pizza pizza

So I'd just come back from a night out with the MM crew and around 1ish I got hungry (the place we went to had tasty food, but small portions and I wasn't really feeling what was left on the table by the end. Awesome horchata with rum though!)

I had bought some pizza dough a couple days earlier to use the rest of my spaghetti sauce on. I didn't wait the two hours for it to be room temperature so the dough and I fought till it would stay spread out in the pan (I won!)


I put the sauce on top, some mozzarella, oregano, pepperoni from Vermont Smoke & Cure that I cut up, some cheddar and a sprinkling of Parmesan. I also added olive oil to the bottom of the pan and drizzled some on top when it was done.

Now I get to have it for lunch today!

steaky nachos

So the bf and I went to the Heights and couldn't finish our dinner. I took home some tortilla chips, some melted cheese thingie, and a few buffalo wings.

Later on that week I used the chips as a base for these nachos.

I mixed salsa verde with some tomato paste, some fresh tomatoes and the juice of a lemon and heated this in a pot.

I pan seared a nice cut of steak in my cast iron skillet till it was on the rare side of medium rare then sliced it thinly.

On top of it all I put a bunch of cheddar cheese.

phy-lily, fi-lily, phyllo, filo!

I had more filo dough left over from the pigs inna blanket. I ALSO had some mashed potatoes left over from this weekend.

So here's what I did.

I cooked some lean ground beef in a pan with sweet onions and garlic. Then I added some nutmeg, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper.

I put a large can of tomato paste in with this and let it cool a little.

I laid out 4 sheets of filo dough in the bottom of a glass pan with butter brushed on the first sheet and the last. Then I crumbled the cold mashed potatoes as a bottom layer on top of the dough.

I scooped all the meat sauce on top of the potatoes and crumbled a liberal amount of domestic feta cheese on top of that.

I topped it off with layer upon layer of filo till I ran out of butter to brush each sheet with.

Here's what it looked like out of the oven!

It's getting chili in here

So I did the unspeakable and made chili 1) without regular "chili" powder and 2) with a can of kidney beans thrown in.


It came out great. I used ancho chili powder, cayenne pepper, some adobo, more pepper, a can of crushed tomatoes, one can of tomato paste, some honey, the can of kidney beans, a pinch of nutmeg, a lot of ground beef, a pat of butter, lots of garlic, and two strips of salt pork served as the oil to sautee the onions in.

Then I covered the whole shebang with a cheese blend from DAG.

Artichoke Basile... a mini DiFara closer and quicker

So I went to this tiny place (14th b/t 1st and 2nd) a couple days ago and had to get the Artichoke pie..

It was good, very good, but it's not what made me swoon with delight.

This...this... smallish slice of Sicilian pizza heaven is what will keep me going back for more:

The crust is infused with generous amounts of olive oil. The sauce is perfectly chunky and the cheese just coats the whole thing in a blanket of deliciousness. There's fresh basil on this and the regular slice and when I go back I'm going to skip the artichoke slice so I have more room for these.

When I went they didn't have the cauliflower fritti because apparently with the volume of people coming through it's hard to make it in a sensible amount of time.

I look forward to the day when I can try that too. =)