3 posts tagged “recipes”

I absolutely love soup. I could honestly eat it every day of the week. A big bowl of soup along with a crusty piece of bread, so good. 

For the past hour, the arch of my foot feels like it is on the verge of getting a charley horse. I keep bracing myself every time it starts. Then nothing, it goes away. I almost wish I would just get the dumb thing, be done with it so I am not walking around in constant fear. Ok, oooh, there it goes again. Maybe I don't want to get one.

I made a new recipe for dinner. I was tired of the same old same old. I made tamale pie. First off, it is cheap. Secondly, I love tamales, so a dish with a tamale like crust (or bottom, because wouldn't a crust be, uh, crusty?) sounded good to me.

The kids kept coming into the kitchen trying to guess what I was making. The ground beef with taco seasoning made them all think tacos. The pot of cornmeal mush had them all confused. The box of brownies I left out when looking for the cornmeal added to the confusion along with 4 packs of my emergency mashed potatoes. They were hovering about, looking over my shoulder, peeking into the pots and pans, anything for a clue as to what I was making and whether they would actually want to eat it. I finally told them all it was a surprise and that none of us had ever had it. Then I shooed them out of the kitchen so I could finish it up.

As I took it out of the oven, they all came running. "Will you tell us now?". I told them tamale pie. They seemed relieved as I pulled it out and put it on the counter. I'm sure part of it's appeal was the cheese I had smothered the top with. It didn't call for cheese, but you can't go wrong with adding cheese to most mexican dishes, in my opinion. I cut them all a slice and served it up with sour cream. They loved it. They want to know when I am making it again.

Hmmm, considering it is cheap, easy and well liked, probably pretty soon.

Ok, so here's what I did after scouring the different recipes that came up when I googled "Flammenkuchen recipe"....

I bought premade pizza dough from my local deli/butcher/liquor store. Not sure why they have there own premade pizza dough balls, but they do. Many of the recipes for flammenkuchen also came with directions for pizza dough, but I am lazy and have a fear of making things with yeast and requiring kneading and rising.

So I thawed it, let it rise, punched it down and spread it out in on a cookie sheet. Then I took a 4 oz container of creme fraiche (I read that you can also use sour cream) and spread it on the dough, like you would with pizza sauce. I topped it with thinly sliced onion and some panchetta (I cut it into small pieces and cooked it over medium high heat for about 5 minutes. I didn't cook it til it was crispy, just cooked through.) I put it in the oven, middle rack at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. And it was yummy.

I still want to find a better crust. The crust on the flammenkuchen we had in Germany was flakier and least yeasty. But this wasn't bad. It was my second attempt. First attempt I used sour cream mixed with cottage cheese and an egg instead of creme fraiche and real bacon bits instead of panchetta. It wasn't horrible, but this one was definitely closer to what we had in Germany. I think the creme fraiche and panchetta made a big difference.

I hope that wasn't too hard to follow. I don't usually use recipes. I look at it, decide what I want to do and then go in that general direction substituting and changing things here and there. So yeah, I need to get back to laundry. No moblogging that until I get it down to a more manageable and less embarrassing state!