Bagna cauda

Bagna cauda has been on my radar screen since it was in the New York Times a few months ago.  I hadn't gotten around to making it, but then I saw a recipe in Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food.  It's more olive oil than butter, compared with Craig Claiborn's recipe which was two parts butter to one part oil.  I made a half recipe, which was a lot for two of us.  I'm sure that the buttery version would be good too, but I liked the olive oil-dominated recipe.  It wasn't too fishy from the anchovies, but they give it a nice savory umami flavor.

Broccoli with Bagna Cauda

6 tbl. butter
1 cup olive oil
8 cloves garlic,minced
12 anchovy fillets, rinsed and dried
1 lb. broccoli

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.  Add the garlic and cook over a gentle heat for 2-3 minutes.  It must not brown and turn bitter.  Add the anchovies, which will virtually dissolve with a bit of stirring.  Pour in the olive oil slowly, stirring all the time.  Simmer, not boil, for 10 minutes.  Blanche the broccoli in boiling water for a couple of minutes; keep it crisp.  Serve the sauce hot. in a bowl, stirring it up  with the drained sprigs of broccoli each time you dip them in.  Soak up the remaining sauce with hunks of bread.

Pizza Crust

Pizza is something I've always wanted to be better at.  Over the past year or so I think I've improved quite a bit.  I like Chicago style pizza as well, but this one is a nice crisp thin crust.  The most important thing is to have a good pizza stone, and also helpful is to have a peel that you can use to slide your raw pizza onto the stone.  The other secret is, I think, to knead the dough long enough to really be elastic.  The recipe I use is based on Alton Brown's, but as is often the case with his recipes, you do have to be careful.  The one that's easiest to find online has way too much sugar and salt.  There are two errors in the recipe from I'm Just Here for More Food, which I've corrected in my version below.  The flour in the book's recipe was off by a factor of two, and it called for a children's aspirin instead of vitamin C (I skip it completely).

Pizza Dough

1¼ cups warm water
2½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
4 cups (454 g) flour
2½ tsp. yeast

Mix the ingredients in a stand mixer with dough hook, then knead on 4 (out of 10) for 5 minutes.  Work the dough into a ball, put in a bowl lightly greased with olive oil, cover with a towel and put it in a warm place, until it doubles in size, about 1 hour.

Divide the dough in half, then work one half into a pizza crust, them place on a pizza peel dusted with cornmeal or semolina.  (The other half can be refrigerated for a few days or frozen if you don't need both.)  Top and slide onto a preheated pizza stone in a 550° F oven.  Keep an eye on it, it should be done in 5-6 minutes.

My biggest remaining problem is that the cheese starts to burn before the crust is completely done.  What I've done the last couple times is take it out and turn the oven off when the cheese gets done, then after having the first piece, if it could use a little more time, slide the rest back on the pizza stone for a few minutes.  That tends to get more cheese & sauce on the pizza stone than usual, making it harder to clean.  Next time I think I'll try 500° F for slightly longer.

Chicken with Orange and Black Olives

This is a really nice sauce for chicken.  We made it with chicken thighs and served it with bulgar, as suggested in the original.

Chicken with Orange and Black Olives

2 tbl. olive oil
4 tbl. butter
2 whole chicken legs
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp. dried thyme
12 black olives, pitted
1 orange, cut in half then thinly sliced
1 tbl. chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Heat the oil and half the butter in a shallow pan. Brown the chicken peices until golden brown on both sides, then add the stock. Stir in the thyme, olives and orange slices. Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Check chicken is cooked—when pierced with the point of a knife the juices should run clear—then remove the meat to a warm serving plate.  Taste the sauce, add parsley, and season with pepper and very carefully, if at all, with salt. Turn up the heat and reduce the liquid by bubbling down to cup, then whisk in the remaining butter.  The sauce will be shiny and slightly thickened when it is ready.  Plate the chicken pieces and pour over the sauce.  Serve with a starchy accessory such as wide noodles or potatoes.

Nigel Slater, Real Fast Food