Lentil Stew with Chicken Andouille Sausage

 
We left off that it was C's birthday and I made cupcakes.  My plan was to make one of his favorites for dinner and the cupcakes.  There was a last minute thing with work right around quitting time and the next thing I knew I was calling online ordering Papa Johns.  Yep, happy friggin' birthday sweetie.

Sunday Pizza: 01.23.2011

Stuffed Crust ready to bake!

Do you ever have one of those Sundays where you look forward to Monday?  If you have kids you probably know what I'm talking about. Right around 6:30 I said, "Man, I can't wait for Monday!"  Did I feel guilty?  Puh-lease!

Here's the skinny ... Sat morning C practically buzzed Z's hair.  [Turns out he is a cutie and can wear it short and C continues to remind me it will grow back]  While prepping Z for a military career C noticed his ear had nasty stuff coming out of it.  blah.  There goes soccer - here we come doctor!  Turns out Z has an ear infection and slight pneumonia.  Poor little guy.  [he has tubes in both ears, hence the nasty stuff]  Sat night C had a fever too.  What's going on?

Sit n Spin

We almost cancelled all Sunday plans but C and Z made miraculous recoveries by Sunday morning.  Way to go!  We watched the Bears wear their uniforms and pass to the wrong team for a couple hours.  Dreadful.

Thin crust with all different size slices

Luckily, Z's and his buddy Elliott go to school together so he's long been exposed to anything Z has [pretty much screwed] and his parents were comfortable coming over.  The boys fought like brothers from minute one.  Z and E and their parents decided to skip making pizzas this week.  phew.

In honor of the Bears game we decided to make an official stuffed pizza.  Well, official might be pushing it since C insisted on going light on the cheese.  We treated ourselves to a 12" cast iron skillet to make a larger pie to feed 6 adults.  As you can see above we also made our traditional thin crust.

Enough sausage, ya think?

What makes it truly Chicago is the wall to wall sausage layer on the bottom. Um... Yum!  We blind baked the crust, then layered with cooked sausage, cooked spinach, red bell pepper, then cheese.  Finally, we topped it with a thick layer of sauce.  My mom will tell you too much sauce...

The one error we made is to not cook the pepper.  Pre-cooking toppings release their liquids so the dough doesn't get soggy.  The dough was a little soggy but everyone claimed to love it nonetheless.  Next time, we'll cook all non-cheese toppings and blind bake the crust longer.  All part of the journey.

Sunday Pizza: 12.26.2010

Last Sunday Pizza 2010

Last Sunday Pizza of the year!  We started doing Sunday Pizza dinners in March.  I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and decided we needed to work towards 10,000 hours of pizza making to get really good.  We're really not much closer to that goal but it has morphed into a wonderful hobby for me and excuse to get together with friends and family.  Like the variety of toppings on a pizza, Sunday Pizza 2010 has ranged from just us to a large group and sometimes not on Sunday.

Phone used to show Z making pizza

This Sunday was special.  The family pitched in and got my mother-in-law, Grandma Choo-Choo, an iPhone!  It is so exciting to be able to Facetime with her on a whim.  Sunday Pizza was just us and while C was baking the sausage and grating the cheese I was on Z duty.  So I decided to call G-Ma Choo-Choo.  While we were on Facetime we realized why not have them watch Z make his pizza!  Woot Woot!  So rather than taking of pictures of it I held the iPhone.  It was awesome!   The rest of these pictures were once we hung up.  The pizza was amazing.  LOVE the new batch of sausage and sauce.  Heaven!

Captain STUFF!

Ready to bake

Watching Dad make pizza

Finished Product

Sausage: Go Big or Go Home

CostCo.  Need I say more?  CostCo is headquartered in Issaquah, WA.  Anyone that has ever visited always comments, "What's with everyone here and CostCo?"  It is not uncommon to be at a party and overhear (or have) the following convo:

Guest:  "Wow this artichoke dip is awesome!"
Host:  "Oh I know! CostCo!"
Guest: "AHH CostCo! I love that place!"

We are out of Italian Sausage and pizza sauce.  Naturally, we get the main ingredients at Seattle's obsession, CostCo.  [sidebar - I also got a 10 lb tube of ground beef, you read right, to make a gagillion meals with for my expecting sister].  Anyway, the first two times we made sausage we used 4-5 lbs of pork.  Since CostCo has pork shoulder we decided to get it there [it is what we used to make sausage with Em and her family in Ritzville, WA]

We get home and realize this baby is over 13 lbs!  WHAT?!  Ok calming down... we have a freezer it'll be ok.  You've seen most of the sausage making process here so I won't repeat.  Really this time there were four differences, we used a scale to weigh the spices (Merry Christmas to us), we added more spice in general, we used red wine mixed with pomegranate juice as the binder, and we make a boatload of it.  [yep Em non-farming kids use that phrase too!]

This post is pretty much about the pictures of the ridiculous amounts of sausage we made.  In case you are wondering we do not stuff it into casings since it will almost all go on pizzas eventually.  As an experiment half has a red wine/ pom juice as a binder and half has no binder.  I'll let you know the verdict eventually.  Sampled cooked and plain, the batch without the binder is much stronger tasting since the sweet juice isn't there to tone it down.

Pork in strips getting slightly frozen

Yep, ALL this seasoning is for the sausage!

So is this garlic!

Coated with seasoning and ready to grind

Sunday Pizza: 10.24.2010

Over the weekend we made another batch of homemade sausage. L mentioned in an earlier post our first and second permutations of sausage making, and I have to say the second was much better . . . Alone and on the pizza. The photo is of this past sunday's pizza. None was left for lunch on Monday, something we both enjoy.

Sausage Fest!

When I was in jr high my older step-bro came home from a party one night and declared it was a "Total sausage fest!"  It took me awhile to get it but then I thought it was the funniest thing.  

This is a different kind of sausage fest so get your head out of da gutter.  C and I made sausage over the weekend.  This is our second batch of homemade sausage.  We followed the quite clear step-by-step directions over at SimplyRecipes.

The first time we pretty much followed his recipe and cursed the fact that we don't have a scale cuz his ingredients are weights.  What does C do for a living?  Science teacher.  hmmmm maybe we should plan a little better next time eh?

Anyway, the sausage tasted fine but we decided the sherry wasn't pairing well with our pizza sauce.  (don't judge the use of wine wordings for pizza talk)  So for round 2 we decided to up the seasonings (oops still no scale), add crushed red pepper flakes, and use red wine and red wine vinegar in place of the weirdo sherry.  (no offense Hank)  

The next day we put it to the test on our pizza.  C was the smart one who took the picture of the pizza.  Since the photo is on his phone he'll need to post it.  Hint hint :)

Here's the play-by-play:

All the seasoning!

Cubed Pork with Seasoning, ready for grinding

That's C's hunky hands in action

Finished Product!