How I Made Pizza From Scratch

Using a recipe for basic pizza dough but not using a food processor because I thought I had nearly K.O.'d our brand new mixer last time, I managed to mix this up and have it turn out completely sucessful. Using 3 cups of flour but starting with just 1 1/4 cups at first added to 1 cup hot water, 1 pack yeast, 1 tbs salt, 1 tbs honey and mix for 3 min. I just did this with a whisk and switched to a spoon when I started to gradually add in more of the 3 cups flour. For more flavor I added a tbs dried oregano to the hot water / yeast mixture. After adding all the flour and mixing till dough pulls from sides of bowl I poured it out on a floured work surface and kneaded for 3 or 4 minutes then placed in a greased bowl and covered with plastic to double in size before finially punching it down and cutting in half to make one 12 in pizza (we'll use the other half for a friday night pizza). Until we buy a big mixer this will probably be my preferred method for the home made pizza dough but the pre-made dough is pretty hard to beat. It kinda depend on how good the toppings are and last nights leftover steak made a dang good pizza.

Paul "Barney" Barnett

I started thinking about my Dad’s cousin Barney last night while eating some Chuck Eye Steaks. First time I’ve tried this cut of meat and the fat in em reminded me of the great steaks Barney use to serve at his home in Mableton, Ga back in 1965 or 66 when I spent a big part of the summer with him and Betty Sue. I thought of him more as an Uncle and him and Dad were pretty close and in fact his wife Betty Sue was one of my Mom’s friends and neighbors when they were growing up. I have a picture of Dad, Barney and me eating watermelon in the kitchen of our apartment when I was 3 or 4 years old and they both looked an awful lot like they were consuming more than watermelon and having a good time. Seems like Barney gave me my first motorcycle ride when he still lived close in to town in Atlanta in a backyard garage apartment where the neighbors weren’t at all happy with his motorcycle coming in and out and would try to block him in with their cars. He would just go between them or around them in the grass just like he did that day and we were off. I didn’t get scared and I don’t think he was trying to scare me but he sure wasn’t letting no moss grown under us neither. Fast forward another 6 or so years and you would find Barney running his very own Standard Oil Co service station on the corner of the famed Peachtree and Collier right next to the big blue medical building. He also had a just bought a 3 bedroom 2 bath home with half basement in Mableton that we all thought was a mansion mainly because it even had a central intercom / radio system in it – WOW. Betty Sue wanted that basement to be a full and he told her that we all just needed to carry a bucket at a time out and it would be finished before she knew it. They let me stay the summer when I was 15 to work in the station and boy o boy what I didn’t learn that summer didn’t need learning anyhow. Do you remember when MINI SKIRTS first started? I believe all them gals around Peachtree Street started that fad and I sure was glad back then to have found myself smack dab in the middle of it all. My money came from washing and waxing cars and the wives and girlfriends of them doctors had a lot of washing and waxing and I even waxed a brand new red Jaguar for a lady one the was wearing one of them mini skirts. My head was spinning trying to look at the car and the gal. One day Barney daring ways about us both in trouble, as he wanted to take Betty Sue out on the town and to get an early start he took his cloths with him and cleaned up at the station and had her meet me and him at the road where you turn in to his house. He waited till she pulled up to tell me I was going to take that old red Rambler on home and I had driven a car a total of ONE other time at that point but, hey, at 15 you know I’m game. Problem was I had to back the car about a block on the sandy gravel road and just about fish tailed that old Rambler going backwards. When I got it stopped the first thing I could see was him looking at me laughing his head off and I knew all I could do was try it again and I did better and got on home without killing anyone. Barney loved steaks better than any man I ever knew and he always bought the best, usually thick T-Bones or Porterhouse. The first thing he would do would cut off a big piece of the fat off the side of one to start his meal and eat that first. Yep the fat tasted just like butter last night in the chuck eye steaks same as I remember from Barney's steaks. The most important thing about Barney though was that he was a damn good man and I will always remember him.

Golf, Lawn, and Pizza

Having these new Backwoods Smokers around has my mind spinning with things to cook. I can’t say which spurred this pizza cook on more, Old Dave’s wonderful cooks in his Backwoods, knowing I have two 15 ½ in Primo pizza stones, or the leftover burgers in the fridge. When I make burgers I season them heavy from inside out you might say. I add the seasonings to the meat before making the patties so the seasoning is inside and those highly seasoned and grilled burgers really added a lot to this pizza. Being a pizza lover I couldn’t find a way to resist all the temptations and I used the little bit of time left in my golfing day off yesterday to mow (bummer) and then fix this pizza. I started with a recipe of basic food processor dough which I thought was a complete disaster until the one hour rising time had finished. It turned out great and it also allowed Sue to fix a couple of sausage (can’t remember the name, con____ something like that) turnovers full of mushrooms, peppers onions. Next after the mowing was sautéing the onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms (just sliced the Jalapenos real thin and didn’t sauté them). I used store bought roasted garlic Alfredo sauce and was hoping it would work with my idea of having the pizza taste something like a “hamburger” and the fresh tomato was suppose to add to the hamburger flavor idea. If I’m fixing or buying the pizza it’s gonna have them little dead and hairy fish (anchovies) and you can barely see those on the pie. Think I’ll take this whole idea a few steps further with some lettuce, pickles, mustard, and mayo one day and see how that goes.

Ribs Cooked On The Fatboy

I’m pretty sure I’m going to love cooking on the FatBoy. The spares were top notch and I pulled a lil bit early as one rack was being vac sealed for bil which I think is bout to pull the trigger on a smoker. I need to remember to remove the RED cutting board when making pics. The rib cook was after Saturdays 18 which was the first time on the course in SIX MONTHS. I had a good time but lost a whopping 50 cents on close ups but pared the 18th hole to win the last six for me and my partner.


Cooking Chicken In The Chubby

Yesterday it was time to rub the Chubby down with oil and fire it up for the first time and do a chicken cook. The chicken turned out real nice but I didn't load enough lump and I used lump instead of briquets. Ran out about the time to glaze em and had to reload. I was using water during the cook as I wanted to let the cooker run an hour or two at 350 after coating the inside with oil. I could have finished if had used a full load of briquets. I know most everyone cooks chicken in the Chubby without water but I wanted to burn the cooker in with the water pan and didn’t want to change the setup before starting the chicken cook. I can’t wait to do them the other way – hopefully next weekend. We had plenty of pulled pork so a combo chicken & pork plate was ready around 6:30 yesterday. Wonder what you'd pay for that plate at a Q joint?

Backwoods Smoker - First Cook

I have been looking forward to doing the first cook on my Backwoods FatBoy from the moment I placed my order for my cookers with Backwoods Smoker. I thought it was a great start to have them arrive just over two weeks ahead of schedule. Having been active on a number of Boards for quite a while, some folks may know that I’ve cooked on / with a number of different cookers and I have to say all have been good quality. I think the more you cook the more your understanding of cookers increase which would explain why this newest one is so good and why I have not been significantly disappointed in one so far. I unloaded my intial order of cookers Monday June 29 and took a Fatboy and Chubby home to burn in and season and do some practice cooks with before mounting inside my cooking trailer in a few weeks. At 9:55 a.m. yesterday I lit a full load of Royal Oak Lump with a weed burner in each of the 4 corners of the fire box and once in the center. Since I had rubbed the entire inside of the cooker down with Pam and a cotton cloth and planned to run the cooker at 350 I thought lighting it this way would speed up the process. My only mistake was forgetting that these cookers have two bottom vents and after starting the guru (mounted on left side next to water valve) I forgot to close the right side until I finally figured out why the guru was over shooting the set temp. continued…

The temp never exceeded 450 but I had to shut it completely down to hold it to 450 and it was 2:00 p.m. before the temp came back down close enough to the 230 pitt temp I wanted so I could put my two 7.5 lb butts on. I used 3 lg chunks of hickory and 1 maple. I probed the meat (see pic below) at 5:30 and the meats were at 148 and 152 and that matched my thermopen.

When I checked it at 7:20 p.m. to see if I should foil or not I didn’t feel like it had enough bark on it, but looking at the pic now they look barky enough. That butternut squash had been in our tater box too long and took the place of the remote probe clip I couldn’t ever find.

They were foiled when they reached an internal temp of 175 for one and 180 on the other at 8:40 p.m, about 10 min after I added water for the 1 and only time to the cooker. . They were removed from the cooker to rest at 12:30. In the pic below you see them after they were pulled and they were both removed from the cooker to rest at the same time with the one in the first pic at 197 and the second one was 195 internal and you would think they would be identical, yet the first one seem cooked more because it pulled easier and you could slice those little rounds you see off of the second (less done one) easier.

If I had these at a contest, I would be feeling mighty good right now with my chances.
I know I’ve said this before about other cookers but this is the best cooker I have ever had bar none. I did add Stubbs natural briquets to the firebox after the seasoning as I thought it could not go the entire cook without them after running 4 hrs at 350 – 450 and when I checked this morning I still had briquets as well as lump. For those that might be considering a Backwoods but are hesitant about using a cooker with water (as I was), my advise is to forget that if it’s your only issue as I only added water once and it takes seconds to do and the cooker is back up to temp as fast as any cooker I’ve ever used. The clean up will surprise you too – unless you use pans to catch your grease, any cooker will have you cleaning the grease out but with Backwoods your not scraping burnt on grease. We just let the old grease water out and added some hot soapy water back to it and brushed the bottom (kinda like washing a pot or pan). If you could see me now you would be looking at a BIG SMIILE!

Had To Cook Something!

With all the lawn and garden work done midweek I just couldn't go all day Saturday (especially not being out on the golf course) without cooking something. Heck of a buy on sirloin tip roast and that's all it takes to get me started. Some nice roast beef sandwiches and the new zuchinni dish I wanted to try sounded like they might go good together. I dosed off while the zukes were in the cooker and got those a little over done but they are very very good and would be better had I not took my little nap. I scraped out the centers of the zukes with a melon baller and scored the insides to better absorbe the marinade I made up with zest and juice of one large lemon, evoo, minced garlic, mint, salt and pepper. Since I was not going to use meat for the filling in the zukes, I just mixed up the part I scraped out with any marinade that would pour off the zukes, bread crumbs, parmesean, salt and pepper. Before stuffing I coverd the bottom of each one with a strip of swiss cheese. They rested in this mixture in the fridge for 3 hrs or more while I cooked the roast. I used my new granton edge 12 inch slicer and it is one heck of a knife but this meat would be better if I had used the electric slice and shaved it.

Cuban Pork Sandwich & Dino Bones

Did a couple of decent cooks over the weekend, both of them had been a long time coming. One of RumR’s most admired cooks for me anyways was the butts cut up in eights and cooked Cuban style with Mojo. I guess you could say I mojoed these country style ribs and boy did they make some good sammiches. I definitely got the fat rendered out of these ribs but they were still not dry and by the time you applied a bunch of the mojoed mayo both on the bun and drizzled on the meat, you couldn’t ask for better. I gotta get off this bean / corn stuff till the maters start coming in at least and the peppers should be ready about the same time which is real good cause I’m having a hard time getting this hot enough and plan to pour the peppers to it next time. I used a commercial mojo and just cut the ribs into cubes and placed in a gal bag along with the marinade and one of them long – fresh cayenne peppers chopped fine for about 3 hours (would have rather had it in there overnight) then browned in the Jr before going indirect in a covered half pan with more mojo till they were done. I don’t know why I haven’t done the dino bones more often cause I love em. I did these 2-1-1 with a heavy rub or 3 and applied some honey mustard for a glaze at the end and had one goal all along and that was to not overcook em. Set Jr at 300 from start to finish. I’ve lost a setting somewhere along the ling on my little camera as the pics are getting worst all the time. That red cutting board did help none either.

Veggie Stuffed Red Peppers

Chopped tomatoes, niblet corn, cooked rice, minced garlic, diced zukes, Monterey Jack pepper cheese, sliced black olives, huge red peppers, red and black beans, parmesean cheese. In a big mixin bowl mix all that up except the parmesan cheese and spoon this UNCOOKED veggie mixture into the peppers, top with Parmesean. Mix some spagetti sauce with h20 so the peppers are setting down in the liquid, pour a lil bit of that on the peppers, jack up the indirect heat on your smoker to bout 400 and cook to your desired doneness.

Amazing!

The kitchen window has been graced with this potted plant that has looked exactly as you see it here for about 3 months now - it's hard to believe a flower this beautiful can look like this for this long. I don't even know the name of it but it sure is pretty. As for the Cactus flowers, I have always been amazed at their beauty as well and the one word to describe them that first comes to mind is "delicate".

Fillet Mignon & Cokannon

Tired of baked spuds and had to have some kind of taters to go with these little fillets, so after a little poking around recipes I figured I’d try some disaway. Mashed taters, boiled then sautéed cabbage, green onions sliced once long ways then thin sliced, and just fer good measure sprinkled on some caramelized garlic. I liked it a lot so it was a good change from the bakers. I think some folks also call it Champ.