Below are all three of the recipes Sherry and I made for last nights battle food on a "steeek" (apologies to Jeff Dunham). I will try to get pictures up in the main dinner post.
Appetizer: Grilled Pizza in/on a stick.
This originally was going to be a grilled kabob of pizza dough and toppings arranged that when everything was done, the grilled items were pulled onto the crust and eaten as a single bite. Test runs of this dish didn't go so well so I revised to more of a grilled calzone/kabob.
Ingredients:
Pizza Dough (Our local Bloom and pizza house both stock dough ready made, I cheated and used this).
Pepperoni
Sweet Cherry Tomatoes cut in half
Mozzarella Balls
Olive Oil
Basil
Grated parmesan
On a skewer I alternated Pepperoni chunks with the tomato and mozzarella. With the dough I stretched it into long length that I brushed with olive oil and added basil and the grated parmesan onto. From there, the skewers were layed into the dough and wrapped like a calzone, making sure the toppings kabob was completely enveloped in dough. After a quick wipedown of the grill with some oil, I threw the pizzas on to the grill for a few minutes until the dough was set and evenly cooked on all sides. Serve with a bit of pizza sauce (optional) and enjoy!
Main Course: Asian Lamb Lollipops with a Duo of Sauces
This course had 3 components and I'll post each bit by itself for ease of following
Meat (adapted from a Dan Aykroyd/Martha Stewart recipe) :
1.5 tablespoon chopped garlic
1.5 tablespoon grated fresh peeled ginger
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for pan
2 tablespoons cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt (this could be subbed by using regular soy sauce, more on this below)
15 lamb lollipops (frenched hotel rack broken into individual chops)
In a bowl, add everything but the lollipops and stir to combine and pour over the lamb in a large vessel, marinate over night, flipping once to twice. The marinade will be good after 2 hours, but overnight really helps.
On the test of this recipe, I didn't add the teaspoon salt and it was very obvious. Since we don't keep regular soy in the house, I just pre salted the meat before it soaked in the marinade. Grill to medium at most and rest before serving. In true battle style, we decided the meat wouldn't be enough and paired the lamb with two different contrasting sauces, a Chimichurri, and a Tzatziki Sauce
Tzatziki Sauce
from (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Tzatziki-Sauce/Detail.aspx)
8oz Greek Yogurt
1 cucumber peeled, seeded, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 lemon, juiced
salt and pepper to taste
1-1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill
1-1/2 cloves garlic, peeled
Combine in a blender, toss in the fridge, and let sit 2+ hours before serving.
Chimichurri Sauce
from (http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/argentina/sauce.html)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup minced fresh parsley
1 clove garlic
2 minced shallots
1 teaspoon minced basil, thyme or oregano, or mixture
Salt and pepper to taste
Dessert: Wine Lollipops two ways
These lollipops were a brain child of Sherry and I one day when we were completely stumped from ideas. So looking online we found a recipe for making simple lollipops at
http://oldrecipebook.com/homemade_lollipops.shtml
With the recipe in place we decided to sub water with a desert wine to add flavor and sweetness.
Recipe:2 cups sugar
5oz of Dessert Wine
1/8 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
Add all ingredients to a sauce pot and bring to a boil. Using your candy thermometer bring temp to hard crack stage (300-310). We found with the wine that we needed to go closer to 310 to get a proper set out of the sugars. Whether this was residual compounds of the wine making things difficult or inexperience making candy I just don't know.
The next portion was to decide what wine and molds to use. Sherry found some Moose and Bear lollipop molds, which worked well since that is our kids nicknames (no, not moose and squirrel). We found two different dessert wines in our cabinet: A Veramar Vineyards Apple Wine and a Wyndham (now Doukennie) Vineyards Raspberry Merlot. We made two batches of the lollipops, one with each wine, with the Bear molds receiving the Veramar wine, and the moose molds getting the Wyndham wine.
