds if using the flat beater in a mixer). Mix in the remaining 2 cups flour and stir ~2 minutes longer (~1 minute if using a mixer). Stir just until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and the flour is incorporated. The dough will be fairly wet and sticky.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise until doubled in volume, 30 to 40 minutes. (Or, for more flavor, cover the bowl and refrigerate overnight. Remove the dough 2 hours before shaping and let it sit, covered, before proceeding with the recipe.)

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. If you have a pizza stone put it on the bottom rack of the oven (and if using a stone, preheat the oven ~1 hour before baking).

Oil a half-sheet or pizza pan generously with the olive oil (for ease in removal of the baked pizza, I like to line the pan with a piece of parchment paper and lightly oil the parchment). Pour the dough onto the pan, scraping it from the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula or flexible dough scraper. Liberally oil your hands and the surface of the dough with olive oil and gently press and stretch the dough with your fingertips until it covers the whole pan.

Immediately, place the plain crust (without toppings) in the oven (on top of the baking stone if you are using one) and reduce the oven temperature to 450 degrees. Bake for ~20 until the crust just starts to color. Remove from the oven, top with your desired toppings and then bake an additional 15-20 minutes until the toppings are heated through and the cheese is lightly browned.

I will add a comment to say that this is a great quick dough to make. Try it, you will be happy.

And then there is Vace for the rest of us

Dinner tonight was chilled pea soup (Thank you Mrs. & Mr. B, they were better than you thought), spaghetti with a pureed asparagus and piave sauce and chilled strawberry soup with vanilla rum.

Yes, the dought was in the open cooler at Wegman's much like it is a Trader Joe's. It was kept in the fridge at home too. Couple of possible contributing factors I forgot to mention before-- 1) The dough was partially frozen at Wegmans and 2) It was about a 40 minute drive back to Bethesda from the Wegmans near Dulles.

I've posted about this sandwich before, but this time I have pictures. Bacon, lettuce, red, yellow and orange on the vine tomatoes (I should have waited a few more weeks, oh well), Monterey jack cheese, fried egg and mayo on challa. It might not look very good, but it is pretty tasty.

Noooo! You can do it, I know you can!!!

For inspiration (and to prove I practice what I preach)...

Mixing the dough, mixed, and after 40 minute rise
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The dough, poured and then spread in the pan
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The half-baked dough (and half-topped, since I am apparently half-witted and forgot to take the picture before I started putting on the toppings) and ready to go back into the oven (brushed with garlic oil and topped with tomatoes, basil & mozzarella)
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Finished baking
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Time to eat (I started the dough at 5:00 and it was ready to eat at 7:00 even though I got busy and left the dough to rise to an hour and 15 minutes.)
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Edited to add: If you want a thinner crust pizza, you can use half the amount of dough and stretch it out more (just keep in mind that a thinner crust will take less time to partially bake before topping, only 10 minutes or so).

Strip steak with smoked paprika rub and chimichurri and Trader Joe's garlic fires (first time for these and they are really good, highly recommended).

Alabama jumbo lump crab from Black Salt with avocado, salsa and roasted pepper sauces.

And some deviled eggs with salsa verde, ala Two Amys.

Last night was spicy beef with basil served with brown jasmine rice and steamed sugar snap peas.

Nice presentation there cjsadler!

Tonight the rus family had Shrimp "Ceviche" Cocktail from Rick Bayless' Mexico - One Plate at a Time.

Pork chop with red onion, dried cherry and pecan stuffing. This was from a recent issue of Cook's Illustrated. The stuffing was really tasty, which seems to have led to me seriously overstuffing the chop, as you can see (it just seemed to keep taking it, so I kept on stuffing... oops).



And then these light vanilla cakes with strawberry-lime marmalade for dessert, from the Cafe Boulud cookbook. They weren't too bad.

Chris, I've been doing a lot of stuffed pork chops too recently, and this stuffing you've got here is one I'll have to try. I've been most recently going with corn bread, carmelized onions, sherry soaked raisins and chile powder.

I've been saucing them with a reduction of the leftover sherry cut with cream, which I haven't been thoroughly happy with. Wabeck suggested I try stock/demiglace for a little less sharpness which is my next plan. It doesn't look like it from the image, but are you putting a pan sauce on yours?

No pan sauce on this. I guess they felt it could do without on this one, since the stuffing was very moist and strong in flavor (it was like a jam or chutney). However, just about anything could be improved with demiglace!

Where do you buy your chops? I had them special cut me a thick rib chop at Whole Foods, but they seemed to imply this was a one time thing they were doing for me (they have for sale only very thin rib chops ("quick cook") at the P St Whole Foods) ...and it wasn't cheap either.

Mine are the boneless center cut chops, also from P St. I did get their bone-in rib chops once or twice and didn't seem to think they were too thin. The bone-ins take up too much room in my pan, though.

And if they had a problem cutting your meat to order, we should find someplace else to get them.

BBQ turkey sausage, salmon cake and burger. Yummm.

Is that paprika rub store bought or did you make it yourself? I am grilling some hanger steaks tonight and was thinking of doing a dry rub for them.

I made it myself. Smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsely and a little red pepper. Turned out very good, although it did start to burn/char a little bit, although I caught it in time. This was the first time I'd done this one, but I bought a bag of smoked paprika at Reading Market last weekend. I like the flavor it gives without being overly paprika-y.

Bill:

Can you be a little more precise on the smoked paprika rub, and what is the recipe for the chimichurrri?

The rub was a "thrown it in a bag and mix it together" sort of thing, so my measurements didn't really exist. But I think I used about 4 tbs of the paprika, 2 tsp onion powder, 2 tsp garlic powder, 1 tbs parsley and two or three dashes of the red pepper and some salt. Covered all surface areas of the two steaks with the rub and I let it sit in the fridge overnight.

The recipe that most closely approximates the one i used is one from Cooking Light although I used a bit more oil and a bit less vegetable broth.

Grilled some hanger steaks(with Bilrus' dry rub) and chicken breasts tonight. The steaks turned out great, but I'm sure an overnight sit in the fridge with the dry rub would only have enhanced the flavor. Also on the grill was red and orange peppers, portobellos & zucchinis. To drink: Domaine de Pouy and a 1999 Domaine Saint Benoit Chateauneuf du Pape La Truffiere

Had the future in-laws over for dinner last night. Went quite well!

Started off with some Whole Foods abused cheeses (these were quite good though) and a baguette from Firehook. I think we had Emmenthaler, Bleu D’Auvergne, and a double cream Brie. Next up were some spinach, pine nut, and Gorgonzola raviolis from Eastern Market that I served with good sea salt and a drizzle of truffle oil. These were phenomenal-- I only wish I could have taken credit for the pasta. Then I served up some roasted organic chickens (also from Eastern Market) done a la Les Halles Cookbook with some Herbes de Provence compound butter stuffed under the skin. This was served with broccolini that had been blanched and then sautéed with thin slices of garlic and red pepper flakes. We drank some Gruet bubbly that was given to us as a gift along with a couple of Alsatian whites.

I enjoyed trying out a number of new pots and pans and setting our table for the first time with new dishes and flatware. A DR.com dinner party is somewhere on the horizon.

Dinner was at Maria's last night - wonton soup, HK style milk tea (w/ extra milk, pls), crinkle cut French fries (and they were extra crispy and GOOD), and a couple of stolen bites of Portguese chicken with rice. That's a bake rice dish - chucks of fried boneless chicken in a light Chinese yellow curry sauce with onions, bell pepers and a bit of cheese on top. A wee bit, enough to make you go hmmm.

Canto-fied Western food. Gotta love it.

NY Strip seasoned with black pepper.
Baby greens salad with simple vinagrette.
Biscuits.
Niebaum (sp?) - Coppola Black Diamond Claret.
(My brother gave me the last item, it was good but nothing special to me)

Sauted Soft Shell Crab over a bed of arugula.

Sauted crab for a couple minutes a side, removed.
then tossed some minced shallots into the pan
deglazed with white wine and reduced wine to pan almost dry
add juice of about a third of a lemon
salt, pepper, dash of garam masala
added a couple of pats of butter and let it all reduce for a couple more seconds
bed of arugula, place crab on top, drizzle reduced pan sauce on top.
eat!

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Tonight I made pizza using mktye's recipe. In saying "Try it, you will be happy," mdt is correct. I used to ALWAYS get my dough from Vace and now I see no need nor knead to do so anymore.

I made the dough from the recipe, as written, yesterday in a KA mixer. Left it in the bowl overnight and this morning moved it to a smaller, floured bowl to sit outside while I was at work. mktye is right when she notes how wet and sticky this dough is, as it poured out of the mixing bowl in a very unsavory manner, looking like it had been a prop in "Ghostbusters" and was just "slimed."

Came home to see my dough had risen nicely and had the same issue removing it from the bowl. I proceeded to flour my countertops, my hands, the dough, the bowl, several small neighbor children and our pet rabbit before I attempted to turn the dough out for "processing."

I did not do a pre-cook in an attempt to do a deep dish or focaccia. I cut the dough into quarters and used them to make 3 small pizzas. (one quarter I bagged and put in the freezer to see how it holds up for future use.)

The dough was tough to manipulate because of its stickiness, but not frustratingly so. I'll need to figure out how to make the dough more easy to work with. (Attn: mktye. Expect PM barrage.)

The first pizza was a basic cheese, made with a certain butter sauce made from a certain brand of canned tomatoes. (See thread on pasta making/tomato tasting for the recipe). The cheese was the low moisture pizza cheese that I got from Paul at Blue Ridge Dairy at Dupont market yesterday. (did anyone go see his mozzarella making demonstration at the P Street Whole Foods last week?) When it was done cooking, I simply added some torn basil leaves from my herb garden. Cooked it on a stone in my oven, which I had turned up to 11.

This is the homemade pizza I've been waiting for. In my 5+ years in DC, I've essentially given up looking for that NY pizza that I grew up with. This dough did it. It was the EXACT texture, the EXACT flavor, the EXACT crunch, the EXACT snap when I folded the piece in half. (You do fold your pizza slice in half, don't you?)

The second one I made had some italian sausage slices, and chunks of the onion that was pulled from the tomato sauce I made. The third one was a copy of the first pizza, and was made specifically to be cut into slices for tomorrow's lunch!

Anyway, I for one will no longer need Vace, nor Trader Joe's for pizza. And I encourage others to try it too. I'm anxious to hear what other first-time pizza dough chefs encounter.

I like to use oil rather than flour while stretching the dough. It is a bit odd to get accustomed to, but it might make things easier. You can also add more flour at the start to make a bit firmer dough, but it will affect the texture of the end-product.

I am glad you were happy with the recipe!

Are there people who don't fold their slices??? I wasn't going to give this a whirl because no matter how good it is, it isn't *really* pizza based on this same standard, admittedly subjective but it happens to be my baseline, but you have piqued my interest. I have to trust the word of a man who quotes Cookie Puss. I'll give it a try this weekend.

Dinner last night was some braised buffalo short ribs in a tamarind sauce, polenta, roasted zucchini from the Dupont market.

Chicken fajitas!

Had a little Mexican feast/party for some friends that are moving. Forgot to take any pics.

Traditional and strawberry-basil margaritas
Pineapple salsa
Tomatillo-avocado salsa
Red chile enchiladas
Green chili rice
Borracho beans

I'll be damned if I can figure out how to cook enchiladas that aren't falling apart and a bit soggy, though (even after doing the 'dip the tortillas in hot oil before rolling' step).

White rice, iced jasmine green tea and Chinese roast pork chowed with soy sauce. Oh my goodness...pork fat rules. Helllll yeah, baby.

The last bowl for the season of chilled roasted asparagus soup and a plate of prosciutto, mozzarella balls and micro basil. I added a balsamic vinegar reduction and extra virgin after the pic.

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