Homemade Marinara! aka "Red Sauce" or "Italian Gravy"

Ever since my wife started growing San Marzano tomatoes in our garden, I've been tweaking my recipe for "Simple Marinara."  Well, after 4 years of such tweaking, I think I'm finally ready to share it with the world (or at least with my own corner of the internet)!

Marinara for 150, anyone?

 

I don't have a ton of pictures of this recipe because it's very simple... There are very few steps, but I'll write them (below) carefully, providing any tips I've learned along the way.

You Will Need:

• 4lbs fresh or canned Roma, "Plum," or San Marzano tomatoes
• 1 Cup Chianti or your favorite fruity white wine
• 1/2 Cup finely shredded and diced carrots (very thin, very small, super tiny bits)
  
• 2 Tbsp dried Basil
• 2 Tbsp dried Oregano
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 whole bulb of Garlic
• 2 6oz can tomato paste
• 1 tsp jalapeno powder
• 2 Tsp Salt
• 2 Tsp Pepper

My first "note" is that this recipe is extremely scalable.  I've cut it half, and I've multiplied it to feed 150 people!  I recommend weighing out your supply of tomatoes and then doing the math from there.  OR, if you only have 3lbs of fresh tomatoes, add another pound of tomatoes from a can and go from there.  Whatever you decide to do, you should always start with the weight of the tomatoes.

The question I always get is, "What kind of tomatoes should I use?"  It's a legit question.  The answer lies in the texture and firmness of the tomato flesh, rather than the taste of the tomato itself.  Take another look at the sauce in the picture above.  It's thick enough to allow the spoon to stand on it's own, and that's critical!  NOBODY likes a thin soupy watery sauce; SO, start with a thick firm tomato.  Roma tomatoes are perfect.  So are San Marzano tomatoes.  Basically any "plum" type of tomato that is heavy for it's size and has very thick walls.

Steps:

1. 
   Get 4lbs of tomatoes into a large pot.  If you are using fresh tomatoes, cut them in half and pull out the juice and seeds with your fingers.  If you're using canned tomatoes, just dump them into the pot.  Use a stick blender (or food processor) to puree everything into a fairly thick pulp.  Do NOT be afraid to use canned tomatoes!  Tomatoes can very well and they already have the water and seeds removed!
   
2. Add the olive oil, the wine and the carrots.  The carrots will basically cook themselves out of the sauce, leaving behind their sugars and a nice aroma.  The wine is key.  If you use a red, it will give the sauce depth.  If you use a white, it will give the sauce a mysterious fruity flavor.  I like white.  Bring the sauce up to a boil and then reduce it to a gentle simmer.  Stir it and let the wine reduce and the sauce thicken a bit.  Also, you might take the time to realize that you just opened a fresh bottle of wine but you only used a relatively small amount for the sauce.  You might as well get your money's worth and pour yourself a glass to have while you stir...
   
3. Add the basil, oregano, and sugar.  Stir it all in and bump the heat just a bit to a slightly more aggressive simmer.  You want it to bubble, but you don't want it to bubble up and out of the pot all over everything.. Stir and cook it for about 5 minutes.  Your goal is to re-hydrate the herbs.  When your kitchen starts to smell like an Italian kitchen, reduce the heat back to a low gentle simmer.  Add the tomato paste and stir it in.  Cover with a lid and turn your attention to the garlic.
4. Peel, smash, and dice an entire bulb of garlic into as fine a dice as you can.  Deploy a very angry "Smash and Slice" mentality!  Fresh garlic is important here, don't use powder or dried garlic!  Remember, "Good stuff in, means good stuff out!"  Add it to the sauce, stir it in, put the lid back on, and simmer it for thirty minutes.
5. Ready?  Give it another stir and taste it!!  Does it need salt?  Add a bit.  Pepper?  Same.
6. Now, for the secret ingredient... I like to add just a touch of jalapeno powder.  Where do you get it?  Well, I make my own and I make a lot of it so send me a DM if you're local, but you can get it on Amazon...  I like a spicy marinara.  To achieve this, most cooks add red pepper flakes.  The problem is, red pepper flakes can overwhelm a sauce and cover up the herbs, garlic, and those fruity wine notes you worked so hard to get.  I will add just a light sprinkle of an angry chili powder, to bring a latent eye-popping "wow" to the mix.  Not so much that the sauce gets "hot," just enough to make your tongue want to know "what else is going on in there?!"
7. That's it, and that's all!  Give it a final stir and eat it.  Or pour it into jars. This 4lb recipe will make 11 servings, 3/4 Cup each.  I recently scaled this up to a batch of 50lbs of tomatoes to make sauce for a spaghetti dinner fundraiser and according to the math, it should have been 147 servings.  We had 145 people show up, and everything worked out perfectly!

 

Turkey Pot Pie (or Chicken Pot Pie; you pick!)

No matter how fancy your palette may be, once in awhile we all crave something simple that reminds of our childhood and for my money, Turkey Pot Pie is hard to beat!

I have many thoughts about pot-pie.  They should be super creamy, and without potatoes!  I seem to remember (growing up) that the cheaper pot-pies always had tons of potatoes and less meat.  That's just wrong!  Let's fix this:

You Will Need (for TWO pies):

• 2 deep dish pie crusts (9" or bigger, thawed and unrolled)
  
• 2 Large Squares of Frozen puff pastry dough (thawed and unrolled)
  
• 1 Stick Butter
  
• 1 Cup finely diced red onion
• 1 Cup finely diced carrots
• 1 Cup finely diced celery
• 4 Cups leftover turkey, (I like Smoked) light and dark meat, diced or shredded (or both!)
• 1/2 c. flour
• 4 Cups Turkey (or Chicken) Stock
• 1.5 Cups heavy cream (No substitutions!)
  
• 2 Cups frozen peas (set out to room temp)
  
• 3 Tsp Thyme
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

Set the oven to 400 degrees!  While it's pre-heating, let's assemble... For this recipe it is extremely helpful to have all of your ingredients pre-measured!  Get everything diced, shredded, measured out and ready to go before you light the burner, it will make everything so much easier later, because things happen fast!

Drop your stick of butter in a dutch oven or very large pan.  If you're paying attention to my pictures, you'll notice that I had to switch pans midstream... It was a Rookie Mistake and it will NOT happen again!  I mean, I have at least four dutch ovens, what was I thinking?  sigh.  I digress.  Melt your butter and saute the carrots, onions, and celery over medium-high heat until they're tender.

When the veggies are nice and tender, drop in the turkey meat and stir to combine.  Now sprinkle the flour over the entire mixture and stir it in very well.  Stir continuously for about 5 minutes.  When you detect a faint "nutty" aroma from the flour starting to cook, pour in your turkey stock. 

 

Once the turkey stock is in, do NOT stop stirring!  You don't want to give the flour a chance to clump.  Flour abjectly refuses to play along with liquids unless you dissolve it first in some fat (like you did with the butter).  So cook and stir stir stir until you have a nice thick bubbly mixture like you see in this video (above).

Pour in the heavy cream and the peas.  Keep stirring and reduce the heat to medium.  Keep stirring for 5-10 minutes while this final mix thickens!  Then kill the heat and move your pot to a safe place on the counter where you can scoop the goodness out and into your pie-shells.

If you follow this blog, then you know I HATE making pie-crust.  To those who enjoy it, I salute you!  For these pot-pies, I bought two frozen pie crusts, and two frozen Puff-Pastry squares.  Press the pie crusts into your own pie pans.  Use a measuring cup to scoop the goodness into the pie shell.  

Now then; gently lay the square of puff pastry over the top.  Cut the corners so that the pastry fits the top of your pie, and press the pastry dough into the pie crust,  Take you time and do the best you can.  Cut two slits on the top for the steam to vent.

Slide both pies into the middle of your hot oven, and place a cookie sheet in the rack below the pie.  The goodness will want so badly to escape and it will bubble out between the pie layers and land below.  The problem with the pie goodness is, it has cream.  Cream is dairy, dairy has sugar, and sugar will burn... So catch whatever goodness sneaks out on a sheet pan so it doesn't burn all over the bottom of your oven!

Give the pies 30-40 minutes in the oven.  The pastry dough will puff and rise and everything will turn golden brown!  Pull them out and let them cool and "Set" for about an hour.  Then it's all over but for the scooping and eating!  My oh my, sho am good...

Artisanal Bread Loaves

Yes, I'm well aware that I have several "bread" recipes on this blog, but MORE bread is a good thing, right?

"If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens. Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. With bread all sorrows are less” – Sancho Panza speaking to Dapple, (his donkey) in Don Quixote. I mean, how awesome is a trio of unique artisanal loaves with your own custom flavor profiles?  Let's do this!

You Will Need:

• 780g of All Purpose Flour
• 720g of Warm Water (110 degrees)
• 1.5 Tbsp Active Dry Yeast
• 1 Tbsp Sugar
• 4 Tsp Salt

You have a kitchen scale, right?  I mean, you can get them on Amazon for less than $10, seriously.  If this recipe does nothing else but convince you that you need one, then I'll consider my work "Done" here!  Get it done!!

So, your jar of yeast has been on the shelf forever and you're not sure if the little yeasty buggers are still alive.  Well, let's try to revive them!  Pour the water, sugar, salt, and yeast into your biggest bowl and whisk them vigorously.  WAKE UP, YEASTIES!  Now, walk away for ten minutes and pray for the revival... If your kitchen already smells like bread, and your mixture starts to bubble and look like an unsettled carbonated beverage, you know you're ready to proceed to the next step!

Measure EXACTLY 780g of flour and carefully dump it into the bowl.  Use a stiff spatula or wooden spoon and stir to mix well.  The dough will look "soggy."  It will be sticky and goopy!  When you stop mixing, it will sort of "settle" into the bottom of the bowl and spread out like a loose batch of jelly.  This is good!  If you've measured the weight of everything exactly, you shouldn't have to play the "is my dough too wet or too dry" game!  If it looks like a giant bowl of wet oatmeal, then you've done your job perfectly!  Moving on...

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and park it in the warmest spot of your kitchen.  Maybe beneath the "under the counter" lights you like to brag about, or on top of the refrigerator?  Leave the dough there for two hours.  It will triple in size!  No kidding, it will grow like the blob and scare you a little when two hours has elapsed!  It will also be bubbly and gooey and it will jiggle if you shake the bowl.

Ok, so far things have been clean and easy and you're asking yourself, "Why doesn't EVERYONE make their own bread??"  Well, here's where things get "Sticky."  Literally... If you've followed the directions exactly, the giant blob of gooey dough before you will break down into 3 smaller blobs that each weigh exactly 520g.  Dip your hands into a bin of flour.  Seriously, get a LOT of flour on your hands to help prevent sticking.  Reach in a grab a hunk of dough and drop it onto your kitchen scale (I covered my scale with plastic wrap to help keep the goop from sticking to it).  When you have a nice 520g blob, pick it up with your floury hands and tuck the edges under itself to form a nice ball.  

Place the ball of dough into the corner of a cookie sheet with a non-stick Silpat on it.  It will settle and spread a bit, but that's to be expected.  Repeat this two more times so that all three dough balls are arranged evenly around your cookie sheet.  Leave them alone for 45 minutes.  They'll stop "oozing" and start "rising!"  They may even run into each other a little.  Don't sweat it, it's going to be OK!

 

 

 

During the 45 minutes, turn your attention to the oven.  Slide one of the oven racks into the bottom-most slot and place a 9x9 metal cake pan there.  Place a second rack in the middle of the oven.  Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees!!  Why the cake pan?  Well, at "Go Time" you'll pour one cup of hot water into the pan to add steam to the baking process.  It's important!  Do not skip this step....

When 45 minutes have elapsed, have a look at your bread.  The loaves have grown!  This is when you would add the flavoring of your choice.  For this round of baking, we chose to sprinkle one with Sea-Salt, one with Garlic Salt, and one with Italian Herbs.  When you're done sprinkling, use a very sharp knife, and cut a cross or a nice hatch mark into the tops of the loaves.  They'll be so pretty when they come out of the oven!

This next (and last) step is crucial... You must be FAST like a bunny, so you don't lose too much heat when you open the door.  It helps to have an assistant.  Open the door and pour 1 Cup of HOT water (the hottest your tap can produce, or a cup of "near boiling" water from a tea kettle) into the cake pan, quickly slide your bread loaves onto the middle rack and close the door!  Set a timer for 30 minutes.  The 30 minute timer is a guideline... you'll want to keep an eye on things and yank them out when they have a nice golden brown color.

The loaves should have a nice firm outer texture that "crackles" when you "break" them.  The inside (professional bakers call the soft inside of a bread loaf, the "crumb"), should have a nice even texture.  The loaves should feel heavy for their size.  It should taste AMAZING!  If there's a single loaf of bread that you want to paint with some good quality butter as soon as it gets sliced out of the oven, this is the bread for you!

I should note that as great as this bread is, it will only last a couple of days.  Homemade bread rarely has preservatives, and I like it that way!  Just place the loaves into a zip-top bag when they're cool, and enjoy them while you can!

Grandma's Peach Cobbler

Never trust a peach cobbler recipe that has the phrases, "4-ingredient" or "super easy" or "quick and fast" in it!  If you want a high quality cobbler that the neighborhood ladies auxiliary is quietly very jealous of... then settle down, take a deep breath, clean your kitchen, get your tools, and prepare to slay some dragons (and some peaches)!  Let's do this...

You Will Need:

• 8 peaches, peeled, pitted, and sliced (7.5 Cups or so)
  
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the batter:

• 1 Stick Butter
  
• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup whole milk

For the Topping:

• 1 Cup of all-purpose flour
• 1 Cup brown sugar
• 1 stick butter, melted but not "hot"

For the End:

• 1 Tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1 Tsp Ground nutmeg
• 2 Tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Gird your loins, this is a big one!  You may need an adult beverage and some great background music as you work through this one.  It would also help if you had a minion or two help clean the kitchen when you're done, because it will be sticky.

Get 8 sweet and delicious peaches.  Taste one first, to be sure... I used Palisade Peaches locally sourced here in Colorado... YUMMY!  Peel them, pit them, and slice them.  I wish I had a shortcut for this, I truly do.  I've tried them all and there's just not a fast way to do it.  Knuckle down, get it done.  

Add the sliced peaches, sugar and salt to a saucepan and stir to combine.  Cook and stir them over medium heat for just 5 minutes or so.  The sugar will dissolve and the peaches will let some of their juice go.  You'll be left with some warm peaches in their own syrup.  YUM!  Do not eat them  Yet... Just set them on a back burner for now.
    

Slice the butter into 8 pieces and distribute them around the bottom of a 9x13 inch pan. Place the pan in the oven while it preheats, to allow the butter to melt. AS SOON AS the butter is melted, remove the pan from the oven!  Swirl it around to make sure you've got complete coverage.
    

Now, in a large bowl mix together all of the dry ingredients for the batter, then pour in the milk and stir quickly until you have a nice uniform batter.  Pour the mixture into the pan, over the melted butter and smooth it into an even layer.
 

Grab your pot full of peaches and scoop the peaches and their juicy syrup in an even layer all over the top of the batter. Use a spoon to move the peaches around until you have a nice even layer.

Now for my favorite part!  Mix the brown sugar and flour together for the topping.  Stir with a fork and use your fingers to break up any brown sugar lumps.  The result should look like fine beach sand.  Pour the melted butter in and gently stir and mix by hand, with a fork, until you have a crumbly brown delicious goodness.  Sprinkle this goodness all over the cobbler.

 

 

 

CAREFULLY slide the pan into the oven.  I say "Carefully" because it's still mostly a liquid.  With the crumble on top, it doesn't LOOK like a liquid but; think of it as a juicy delicious peachy quicksand.  Don't let it slosh over!  Bake it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.  During this time, mix together the nutmeg, cinnamon, and sugar.  Swirl it around in a cup to get it all mixed evenly together.

During this 45 minutes, amazing and miraculous things will happen!  The whole cobbler will turn itself upside down!!  Yep, the batter will slowly leach up to the top and take over.  You can watch this happen with your very eyes.  After 45 minutes the batter should have taken over.  Slide it out quickly, and sprinkle the nutmeg/cinnamon/sugar mixture on top.  Slid it back into the oven and watch it for another 20-30 minutes until the top of the batter has a nice light brown color.

Let it rest and cool for about an hour, then apply a scoop of Bluebell's "Peaches and homemade vanilla" ice-cream to the top and put your feet up...

Homemade Hot Sauce

Who doesn't like hot sauce? 

The problem is, most commercial hot sauces are either "too hot" or "not hot enough" for most folks.  Solution?  Make your own!!  Let's do this!

Check out this picture.  Look carefully.  What does it contain?

Most of you probably said, "Peppers, garlic, vinegar, and some white stuff."  WRONG!!  This picture has everything you need to make any hot sauce you could ever want.  Every hot sauce you've ever tasted has these five things:

• Heat
• Flavor
• Preservative
• Tweaks
• A Name
  

Now, there's a formula here that will guide you to making amazing hot sauce that will save you time, money, hassle, and excessive preservatives.  

FOR EXAMPLE, here's how I used the formula to create one of my favorite sauces, "The Vampire Killer:"

For HEAT, I wanted a sauce that would register a 27 on a heat scale of 1-10.  So... I used 8oz of Carolina Reapers!  These are the hottest peppers on the market!  For FLAVOR, I chose garlic.  I love garlic!  Since I'm bringing so much heat to the bowl, I wanted to make sure the garlic flavor came through so I peeled and used the cloves from 1 whole bulb of garlic, per reaper pepper pod, or 9 bulbs in this case!!  For a PRESERVATIVE, I used 3/4 Cup Vinegar.  Apple cider vinegar, to be specific.  When it comes to TWEAKS, I try to keep it simple.  In this case, I added some sugar because sugar hits your tongue first, bringing the heat in later.  I wanted that.  I also added salt to enhance the flavor a bit.  Finally, added just a tsp of yellow mustard as a catalyst to merge the garlic oils and juices from the peppers.  This will keep it from separating in the jar.

Then what?  Simply put it all in a blender and hit the button!!  Liquefy everything and then WALK AWAY!  Give it at least an hour to settle down, or you'll mace your whole kitchen.  I'm not kidding.  The first time I ever did this, my wife and I couldn't go back to that part of the house without a legit respirator!

I buy my little hot sauce jars from Amazon, and I use gloves, and a small kitchen funnel to fill them.

The only thing left from the formula is a good name.  For this, given the amount of garlic I used, "Vampire Killer" seemed a good name.  

Please find some other examples/recipes/formulas that I've used, below:

Hula Holla!  A sweet pineapple hot sauce that is a hands-down favorite of our local firefighters:

Heat - 10oz Habanero Peppers

Flavor - 1 whole fresh pineapple

Preservative - 1/2 cup Apple Cider vinegar

Tweaks - 1/4 Cup Sugar, 1 Tsp Salt, 1/4 Cup Coconut Milk

 

Chugga-da-Milk!  An insanely evil sauce that is probably "Too hot" for most normal people

Heat - 8oz Carolina Reapers, 8oz Thai-chili pods, 8oz Ghost Peppers

Flavor - 1 whole honey-crisp apple

Preservative - 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

Tweaks: 3 tsp salt

Yorkshire Pudding (Popover) Secrets

 When Americans hear "Yorkshire Pudding," they think all kinds of things.  Just hearing the word "Pudding" drives Americans to thoughts of dessert, sweet creamy gooey dessert.  Fact is, in the U.K. the word "Pudding" could mean anything from a flavored custard to a mincemeat sausage, so they're not entirely confident about what it means, either.  Check it:

This is a proper Yorkshire Pudding.  You will hear Americans (especially Midwestern Americans) call it a "Popover."  Why?  Because it pops over the pan when you bake it.  Never-mind the particulars and the history, let's make one because it's absolutely delicious!!

You Will Need:

• 2 Cups (280g) Flour
• 2 Cups Whole Milk (Room Temperature)
• 4 Eggs (Room Temperature)
• 4 Tbsp Rendered Oil (Prime Rib drippings, Lard, or other animal fat is best, but you can use vegetable oil if you must)
• 1 Tsp Salt
  

So before we begin, we must divulge a few precious secrets that Yorkshire Puddings all over the world are hiding from you.  First, why room temperature?  Two reasons:

1. Rendered beef fat will re-congeal and get solid again when you introduce it to cold liquid.
2. Don't ask me to explain the science behind it, but if the pudding starts at room temperature it will rise higher, and maintain more of its structural integrity.  Trust me...

Another secret?  The pan.  Any serious Midwestern cook will insist that you need an honest to goodness popover pan.  It's better if the pan were given to you by your grandmother.  This is all bullsh*t.  While it is true that the steep sides of a classic popover pan will help it climb and look pretty, it does nothing for the taste or texture.  Look what a classic 12" cast iron skillet will do with popover dough!  Beautiful.

So... Take your eggs and milk out of the fridge and set them on the counter for 1/2 hour or so to let them climb to room temperature.  Then get your 12" cast iron skillet and put it on the bottom rack of your oven.  Take out the rack above it, to allow for the dough to rise.  Close the oven door and preheat everything to 400 degrees.

Get your blender and add the eggs, milk, salt, flour, and half of the oil (2 Tbsp).  If you're wondering why my oil is orange, it's because I am using the liquid fat rendered from my last Prime Rib roast, and I seasoned the roast with paprika and chili powder so... Anyway, get all of these ingredients into the blender and hit the "fun button!"

Let it go for a minute or so!  You want a nice silky texture.  Also, and this is tricky, you don't want it to stand still very long or the flour will start to settle to the bottom and you'll end up with a brick.  I recommend waiting until the oven is fully pre-heated before you blend! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next steps require a bit of coordination and I apologize that I don't have picture because I needed both hands to do this... and you'll need to do it safely, but as quickly as you can:

1. Open the oven door
2. Slide out your skillet
3. Pour in the remaining 2 Tbsp of oil and swirl it around the pan (use an oven mitt, duh)!
4. Pour the batter in the middle of the oil
5. Close the oven door

Whew!  That's the hardest part.  Now, set a timer for 30 minutes and wait for the YUM!

One thing I love about Yorkshire Pudding is that no two of them are the same!  Clumps of dough, quirks in the pan, temperature variations in the oven and zillions of other factors make for a random mountain-scape of a pudding when it comes out!  Pull it out GENTLY!  If you're too rough with it, it'll fall before it sets.  It's not as fragile as a soufflé, but it can definitely get its feelings hurt!

When it's set but still warm, slice or tear it up.  I like to rip!  Rip off a hunk and chow down!  It doesn't need butter, it doesn't need gravy (although some English would argue with me).  It's a perfect side dish to your Christmas roast or other elegant meal!  Don't believe me?  Make one just for fun!  They're cheap and you could probably use the practice!