Return of the Belly Burger

History has a funny way of repeating itself especially when you mix the food culture from two different families.  Hop in the way back machine to the mid 80's and my parents were making stuffed hamburgers. What's a stuffed hamburger you say?  Two patties with wholesome goodness, often mushrooms and cheese stuffed in between.  The shear girth of the end burger earned them the monicker "Belly Burgers" from one of my oldest friends, Matt Oatman.  Take the Delorean with Doc Brown back to current day 2012 and Erin's Uncle Eddie is making his own version of the belly busting burger.  While we've never had Eddie's version we have heard all about them.

So how does all of this lend itself to today's culinary creation?  As usual a cocktail is involved or in this case several.  Last night's festivities with our senior circuit neighbors turned into a bit of a bender.  As such, movement was a bit slow this morning and while stalking my first cup of coffee, Erin looks at me and says, "I could really use a greasy burger."  As quick as a flash of lightning the decision had been made, time to try our hand at the Belly Burger tonight.

While I played with Margot, Erin got busy working on the stuffing.  Red and white onions and jalapeño peppers, sliced and loaded into a foil tent.  Lightly covered with olive oil, salt, black pepper and fresh garlic, she cut a few slits into the top of the foil tent and put them on the top rack in the grill.  This allowed them to cook slowly and get a nice smokey flavor.  Near the end she opened up the foil to finish the cooking.

 

Next step, the burger.  Ask any good burger maker and they'll tell you the best burgers come from 80/20 ground beef.  Yes, it's got a little more fat than ground sirloin, but a little fat yields a lot of extra flavor.  Besides you're not eating these bad boys every night of the week so live a little and make a great burger.  It's important to make fairly thin patties to work with when stuffing burgers, this allows for a fairly quick cooking of the beef without having all of your stuffing ooze out the sides.

The first patty is down with the onion and pepper mix on top.  Now it's time for cheese and in this case extra sharp cheddar cheese.

The stuffing is complete and it's time for patty number two.

Press the edges together all the way around the burger to help keep your stuffing inside this round mound of ground beef and cover both sides with salt and pepper.  Note to those scoring at home, parchment paper is a great surface to do this on.  Now it's off to a red hot grill.  The temp gauge on my grill was nearly at 600 degrees when I put the burgers on.  I did them at about 3 minutes per side to get a nice sear.  My gas grill has a very unique feature just beneath the cast iron cooking racks, grates that open and close.  Think of shutters on a window but made out of stainless steel.  When closed you are no longer cooking with direct heat under the meat.  The grates have a 1 inch gap all the way around the outside edge of the grill so the heat circulates up above the grates from around the outside edges and it cooks more like an oven this way.  After 6 minutes of searing I closed the grates and did the last 4-5 minutes oven style at around 400 degrees.  Just off the grill and resting nicely with a little extra sharp cheddar oozing out the edges.

A great burger needs the proper vessel to sail into flavor town.  Erin picked out some awesome ciabatta rolls that aren't fully baked so you finish the job at home in the over.  The end result is a nice crusty roll that can hold up to the belly busting monster shown above.

Proper pin stripes on the burger and it's decked out with a homemade chipotle mayo, some fresh peppery arugula and a couple leftover onions and jalapeños on top give it the trendy finish that a gourmet belly burger needs.

Summer is finally here.  Happy Grilling!!!

Bringing The Steak House to Our House

So it's the last day of March and I spent my morning making more golf swings in 90 minutes than I would in over 2 rounds of golf.  Such is the cost for taking a lesson and practicing my new swing after the fact.  As I finished my post lunch yard work Erin announced she was bored.  I told her take Caroline on her adventure and I would put Margot down for her afternoon nap.  As such at 1:30 PM, off they went into Chicago as I ventured into nap world with Margot.

While I shopped online for a new golf pullover as Margot slept, Erin and Caroline were at Fox and Obel http://www.fox-obel.com/ quite likely the best grocery store/upscale market in Chicago.  Erin had a $50 groupon that she paid $20 for that was nearly expired so they wanted to use it up today.  My only $0.02 with regard to their trip was "lets do steaks for dinner."

We love a good steak house and we have been very lucky to visit some of the best; Mastro's (Chicago and Beverly Hills) BLT in DC, Gibson's, Smith & Wollensky, Morton's, Erie Cafe and David Burke's Prime House in Chicago, but damn can't they be expensive.  Out last visit to Mastro's was nearly $400 for the two of us, thank God for the $350 gift card from a client of mine.

No seafood tower as an appetizer tonight but instead Erin took the wine and cheese angle.  Featured below are a nice French Chardonnay (none of the Cali oaken/butter bombs, this one is crisp and full of mineral undertones).  The truffle almonds were a pretty sweet find.  The cheese on the left is a triple cream (not sure words exist to do this guy justice) and the cheese on the right is an aged sharp Swiss cheese.

While the girls watched Sleeping Beauty in the basement we took in the first half of the Kentucky/Louisville game and enjoyed our appetizer selection.

As the clock ticked away after the first 20 minutes it was time to get the fire burning.

Time permitting, I'm a big charcoal guy.  For my money, nothing puts more flavor into beef than a real charcoal fire.  Being the purist that I am, a bag of Kingsford and some lighter fluid will just not do.  Lighter fluid while easy, leaves a flavor on the coals that I don't want on my meat.  As such, I use a Weber charcoal chimney and get my coals going using some newspaper stuffed into the bottom.  In about 20 to 25 minutes you've got a chimney full of nice hot ready to cook coals.  Today I used a mix of regular charcoal and some lump hardwood charcoal on top.

The coals are the first step to a great steak, number two is making sure your beef sits out at room temperature for about an hour before you put it on the grill.  Below is my USDA prime cowboy cut bone-in-rib eye and the two fillets for Erin and the girls.  Yes, the rib eye is much more work to eat, trimming away all the fat, but fat = flavor and it is so worth it.

The coals are prepping and the meat is warming, it's time to talk side dishes.  Given the gourmet market, Erin picked up some twice baked potatoes, lots of work but when someone else does it you've got a very quick and easy add to our meal.  To go along with the starch, Erin decided to do some Caramelized Brussel Sprouts.  Below in the pan are the halved sprouts drizzled with olive oil and accessorized with some bacon!

The coals are just about ready so it's time to season the beef.  My mix is very simple, equal parts of French sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and garlic powder.  Be sure to use powder and not garlic salt as you don't want to double up on the salt content of your rub.  It's almost very important to note, that I don't season/rub my meat (he he he) until about 5 minutes before it goes on the grill.  Salt on beef for too long will turn it grey, and that results in a less than sexy steak.  See the rub mixture below.

The rubbed steaks ready for grilling.  Don't be stingy with the rub.  A nice hot grill will melt the salt crystals and make a nice flavor crust on the outside edge of your meat.

Now that the coals are ready it's time to get my fire ready for cooking.  Given that I'm only cooking three steaks, I'll split my Weber Grill in half and load the coals onto only one side.

If I were cooking four or more steaks I'd likely use two grills.  I'd get the gas grill as hot as it can go and use that for searing the meat and then transfer it them all to the Weber to finish.

Grilling prime beef is kind of like sex, one speed doesn't work for all and the result of that would be very boring.  The key to a good steak is a proper sear on both sides.  The sear not only makes for a very flavorful outer edge when eating but it also locks in the juices to keep your meat nice and juicy regardless of when level of doneness you prefer for your beef.  Using just the Weber I like to sear each piece of meat for 2 minutes per side directly over the coals.



The steaks are ready to come off the grill but not ready to eat.  Time to let them rest.

Put your beef on a plate and let it sit for 5-6 minutes uncovered.  The meat will continue to cook but more importantly, all the blood/juice will redistribute throughout the beef.  If you cut into it immediately, the blood/juice would run out onto the plate and there goes lots of the flavor.

As I was working outside on the grill, Erin was working on the brussel sprouts inside.  She put the mixture into a stainless fry pan and placed it in the oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.  Once the sprouts came out they went to the stove where she deglazed the pan with red wine vinegar at the very end.

Time to plate things up.

My bone in rib eye.

Erin's fillet cut in half.

This is what I call perfection.  Medium rare beef.

All of this is great, but a good meal is not complete in this house without some wine to go along side.  Erin picked up a nice bottle of Italian Barolo for our meal at Fox & Obel.

While we spent over $100 for the meal (including both bottles of wine) it is certainly no where near what we spent at Mastro's and I also dined in Adidas warm up pants and a Badger Bleacher Creature tie dye t-shirt to boot.

Mange, Mange Mange

Motivation for something different

I can admit when I get pushed.  Sometimes its takes only the slightest of nudges, other times inertia will rear its ugly head.  I've been looking for a creative outlet for a couple days now.  While typing up last nights entry I decided to channel my pent up energies into a creating a meal tonight.  Getting from A to B is what makes for the story.

Today was not a day to be creative or to cook at least not from Margot's perspective.  Margot felt left out today.  Mom, Caroline and Grandma G were headed into the city to the American Girl Doll store for almost the last efforts of Caroline's 7th birthday fort-night.  Unfortunately, if you are a three year old girl, you're not invited to the party.  Rather, you get a daddy day.   Now I know Margot really loves me, but it didn't sound that way from the onset when Caroline was getting all prettied up to go into Chicago this morning.  But, once all the dust had settled Margot and I were on our way to some fun.

As daddy daughter days go it started slowly but kept building.  I forced her into a trip to the gym so I could sneak in a work-out.  She made kids court work and we were on our way for lunch and fun.  Watching her dunk her baguette into the chicken noodle soup you could see she was enjoying a new twist on the same old lunch.  A light came on in my mind, time for something new.  We finished lunch and headed home.  After 30 minutes of playing doll house it was nap time for Margot which meant time for me to do some research.  20 minutes later I was engrossed into a blog about Vietnamese food and tonights dinner idea was hatched.

Bahn Mi Nehm Nuong, simply translated to a savory meat sandwich with pickled vegetables.  By 3:00 PM I could hardly contain myself, this nap would be preempted as we needed to get to the store and pick up the goods for dinner.  With the promise of a special treat for tagging along we were off to the store.

While Margot took down 1.5 peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies I was full on into dinner prep.

You know I'm serious about the time I plan to spend in the kitchen when I pull out the Bucky crocs.

The first step was easy, mixing the ground pork and garlic along with the other spices into a large mixing bowl.  The odd part was adding in the baking powder and water mixture with the meat blend, seemed odd but something different none the less.  Meat ready and back into the fridge to firm up for a bit.

Next up, pickled vegetables.  Not all carrots are created equal.

The bigger they are, the harder they match stick.  The food processor took this guy down to size and I added some vinegar, sugar, salt and chopped jalapeno to the mix and set it aside to pickle.

Next up the mayo for the sandwich.  As far as condiments go, mayo seems rather innocuous and laid back. Making it is another story.  Lets just say using a blender to make mayo does not work, 8 eggs and 4 cups of oil later we were back to ground zero.  Once the dust settled we had a proper spread for this sandwich that was kicked up a bit with some fresh garlic, curry and Sriracha "cock" sauce.

Like I said yesterday a great sandwich must start with great bread, as such, right back to the Labriola baguette to get things rolling.

Hurry up and wait.  It's only 6:30 and we decided Margot needed to be in bed before this dinner got fully going.  So be it, the meat was marinating so to speak in the fridge and the carrots were pickling.  Nothing a nice Manhattan can't fix while we wait this one out.

Bed time came and went and I was out the back door and off to the grill.  The beauty of proper motivation is that 28 degree weather seems perfect for grilling when you are convinced it's time for something new.  The pork patties or sliders if you will were grilled up nicely in about 8 minutes.  I brushed them gently with sesame oil before grilling to get a little extra charred flavor and color from the grill.

Back inside it was time to start plating.

Triple pork patty lightly drizzled with soy sauce, pickled carrots and jalepenos, sliced cucumbers and fresh cilantro all on top of the baguette that had been brushed with the curried sriracha garlic mayo.

No meal in this house is complete without the proper drink pairing and tonight we chose a nice crisp Sauvignon Blanc to cut through the spice of this sandwich.

By the way, the spicy mayo made for a nice dip to go along side the sea salt and black pepper potato chips.

Try something different, you never know how good it might be.

Sing it with me........Meatball Sandwich......

Well it all starts with a little stroll down to lunch lady land.  Hoagies and grinders, hoagies and grinders, navy beans, navy beans, Meat Loaf Sandwich...........While the song may be silly tom foolery, this sandwich is serious business.

We stopped into Labriola Bakery for lunch the day after Caroline's 7th birthday party and her dinner of choice, spaghetti and meatballs.  In typical Erin fashion, she made a large bucket of range balls worth of meatballs (hey its cold and grey in February and I've got the golf itch, cut me some slack).  The upside to her excesses is an abundance of left overs to work with.  As we waited in line to order I noticed all the wonderful looking loaves of bread behind the bakery counter at Labriola.  A quick nudge and a little point later Erin knew I wanted her to pick up some bread for the meatball sammiches that were on the menu that evening.

I am a firm believer that a good sandwich starts with great bread.  Some consider it just a vessel but I say good bread is a work of art.  We grabbed both the demi baguettes and some asiago cheese loaves.  Pictured below is the start of my sandwich with the cheese loaf.

You'll notice I've carved a little tunnel through the middle of my bread.  I love bread, more than most and likely more than I should but a proper sandwich is all about the proper blend of meat, cheese and bread.  As such, I've pulled out a fair amount of the doughy innards of my cheese loaf.  This makes for not only a little less bloat in the sandwich but also I nice trough to anchor the meatballs in.

The next step is laying down the gooey blanket to hold a meatball with.

Soft mozzarella cheese, hot giardiniera and some freshly grated sharp provolone cheese.  Pop it under the broiler for 2-3 minutes and we are ready to start building.

Time to add the goods.  I like to slice the meatballs in half and layer them into the sandwich.  No rolling around and also allows me to get about 40% more meat into my sandwich.  Cover them in some home made meat sauce and top with grated parmesan reggiano and pecorino romano cheeses.

The only thing missing now is a nice glass of red wine and we are all ready to eat.  Anything Italian and red would work fine but we did a nice hearty Zinfandel as the fruit really stood up nice to the meat and spice in our sandwiches.

The final product.

Toasty bread, oozing cheeses, hearty meatballs in red sauce and you can see the oil from the giardiniera soaking into the bottom of the bread.

Mange, Mange Mange.

Now I'm motivated to cook tomorrow!!

Tuesday's meatballs become tonight's pizza

So yesterday's pizza dough project resulted in us making a double batch of the sacred yeasty wonder.  With my travel schedule taking me to DC this week and last nights amazement at this dough, we decided to double down tonight and make pizza again for dinner.

Seriously, it's not just me pushing this one.  Our almost 7 year old daughter does not like pizza crust, until last night that is.  Normally when we eat pizza she gets to the crust and tosses it on my plate.  She was doing that last night, when Erin and I both prompted her to try this new crust.  Being the good kid that she is, she trusted us and tried it.  A big smile spread across her face just before she pronounced, "I like crust!" She ate all of her crust and even asked Erin to cut the crust off one of the slices still on the cutting board as she was getting full and only wanted to eat the crust.  This morning while I was making her PBJ&B toast she asked me, "Dad, when do I get to eat more of that pizza crust?"  I chuckled and replied, "Stick with me kid and we'll go places."

One of the benefits of having a wife who is an amazing cook is a fridge that is better than a pirates booty when it comes time to look for new topping ideas.  As we cleaned out the fridge with garbage day looming, the leftover spaghetti and meatballs from earlier in the week seemed like a good starting place for tonight's pie.  I pulled the meatballs out of the sauce and sliced them up into 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick slices.  We decided that we would take this pie to spicy town and grabbed a jar of Rubino's hot giardiniera relish.  Using the traditional sauce here is how it got started.

Next stop was the fresh mozzarella followed by both of the hard cheeses.

Five minutes on the thin cookie sheet at 550 degrees, then we slid it directly onto the stone for 10 more minutes to finish it off.

Spicy giardiniera combined with savory home made meatballs.  Wow.

It's a good thing we made it to the gym both days this weekend!!

Mange Mange Mange

You don't really know pizza until you read this

Erin and I really love pizza and we thought we made our own version pretty well.  I like to think that I am a pretty good cook but Erin is the real deal.  Together we've gone through many deviations and variations changing everything from sauce to style to crust to toppings to cheese blend.  Just when we were getting comfortable with our secret 00 flour crust recipe a little trip to California for the Rose Bowl changed everything.

Planning for the trip started no less than 5 minutes after the Badgers knocked off MSU on the night of 12/3.  Fortunately for us, we've got great friends that live in Orange County (yes that's you two Mike and AJ) who are willing to put up with us and as crazy as this may sound, I'm pretty sure they are our west coast twins.  AJ and Mike are foodies like us and they were scouting potential restaurants for our visit and suggested Mozza in Newport Beach a gourmet pizza joint owned by Nancy Silverton (founder of La Brea Bakery), Matt Molina and iron chef Mario Batali.  With AJ being as neurotic as she is, they gave Mozza a test run prior to our visit.  The concensis was great pizza but way overpriced.  We never made it to Mozza but AJ and Mike got us The Mozza Cookbook which includes a dough recipe similar to what they use at Mozza but converted to work in household ovens that can't reach 800-900 degrees for proper pizza baking.

As we love pizza we decided to give Nancy's recipe a dance tonight.  Below is the recipe for all of you to use and try followed by the results and our thoughts about it.  As pizza dough recipes go, this one is pretty involved so read it through completely and get you ingredients organized and measured before getting started.

RECIPE Ingredients

• 22 ounces of warm tap water (warm not hot, hot will ruin the yeast)
• 1 tsp of active dry yeast (we used organic yeast, not really sure what that means?)
• 26 ounces of unbleached bread flour (this is not 26 ounces in the measuring cup e.g.. volume, but 26 ounces by dry weight, since we don't have a cooking scale yet, we converted the 26 ounces of dry weight to a volume measured in cups or 5.9 cups.  I eyeballed the 0.9 part and it turned out just fine.
• 1 TBL dark rye flour or medium rye flour (we used organic dark rye flour)
• 1.5 tsp of wheat germ
• 1.5 tsp of barley malt or mild flavored honey (we used honey)
• 1 tsp of kosher salt
• Olive oil for greasing the bowl

RECIPE Steps

• Make the sponge by combining 15 ounces of water and the yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer and let it sit for a few minutes to dissolve the yeast.  
• Add 13 ounces (2.95 cups) of the bread flour, the rye flour and the wheat germ.  Stir with a wooden spooned to combine the ingredients with the water and yeast already in the bowl.
• Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap to insure a very tight seal.
• Set the dough aside at room temperature (68-70 degrees) for 90 minutes.  You can cut this to 45 minutes if you are in a hurry and it's still ok.
• Uncover the bowl and add the remaining 7 ounces of water, the remaining 13 ounces (2.95 cups) of bread flour and the barley malt (we used honey).
• Fit the mixer with a dough hook, place the bowl on the mixer stand and mix the dough on low speed for 2 minutes.
• Add the salt and mix on medium speed for 6 to 8 minutes, until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Note the dough will not pull so much that it completely cleans the bowl.  If the dough is too sticky slowly toss in a handful of flower to help it along.
• While the dough is mixing lightly grease a large bowl with olive oil.  The bowl should be big enough to accommodate  the existing dough ball and have room for it to double in size as it rises.
• Wrap the bowl as before and allow it to rest for 45 minutes at room temperature.
• Acting as if the dough round has four sides, fold the edges of the dough toward the center.  Turn the dough over and return it, folded side down, to the bowl.  Cover the bowl again with plastic wrap and set it aside for 45 minutes.

Mixing the dough

Making the pizzas

• Dust you work surface with flour and turn the dough out onto the floured surface.
• Divide the dough into 6 equal segments.  (we did only 3 segments and it made nice sized pizzas for sharing between 12-14 inches) Doing 6 segments will make individual size pizzas which is fine too and allows you to employ greater topping variety.
• Take a dough ball and place it on the floured surface
• With a floured rolling pin roll the dough out into a manageable circle/oval.  Be careful not to get the dough any thinner than 1/4 inch thick with a little extra thickness ok at the outer edge of the pizza.
• Once you've done this add your toppings to make the pizza yours.
• Once topped use a pastry brush to lightly brush the un-topped outer edges of the pizza with olive oil. For extra flavor we added California Garlic Powder to the olive oil before brushing it on.  Once the olive oil garlic mixture was brushed on to the outer edge of the crust we lightly sprinkled kosher salt on top of the brushed edges.  This allowed the outer edges of crust to really brown up and also give it some great finishing flavor.

Notice the brushed edges

Baking the pizzas

We preheated our oven to 550 degrees and also used the convection feature on our oven.  We always use a pizza stone when making pizzas in our oven as it makes a much better crust.  We kept only one rack in the oven and put at at the lowest level in the oven with the stone on top of it.  This may sound excessive but we got the oven to 550 and kept it at temp for 1 hour before we started baking the pies.  This allows the stone to get fully up to temp which is a make or break as far as crusts go in my mind.

Because we don't have a nice metal pizza peel yet, we started each pizza on a razor thin cookie sheet for the first 5 minutes of baking.  After five minutes we used a very long metal spatula to help the partially cooked pizza off of the cookie sheet and directly onto the stone.  From that point it was 5-9 additional minutes of baking directly on the stone to get it just right.

Beyond your comfort level

This was the hard part and took us until the 3rd pie to get it just right.  It is very easy to take the pizza out 2-3 minutes too early and not quite finish the crust on the bottom where you can't see it while cooking.  When it looks done, give it 2-3 more minutes to get it there, trust me on this one.  The picture below will show you what the outer edge of the crust looks like when the bottom is just right.

Crispy Edges

Once you pull the pizza from the oven allow it to rest on a raised open air rack (see pictures below for a good example) for 5 to 6 minutes.  This allows the cheese to recongeal but does so without the crust sweating and getting soggy on the bottom like it would on a cutting board or other solid heat retaining surface.

After 5-6 minutes, cut into 8 slices and prepare to have a pizzagasm!!!

The Pizzas

#1 (for the kids)

Pepperoni and Extra Hot Italian Sausage with our classic 4 cheese blend (grated mozzarella and scamorza along with the hard cheeses also grated Parmesan Reggiano and Pecorino Romano.  You may not be able to find all of these at your local grocer.  We are lucky living in suburban Chicago to have an amazing Italian grocery store very near by.  http://www.rubinositalianimports.com/

#2 The Classic Margherita Pizza

Classic sauce with buffalo mozzarella cheese.  Get the balls and slice them like you can see in the un-baked picture above.  Once the pizza is resting on the rack sprinkle the basil leaves on the pie.

#3 The Schoen Signature Pie (Sausage, Banana Pepper and Onion)

Classic sauce with Rubino's extra hot sausage (pre cooked, see below) banana peppers and onions.  Erin has a hang up on sausage for pizza and doesn't like it in big chunks as such we take the bulk sausage and cook it in a cast iron skillet before it goes on the pizza.  Half way into the sausage cooking, Erin will pour it from the skillet into the food processor and grind it up into raisin sized chunks and then finish cooking it with the end result below.

For all three pizzas above I refer to the classic sauce.  We like to use our own from scratch pizza sauce.

We start with a large can of San Marzano Tomatoes (from San Marzano Italy), yes they cost more, $5.99 for the 26 oz can, but it is worth it.  Put the tomatoes through the food processor and add in fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, oregano to taste.  We also mix in a 14 oz can of tomato paste to help thicken the sauce.  This sauce is not cooked.  All the ingredients are mixed together and allowed to rest in a bowl for a couple hours before using to help marry the flavors together.  Making it the day before is fine as well.  Finished sauce is pictured below.

Final thoughts on the dough recipe.  Top Notch.  This is by far the best pizza dough we have ever made.  Light and airy with great flavor and texture.  The edges puff up nicely to provide that crispy exterior with the light and fluffy interior.

If you've made it this far you have now completed Pizza 202 as taught by Erin and Scott.  Send us a check for $22 and we'll return a certificate of completion to you.

Good luck, happy cooking and mange, mange, mange.