Today I am making pomanders. Do you remember them from childhood? They always make the house smell like Christmas memories to me. Just get some oranges and whole cloves and push the pointed end of the clove into the orange’s peel. That’s it. You can add a ribbon or whatever if you want to get fancy. MMM. Smells good!

FYI I find that my local Asian market usually has the best and least expensive whole cloves. The ones I just bought were 99 cents for about a half cup of cloves. Good deal!

The pictures are of my work in process. You have to go a bit slow since pushing the clove in can be hard on your thumbs -unless you want to wear a leather thimble.

With Autumn fastening her chilly grip on our days the thought of something warm and comforting for dinner is needed. So luckily I came across this recipe in Saveur for Toad-in-the-Hole with onion gravy, a lovely combination of pork sausages wrapped in bacon and baked on top of a batter resulting in crispy browned Yorkshire Pudding and sizzling sausages. Perfect!

I did change the onion gravy a bit (you know who doesn’t eat beef -even in stock)and substituted streaky bacon  instead of Proscuitto to wrap half of the sausages, because well $1.00 a slice di Parma seemed a bit much for this dish and my current frugality. The bacon didn’t cling as well as the Proscuitto di Parma but that was okay because it rested on top of the sausages and Yorkshire pudding and got nice and crispy.

Onion Gravy with Chicken Stock

• One jumbo or two large yellow onions, thinly sliced
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 1 Tablespoon all purpose flour
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1/3 cup Marsala wine
• 2 Tablespoons Tawny Port
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet Browning and Seasoning sauce*
• salt and pepper to taste

Cook the onions in the butter in a medium saucepan over medium low heat until they are golden, stir them often as they cook to prevent scorching. When they are carmelized to a medium golden brown, add the flour and cook for a minute or two just to coat the flour with fat and cook it a bit. Add the stock, wine and Worcestershire, bring to the boil and cook for  a few minutes until it starts to thicken a bit. Remove from heat and stir in the Kitchen Bouquet and taste. Add salt and pepper if needed.

*Kitchen Bouquet is a flavouring sauce that is made from caramelized vegetables and spices. It is available in most grocery stores in the U.S.A. You could probably use Vietnamese Caramel Sauce in it’s place.

I made our typical house salad with Parmesan, pine nuts and shallot-Dijon vinaigrette to accompany and that along with a nice glass of Cider was that! We snuggled under a blanket, warmed by comfort food

and watched Veronica Mars on DVD- highly recommended as a superior TV show but sadly cancelled before its time.

Today there is a Pizza Party around the world that is being hosted by Zoë François and Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. , the authors of “Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day.”

For the last year or so, Rick and I have been working on a wood fired pizza oven in our back garden. So this was a fun event to unveil the (almost) completed oven and share this great book with you too. To family and friends who have been (patiently) waiting for a pizza party- it’s on its way- I promise.     We’ve just been working on the practical aspects of using the oven. The doughs in the book will be helpful because we can mix up different batches of dough without a lot of time or effort and have them on hand for when the time is right to fire up the oven.

I have a separate post planned for when the last bit is complete on the oven to show you how we made it  and the different stages of completion- so more on that later. Right now let’s party with some pizza!

First gather the book and a few ingredients. I used four litre buckets to mix each dough in,  instead of the 5 quarts recommended because it was either them or a 6 qt which takes up too much space in my fridge.  So here are the ingredients. I made the “00″ flour variation of the Ultimate Tender Neopolitan Crust from page 73- because I happen to have about 40 lbs of Caputo “00″ flour from Central Milling on hand. It’s in the 5 Gallon bucket with the red lid pictured. The blue crock is my salt cellar.

I also made the “Cornmeal Olive Oil dough” on page 86, although I substituted purple cornmeal for the yellow listed. I know- I’m a rebel. Plus I had some to use up.  :)

I like to use my King Arthur (thingamajig)  mixing tool that my sister, Tonya, gave to me a few years ago for mixing things up in the buckets. It works great! Funny note:It’s in a gift box on their site featured with Bread in 5′s book.

This is what the doughs look like after raising and being chilled overnight:

So fire up the oven…

Rick just finished the spire on top of the onion dome. There is more to do but it works and more on the pizza oven to come in a later post.

It makes a great fire.

Toppings:

San Marzano tomatoes that I bottled this Summer from our garden, whizzed in the blender with a little salt and then strained make a delicious sauce.

I make pesto during the summer and freeze it in flexible ice cube trays. Just thaw and use.

Cubed Turkey Breast, Goat cheese, Brie, Ricotta,  Fresh and shredded Mozzarella, BBQ sauce, San Marzanos, pesto, homemade Bechamel, Ambrosia Apple, artichoke hearts, cooked sweet Italian sausage and pepperoni, shallots, onions and red peppers.

Prepared Margherita, San Marzano tomato sauce and fresh Mozzarella on "00" dough

Margherita out of the oven and topped with fresh Basil from the windowsill

Prepared Apple, Bechamel and Brie on Cornmeal Olive Oil Crust

After the fire:Turkey Breast on BBQ Sauce Before and after:

An “Italian Flag” one third each Margherita, Pesto and Bechamel Ricotta Before and after firing:

This is an "Italian Flag" before cooking

I had another pizza and some wood fired Naan to show you but I’ve lost this post twice running out of room so I’ll save those for another day. Party on and check out the other parties over at the Artisan Bread in 5 site.

Enjoy!

Hi there sorry it’s been so long. The lovely folks over at Quirk Books were kind enough to send me “The Cookiepedia” by Stacy Adimando with photos by Tara Striano to look over.

I found the cookbook to be a fun read with a great assortment of recipes and luscious photos. It is pulled together nicely with categories listed as “Buttery, Chocolaty, Fancy, Fruity, Spicy, and Nutty & Seedy”, a fun graphic design and a user friendly spiral binding inside the covers. I have baked a few recipes from it and my favourite so far are these ”Mint Thins” cookies: (photo and recipe reprinted with permission from Quirk Books)

Mint Thins by Stacy Adimondo, makes: 3 dozen cookies

preheat oven to 350°F
 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
 1 cup powdered sugar
 1 egg
 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
 2/3 cup cocoa powder
 1/4 teaspoon salt
 12 ounces semisweet chocolate
 1/4 cup unsalted butter
 ¾ teaspoon peppermint flavor

Nobody you know will not come by when you say you’re
 baking homemade mint thins. (If they don’t so much as
 ask, consider defriending them immediately.) The question
 is: Do you want to share?

The baking and dunking takes
 no time (especially if you’re tasting as you go), but these
 bite-size treats do hold up best (and taste yummiest)
 once the mint chocolate has had ample time to set. If
 you’re protective of your stash, store them in the freezer.

They’re best with a chill anyway.

1. Cream the butter until it’s light and fluffy.
 Add the powdered sugar and continue mixing,
 stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl as
 needed. Mix in the egg and vanilla extract.
 Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt.
 Add the flour mixture by halves, beating to
 incorporate after each addition.

2. Turn out the dough onto a clean surface
 and form it into a disk with your hands. Split
 the disk in half and place them in the fridge
 to firm up for 1 hour.

Tip:

If you’re short
 on time, do 25
 minutes in the
 freezer instead.

3. Working on a floured surface (you’ll need
 a decent amount, since the dough is sticky),
 roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thick. Shape the
 cookies using a 1-1/2-inch round cutter and
 place them on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.
 Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, then let cool
 completely.

4. Break up the chocolate into a bowl and set it
 over a small pot of simmering water (make sure
 the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Add the butter
 and the peppermint flavor and stir the mixture
 steadily until it’s fully melted and looks glossy and
 smooth. Remove the bowl and let the chocolate
 cool slightly.

5. One by one, drop the cookies in the chocolate,
 then scoop them out with a fork to let the excess
 drip off. (Tap the cookies against the side of the
 bowl to help drain the extra chocolate.) Move
 them carefully to a wire rack or parchment-paperlined
 baking sheet. When they’re all coated, move
 the sheet to the refrigerator or freezer to set.

Mint thins, meet chocolate chip
 cookie dough. You’re a match made
 in heaven.

Mint-Thin-Stuffed Cookies

Prepare a batch of the mint thins
 and store them in the freezer. Then
 prepare a batch of the chocolate
 chip dough on page 43. When both
 are chilled, sandwich the mint cookie
 between 1 tablespoon each of the
 chocolate chip dough, then press the
 dough around the mint thin to cover
 it completely. Bake according to the
 chocolate chip directions.

Run out and get the book :$18.95 from Quirk Books, ISBN #978-1-59474-535-5 wherever great cookbooks are sold.   BTW check out lots of other great books from Quirk Books here.