Neapolitan Pizza

Guest post from Jar Head:

Better than delivery...

There is nothing better then pizza - sweet, chewy and crusty bread with tomatoes, cheese and basil. Combined with a good beer you hit all of the required food groups (well, at least the important ones).

First you need the dough - start with my pizza dough recipe. Remove the dough from the fridge 2 hours before making the pizza. Dust your counter with flour and place the ball on top and press into a disk. Cover with plastic wrap and cover with a tea towel. Leave for 2 hours to rest.

Preheat the oven about 30-45 minutes before making baking as high as the oven goes and use a pizza stone if you have one.

After the 2 hour rest, begin to gently stretch the dough out until it is about 10-12 inches in diameter. Place on a pizza peel and top with ingredients of your choosing. Less is more here - we like to use crushed canned tomatoes for a sauce topped with garlic and buffalo mozzarella and sometimes anchovies.

Slide onto pizza stone and bake until browned on top. Serve with freshly chopped basil.

Pizza Beer Pairing: Pizza and beer just seems to be a match made in heaven and you cannot really go to wrong here. IPA's, belgians, pilsners and even sours would work well against the sweet tomato sauce and yeasty bread. Tonight we went with Steamworks Pilsner.

Pizza Dough - The Bread of the Gods

Guest post from Jar Head:


As every fan of good pizza knows, the starting point is the dough. You cannot have a great pizza without first having a great dough - without it you might as well cover a cardboard box with tomato sauce and cheese.

This recipe has gone through many adaptations over time and I am very happy with the results. Patience is a virtue here as this recipe uses a delayed fermentation technique, using a small amount of yeast to work with the natural sugars in the flour which are released as the dough rests in the cold fridge. This concept came from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Bakers Apprentice, which is a great book on everything to do with bread.

What you will need:

• 3.5 to 4 cups of flour*
• 1.75 tsp salt
• 1 tsp yeast
• 1.75 cups cold water

* I use a mixture of 3 to 3.5 cups of bread flour together with 1/4 cup rye and 1/4 semolina. You could use all bread flour (or all purpose) but I prefer the slight nuttiness and texture that the rye and semolina adds.

Add 75% of the flour together with the water and bring to a paste - the mixture will be very wet, almost pancake batter in consistency. Let sit for about 20 minutes. This is known as autolyse which allows enzymes break down the proteins in the flour so they can reform as gluten and amylase enzymes convert the broken starch into sugars. Add the remaining ingredients, including the remaining flour, and kneed in a stand mixer for 5-8 minutes (10-12 by hand).

Separate the dough into 4 balls and place in lightly oiled containers. Place in fridge for 1 to 3 days (you can place in freezer after 1 day in the fridge and save for 3 months).

After a day in the fridge you are ready to make pizza - I will be doing a posting on that step soon.

Now I only need to get going on that wood burning pizza oven in the back yard...

Clam Chowder

Gnome approved

As soon as the leaves turn and the beginning of rainy season takes hold here on the west coast my thoughts turn to warm soups on a dark night. One such soup is a clam chowder with lots of clams and fish - not that tomato based kind (tomatoes and clams...blasphemous) but the creamy New England variety (note clam chowder beer pairing below).

What you will need:

• 1 can baby clams
• 1 can clam juice
• about 400 grams of white fish of your choice
• 1 leek finely chopped
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 2 cups diced potatoes
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 2 fresh bay leaves
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 cup cereal milk or sour cream
• 2 TBSP red wine vinegar
• Fresh chopped herbs (such as parsley and chives)
• Salt (smoked) and Pepper to Taste

Drain juice from clams into a large skillet over the onions, celery, potatoes and carrots. Add water to cover and bay leaves, and cook over medium heat until tender.

Meanwhile, in a large, heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour until smooth. Whisk in milk/cream and stir constantly until thick and smooth. Stir into vegetables and clam juice. Heat through, but do not boil. Add fish to cook. Stir in clams just before serving. If they cook too much they get tough. When clams are heated through, stir in vinegar, and season with herbs and salt and pepper.

Clam Chowder Beer Pairing: There are a few different ways you can go with this type of soup. An IPA with its bitter hoppiness will cut through the creamy soup nicely while a dark or brown ale would also pair well. You can also go with a thick stout or porter. This time I went with a west coast crossover - a Cascadian Dark Ale (sometimes also called a Black IPA or an American Black Ale) which is a dark malty beer with a high amount of west coast hops.

Coq au Vin - Chicken Swimming in Wine & Bobbing for Mushrooms

Chicken swimming in wine

We here at Fondue Voodoo tend to enjoy our beers more then our wines, see my beer reviews at Beer Advocate here. Having been gifted wines we must preserver and endeavour to put them to good use.  Since it just happened to be dark, wet and cold outside (rain in Vancouver...who knew) my thoughts went to stew, specifically my take on Coq au Vin. Traditionally you include bacon and skip the potatoes, carrot or celery but I don't follow follow instructions well...

Here's what you will need:

• 3lb Whole free range chicken - butchered into parts (we gave the wings and part of back to the Hell Hound)
• 2 medium onions (chopped into large chucks)
• 1 extra large clove garlic (coarsely chopped)
• 2 carrots (diced)
• 2 stalks celery (diced)
• 5 small potatoes
• 1 1/2  cups brown mushrooms (quartered) 
• 2 bay leaves
• fresh herbs (thyme, savoury etc)
• 3 cups red wine (such as merlot or cabernet sauvignon)
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 cup crushed tomates
• 2-3 TBSP olive oil
• Flour for coating chicken
• 3 TBSP beurre manie

Season the chicken with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then coat lightly in flour. Heat the oil in a large cast iron casserole dish (such as le creuset) and brown the chicken in batches on both sides over a medium high heat. Remove the chicken and set aside.

Reduce the heat, fry the mushrooms. Once browned remove and set aside. Next, add the onions, carrots and celery and sauté for about 5 minutes until the onions are translucent and then add the garlic and fry for about 1 minute.

Add back in the chicken, mushrooms, bay leaves, herbs, crushed tomatoes, red wine and stock. Bring to a simmer making sure all ingredients are well covered with the liquid. Once the broth has come to a slow boil turn the heat down and cover. Allow to simmer go for 30 minutes until the chicken is cooked and tender. 

Remove the chicken and set aside once done. Taste the sauce and season as necessary. Remove from heat and whisk in beurre manie to make a lightly thickened sauce. Bring back to the heat and bump the heat up to medium to thicken - it should just cover a spoon slightly. Serve the sauce over with fresh herbs.

Coq au Vin Beer Pairing: You need a strong heavy beer to pair with this meal as anything light will not hold up to the red wine sauce. Belgian Strong Dark Ales or Belgian Quadrupel's would work great here as they have rich flavours of dark fruit, earthiness and spices that are reminiscent of red wines. We went with Unibroue's La Terrible which was a great match (my review here).

Mushroom Powder - Crimini Crack for Foodies

Neglect is the word of the day.

Mystery yard mushroom - 2010

I'm a bit of a masochist when it come to veggies, particularity mushrooms. Those little fungi's are up for neglect and just a little abuse when they get tossed to the back of my fridge. After months of neglect, I rediscovered the multiple brown bags to find wrinkly little dried mushrooms, a la "Return of the Mummy"style, except much more tasteful and without all that campy acting.

All hope seems to be lost, but wait - all hope isn't lost,  a little once over with a mushroom brush, and a round in the spice grinder and you've got a beautiful fine mushroom talcum powder,  fragrant and big on taste. A happier case of neglect has never been boosted about.

Mystery yard mushroom - 2010

How to raise your 'shrooms from the dead - Mushroom Powder

Purchase crimini or shitake mushrooms.

• Pro tip, skip white mushrooms, they have no flavour.

Place them in a lose brown paper bag, back of the fridge
Check occasionally to ensure no mold is growing. Wrinkles good, mould bad. Once dried, brush with mushroom brush to get clean and break off the stems. Break them up a bit and buzz them in a spice grinder until they reach a fine powder stage.

Place the powder in air tight jars and store in the pantry.

How to raise the crimini powder form the dead:

Gravy, Stew, Soups, Scrambled eggs, Meatloaf & burgers, Veggie loaf, Pasta sauce and mixed with salt to season french fries.

Who's up for a little abuse?

The dark spell of Savoury Buckwheat Crepes

Buckwheat crepes, post sacrifice.

The world is a better place with flat breads in it. Childhoods are made better with pancakes slathered in maple syrup and butter.  Lovers languish over breakfast waffles, well, I've heard they do, anyway, and even the French are tolerable when it comes to crepes. Fondue Voodoo has been under the spell of crepes since before these sausages I call fingers could roll them. Try them yourself and feel the satisfaction of the magic that happens when simplicity meets the frying pan.
Begin your adventure our here:
Savory buckwheat crepes          Special tools
1.5 cups buckwheat flour             Immersion blender    
1/2 cup whole wheat flour           Non stick pan
2 cups of milk                              Hungry belly
1 cup of water
2 eggs
butter for frying
The batter
-Mix the flours together
-whip up the eggs and add the milk and water
-add the flour to the milk, water eggs mix and quickly use an immersion blender to mix the batter up very well.
-place the batter in the fridge for at least 2 hours or over night
To fry
-scatter a tiny bit of butter across a hot pan
-pour the batter into the pan and immediately start to roll the pan to encourage a batter circle
-expect the first crepe to die, it's a sacrifice to the crepe gods, make the sacrifice with your whole heart. Then try again.
Makes somewhere around 18 - 20 crepes, depending on the number of sacrifices you make.

Fillings
Cheese   Mushrooms   Spinach   Fried egg   Shredded veggies  Ham  Smoked fish    Bacon    Herbs on top of course.

Enjoy and don't forget the sacrifice is all part of the bigger plan.

Multigrain Beer Bread

Guest post from Jar Head:

There is nothing like a good home made bread. This one uses multiple grains and beer which results in an amazing crust and taste.

Use a dark beer for this recipe such as a stout or a porter.  I love to use St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout which is an amazing beer and adds an enormous amount of taste when paired with dark fruits (reviews here).

What you will need for one 2 pound loaf:

Soaker

• 3 TBSP grains (quinoa, polenta, millet etc)
• 3 TBSP rolled oats, buckwheat etc
• 2 TBSP wheat bran
• 1/4 cup water

Dough

• 3 cups bread flour
• 1.5 TBSP brown sugar
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 1 TBSP yeast
• 3 TBSP cooked riced (brown is best)
• 1/2 cup chopped dark dried fruit (figs, dates, prunes or cherries)
• 1.5 cup beer (room temperature)

Combine the soaker ingredients the day before you plan on making the bread. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature. If you cannot do the night before heat the water to a slight boil and pour over the grains and let sit for about 2 hours.

Add all of the dough ingredients together in a large bowl with the soaker. Mix well until you get a rough ball. Kneed by hand for about 12 min (or 8-10 by machine). The dough should be tacky but not sticky. Add a few drops of water or a bit of flour to get the right consistency. If using a machine kneed for an additional 2 min by hand at the end. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl and let ferment for 90 min until doubled.

Remove dough from bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Gently form into a rectangle and fold one side halfway over. Do the same for the other 3 sides. Place seam side down on a floured surface and cover with plastic wrap to rise for 45 to 60 min.

Preheat the over with a large heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) at 500F. Remove the pot from the oven and carefully drop the dough into the pot seam side up. Place the hot lid onto the pot and place back into the oven. Bake for 30 minutes, if the bread is golden brown it is ready. If the dough is still white you can remove the lid and continue to bake for another 10 to 20 min. Bread is done when it is golden brown and makes a hollow sound when thumped at the bottom. Internal temperature should be 185F to 190F.

Let rest 1 to 2 hours before slicing.