Bread Salad (Panzanella)

Don’t forget to enter my OXO Salad Dressing Shaker Giveaway HERE. It’s my new favorite kitchen toy.

I first heard about this kind of salad several years ago. I was intrigued by the idea but food blogs were still mostly non-existent and I didn’t have a recipe. I decided to just try to make a bread salad.

Well, I didn’t know what the helk I was doing. I ended up with a good flavored mushy salad.

Yesterday Jake said, “Remember when you didn’t know how to cook?”

What? I thought I could always cook!

Ok, so I made a mushy salad, a LONG time ago. It’s great what years of practice and lots of food blog reading can do for a person.

This is barely a recipe. I did not measure, and I don’t think you should either. Taste, taste, taste!

Bread Salad (Panzanella)

• Cut 5 or 6 Cups of hearty, rustic bread into 1” pieces. I cubed, but you can tear.
• olive oil
• salt
• 6 smallish, locally grown tomatoes (Roma sized) that have NEVER been in the fridge and are ripe
• 1 Japanese cucumber (less seeds/water, but you can use whatever) peeled and cut into half moon chunks
• Sherry vinegar (balsamic would be acceptable)
• fresh Mozzarella cheese, cubed (more than a cup)
• 3 large handfuls of Arugula
• Sunflower Sprouts
• Thinly sliced red onion
• More olive oil
• Minced garlic (if you can handle it raw)
• sugar
• pepper and salt to taste
• A few Tablespoons of thinly sliced basil

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees and lay the bread cubes onto a baking sheet. Pour olive oil (lots, like half a cup) over the bread and toss, rubbing it with your fingers. Sprinkle salt over the top. Toast the bread in the oven for several minutes, tossing the bread once during cooking to toast both sides. Remove when they are crouton like and golden. Let cool on the sheet. They should seem too dry. They’ll soak up liquid and soften later.
2. While the bread is toasting, cut up the tomatoes and reserve the juices as much as possible. Put the tomatoes in a metal strainer/colander over a bowl. Toss the tomatoes with salt and let the juice seep into the bottom bowl for about 15 minutes. Put the onion in the tomato juice bowl.
3. Put the cooled bread pieces, strained tomatoes, cucumber, arugula, sprouts, and cheese into a large bowl. Whisk a couple of glugs of olive oil, garlic, and a few Tablespoons of sherry vinegar into the bowl of tomato juices. You may want to add a little teensy bit of sugar here. Your call.
4. Pour the dressing over the whole salad, add some salt and pepper, throw in the basil, and toss the salad lots of times. The bread should start taking up some of the liquid and softening. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Serve immediately.

Vegan Pesto Pizza is Real

One too many people I know consider vegan food

weird,

or something only skinny people eat.

I’ll tell you, I could get downright plump on vegan food. Especially this pizza. I go through phases where I feel the need to balance out my proteins with vegan foods, like when I’m on this ridiculous South Beach diet (currently on hold, indefinitely) and I just hate eggs and meat of all kinds, passionately (but just right now, promise).

I’m a fan of this girl’s recipes. I have never once been disappointed by her ability to make vegan food real. As in, Real tasty.

I made her pesto pizza (click to print) and I have some suggestions to make it the number one pizza on the planet, against all other kinds. I know this because I’ve made this pizza three times in the last two weeks.

Use This crust recipe.

Throw a diced eggplant into the roasting pan for the topping if you like. Roasting these veggies before actually making the pizza was a genius move. I’ve always been a purist in the pizza making—I always just thinly slice raw vegetables and make a very scant topping in favor of cheese. This recipe proved that whole idea wrong. Load those roasted veggies on there, please.

Variations for the pesto: add a roasted jalapeno for spicy pesto, or a handful of sundried tomatoes for a sweeter one.

A slice is delicious for breakfast too. Yes, I did. Three times.

The pizza tastes fresh, sweet with roasted tomato and onion, and crispy crackly garlic oil crust under a savory pesto. I was sure that the pesto wouldn’t live up to my standards, but I can honestly say I like this vegan version better than the original parmesan standard. That is saying a lot.

I had been craving pizza like crazy, since I wasn’t supposed to eat any, which is completely torturous. I was totally convincing myself that I was starving. Riiiiight, you’re saying. My hunger was eating up my soul, or so I told myself when I started making this pizza.

Being hungry is really, really distracting. It's hard to concentrate on anything. And please. I was just on a diet. I am one of the luckiest people ever to consider myself deprived while on a diet. The fact of it doesn’t escape me. I try to count my blessings, even when I’m being an angry witch and hating everyone who is allowed to eat carbs.

I want to tell you, before you go out for your weekend, that Foodbuzz is partnering up with Yahoo! to support Share our Strength, an organization I really care about. They create food programs for hungry children in smart and effective ways. Yahoo! will donate $20,000 to Share our Strength on behalf of Foodbuzz and their community of readers and bloggers.

Here are two things you can do raise awareness about this important cause:
1. Make Yahoo! your homepage now to let them know you like what they’re doing to help Share Our Strength.
2. Share the campaign with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

I’ll be talking about Share Our Strength during the campaign, and in return for my participation, Foodbuzz is going to donate some $ on my behalf to Share Our Strength, too.

Win-Win in my book.

The Pumpkin One

Pumpkin? you ask? Why are you doing Pumpkin even though you are not in PFB 2010 anymore?

Because, dang it, I've been thinking about pumpkin for WEEKS but trying to hold off because I didn't want to ruin any surprises.

(No snickering, now.)

We caught the end of Punkin Chunkin and although I didn't get the whole story, I did gather that there was a guy who had been 2nd place against the same team for 20 years or so and had just finally launched the most awesome pumpkin launch ever, finally beating that team, and everyone was so super happy about it until a different team just inched them out of 1st place. Again.
I may have part of that story wrong but I think the point was, that sucks. Big time.
I have nothing to complain about.

I had some fun with Project Food Blog, but I'm about to have fun with this pumpkin week challenge I've cooked up for myself. Since Jake doesn't like pumpkin and I love it, I think I'll just over do it while I'm hanging out with my parents for the week and Jake doesn't have to be my taste tester. So I'm going to show you 7 pumpkin recipes (will I stop there?) in a row. You're probably pumpkin-fied already. If you're not sick of pumpkin, come back tomorrow for the sequel.

I've mentioned before that I've found a new love in Dorie Greenspan, and she has a stuffed pumpkin recipe that I tried and loved. It was so easy and good. But I did feel like it wasn't quite right for me. I've had some trouble finding a pumpkin that I liked as much baked as I like from a can. Really. Usually they come out quite bland, in fact, even though I've tried several varieties.

Deciding to switch this dish over to a kabocha and add a couple of flavor notchers seemed natural. Kabocha is my favorite pumpkin. It's much sweeter and has stronger flavor than pumpkin. Plus you can eat the skin. I don't want to deal with the peel when I bake a pumpkin.

Amaya actually likes kabocha, but she and every other 4 year old out there likes to play the this-does-not-look-right-to-me-I'm-going-to-hate-it game. After several minutes of trying to explain to her that this is the kabocha she knows and loves and everything in it is also a known and loved tasty item, I resorted to time out and afterwards she ate her food. Happily.

People talk a lot about not forcing kids to eat food, and they'll eat if they're hungry, but my kid, at least, is just super cranky when hungry and doesn't really make logical conclusions regarding food and hunger and behavior in that state. Usually if I can get the first couple of bites past her clenched teeth she'll be happy enough to chew and swallow.

I have to apologize for the pictures. In Oregon it gets dark at 4 or so and I don't have the right lights. I was just saying to Da that food pictures have to be good, and here I am posting a not-so appetizing one. In my defense I'd say that Dorie's one isn't totally delicious looking and I still tried it.

Kabocha Pumpkin, packed with Bread, spinach, bacon and Cheese
(Stuffed Kabocha)
(adapted from Dorie Greenspan)
My main tip for this recipe is that you can stuff a lot more bread in this than you think. Just keep pushing it down there until it's full and kind of packed together. Amounts vary HUGELY depending on the size of your pumpkin. Once you pack all the bread in there and are pouring the cream in, get a chopstick and poke down through the top a bunch of times to help the cream soak into the different areas. keep putting the cream in until you obviously can't pour in any more (this is only right if you actually really pack the bread in there).

• kabocha pumpkin (probably works with butternut squash or acorn squash as well)
• bacon, chopped
• gruyere, cubed (you could use another, but I love the gruyere. Don't you?)
• spinach, sauteed and squeezed until dry and chopped (I think Kale would be good here)
• good crusty bread, like ciabatta, french, or sourdough, diced into 1/2" pieces
• salt and pepper to taste
• garlic, minced
• cream

1. Turn the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Cut the top off the pumpkin, around the stem. Remove the seeds and strings inside, scraping until smooth on the inside.
3. In a bowl, toss bacon, gruyere, spinach, bread, salt and pepper. Ratios of the ingredients are like this: Bread 2:1 gruyere, bacon a few to several slices (depending on your tastes, really) and probably about a 1/2 Cup of spinach to 3 Cups bread. 
4. Once tossed, throw the mix into the pumpkin, packing tightly into all the spaces.
5. Pour cream into the pumpkin and keep poking holes into the filling until the cream is soaked in and seems to be at the top.
6. Place on the parchment lined baking sheet and bake until the pumpkin is tender when pierced. Check after an hour. My pumpkin in this case was a 3 lb pumpkin and it took about an hour.
7. Cut into slices and serve, or scrape up the insides of the pumpkin into the filling and serve that way. Both ways are good!

The Bap’za

“Mom!” Amaya yells when she walks in the door.

“What?” I pause, mid-click in my bibimbap pizza photo shoot.

“I want to try your ‘best pizza ever’,” she tells me and immediately starts reaching for a slice of meat.

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I guess I’d been talking about it a bit too much. When I started looking ahead to Challenge #5 of Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog, I immediately started thinking pizza. Pizza is something I dream about. It’s like the culinary canvas.

I’ve had pizza in every country I’ve ever visited, and everyone makes it their own. That’s how versatile it is. Don’t get me wrong—I love a perfect Neapolitan slice. But, me, I can’t leave well enough alone. I make pizza often, and I usually subject everyone to my experimentation.

When our friends came over for dinner last week, one said, “Yep, this is Mariko pizza.”

The combinations that I’ve come up with will last me several good posts into the future. But one idea was my favorite. The one I kept calling the “best pizza ever.”

Amaya picked up on my vibe very quickly. She knows when I’m on the trail for food. I buy my ingredients, make notes in my book, bounce wacky ideas off Jake, and announce my food-making schedule.

When she got out the kid’s set for our “afternoon tea”, she handed me a slice of wooden bread. Animatedly, she offered, “Here you go. This is spicy corn on bread!”

I made a face. “I’m not sure if I want spicy corn on bread. That sounds nasty.”

“Try it,” she answered. “You’re going to love it!”

Hmmm. Is that really how I sound?

If kids are a pretty honest reflection of yourself, then my interest in food is definitely rubbing off on Amaya. As picky as she is, she gets that there is a world of taste out there, and she wants it. She gets that meals don’t have to be static repetitions of weeknight canned casseroles and eating out is a chance to try something new without having to do the dishes. She gets that being excited about food is an extension of the pleasure of taste.

And she definitely gets that I am going to make her try my pizza. She doesn’t get out of trying anything when it comes to the dinner table.

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“I love your ‘best pizza ever’, Mom,” she says, as she picks through the toppings she wants, and leaves the rest behind.

The Bap’za

This pizza is a recreation of bibimbap in pizza form. Bibimbap is a Korean dish of vegetables and meat on rice which is tossed and mixed with hot bean paste and a barely fried egg. It is a mix of flavors that work, however odd it sounds. The snap of vegetables, sweet sesame, spicy gochujang, salty meat, sour pickles, and soft rice each offer their individual and distinct treasures to your tongue and teeth. I am a huge fan of (read: obsessed with) stone bowl bap. In a stone bowl that has been heated, the flavors kind of cook together and sizzle while the rice becomes crisp on the edges. The rice crust I made on a pizza pan imitated that perfectly. The pizza sauce is a sweetened gochujang (hot bean paste) that mimics Korean fried chicken sauce recipes I’ve had. It brought the pizza together well. I stuck with common bap toppings and made my own namul (seasoned vegetables) to go with the bulgogi beef, egg, mushrooms, and cucumber. Baking the egg in the oven on the rice crust and sauce made it just right, as the yolk was hot and still able to mix well with my toppings as I loaded them on. The pizza sliced nicely and held together, but with all the toppings, you’ll want to eat this one with a fork, because you are likely more civilized than me. I still ate it with my hands and made the crust into a tool to wrap up the toppings, just like folding a New York slice.

View and Print the recipe(s) here:

• The whole recipe: The Bap’za
• Crust
• Gochujang Sweet Pizza sauce
• Namul (soy bean sprouts and daikon/carrot)

If you want a slice of this pizza, vote for me by clicking my profile icon on the right sidebar starting on Monday the 18th. Thanks for visiting.

How to throw a Little Foodie dinner party

voting is now open! If you liked my dinner party you can vote HERE. Thanks!


For Project Food Blog Round #3 (woo hoo!), we were challenged to throw a luxury dinner party. Ha. I would love nothing more than to have an adult dinner party. But where would we get all the baby sitters? No matter. This is a food blog about feeding little foodies. Here’s how in 12 easy steps.

1. Plan a menu around finger foods in a cuisine you totally know. Make exotic foods seem somewhat normal, like, say, cheese as an option in sushi rolls. And then maybe they will try it.  Luxury means nothing to a kid. I mean, they will eat candy corn before they touch your food.
2. Invite some kids. And their parents. Then invite some single people, because it’s a good idea to have a ratio of 4 adults to 1 kid. It’s also a good idea to invite different ages of kids, because older kids are way better at entertaining younger kids than any adult. As you can see, I got it backwards.

3. Invite too many people. Because half of them will say they’re coming, but then won’t be able to come, because they have KIDS, and kids are unpredictable. They might all come down with the most horrible pukey virus ever known to man an hour before the party. And then you’ll have to clean up puke instead of going to a party.

4. Cook all day long, running around like a wild woman with no time management skills, make your husband hold the baby, cook during your turn to hold the baby, and tell your daughter to go clean her room. If you’re lucky, she’ll play in there the whole afternoon, but don’t actually expect her to clean anything.
      

5. Get out your finest china.

6. Don’t stress out when everyone shows up more than a half hour late, because they have kids. (see #2). Also DO not clean while you are waiting. You will be happy you didn’t.

7. Serve the kiddies first.


8. Play “pass the kiddies”.
   

9. Don’t worry about the fact that your kid is only eating the rice on the plate. And drinking root beer. It’s a party. And at least it’s the fancy, good kind rice. It’s even sushi rice. Your kid is practically eating sushi. You can brag about it to your friends.

10. Have lots of toys for the kids to play with so the adults can finally eat.

11. Serve cupcakes, and even if the food was bad, the kids will only remember the cupcakes.  11 and a half: Remove wrappers before eating. 

12. Because you are all party animals, expect everyone to stay until at least 7:30. Then they will leave to put the kids in bed. After everyone leaves and you put your kids in bed, ignore the dishes. They will totally be there the next day (and the next). They’re reliable like that.
The Recipes:

• Garlic and Sesame Edamame
• Roasted kabocha: Cut into chunks, salt and EVOO, roast at 350 until soft
• Temaki sushi: I highly recommend CHEESE. Even I like it. SPAM is good too.
• Chicken with sesame seeds from Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking
• Gyoza
• Fried Cheese Wontons
• Mochi cupcakes (I just made them cupcakes instead of cake) with the best frosting ever. PW is not messing around here. Eat your heart out.