Chicago knows good pizza

Last Sunday, in between wooing Hazel with his mad accordian skills and making viral videos, Daniel requested deep dish pizza for lunch. I got ambitious and thought "Ha! What do all these established, time-honored pizza restaurants have that I don't? I'm going to make it myself!" Several cups of cheese later:

Even my cheesy smile can't detract from this deep dish pizza.

Temptingly cheesy

I was pretty happy with how it turned out. The tomato sauce was on the sweeter side which I really like, and it wasn't too hard to put together. Daniel rolled out the crusts (one larger one for the bottom and sides, and a smaller one that fit on top right under the sauce), and David chopped and placed all the ingredients. I've been trying to come up with any excuse I can to make this again...so right now would be a good time for a visit. :) 

Submersing Food in Hot Liquids/Semi-Solids

I realize this is a little unusual for a Butchers's blog post, because it's only partly about food, and the food pictures aren't all that great. A week ago I hosted a fondue party for some friends from my "long-ago" Milkweed days, and thought some of you might appreciate seeing the photos.

The table set, before we destroyed all the wonderful food.

It was my first time having fondue, and I have to recommend it for any of you who've never tried it. There was a lot of prep-work, but all that prep makes the dining part of the meal go quickly. We prepared a coq au vin broth for vegetables, a traditional cheese fondue, oil for meats, and chocolate for the final dessert round.

(from l to r): Kate, Dan, Jen, me, Maryhope, & Ethan.

And here's the happy crew, after we've decimated most of the food. Of the people here, my ex-Milkweed colleagues are Kate, Jen, and Ethan.

Chicken & waffles

It seems only fitting that we usher in 2012 with some chicken & waffles (with a gravy of heavy cream & Dijon). After last night's dinner of fried livers & gizzards, I think it's safe to say this will be a year of greasy eating.

I Can Can

This year we did a little more unusual canning than usual. We often make some jam or apple butter, but this year we were just trying to preserve the harvest without too much fuss.

While much of the harvest ended up in the freezer, a few things found their way into jars and hopped into the canner while we weren't watching.

Above, French Onion Soup. We used six pounds of yellow and white onions from our garden and simmered them in a homemade beef stock with some dried herbs vaguely resembling a bouquet garni.

Sideways sliced dill pickles from the last cucumbers of the year. These pickling cucumbers were a bit overgrown (think two pound torpedoes), but they sliced up fine.

The long-sliced dills are identical except for shape. In the past we've made bread and butter pickles but we really like dills. These are sort of a mix between the two. The kids love them and I think they're pretty good.

What canning blog post would be complete without dilly beans? Sorry, Ben - no hot pepper variety this time.







Beets made for beautiful canning creations. We topped the beets and sautéed some of the greens. I think I was the only fan of the greens - we'll see if the kids go for the beets.
































The Mehu Maija rests after steaming apples for juice and apple puree.

Name That Dish

See if you can come up with the most delicious name for this dish. You may want to spin it like you're trying to sell something in one of those gourmet holiday catalogs.


Have fun with it and when the comments are in, I'll let you know exactly what it is.

Young Chefs

Here are the youngest Barnhart chefs in the Hancock household. They're posing with their latest creations - lunch today. :) It was a pretty tasty lunch, if I do say so myself.


Ella made a heart-shaped pizza.

Elisabeth made a rectangle pizza.



Peter made a circle pizza.
And I made a regular, much larger pizza to share with anyone who needed a little more (and to have leftovers for tomorrow). No photo documentation there, but there's about 3/4 of it cooling off in our "extra" cold storage. Hope everyone has tasty meals like this at their own places.

The sourest of sourdoughs

Some of you may remember (especially if your name is Steve) that Steve started a sourdough culture a couple years ago, which I was lucky enough to receive a bit of. Well, that sourdough starter gifted me with many fine sourdough pancakes, some pizza dough, and a rather lackluster loaf of bread before eventually going on to die and become the most horrible smelling thing in my entire house (honestly, I almost vomited when I eventually got rid of it). So the lesson is if you don't feed your sourdough starter, but instead leave it on the kitchen counter when you go away for a week, it will figure out how to get even with you.

Earlier this fall I followed Steve's technique for starting a sourdough culture and used some apple peels, flour, and water to get one going. After about a month of feeding it and making sure it's happy (I sing it to sleep every night before tucking it into the fridge), I thought it was ready to go into a loaf of bread.

I've been intrigued by the no-knead sourdough recipes that are popping up everywhere, and I ended up using this one (mostly because it's simple and he has a very informative video on the process of making this bread).

After one failed attempt (which I did not photograph for obvious reasons), here are a couple photos of my first successful loaf of sourdough bread made from a sourdough starter. It may be a little hard to tell from the pictures, but I'm pleased to report that the crust is nice and tough, and the bread itself is very chewy and airy. It's got a bit of a sourdough tang, though it's not too sour (you can fault me for the misleading post title). All around, a pretty enjoyable loaf of bread.

I've read that refrigerating the bread overnight (after letting it rise for 5 to 8 hours) also results in a pretty good bread. So I'll give that a shot next time.