BACON CRUSTED PIZZA

The latest new bacon themed product has just been released. I proudly admit that I was one of the first in line to try this new offering of Corporate American Bandwagon bacon themed product. The fast food pizza chain, Little Caesars'  is offering a pepperoni deep dish pizza with a crust of bacon. Brilliant!. Let me tell you, this was everything it seemed to be. Lot's of gooey cheese, salty oily pepperoni, butter flavored rich crust that had a salty crisp bacon exterior. It is addicting. Is not all pizza addicting? Bacon is a nice touch but is it really necessary? Of course.

BACON PIZZA

This beautiful slab was found at 'Bud's Meats' in Penngrove California. Look at the meat to fat ratio. This is one meaty hunk of cured swine. The smoke is slight but present. Salt and sugar are in balance. The only fault I can find in this specimen is the rind is on. It may be a minor inconvenience but when removed you are also losing a sliver of possible smoke flavor. In my opinion: rind on is just plain wrong. The flavor is very meaty with porky goodness. This bacon makes Meat Adventures worthwhile.

Lately, we have been enjoying bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. The tomato's are ripe and with the addition of this fantastic bacon, we have sandwich perfection. Today we are having some fun by making a bacon pizza. We bought some convenient tasty pizza dough from the Berkeley Bowl West. A quick sauce was made from our vine ripe tomato's. We partially cooked the bacon to ensure crispness before we placed them on sauced and three cheese assembled pie.. A quick trip to our ultra hot wood fired beehive oven and we were in business. This was a fun dinner.

DIY CHEESE KIT

 Ms. Goofy loves cheese. Her passion for cheese is so great we have begun to make cheese at home. Thanks to ‘Urban Cheesecraft’ we have a kit to guide us in the craft of cheese making. While reading my ‘Chilepepper’ magazine I spotted an advertisement for this cheese kit. You can make mozzarella, chevre, paneer, and more with the included tools and instructions. This would be the perfect Christmas gift for my cheese loving wife. Ms. Goofy made her trial run of mozzarella. Can you see the smile on her face? This cheese would be perfect for our pulled pork pizza. Pull up a chair and say ‘Cheese’.

The only ingredient we needed to acquire for our cheese making was milk. We did not want to use your ultra pasteurized garden variety from Wally-World. A venture to the Marin farmers market to visit the ‘StrausFamily Creamery’ booth would satisfy our needs. One gallon of Straus’s local, organic, non homogenized, cream on the top, whole milk would be our purchase. While at the market I also picked up my new favorite vegetable Romanesco broccoli but that is a different story. We are now ready to make cheese. I need to clarify; Ms. Goofy is ready. I was banished from the kitchen.

The details of the cheese making are a secret to me. I can tell you there was a lot of beer drinking, swearing and debauchery involved while the cheese making process went on. That was me watching the football playoff games. Curds & Whey, thermometers, cheese cloth and brightly colored gloves were the only clues I got while retrieving adult beverages from the ice cave.

Pizza would be the vehicle to sample Ms. Goofy’s maiden cheese adventure. Some left over and I mean over the top delicious pulled pork would be our main topping. Barbeque sauce would be the foundation to support cheese, pork and red onions. An oven with a baking stone was heated to extreme heat. Ten minutes in the fiery inferno and we had some good looking pies.

 This mozzarella cheese was hot, gooey, stringy, the perfect cheese to make our pizza pie scrumptious. Immediately Ms. Goofy had new ideas how to improve on our cheese making endeavor. She wants to add herbs or peppers. I just plain loved it. Ms. Goofy is happy with her new DIY Cheese kit. Old Chilebrown did pretty darn good getting Ms. Goofy this cheese maker. Please excuse me because I need to return to the couch. The next football game is almost on.

Urban Cheeecraft

SIZZLING BACON CLASIC

Everybody loves pizza including yours truly. What could one do to improve a pizza pie? Of course! Let’s add bacon. We have a new ‘Mountain Mikes’ pizza parlor in town. They have a pie called; ‘Sizzling Bacon Classic’. The ingredients are; Creamy garlic white sauce, chicken, bacon, ham, mushrooms, olives and green onions. I am not a fan of chain restaurants but sometimes they are just darn convenient. We were pleasantly surprised. Ham, mushrooms and salty crisp bacon was a combination that worked. The sauce actually had large chunks of creamy roasted garlic. Bacon at fast food establishments are usually poor imitations of a true rasher. This bacon actually had great flavor was crisp salty and chewy all at the same time. Mountain Mike's, you now have a new regular customer.

MAC & CHEESE PIZZA

Sometimes one needs to think outside the box. Outside the famous blue box will be our culinary journey today. Macaroni and cheese pizza will be created and cooked in our wood fired oven. This recipe could not be simpler. A simple pizza dough needs to made and proofed. Cook your mac & cheese by following the instructions provided on the box. Let the gooey comfort pasta cool slightly We grated a little Parmesan cheese for extra flavor. A few sliced home grown tomato’s and the Parmesan will be the tasty crown to our pie. Assemble and cook in a hot oven and enjoy the show. This was one fun meal. Sometimes cooking outside the box is a wonderful thing.

PIZZAQUE

Sometimes on Craigslist you can find some wonderful barbeque treasures. Somebody was selling a PizzaQue and I could not resist. A Pizzaque is a ceramic stone that is housed in a stainless steel base which has a thermometer. This would be perfect for pizza. Last night was the maiden voyage for this new barbeque tool/toy. This pizza would have all premium ingredients. The crust would be made with a sourdough starter. Four types of cheese would melt together to form a gooey delicious pie. To put this pizza over the top some sausage from Willow Glen Meats would garnish the top.

The instructions for the PizzaQue are simple. Light a fire, let the stone heat and then cook. That is what we did. I used a chimney full of briquet's. The thermometer registered 600 degrees. I am a little skeptical on this reading. We cooked our pizza for about 10 minutes. It looked oh so very good. It even tasted better than it looked. Now the reason I am skeptical on the temperature reading is because the crust bottom never crisped up as it should. It was cooked, but not to the degree our wood burning oven could achieve.

The PizzaQue will take its place in the Mad Meat Genius arsenal of barbeque tools. It is a lot of fun cooking pizza on the barbeque.

ASPARAGUS & ARTICHOKE PIZZA

It was another beautiful Spring day. It was a good excuse to makes some Aritchoke heart and Asparagus pizza. The sauce was a grilled green salsa. This roasted salsa had tomatillas, green onions, white onions 'California Long Hots' and garlic. This was spring at its tasty best. I think leftover pizza would be perfect for lunch.

COVERED MEAT PIE

Covered Meat Pie or Calazone, whatever you may call it, it was darn tooting good. It was a beautiful clear sunny day in the Bay Area. This was a perfect day to fire up the wood burning oven. I checked our local government website to see if they would grant permission to build a wood fire today. Thank goodness the coin flip made it legal to burn wood and use your barbeque. Bureaucracy be damned. The beehive was stoked with almond wood. Once the fire is going, a soothing calm is enjoyed watching the flames flicker.

Some pizza pie dough was made. It is a secret recipe that I will share with you. Homemade sauce is mandatory for all pizza made in the Mad Meat Kitchen. Leftover pulled pork, green chile, cheese and mushrooms would be the filling. With every thing set it was easy to just roll out a couple of rounds of dough. One round was placed on top and the edges were pinched to hold all the goodness in. The calazones hit the oven and were done 6 minutes later.

A beautiful day and some wonderful eats. Does it get any better?

LEFTOVERS

Don't you love leftovers? We have left over New Hatch Chile, Bacon/Burgers and tomato's. What should we do with this plethora of bounty. How about pizza? This would be a great excuse to fire up the Beehive oven. It is sometimes risky to fire up the Beehive, because of our local Bay Area Air Quality Management Bureaucracy.They may declare a "Spare the Air Day". According to their declaration,if you burn in your fireplace,run your lawnmower or even use your barbeque you are a gross polluter and should be fined into submission. Never mind the Highway, Refineries, and our local Burger Queen. Wow, I am sorry for that mini rant, that was uncalled for.

Pizza with home made dough, sauce with home grown globes of red devilishness, fancy smanchy cheese, mesquite roasted chile, and a very important ingredient, bacon/burger meat. All these and a few other ingredients are combined and fired up in our gross polluter and transformed into pizza to die for.

Oh go ahead and drag me off to jail. At least I had some killer leftovers!

THE RING OF FIRE, THE RING OF FIRE!

'Burn, Burn, the Ring of Fire'. I cannot help my self. This is the best song ever. June or Johnny Carter wrote this song. There have been numerous artists that have covered this song What does this mean? It is Ms. Goofy's birthday and I am going to make her a breakfast pizza.

Some Schinken Speck, Asparagus and Eggs are the main ingredients on this pizza pie. How come when ever I say pizza pie, I break out into song. (Thats Amore). We are also using some chicken apple sausage from Lakewood. Sausage Co.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, Scoozza Me that's Amore!

SPAM PIZZA

There is a contest at the Pragmatic Chef. Spam Pizza is my entry. You can read more at http://www.thepragmaticchef.com/

PIZZA SAUCE

My tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters. It is time to make pizza sauce. I will canvas the garden for all the ingredients. I have all the herbs needed and all the vegetables. The only store bought product will be the tomato paste and bacon. Paul Bertoli has a recipe for tomato paste. It is only a matter of time before I make my own. I just want to tell you how good it smells in the Chilebrown Kitchen. I like to take the skins off of the tomatoes. It only involves boiling a pot of water and blanching them. You need to cut the stem off and X the bottom. Rinse and squeeze the round orbits of summer.The skin will slide right off. Chop and your ready.

Chilebrown's Pizza Sauce

1. 6 tomatoes (blanched,peeled, sqouzen, and chopped)


2. 1 tablespoon of tomato paste


3. 1 teaspoon of sugar (Honey)


4. 1 teaspoon of salt


5. 1/2 onion chopped


6. 2 garlic cloves chopped


7. 1/4 cup of wine or vinegar


8. Herbs (Lot, and Lots of finely chopped herbs)


9. Any other veggies from the garden finely chopped


10. 2 slice of bacon cubed

Saute your Bacon and onion until soft. Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for another five minutes. Add your tomatoes,honey vinegar and veggies, and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn the heat off and add herbs.

We are making a Canadian Bacon,(Nueske), Mushroom and Onion Pizza today. Of course I am using the Beehive Oven. It will be served with some tomatoes dressed with Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese, oil and vinegar