Italian Night!

For anyone who knows me, knows I actually don't like Italian food all that much. With the exception for pizza and a few other choice dishes, I could stop eating Italian food for good and not feel like there's a food void in my life (do not relay this to my Sicilian mother...). However, as stated, pizza, is most definitely my weakness (and Justin's!) so last night was Pizza Night....but having been raised in the Zerner household, it is actually a federal offense not to have some kind of vegetable/greenery alongside your main course, so I dug up a great recipe for a true, homemade Caesar salad that my mom taught me. The recipe came from my grandma's friend Ursula, and my mom passed it along to me last Christmas when we made it (and it was a huge hit). So Caesar Salad and Homemade Sicilian Style Pizza! ENJOY!

Caeser Salad (a-la Ursula Heindl)

2 bags of romaine lettuce
1 garlic clove
1 small can of anchovies
1 egg
1/3 cup Olive Oil
3 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
Splash of Worcestershire
1/2 tsp Mustard
Pepper
1/2 - 3/4 cup Parmesan Cheese
Croutons

>Get all of your ingredients out -- the idea is to make the dressing in the bowl in which you are serving it in -- make your dressing in it's entirety FIRST and make sure to taste it before adding your lettuce (that way you can tweak flavors before coating the whole salad with something that may taste off).

>Take out your anchovies from the can and drain most of the liquid out (I used a little less than a whole can because it was a bit much for the amount of salad I was making -- but depending on the amount of lettuce you may want to use the whole thing). However the extra anchovies were very much enjoyed by Yoshi :)
>Take out a mortar and pestle

>Mash up the anchovies completely until it becomes a paste

>Before adding anything to the bowl - take the 1 garlic clove and rub it thoroughly around the entire bowl (I know this sounds weird, but the garlic flavor comes out amazingly with this process)
>Once done rubbing the garlic around, you can discard of the clove
>Add in your anchovies, Olive Oil and Red Wine Vinegar

>Whisk those ingredients together well

>Now it's time to coddle your egg! This was my first time coddling an egg so I literally went on youtube to see how it's done - it's really the easiest thing in the world and can be explained sans youtube video.
>In a small pot bring water to a boil. Take the pot off the stove, and gently place a whole egg in the water. Cover and let sit for 7 minutes.

>Take out the egg gently with a spoon and let cool for a minute or two.
>Then, break egg and scrape out any leftover egg whites from the shell (** when taking the egg apart, I did this in a separate bowl first in case my coddling went wrong).
>Now add in egg, mustard, Worcestershire, and pepper (to taste) and whisk extremely well.

>Now is the time to taste test and make sure the flavor of the dressing is to your liking.
> Now you're ready to add in your lettuce. My ghetto supermarket only had bagged romaine lettuce, but you can use the full romaine stalks and cut them up just the same.

>Add in a 1/2 cup of Parmesan Cheese (or more depending on your love for cheese) and your croutons and toss all parts together to make sure that the dressing is evenly coated.

You will not believe the taste difference in actually making your own traditional Caesar Salad with homemade dressing, as opposed to just getting those prepackaged salads with the dressing in a bottle. This salad has a whole different taste and is completely addictive!
Now on to PIZZA!


Sicilian Style Pizza

For the Dough:
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) butter
1 active yeast packet
1 tbsp Sugar
Water
Olive Oil

>In a Cuisinart with a dough blade in, pulse together the flour, salt and butter, lightly.
>In a mug, pour in your yeast and sugar. Then heat up a 1/3 cup of water to 105-115 degrees and add that to the yeast/sugar mix.

>Let that sit for 5 minutes until the yeast starts to grow. Then add that mixture into your Cuisinart and blend. While mixing, add in 1 cup of cold water. The dough will then start to form a ball.

>Once it looks like the dough in the picture below, you know you've gotten the right consistency - not too moist but not crumbly (if you follow this recipe's measurements you shouldn't have to do any tweaking in terms of adding more ingredients).

>In a bowl, add about 1 tbsp of Olive Oil and place the dough in the bowl, and mush around so that all sides of the dough are lightly coated in oil. Let the dough sit for at least 2 hours to rise. Once risen, punch out the air in it and get ready to make some dough!

>Grease a large baking sheet and throw your mound of dough onto the pan. The Olive Oil from the previous step will not only add flavor but also prevent any sticking.

>Start to spread the dough from all angles so as to have an even layer of dough across the whole pan.

>In a preheated oven of 350 degrees, cook just the dough for 10 minutes....now onto the SAUCE & CHEESE :)

For the Sauce:
1/2 jar of Rao's Marinara Sauce
1 Garlic Clove
2 tbsp Basil

Cheese:
8 ounces of shredded Mozzarella Cheese

>Dice up one garlic clove finely

>Get your cheese ready -- I know a lot of people like to use the fresh mozzarella and believe me, I could eat that stuff by the pound, but when it comes to making this kind of pizza, the fresh mozzarella makes it VERY watery (since it tends to be an extremely moist form) -- I usually buy the 8oz. blocks of mozzarella and then shred it up myself -- and it tastes DELICIOUS! I learned the mozzarella water debacle from a previous experience and it was not a pleasant pizza.....

>Rao's is the ONLY jarred sauce that my mother, the most ultimate Sicilian would allow me to use, if I were not making sauce from scratch. It truly is the one sauce that tastes homemade, and doesn't need much altering because the flavor is perfect. So yes, it's one of the more expensive sauces (usually about $9 a bottle) but you'll only be using half of it and can freeze the other half for the next pizza or pasta dinner! I'm pretty sure that little rant should earn me some kind of shameless advertising money from Rao's....just saying....

>So after your dough has cooked for about 10 minutes in the oven, spread your delicious Rao's evenly across the dough, leaving about a 3/4 inch space around the border for the crust -- Justin is a corner slice kinda guy so I always make sure there's a crust!

>Add on your diced garlic clove and basil (I only added this picture of myself below because you can kind of see our beautiful kitchen in the background....pay no attention to my day-glow pink sweatshirt in the foreground)

>Now add your Cheese! This looks so delicious even unbaked....

>Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes, then switch the oven to a "hi" broil and broil for about 2 minutes or until your cheese gets that golden brown crust.

And voila! You've made a well rounded Italian feast from scratch!
Look at the happy face it elicited from Justin! It's pictorial proof that it was yummy!

ENJOY!