Pizza Bisque aka Italian Onion Soup

Creamy tomato soup with a hint of roasted red pepper, delectable mushrooms, and more than a pizza’s worth of pepperoni.

This originated as a way to use up a bag of pepperonis in my freezer (are we seeing a trend here?). Serve topped with a toasted slice of pepperoni roll or garlic bread and a blend of mozzarella/parmesan cheese, ala French onion soup. I guess you could call this Italian onion soup…there are onions and quite a few cloves of garlic in there…

Yields about a gallon. Maybe more. Have company.

Ingredients
2 onions, diced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 pound of pepperoni, quartered
1 pound of mushrooms, sliced
3-4 bell peppers, roasted (see Step 1), then diced
2 cans of evaporated milk
1 can of V8
2 cans of diced tomato
1 6oz can of tomato paste
1 32 oz carton chicken broth
1 32 oz carton beef broth
3T sugar
1t red pepper flakes
2T granulated garlic
2T granulated onion
3T dried Italian herbs

1.    Roast peppers. Cut off the ends, remove the crap in the middle, and slice in half. Rub with canola or other high-heat oil. Place on foiled sheet skin-side-up and broil until skins are burnt and crispy (about 5 minutes). Remove from oven and throw into sandwich bag or scrunch the foil into a packet, whatever works. This will trap moisture in and help the skins to pop off. After allowing to cool for ten minutes or until you can pick them up, peel the skins off the peppers. Dice em. Dice up the un-roasted ends too—it’s just too much of a pain in my opinion to roast and peel those little bits.

2.    Add pepperoni, onion, and garlic to a large pot (seriously, my normal pot was too small). Stir over medium heat until pepperoni grease starts to render out. Mmm. Saute until onions are translucent.

3.    Add tomatoes, bell peppers, V8, broths, and dry spices. Stir well to combine.

4.    Ladle out about 4 cups into a food processor. Process until smooth and add back into the pot.

5.    Add mushrooms. Cover and let simmer until warmed through and mushrooms shrink. This can take as much or as little time as you like. No harm letting it cook for an hour or longer, if you want—but in the quick version, you only need about 15 minutes.

6.    When about ready to serve, crack open the evaporated milk and mix in. Let the soup get warm, but don’t let it simmer again, or the dairy will break. This doesn’t taste bad or anything, but it makes your soup look like someone sneezed ricotta cheese into it.

7.    Taste and adjust spices as desired.

8.    Ladle into oven-safe bowls. Top with a toasted slice of pepperoni roll or garlic bread, then a layer of mozz and parm—broil like you would a bowl of French onion soup.

Spanakopita Deluxe aka Spanakoplava aka Bakapita

Sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it? But the slightly nutty flavor of the spinach/parmesan blends well with the walnuts, and the little bit of sweetness complements the feta and lemon. Lots of good textures too—soft, crispy, and crunchy. This recipe might look lengthy, but don’t worry. It’s really pretty simple…and I’ve taken care of the first seven steps for you already. 

Step one. Buy a few bags/boxes of frozen spinach to make something…it doesn’t matter what.

Step two. Stick the spinach in the back of the freezer and forget about it.

Step three. Clean out your freezer months later and spy said forsaken spinach.

Step four. Decide to make spanakopita.

Step five. Look up recipes to get inspired. Decide that nothing sounds exciting enough. Cudgel brain to produce something different, yet still delicious.

Step six. Realize that there is another food you love that’s sandwiched between layers of phyllo: baklava. Plus spanakopita? Reject the idea of combining the two. Reject the rejection.

Step seven. Poo-poo the idea of shaming this glorious idea by crafting it in the typical casserole square construction. Rolling it is.

Ingredients

Yields three rolls; half a roll is a meal for one person

Spanakopita filling
-20–24 oz (two 10 or 12 oz packages) frozen spinach
-2T butter or olive oil (for sautéing)
-1 small onion, small dice
-2 cloves of garlic, minced
-1/8c olive oil
-2 eggs
-24 oz crumbled feta cheese
-1/4c shredded parmesan
-2T lemon juice
-1t nutmeg or pumpkin pie spice
-1T salt
-2t granulated garlic
-2t granulated onion

Baklava filling
-2c walnuts
-1/4c+ honey (You know how honey sticks to the measuring cup…so make it over-full)
-1t ground cinnamon
-1t sugar

Assembly
-2 sticks of butter, melted
-1 package of phyllo dough (usually two 8 oz packs of ~20 sheets each)
-Honey, for drizzling
-Alcohol of choice, for maintaining sanity

Instructions

1. The day before you want to cook, open the spinach packages and dump contents into a colander over a bowl, preferably so the colander is a few inches above the bottom of the bowl. Leave out on the counter until spinach is on its way to melting (about 1–2 hours). Place contraption into refrigerator overnight. The next day, grab handfuls of the spinach and squeeze into the sink (or into the bowl to save and freeze in a baggie to make vegetable stock) to remove as much water as possible. This step allows the spinach to dry out a bit, which will make the cooking-down step much faster. If you’d rather ignore this, plan on adding another 15–20 minutes to Step 3. Last thing—make sure the phyllo dough, if frozen, is in the fridge at least overnight to thaw.

2. Add the 2T of olive oil or butter to a medium-sized pan (big enough to fit in all the spinach). Add onion and garlic and sauté over medium-high heat.

3. Add the spinach. Stir and cook, uncovered, until the mixture is pretty dry. We want a moistness close to hour-old brewed coffee grounds—damp, but not drippy/juicy. If your spinach mixture is too wet, the phyllo will not crisp up. No one likes soggy bottoms!

4. Take the spinach pan off heat and let it cool off while you prepare the baklava filling.

5. Either chop by hand or use a food processor to cut up the nuts. When you have the proper grind—I like a rough chop, maybe quartering the walnut halves, but do whatever you prefer—mix in the cinnamon, sugar, and honey. Set aside.

6. Melt 1 stick of butter and get out a pastry brush or basting brush. If you don’t have one, fold up a paper towel until you’ve got a wad about an inch wide. You can use this in lieu of a brush.

7. Hopefully the spinach is relatively cool now. Mix in the cheeses, oil, eggs, spices, and lemon juice. Spray a lasagna pan or baking sheet with pan spray. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

8. Get out your phyllo dough. Open only one roll to start. Keep the sheets you’re not working with covered with plastic wrap so they don’t dry out. If your phyllo dries out, you’re gonna have a bad time. Seriously…you think I’m overreacting, because that’s what I thought when all the recipes I looked at reiterated this. Phyllo is a bunch of very thin dough sheets. Maybe thinner than paper. If they dry out…you can’t get them apart without ripping them all to hell. In the end, this doesn’t REALLY matter (you’re slathering the layers with butter-glue and slapping it all together anyway). But try to keep them happy…and definitely have a bit of alcohol before starting (this does help). Also helpful if you have a partner to hand you sheets of phyllo...quick-quick like bunny.

Lay out one piece of phyllo. Brush it with butter: you don’t need to cover every visible square millimeter. Hit the edges, hit the middle. It’s not a bad idea to move quickly (keeping that phyllo un-dry!). Place a second sheet of phyllo on top of the first and brush that with butter. Repeat until you have about 2/3^rd of the package (~12 sheets of phyllo) in a stack. Do not butter the top of the last sheet.

9. Orient the phyllo stack/yourself so that the long edge of the phyllo is facing you. Grab the spanakopita filling and use a spoon/spatula/your hand to spread 1/3rd of it on this long edge. Keep away from the short sides about an inch back.

10. Butter one brush-width along the inner edge of the spanakopita filling.

11. Spread 1/3rd of the baklava mixture over the rest of the phyllo. Brush some butter on the top edge.

12. Slide your fingers under the phyllo and gently roll the dough up. As you roll forward, also fold the edges in so that the finished roll has tucked edges like a burrito. Gently squeeze all along the roll to shape it. Place the roll seam side down on the pan/baking sheet.

13. Repeat steps 8–12 to produce a second and third spanakoplava roll. If you don’t want to eat all of the rolls within a few days, freeze the extras now.

14. Brush the tops and sides of the rolls with butter and drizzle some honey on top. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. You want the phyllo to be golden and crispy and the fillings to be hot. Don't expect nice clean-looking slices...it will be messy. And delicious.

Opa!

Okonomiyaki

Only recently in life have I come to appreciate the taste of cabbage. As a kid, I'd eat cole slaw (drowning in mayo/requirement at bbqs) and, begrudgingly, sauerkraut once a year on New Year's Day (for good luck). Now--thanks to my husband, who is descended from Polish folk (if I hadn't mentioned it)--I will actually CHOOSE to eat cabbage. Pigs in blankets (Polish style, not little hot dogs wrapped up in dough), halushki (buttered noodles plus fiber!), and a fair amount of Japanese dishes. Other than in egg rolls, I didn't know Asian food was into cabbage. Here's a good, easy, delicious recipe to convert you to the Way of the Cabbage. Okonomiyaki is a sort of pancake/pizza...essentially, a flour/egg/water/cabbage pancake batter with whatever else you want mixed in, fried on a griddle, with meat, mayo, and bbq sauce on top. I know...I know...it sounds odd and not appealing at all. But try it...you won't be disappointed.

Yields 8
Base batter ingredients
-Green cabbage, finely sliced and broken apart--Tough to measure. Ends up being about 15 cups--or for me (and my small hands) 8 big handfuls. This can be about half of a small (2-3 lb) cabbage or a quarter of a large (3-4 lb) cabbage
-4 cups of flour
-2 cups of water
-1 T baking powder
-1 t salt
-6 eggs
 -Whatever else you want--onion, mushrooms, cut-up shrimp, pre-cooked chicken pieces, green onion, you name it.

Topping ingredients
-Mayo (can be kewpie or regular/American)
-Tonkatsu sauce for authenticity, or any kind of bbq or steak sauce
-Whatever other sauces you want to drizzle on top--I like eel sauce too, if I have it. If you like your food spicy-hot, add sriracha and red pepper flakes.
-Bonito flakes for authenticity--these are a sort of dried fish flake used to make fish stock. The cool thing about them is, after you sprinkle them on the hot and be-sauced okonomiyaki, one end of the flake sticks in the sauce and the other end waves (because of the convection). It's pretty cool.

Extra-special embedded meat ingredients
A special part of the okonomiyaki is that you usually dollop the batter over some bacon. However, you can obviously use any kind of meat you want. Spam is good...and recently, we tried adding thinly sliced pork chops with great success. You need to pre-cook this meat--everything should be just a few minutes shy of ready to eat.
-Pork loin (at least 2 lbs) sliced into 8 very thin pork chops. We're talkin' maybe a half-inch thick. OR 16 pieces of bacon. OR one 12-oz can of Spam, sliced into 8 thin slabs. OR...whatever else strikes you.

Cook!
1. Prepare any meat/veggies (other than the cabbage) that you want to mix into the batter. Embedded meat needs par-cooked (aka partially cooked, for you non-fancy-pants people). Any mix-in meat items will need completely pre-cooked and cut up.

2. Thinly slice (as thin as you can get it) the cabbage. I like using a serrated bread knife. Break apart the pieces so they'll mix easily into the batter. Put the cabbage in a large bowl.

3. Mix together the flour, water, eggs, salt, and baking powder. The mixture will be slightly lumpy, but that's OK. Mix this batter into the cabbage bowl, stirring well. It's advisable to do this in several stages.

4. If there are any other veggies or pre-cooked meat chunks you want *in* the okonomiyaki (as opposed to stuck on the top/bottom) mix them in now.

5. Grease/butter a griddle or pan. Pre-heat to medium-hot. Put 1/16 (or 1/8, if you're using pork chops--they're only on one side) of the special embedded meat in a small pile. Ladle about 2 cups of the batter over the meat. Press the another 1/16 of your choice of par-cooked meat into the top of the pancake. Repeat until your cooking area is full.

6. In about 4 minutes, check on the okonomiyaki. When you see small bubbles coming through the batter--just like happens when cooking pancakes--they are ready to flip. This could be anywhere between 4 and 8 minutes, depending on how hot your pan is. Don't flip until you can slide a spatula cleanly under the okonomiyaki without fighting it.

7. Cook on the second side for about 2-4 minutes. Again, don't flip to check unless you can get the spatula in without an argument.

8. If you're starving, prepare an oko from the first batch to eat. If not, keep going until you're out of batter. Store the finished oko either on a plate in the microwave or on a cookie sheet in a warm oven until you finish them all.

9. To decorate a cooked okonomiyaki for eating--spread or squirt a nice layer of mayo, bbq sauce, and whatever other sauces you wanted on top of the okonomiyaki. Sprinkle on a few tablespoons of bonito flakes and wave back to them as they beckon you to enjoy your first mouthful. Cut up into bite-sized pieces and enjoy!

10. I'd recommend refrigerating any leftovers without applying the toppings. To reheat, pop in the microwave or oven (both work well) and then top with abandon.

Itadakimasu!