I would just like to preface that due to our softening country finally coming around to the thinking of “Why are our kids so fat,” half of these things would not even be allowed to hit the super markets today. Without further a due, here is my top 10 list of snack foods we used to eat as kids: (Drinks to come in a later post)

10. Starburst – I used to hose my parents every time they took me to the movies for a solid 5.00 for a bag of Starburst. And I used to eat the whole damn bag. So many great flavors and that blinding yellow bag, I’m surprised they didn’t throw me out of the theater! Ha, terrible, just awful joke. This is probably my favorite commercial as a kid and I’m glad it cracked my list of top 10. 

9. Ring pop – I really don’t have anything to say about this, but it was cool, good and it made your fingers really damn sticky. 

8. Lunchables – Now, they are quite possibly the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. The ham is shiny and slimy, the cheese tastes like it’s right out of the processing machine, the crackers are moist and soft because of the condensation from the ham, but I used to eat the shit out of these. I don’t think I started developing taste buds until they came out with the pizza flavored Lunchables, those almost made me throw up. But, I still at the pepperoni (or whatever those disc-shaped objects were in the package. And the salsa was nasty in the nacho brand. Oscar Meyer really got away with these. 

7. Pizza Bagel bits – “Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening and pizza at supper time. When pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime.” Quite possibly one of the most successful advertising jingles in any food product, pizza bagels really did hit the spot all the time every time. But, I always burnt the shit out of my mouth and had that dangly piece of skin hanging from the roof of my mouth for 2 weeks after it. Sorry, I had to. 

6. Ellios Pizza – But it had to be the Ninja Turtles box. Does anybody remember this? There used to be punch-outs of the characters on the back of the box. I would only eat this if the Ninja Turtles were on it. I liked, I’d eat anything as a kid, they used to put the Flyers logo on the back too, when hockey used to be really cool. Apparently, each rectangular piece of was 1 serving. I used to eat 3 at a time. And, no matter how long you left it in the oven, the middle was ALWAYS cold.

5. Charms Blow-Pop – Come on, you knew the lollypop infused gum ball had to make the list. I felt like the majority of my Halloween candy ended up being blow pops one year. I always loved the grap5e and cherry flavors. And you know what’s great? They still have the same wrappers today. I used to get one of these in my lunchbox every now and again as a treat. From Charms, I know everybody remembers this commercial: 

4. Bubble Tape – The 2nd best gum if you played baseball as a kid. This gum was great and it came in a circular container (that always came undone) that you could unwind your gum. Eventually, they put a tricky little device on the end of the container that allowed you to cut the game. I was always a fan of the grape flavored brand. It’s for you! Not them. 

3. Fruit by the Foot – Jumpin’ jehosaphat! This craft little snack came in a small package but rolled out to 3 feet of pure artificially fruit flavored joy. Eventually, they started putting designs on the paper that lined the fruit. Who the hell actually payed attention to that anyway? I usually just unraveled the whole thing, crunched it up into the smallest ball I could make of it and let my insides do the rest. Always liked this kid’s shirt: 

2 Gushers – Great googly moogly. How good were these? The stickiest, juiciest of all fruit- related teeth-rotting glory. I believe they came in 2 or 3 flavors, I always remember asking my mom for the red kind. The red kind as a kid covered flavors touching the cherry and strawberry spectrums. 

1. Dunkaroos – Good. God. The dessert version of a Handi snack, a pouch filled with delicious kangaroo shaped cookies and a connected container of sweet, delicious fudge knocked any kid’s socks off. Me? I just ate the chocolate and threw the cookies out, screw all that work.
Stay hungry retro style. Now accepting rebuttals and honorable mentions.

Doritos are my all-time favorite snack food. There have been a lot of different flavors since the Dorito hit the market in 1964, my birth in 1985 and the less painful dimension of the chip sometime in the 1990′s (when the chip’s corners went from sharp to rounded). Taco bell, pizza hut and bold BBQ to name a few are some of the flavors the really need to make it back to the shelves. However, a couple years ago, Frito Lay hit the jackpot with what seemed like an era of trial and era chip: Sweet Chili BBQ Doritos, the purple bag.

Delicious and overly addictive, the Sweet Chili BBQ Dorito has taken the world by storm and the flavor is still mysterious to me whether or not it’s more BBQ-ey or more Chili-ey. The allure keeps coming me coming back, bag after bag after bag.

Jess E. gave me this idea a few weeks ago and I made it for Tricia last weekend, but I added a couple twists and turns to somewhat call it my own idea. Why not combine my favorite snack food with the most diversely used meat?

I present to you today…Baked Dorito Encrusted Chicken

Here’s what I did:

1/2 bag of Sweet Chili BBQ Dortios

6 filets of boneless, skinless chicken breast

2 eggs, beat

1/2 cup spicy bread crumbs

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Paprika

Before you start anything, pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Line a pan you can put in your oven with tin foil, drizzle olive oil on the foil so the chicken doesn’t stick, you’ll lose your coating if you don’t do this.

Trim the fat off the chicken before you cook it. Take about half the bag of the Doritos and crumble the chips up until they are a little bigger than bread crumbs. Pour into the mixture your spicy bread crumbs and give a couple good shakes of paprika until you can see the red particles in the mixture. Set aside in a large mixing bowl.

Once the fat is trimmed off your chicken, dip each piece of chicken in the eggs until completely covered. Transfer the egg covered chicken into your mixing bowl of Dorito mixture and cover the chicken completely. Don’t be afraid to go over board with you coating since this coating will not cover like normal bread crumbs. Place side by side in the pan and put into the oven when it reaches 400 degrees.

Depending on how thick your chicken is (I used thin cut), the chicken should be done in 15-20 minutes. Half-way through the baking, sprinkle cheese on top of your chicken to your liking. Dominant.

Stay hungry my friends.

For people who don’t know me that well are probably pretty surprised that I have any kind of skill in the kitchen, and what better time to impress your coworkers than at a floor potluck? I was incredibly excited when I read in our kitchen at the Comcast Center that there was going to be a 36th floor potluck. Why was I excited? Really only friends and family know what I’m made of in the kitchen, it was time to see how I stacked up against the general public. I had to come up with something new, I already used my Italian hoagie dip in 2010 that ended up being pretty successful. I needed to pull a rabbit out of my hat and do something no man has ever done before. I think I’ve set myself apart with dips at least in the sense that I like to use sliced baguette bread instead of chips, it kind of adds a sandwich dimension to the whole dipping experience. But, what would my new creation be? And then it hit me…

What is Philadelphia known for? Sports, tasty cakes, irate fans, shitty weather…and cheesesteaks! I personally am not the biggest fan of the cheesesteak, but I feel like most people around here wouldn’t snicker at the site of one. Why not…transform…a cheesesteak…INTO A DIP?? Brilliant, just brilliant. But, as if that thought could have been perceived as common, why not go out and try to create “the perfect chicken cheesesteak dip.” And I did it.

Behold, the perfect chicken cheesesteak dip: (Before the wolves got to it)

It needed to be smooth, cheesy and downright filthy good. So what’d I do? I combined the thought of a chicken cheesesteak and a good chunky dip into one. This could quite possibly be the most unhealthy dip in the history of dip:

Here’s your recipe:

1 stick philadelphia cream cheese

1 small bottle lite ranch dressing

1 large white onion

3 pounds of pulled, boneless skinless chicken breast

3 red bell peppers

2 cans chopped mushrooms

1/2 pound sliced american cheese

In a large pot, bring water to a boil and boil your chicken until it’s cooked through. Drain the pot and let the chicken cool until you’re able to use your hands to touch. Pull the chicken apart in to small, thin shredded pieces, set aside. Slice your white onion and peppers into slivers and fry in a sauce pan until translucent (you’ve got to have fried peppers and onions). You’re onions and peppers are done when the onion is translucent and peppers are no longer hardened. Then in another pot, use your entire bottle of ranch dressing until bubbling, this will be your rue. Once the ranch is bubbling, melt the cream cheese and 1/2 pound of cheese until you get a thick, rich and milky mixture. Add the chicken until complete mixed and chunky. Cook on medium heat until all of the chicken is coated. Once you have a nice, thick mixture, add your fried vegetables and continue to mix. At the very end, add in your mushrooms (if you like them) and keep mixing. You can serve this either hot or cold, I served it hot at the potluck. Pick yourself up 2 packages of french baguette and have the bakers slice it into mini baguette pieces, beats the hell out of chips, actually, chips are not strong enough to hold this stuff.

I put my dip in the microwave for 5 minutes on high and the aroma took over the kitchen. I placed my dish in the conference room where the food was held and walked away for a bit, I was nervous that nobody would try my dip and it would sit there lonely. I came back in on a reconnaissance move, as some of the people on the other side of the floor didn’t know who I was while I was really trying to listen to what they were saying. I was getting a good vibe and people were diving into my dip. It was safe to say that HALF WAY through the pot luck, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Gone, just freaking completely gone. Put in ooon the boooooard…YES!

Stay hungry my friends.

Ahh, nothing like a little quote from Casino to kick off this post about…Clams Casino.

I’ve had a thousand different types of Clams Casino, and I’ve really only liked one place that makes it really good, Scaturro’s restaurant in Marlton, NJ. You know how can tell the difference between good and poor Clams Casino? Bad Clams Casino: Huge chunk of baked bread crumbs with a chewy piece of clam. Good Clams Casino: Congregate of clam, spices and lightly seasoned breadcrumbs. After all, you didn’t order baked bread crumbs.

For those of who’ve been out to eat with me, you know that not only do I make the waitress come back 3 times before I’ve decided, but I end up ordering something whacked out and probably only found in the fine print on the back bottom right hand corner of the menu. That’s who I am, and that’s who I care about. Threw another movie quote at you there; but, seriously, I like when things are made differently. In college, I had a friend that made me pasta to try impress me with her “sauce.” She’s sitting there with a can of crushed tomatoes and then dumps an entire bottle of salsa into the sauce. At first, I was appalled. Then I tried it and decided it was the coolest desecration of Italian food in The NCAA (National Collegiate of Arts of Annihilation).

Now that I’ve bored you with all of the preambles, here is what I liked to call my Clams Casino if they made it onto a restaurant menu: The Nicky Santoro.

100 littleneck clams

1 pound of spicy italian sausage, drained, crumbled and chopped fine.

1 cup of romano cheese. (Not the granulated kind, but the chopped kind. I don’t know the real name for it but you’ll see in the pictures)

1 container of green chiles

1 cup PANKO bread crumbs

Paprika, salt and pepper

After you’ve cleaned your clams, bake them in the oven until they open. I put them on a pan lined with tin foil. Once the clams are opened, remove from the oven and clean out of the clam. Place in a bowl. Mix your sausage, green chiles, bread crumbs and cheese in a bowl until blended well. The leftover grease will allow for the coating to stick together. Once you’ve made your mixture, add in the clams until completely blended. Why not just add them all at the same time if you’re feeling up to it? Well if you do then it’s not truly the Nick Santoro, but whatever stupid name you came up with it will be.

Once you have your mixture, you should be able to scoop the mixture out and place them on whatever clams you might have laying around the house. This proves to be the most difficult part of this whole shebang because quite frankly, who has leftover clams laying around the house? You called it, this guy does, but they’re not from the ocean, probably made in some factory somewhere. Scoop the mixture into your clams until they’re full to your desire. Add some salt and pepper to taste and the go to town with the paprika. Paprika is the god of all fish seasonings, it really won’t ever overpower your food because it’s strong enough to make a difference but not strong enough to send you to the hospital, morgue, whatever.

Once you’ve got mixture in it’s cozy canister, bake in the oven until you start to see the sausage and cheese turn brown. I’m cool because I think it’s OK to mix cheese with fish, and you should too. Got a problem with that? Then go be like everybody else.

Enjoy the Nicky Santoro. Stay hungry my friends.

Anyway, this Summer has been an action-packed one with a lot of things I’ve eaten I’d like to share with you. We’ve ranged from fish, exotic meat to grade Z to the negative 12th power NYC street meat. To start it all off, I want to start off with some of the grilling I’ve done.

Grilled t-bone and mixed summer vegetables: 

I think we had about 21 heat waves this Summer and there’s nothing better than a nice, seasoned and marinated t-bone steak grilled to perfection. The thing is in the Summer time, you really don’t want to have a heavy, thick steak. No, you want something light and tender. I picked up some nice t-bone steaks from Genuardi’s one Sunday morning, I had a nice conversation with the butcher about what’s best to grill and he pointed me in the right direction. T-bone’s really aren’t that expensive because they’re not the highest quality meat and cut, but they’re great to grill because they’re thin and absorb marinade and rubs better than a huge thick filet. I bought 8 filets for about $35.00 total. On the way back from Genuardi’s, I pulled into Produce Junction and picked up some good Summer vegetables. I bought a bag of zucchini, squash, red potatoes, small white potatoes, red onions and then a box of cherry tomatoes.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could really care less about mashed potatos with my steak. Vegetables reign supreme, and I came up with a pretty sick way of cooking them along with the steaks.

Firstly, I came home and decided on a marinade for the steaks. When I make steaks, I marinate for about 6 before I take them out to cook. A lot of you are probably like, “What? Only 6 hours, I’d put them shits in my fridge for like a week, blah blah blah.” For those classless people, remember that you always want to maintain the integrity flavor of the steak and not taste 100% marinade. I marinate for about 6 hours so that there is a good “hint” of flavor. Once I’m done marinating, I dab the marinade off and tack on dry rub.  The best dry rub I’ve used is the Grill Mates’ Cowboy Rub. Who knows grilling/BBQ better than Texas?

Once those meats are marinated and rubbed for grilling, you’ve got to take care of the beautiful vegetables you bought. What I did here is I took all of my vegetables, lined a sauce pan with tin foil and some olive oil. Drop all of the vegetables into the foil and turn the grill on high. Of course, you need to use a good vegetable seasoning for all of those vegetables. I personally use Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning.

It’s a great seasoning that you can really use on anything, but I think this seasoning in particular really brings out of the flavor of Summer vegetables. I make sure to coat all of the vegetables with the seasoning and some more olive oil on top of all of the vegetables. Cover the pan up with tin foil to keep the heat in when grilling. I made sure to start the vegetables about an hour before the meat went on, the actual steaks only take about 5 minutes to cook.

Turn that grill on high and get those vegetables going. You should hear a constant bubbling inside your enclosed sauce pan. That’s sound you hear isn’t burning, it’s flavor perfection. You want to make sure that your vegetables are no longer hard, but pliable, and definitely not mushy. The goal of grilling these veggies is create an outstanding, flavorful side to your wonderfully marinated steaks. My personal favorite out of all of the vegetables are the red onions. It really is amazing how differently a raw red onion and a grilled to perfection red onions tastes. Raw = Sour. Grilled to perfection = Candy sweet.

This is probably one of my favorite meals of all time, especially in the summer. I uniquely call it: Steak and vegetables.

Stay hungry my friends.

90% of the pizza eaten in my house is homemade. Fresh ingredients, fresh dough from the bread maker, fresh mozzarella and homemade pizza sauce. It costs a heck of a lot less money than ordering delivery, but you do have to baby it since the convection oven is no pizza oven. Here’s what I did recently:

Fresh out of the dough maker, I had enough dough for 2 large pies. They keys to making great pizza from home are having great dough, a pizza stone and great sauce.

Dough: For the local people who don’t have the luxury of having a dough maker around, Massos in Gibbsboro has great dough. I like my dough a little on the sweeter side, it helps bring down the acid flavor of the tomatoes. The pizza dough recipe that came with my bread maker is perfect, there are millions of recipes out there, try one.

Stone: Who likes mushy pizza? Amateurs and people who love dominos over a good mom and pop slice, get outta here. The pizza stone is what I use to place the pizza on top of when baking, we have 3 in this house. The stone gives the pizza a natural crisp to the dough when baking. I love my pizza well-done, nice and crispy.

Sauce: My favorite part of the pizza. Here is my recipe for a chunky pizza sauce:
1 32 ounce can of San Marzano whole tomatoes
1 garlic cube (not the entire bulb)
1 ounce extra virgin olive oil
1/2 minced white onion
Oregano
Paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

Place oil in a pot and heat on medium until hot. Smash the garlic cube and fry in the oil until brown, do not burn. Remove the garlic when browner and fry the onions until caramelized. You should slice the onion thin enough that they almost dissolve in the oil. Empty the can of tomatoes into the seasoned oil, chop the whole tomatoes with a wooden spatula until the sauce is evenly chunky. Add oregano, paprika, salt and pepper until you reach desired taste. Now that is a great sauce.

Cheese: I like different style pizza. Although most pizza used grated mozzarella, I like chunky mozzarella. Instead of grating the cheese, tear into little ovals. You’ll notice by doing this, you’re not robbing yourself of any flavors, both the sauce and cheese will be on display, and not a nasty film layer of cheese.

Now that we have that down, we need to tackle the challenge of forming the pizza. Whatever surface you’re working on, make sure you add a dusting of flour, it keeps the dough from sticking. You really have to play with the dough to get a flat circle. I put the dough right on the pizza stone and use a rolling-pin to flatten it. Major point: make sure your dough is as flat and spread out as possible. If it isn’t, the yeast in the dough will ruin your pie. Don’t be afraid to stretch it out so thin that it looks translucent.

Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and bake for 25 minutes until the crust hardens. Be careful, the pizza can burn quickly and easily after it starts to bake. I added crumbled sausage to this as well.

Once that bitch is heating up, time to work on the display of your pie. I’m not going to go into anymore detail, enjoy the pictures. Stay hungry my friends.

I did..and I have.

Imagine a primo hoagie in a dish. You don’t have to share a bite of your precious hoagie with anyone, it’s all in a bowl, and all for you. You can take as much as you want or as little as you want. Not as much capicola and more cheese? More lettuce and tomato and less salami? It all depends on how much you want on your baguette. You want to know how to make it? I’m sure you do, here goes:

I recommend going out and getting the good Italian meats for this one. Although Boar’s Head is really good, I think Thumann’s is better. You can pick this brand up at your local BJ’s deli, they are the only super market that carries it, it is also the brand of meat Primo’s uses. Although the specialty meats are more expensive than your generic store brand, you’ll only be buying each meat by the 1/4 pound, so loosen the belt on your pennies and nickles.

Hoagie...dip...

• 1/4 pound sharp provolone cheese
• 1/4 pound hot capicola ham
• 1/4 pound cooked salami
• 1/4 pound mortadella
• 1/2 cup hot cherry peppers
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise
• oregano
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 10 small cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 head iceberg lettuce
• 2 rolls of seeded baguette bread

I suggest investing in a food processor for this, or a really good knife. Chop or process the meat, cheese, peppers lettuce and tomatoes into small pieces. Be careful with the food processor, you don’t want grains of meat, but nice small chunks. Also, I suggest using a knife to chop the lettuce, it’s just easier. Once you’re done with all of that, add the mayonnaise to the dish and mixed up the chopped ingredients. Mix around until the mixture thickens. Now here is the difficult part, make your dip taste like a hoagie. Add the olive oil and vinegar and continue to mix. Now, continue to add oregano until you get that true Italian hoagie feel. Done yet? Ya done?

Take your baguette bread and slice into several thin cylinders, this will be your dipping utensil. It takes a few cracks at perfecting it, but I finally have it down. Questions? EAT.

Stay hungry my friends.

I’ve been getting soft around the mid-section over the past few weeks and I decided that I was going to make myself a soup that I would recycle over a few days to halt my appetite. I was pretty much in the mood for something cheesy and thick enough to be considered a meal. In addition to being bored after work, I also took inventory of my closet and fridge and decided I was going to make turn a common soup into an uncommon meal.

I was going through popular soups in my head and after taking inventory in my house and I found a couple of cans of Campbell’s cheddar soup base lying around the pantry closet. What could I do with that? After some brainstorming, I remembered back in my college food court, people loved the broccoli cheddar soup that was usually available on Tuesday and Thursday each week. To tell you the truth, I like broccoli cheddar soup; but sometimes, the broccoli ends up taking over the cheddar part. Who wants a soup that tastes like broccoli with some cheese dropped on it? I think the marriage of broccoli and cheddar is a good one and a popular one. However, I’ve decided to throw a wrench into the equation.

Question: How can I maintain cheese flavor level with presence of broccoli?

Answer: Add more shit.

I call my creation: Chicken Cheddar Chowder. Yes, I even thought hard about the name, soups with the word “broccoli” in the name definitely make it less appealing in my opinion.

It looks green (Insert thumbs down with a fart noise).

I took two chicken breasts and cooked them in a small frying pan with a little bit of olive oil, cut into cubes and set those aside. I took two white onions, peeled and chopped them into rings. Once I was done preparing the onions, I pulled out my dominant cast iron frying pan and added some oil while turning up the heat all the way to hell temperature. That’s right, once the that baby heated up real nice and the oil swirled around like water, I dropped in the onions and began to let them caramelize. Fried onions in a soup? I’ll give you two reasons: 1. We’re in the Philly area. 2. Have you ever eaten a fried onion? It’s like sugar candy, and I will be counting on that sugar flavor to neutralize the acidity in the cheddar and allow the broccoli flower bastards not to take over as well.

Then I got creative. How good is anything that is fried? Or for that matter, caramelized? I then proceeded to toss in some sliced carrots and sliced mushrooms into the frying onions and oil. Fried carrots are absolutely phenomenal. They are already sweet to begin with, but when you bring out the OTHER natural sugars out of it, you’d eat more carrots than Bugs Bunny.

Friends swimming together in harmony.

Once all of those ingredients softened up, I transferred the mushrooms, carrots and onions into a huge frying pan, and then added some chopped broccoli and chicken and turned the heat up to about medium low, don’t want to burn anything. While that’s going, I took a can of condensed Campbell’s cheddar soup base, added it to a pot and then a cup’s worth of 2%

Soup...mmm.

milk and brought it to a boil. When at a boil, I took the pan of beautiful fried vegetables and fornicated it with the boiling cheddar soup base. Once that simmered for a while, I took a taste and decided it was a success! I drowned out the broccoli flavor and maintained the cheesy flavor, but the sweetness of the fried vegetables made the chowder too sweet. What should you do if you run into that debacle? 1 answer: Srichacha hot sauce. Add this to your soup (or anything) and it will guarantee to add much-needed heat.  Heck, it even changes the color of your concoction. I added about 3 healthy squirts to the soup and I thought I had perfected it. I took another taste and I realized it was still missing something…

It was hot, bittersweet and filled with flavor, but it was missing something still…

Back to the pantry and then my eyes widened up real big and I literally questioned myself out loud “Really?”Animal crackers? Well they’re not a cookie or a cracker and are definitely sweeter than they are salty. I took a handful, crushed them up and then questionably sprinkled them on to the top of the piping chowder.

And here is our finished product. Stay hungry my friends.

Hearty, thick and cheesy.

I’m sure whatever followers I once had are off following other food blogs, but it’s time to reel you back in. It’s now Fall of 2010 and I’ve put on some poundage this past Summer because I feel like everywhere I’ve gone over the past few months, I’ve been required to eat in excess. Now that I’m checking back in, I wanted to let you all know what I’ve been up to.

When you think of Summer, you should think of barbecues, baseball and beer; if you don’t, you’re not human, you’re a criminal.

To quote the movie “Heat”…

“Don’t you want to live a normal life”?

“What’s That? Barbecues and ball games”?

“Yeah.”

Something like that. Anyway, since the weather has been incredibly hot in the South Jersey area these past few months, I’ve taken my skills outside (and not to South Beach, dumbass) to master my outdoor Char-Broil grill. Everybody knows how to grill hamburgers, hot dogs and sausage; but, I’ve decided to tackle something else. Something…more sophisticated. Something… exquisite and fragile. Something…sacred and globally respected…

I’m working on improving my nut graf skills everyone and I’m not all there yet, so I’ll just tell you what I made.

PIZZA! “Wise man once said, ‘Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.’” Pizza might be the most diverse item you can eat throughout the entire world. There is an almost endless array of toppings you can place on a pizza, ranging from no topping to having every square inch covered with something delicious, and depending on how fat you really are, stuffed crust. I’ve never met a person who didn’t like pizza, but I’ve met some people who don’t care what it tastes like. Reminds me of that Miller Lite commercial where the bartender gives the guy a beer with no label and he ends up walking away with a thong wedgie because he didn’t care about the taste. Not sure I blame that guy because Miller Lite is terrible, but let’s not get too far off topic.

Yes, everybody loves pizza. Traditional forms of making a pizza consist of baking in a brick oven, coal oven and pizza oven, all of which I believe give the pie a different taste. But if you know me, I always take the road less-taken and decided to make grilled pizza.

It was mid-morning on the day of the World Cup final, and I decided to get going since some people were coming over. Like a good foodie believes, fresh ingredients are key to a legit dish.

The first thing I did was make fresh dough in my bread-maker. You’re up the creek if you don’t have a good crust. Much like a hoagie, the bread is the most important component.

While that was going, I decided to make a fresh pizza sauce. I’ll have to admit I didn’t squash the tomatoes myself, but I made do with what I had. I put a little oil in a pan, fried some fresh garlic, minced white onion and shaved a half carrot for extra flavor. Once that was all browned and the garlic flavors molded together in the oil, I added the tomatoes. Personally, I enjoy a thick pizza sauce, so I used about a 1/4 can of fire-r0asted tomatoes for the thickness. Then the not-so secret ingredient: A whole, ripe and beautiful San Marzano tomato. For those of you who are not aware of what a San Marzano tomato is, these are tomatoes that grow in the volcanic soil on the sides of Mt. Vesuvius, Naples, Italy. (Fitting that I am a Neapolitan Italian). The San Marzano tomato is the best tasting tomato I’ve ever had, and it really amplified the pizza sauce, and you can pick them up at Wegman’s or Genuardi’s supermarkets.

I brought the sauce to a boil and made sure the tomatos and oil, onion, garlic and carrot meshed like PBJ, and then started adding spices. I added fresh oregano and basil that my parents bottled from our garden to the sauce. The point of basil is to make your sauce taste fresh and light and the oregano gives the sauce an extra bite at the same time.

The bread finally finished and my sauce is now simmering. What’s next you ask? Toppings!

Personally, I enjoy sausage on my pizza, but not traditional sliced sausage. I really like crumbled sausage. So, I took fresh garlic and basil stuffed sausage and removed it from the casing. Then I put it in a pan with a little oil and cooked it crumbled.

What’s next? A good cheese, and what’s better than fresh mozzarella? I had some fresh mozzarella in water that was in my fridge and decided to use that. In my house hold, that’s pronounced “moozadel.” I could never get away in public saying it like that, but It’s awesome that it comes out of my mom and her side of the family’s mouths naturally. Sick.

And again as I’m untraditional, I didn’t shred the cheese, I cut the cheese into thin slices. This way, you can layer the cheese throughout the pizza and not have the cheese overtake the taste of the sauce. I made pizzas in the Boston Pizza restaurant for about 8 months after I graduated college and a making a good-looking pie is no easy feat, it took me time to perfect it.

Now that we have all of our ingredients, we face our feat: Baking the dough on the grill. This is the single-handedly most difficult debacle I’ve had to command and conquer in my short cooking career. Since the grill is a gas grill that cooks over a heated grate, I had to make sure that the dough wouldn’t seep through the cracks and become abominated by the residue on top of the flame.

And I won. Since the grill is square and pizza is traditionally round, I improvised and made an oval shaped dough pie. I Before turning the heat on (and of course that was another challenge on it’s own), I added a coat of olive oil on the bottom side of the dough. Olive oil is a thick substance that is great because it will prevent the dough from burning when I turn on the heat. If you end up doing this, make sure you had a good helping, the dough can burn quickly.

Now that the dough was oiled up and ready to go, I turned the flame on high. The objective is to get the bottom of the dough hardened quickly so it doesn’t fall through the cracks and so that we can add our sauce, cheese and toppings.

Ready, set, GO! After about 2 minutes, the bottom of the dough hardened and you could lift up off the grill as a solid, flat piece of bread. Success! I then lowered the heat so that we could get a nice, well-done crust. I then added the sauce, cheese and toppings. 20 minutes later, I took a beautiful, well-done pie off the grill and served to my friends.

Sorry I was a bit long-winded today, but I expect to continue my upkeep of this blog because I’m hungry, all the time. Stay hungry my friends.

Thanks to my food photographer, Jess E.

I’ts been a few days and thought I’d tell you what I’ve been up to. I recently received and email from Jake’s Cheesesteak’s in Philadelphia, they are a commencing a contest for a new cheesesteak item to put on their menu. They give you a list of items to play around with and if they like your steak, it will not only become their new menu item, but you will receive free cheesesteaks for an entire year!

So far, here is what I’m up against:

Pork Bomb: Steak and Pork mixed together with fried onions, roasted peppers & sharp provolone.

I don’t think that Steak and Pork will mix together. I’ve heard of 2,3, 4 cheeses, but not 2 or 3 meats.

No Shame: 3-cheese, fried onions, mushrooms, roasted peppers, grilled tomatoes, lettuce & mayo

This is a respectable steak, but it’s as generic as you can get. Sounds more like a health sandwhich with all the vegetables.

The Comcastic!: Not specific on toppings – “just make it bigger and better than everything else out there!”

Come on, i’m not going to knock my workplace, but thanks for trying?

The Philabuster: “Steak with Bacon, Mushrooms & Whiz!!! The Philabuster!!!!”

Whoever did this probably likes to put bacon on everything. I’ll give this sandwhich credit, but I don’t know about the Whiz and Mushrooms, I would have put spinach and Whiz together for sure.

Alright folks, I spoke to a couple of my fellow goomba’s and am starting to feel really good about my entry. I call it:

The Philly Sharp

Here’s how to make it:

Take a seeded, South Philadelphia long roll and and line the inside with horseradish. Then, place sharp provolone wedges over top of the horseradish, have you ever heard horseradish cheese? It’s incredible. Then, pile on the steak. After that, mix fried onions and mushrooms together and put that on top of the steak. Once that’s on there, mix garlic and spinach and put that on top of the mushrooms and onions. To seal the greatness inside, melt provolone cheese above that, top with strips of roasted peppers and you have yourself the Philly Sharp.

I’d really like to hear your comments about this, it took me half the morning to figure this out. Let me know what you think, I think it’s unique and the flavors thrown together will meld every so gloriously.