by Wilbur, Todd
6. Spray the pizza dough with a generous amount of olive oil spray. Spread I cup of shredded mozzarella cheese on the dough. Sprinkle half of the bacon on next, followed by half of the chicken. Slide the pizza onto the pizza stone and bake for 9 to 10 minutes or until the cheese and crust begins to brown.
7. While pizza bakes, combine 1½ cups chopped iceberg lettuce with ½ cup of chopped romaine in a bowl. Stir in 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise and mix well until all of the lettuce is coated with mayo.
8. When the pizza comes out of the oven, slice it into 8 pieces. Spoon the lettuce mixture over the top, then place a roma tomato slice on each slice of pizza. Finish off your pie by placing an avocado slice on each slice of pizza. Repeat the process for the remaining pizza.
• MAKES 2 PIZZAS, 8 SLICES EACH.
CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN JAMAICAN JERK CHICKEN PIZZA
MENU DESCRIPTION: “Grilled Jamaican Jerk spiced chicken breast with our spicy sweet Caribbean sauce, mozzarella cheese, applewood smoked bacon, mild onions, roosted red & yellow peppers and scallions.”
This CPK creation is a top pick at the 162-unit chain, most likely because chefs slather on a delicious sweet and spicy Caribbean sauce where tomato sauce usually sits on traditional Italian-style pies. Making the sauce from scratch is the way to go for true clone rangers, but if you’d like a shortcut, find Tiger Sauce in your local market where the bottled hot sauces are sold, and use that. If you want another shortcut, rather than mixing your own jerk seasoning from scratch, use any jerk blend you can find in the store or snag a bottle of our own Top Secret Island Rub at the TopSecret Recipes website (www.TopSecretRecipes.com). I do recommend making the pizza dough from scratch rather than buying prepared dough, however. You’ll need to plan ahead on this part of the recipe so that the dough has a chance to slowly rise in your fridge overnight. I also recommend that you use a pizza stone to bake the two pizzas this recipes makes to re-create the baking results of CPK’s stone ovens.
PIZZA DOUGH
¾ cup warm water
(105 to 115 degrees)
1½ teaspoons yeast
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1¾ cups bread flour
I teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
CARIBBEAN SAUCE
½ cup light brown sugar
¼ cup water
¼ cup ketchup
¼ cup light corn syrup
¼ cup minced white onion
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
I teaspoon minced garlic
I teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
flakes
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
⅛ teaspoon dried thyme
⅛ teaspoon ground allspice
JERK SEASONING
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ teaspoon ground paprika
½ teaspoon ground allspice
2 chicken breasts, pounded thin
olive oil cooking spray
I red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
2 cups plus 4 tablespoons
shredded mozzarella cheese
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon onion powder
⅛ teaspoon ground cayenne
pepper
pinch ground cinnamon
½ cup cooked thick bacon,
crumbled (about 6 slices)
½ cup thinly sliced white onion
2 tablespoons chopped green
onion (green part only)
1. Make the pizza dough by dissolving yeast and granulated sugar in ¾ cup warm water in a small bowl or glass measuring cup. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes or until it gets foamy on top.
2. Combine flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a depression in the flour and pour the yeast mixture and oil into it. Stir the liquid gradually drawing more flour into it, until you can form the dough into a ball. Use your hands to knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes, or until the texture of the dough is smooth. Coat dough with oil, cover it and let it sit in a warm spot for 1 to 2 hours or until it doubles in size. Punch down the dough, cover it again and let it sit overnight in your fridge.
3. You can also make the sauce a day ahead by combining all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Simmer over medium/low heat for 7 minutes. Puree cooled sauce in a blender for 10 seconds, then cover it and let it chill out in the fridge.
4. When it gets close to pizza time, remove the dough from the refrigerator. It needs to warm up for about 2 hours before you use it. Also, place a pizza stone in your oven and crank the temperature up to 500 degrees.
5. Combine all of the ingredients for the jerk seasoning. Cover chicken breasts and pound them to about ½-inch thick with a kitchen mallet. Spray chicken liberally with olive oil cooking spray (or rub with olive oil), then sprinkle on some seasoning. Grill chicken on a preheated grill for 3 to 4 minutes per side or until done. You can also saute chicken in a skillet on your stove for 4 to 5 minutes per side or until done. Cool and chop into ½-inch cubes.
6. Roast red bell peppers by setting them directly over a high flame on a gas stove. Turn the peppers as the skin chars black, then plunge them into ice water and remove the blackened skin. If you don’t have a gas stove, you can also roast the peppers on a baking sheet in a 450-degree preheated oven for 45 minutes or until skin is charred, then peel the skin off in cold water. Dice about 2 tablespoons of each pepper for each pizza. Seal the rest of the roasted pepper and refrigerate. It will keep for about two days.
7. Assemble each pizza by dividing the dough in half and rolling one half into a 10-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Place the dough onto a pizza pan or a pizza peel that will be used to slide the dough onto the hot pizza stone. Be sure to flour the pan or pizza peel liberally with flour so that the assembled pizza will slide off easily.
8. Spray the pizza dough with a generous amount of olive oil spray. Spoon 3 to 4 tablespoons of sauce onto the dough, followed by I cup of shredded mozzarella. Sprinkle I cup of diced chicken on next, followed by ¼ cup of the cooked bacon. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of diced roasted red bell pepper and 2 tablespoons of diced roasted yellow bell pepper on the pizza. Sprinkle ¼ cup of thinly sliced onion on next, followed by just a couple tablespoons of additional mozzarella. Slide the pizza onto the pizza stone and bake for 9 to 10 minutes or until the cheese and crust begins to brown. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon chopped green onion.
9. Slice pizza into 8 pieces and serve. Repeat for remaining pizza.
• MAKES 2 PIZZAS, 8 SLICES EACH.
CARRABBA’S BREAD DIPPING BLEND
When you sit down for Italian-style grub at one of the more than 168 nationwide Carrabba’s restaurants, you’re first served a small plate with a little pile of herbs and spices in the middle to which the waiter adds olive oil. Now you’re set up to dip your sliced bread in the freshly flavored oil. To craft a version of this tasty blend at home you’ll need a coffee bean grinder or a small food processor to finely chop the ingredients.
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil
I tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
I tablespoon minced fresh garlic
I teaspoon dried thyme
I teaspoon dried oregano
I teaspoon ground black pepper
(freshly ground is best)
½ teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
½ teaspoon ground sea salt or
kosher salt
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
½ teaspoon olive oil
⅛ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1. Combine all the ingredients, except oil and lemon juice in a small food processor or coffee bean grinder Chop briefly until all ingredients are about the same size.
2. Stir in oil and lemon juice.
3. To serve, combine about 1 teaspoon ble
nd to 3 to 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil on a small dish. Dip sliced bread in mixture.
• MAKES ABOUT ¼ CUP BLEND.
CARRABBA’S HOUSE SALAD DRESSING (CREAMY PARMESAN)
When Johnny Carrabba and his uncle Damian Mandola opened the first Carrabba’s restaurant in 1986, they used a collection of their own traditional family recipes to craft a terrific Italian menu. You’ll even find the names of friends and family in several of those dishes including Polio Rosa Maria, Chicken Bryan, Scampi Damian and Insalata Johnny Rocco. Now we can easily re-create the taste of the delicious dressing that’s tossed into the salad served before each Carrabba’s entree. And we need only six ingredients. For the grated Parmesan cheese, go ahead and use the stuff made by Kraft that comes in the green shaker canisters. And if you don’t have any buttermilk, you can substitute regular milk. Since it’s so thick, this dressing is best when tossed into your salad before serving it, just like the real thing.
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¼ cup buttermilk
1½ teaspoons minced garlic
½ teaspoon minced fresh parsley
½ teaspoon lemon juice
Whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl.
• MAKES I CUP.
CARRABBA’S CHICKEN MARSALA
MENU DESCRIPTION: “Fire-roosted chicken breast topped with mushrooms, prosciutto and our Florio Marsala wine sauce.”
To reverse-engineer this big-time favorite entree, I ordered the dish to go, with the sauce on the side, so that I could separately analyze each component. After some trial and error in the underground lab, I found that recreating the secret sauce from scratch is easy enough with a couple small cans of sliced mushrooms, a bit of prosciutto, some Marsala wine, shallots, garlic and a few other good things. Cooking the chicken requires a very hot grill. The restaurant chain grills chicken breasts over a blazing real wood fire, so crank your grill up high enough to get the flames nipping at your cluckers (no, that’s not an euphemism). If your grill has a lid, keep it open so you can watch for nasty flare-ups.
MARSALA SAUCE
⅓ cup butter
1 slice prosciutto, diced
2 teaspoons minced shallots
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 4-ounce cans sliced mushrooms
(drained)
¼ cup Marsala wine
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup chicken broth
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoons heavy cream
CHICKEN SEASONING
1¼ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon dried parsley
¼ teaspoon marjoram
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon onion powder
4 skinless chicken breasts fillets
olive oil
1. Melt butter over low heat in a medium saucepan.
2. Turn heat up to medium/high to saute the prosciutto in the melted butter for about 2 to 3 minutes (be careful not to burn the butter). Add shallots and garlic and saute for about 30 seconds. Add Marsala wine, simmer for another 30 seconds or so, then add drained mushrooms and black pepper Simmer over medium/high heat for 5 minutes.
3. Dissolve cornstarch in chicken broth. Add broth to the saucepan and simmer for an additional 5 minutes.
4. Add parsley and cream to the sauce and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes or until thick. Remove pan from the heat, then cover it until needed.
5. Preheat barbecue grill on high heat. Combine ingredients for chicken seasoning in a small bowl. Use your thumb and fingers to crush the herbs and spices in the bowl to make a finer blend.
6. Wrap each chicken breast in plastic wrap and pound with a kitchen mallet until uniform in thickness. Brush each chicken breast generously with olive oil. Sprinkle seasoning blend over both sides of each chicken breast and grill for 6 to 8 minutes per side or until done. Give chicken a one-quarter turn on each side while cooking to make criss-cross grill marks.
7. Serve entree by arranging each chicken breast on a plate. Spoon one quarter of the Marsala sauce over each serving of chicken and dig in.
• SERVES 4.
THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY MINI CRABCAKES
MENU DESCRIPTION: “Served with remoulade sauce.”
The secret to great crab cakes starts with great crab. Freshly cooked blue crab is the crab of choice for these crustacean cakes, but you can often find high quality canned backfin blue crab in some stores. One such brand comes in 16-ounce cans from Phillips Seafood and is sold at Costco, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart and Von’s stores. Once you’ve got the crab grabbed you need to pick up some panko. Panko is Japanese-style breadcrumbs usually found near the other Asian foods in your market. The Factory uses a little bit of panko to coat each of these small crab cakes for a great, lightly crunchy texture. One order of this appetizer at the restaurant gets you 3 crab cakes; this recipe makes 6 cakes from ½-pound of crab. If you have a 1-pound can of crabmeat, you can save the leftover ½-pound for another recipe or double-up on this one. Any surplus crab cakes will keep for 24 hours in the fridge before you need to get them in a pan. Oh, and one other thing to remember when making crab cakes: Be gentle. Don’t stir the crab too much into the other ingredients. Rather, fold the mixture gingerly with a spatula to combine. You want any big chunks of tasty crab to stay as big chunks of tasty crab in the finished product.
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons minced green onion
(green part only)
2 tablespoons minced red bell
pepper
½ beaten egg
1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
½ teaspoon yellow prepared
mustard
½ pound lump crab meat
3 tablespoons plain breadcrumbs
(such as Progresso)
¼ cup panko (Japanese
breadcrumbs)
vegetable oil
REMOULADE SAUCE
½ cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons capers
2 teaspoons chopped dill pickle
slices (hamburger pickles)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon minced fresh parsley
½ teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
⅛ teaspoon salt
1. Measure all the ingredients for the crab cakes—except the breadcrumbs, crab, panko and vegetable oil—into a large bowl. Use a whisk to blend ingredients together. Carefully fold the crab and breadcrumbs into the whisked ingredients. Be sure not to over stir the mixture or those tasty lumps of crab will fall apart. The best crab cakes have nice big chunks of crab in ’em.
2. Rub a light coating of oil in six cups of a nonstick standard size muffin tin, then use your hands or a spoon to fill the cups with equal amounts of the crab mixture. Press down a bit on each crab cake so that the top is flat. Don’t press too hard or the crab cakes may be hard to get out. Cover the muffin tin with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge for an hour or so. This step will help the cakes stay together when they’re browned in the oil.
3. Make the remoulade sauce by combining all the ingredients in a small bowl. Cover and chill the sauce until you’re ready to serve up the crab cakes.
4. After the crab cakes have chilled through, heat up about ¼-inch of vegetable oil in large skillet over medium/low heat. Fill a shallow bowl with the panko breadcrumbs.
5. Carefully turn the crab cakes out onto a plate. Gently roll each crab cake around in the panko breadcrumbs. Each crab cake should be wearing a light coating of panko.
6. Test the oil by dropping a pinch of panko into the pan. It should sizzle, Saute the crab cakes in the hot oil for I ½ to 3 m
inutes on each side or until the cakes are golden brown.
7. Drain crab cakes on paper towels or a rack very briefly, then serve them up hot with the remoulade sauce alongside in a little dish.
• MAKES 6 SMALL CRAB CAKES.
THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY SWEET CORN TAMALE CAKES
MENU DESCRIPTION: “Topped with sour cream, salsa, avocado and salsa verde.”
Nestled between slickfull-page ads on page 7 of the huge 19-page spiral-bound menu from The Cheesecake Factory, is a long list of fabulous appetizers that includes this Southwestern-style crowd pleaser. Hand-formed tamale cakes are arranged on fresh salsa verde, topped with sour cream and a creamy Southwestern sauce, with a fresh avocado and cilantro garnish. It’s happiness on a plate. And, while the ingredients list below may seem intimidating at first, the three sauces are very simple to make, and your crew will be rewarded and impressed by your effort. (The flavors in the sauces develop after sitting for a bit so you can prepare them all in advance and let them chill in the fridge until chow time.) If you get anything short of a standing ovation for this dish, it’s important to encourage kudos by waving the pages of this recipe in front of your diners while casually wiping your brow. Sometimes you have to milk it.