Emily's Family Pizza Party (they'll stop by on their way back through)
So I often make to much food for two people, but when I have more I want to make sure everyone gets as much as they want. So with an army of nieces and nephews I made 3 pizzas. I didn't get to do the couple to three day rise that I normally do, because of timing, so they had about 24 hours to rise, 2/3rds in the fridge. I put together all the sauces (excluding garlic) and prepped all the cheeses and as soon as they arrived, went into action. First up was a pepperoni pizza for the kids. First time using a pepperoni (s'right). Next up I put together the more "adult" pizza once again using the La Quercia Borsellino Dry Sausage, but then combining it with some buffalo mozzarella and Parmesan. Now unlike last time, where I pan seared the sausage a bit before putting them on the pizza. The sausage, while tasting amazing, ended up a little dry. So this time around I figured I should just do a bit of oven cooking. There was something missing this time around, I think the searing added a quite a bit of flavor. So, perhaps I should do this again and gently sear the slices. For the third pizza, I used the green onion sausage from Crooked Gap. All three turned out well. I probably could've gotten away with not making the third pizza, but why would I? Because of allergies, I used canola instead of vegetable (soybean) oil. The crust turned out a bit different. A little more flakey crust. It was nice to see Emily and all and I think the winning quote was when one of my nephews called the pizza crust, "Cookie crust".
Bangers & Mash
Should've made gravy...but didn't. This was a simple meal but I was having trouble tasting things, so I could really just go by texture. The bangers were dense, much denser then many sausages that I've had. It seemed to turn out well, I got no complaints...or complaint.
All Beef Hot Dogs (Crooked Gap)
I'm not sure this got a fair shake. My tastes were muted. The casing wasn't done the best, but I'll try these again.
Sloppy Sammys (Crooked Gap beef)
This is one of those "empty the fridge" moments for me. Finished off the BBQ sauce that was in the fridge and a bunch of other miscellaneous ingredients. Clearly you have the base of onions, garlic, diced tomatoes, spices and usually mustard and then combine stuff on that. So I think it had some pureed chipotle in adobo sauce, but not to much. Both Shannon and Joseph enjoyed it, and I could taste stuff which means it was spicy, but not to spicy.
Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo (after hearing Jenny talk about it while we were making sausage a bit ago, I can't help it, and there was okra at the market)
Spending 4 hours to make dinner on a Wednesday is probably not the best idea, but this was delicious. I had to cut short some of the directions at the end because it was 8:PM and they wanted to cook for another 45 minutes. Certainly a very filling meal and warming, and luckily, it wasn't to hot out.
Cheesy Farro and Tomato Risotto
Kept forgetting to buy farro, so skipped.