Review of "The New Midwest Table" Cookbook by Amy Thielen

Bookmarked Recipes

As I said previously, I got a signed copy of the The New Midwestern Table Cookbook by Amy Thielen for Christmas from Auntie Shannon.  This is a cookbook with not only recipes in it, but stories and information that make it more than just a book full of recipes.

As you can see I've bookmarked the recipes I want to make.  Some as you can see are marked "This summer"  like the Northern Pike Cakes and Kalamojakka, simply because that when I can get fresh fish.  I also bookmark Wild Boar Sloppy Joes, not because I have any nor will I go out and buy any Wild Boar but the recipe says you can also use a ground venison beef mixture.  Which I do have in the freezer.  Little Grandma and I are also going to try our hand at making some Sauerkraut. I'm probably not going to wait for the Sauerkraut to get done before I make the Smoky Sauerkraut Soup.  But it should provide a nice contrast between store bought Sauerkraut flavor and the stuff we'll make.  Now the Cookbook is $35, which for me is on the high side of what I'll pay for a cookbook, so it's a good thing I got it as a present.  Having said that I would have really missed out on some great recipes, ideas, stories and knowledge because of my cheapness.

So reading a cookbook an actually making some of the recipes are completely different, so how have I found the recipes?  Well last night, I made the Cracker Crust Pizza, the Homemade Italian Sausage as well as the Tarte Flambee.  Now my boys love pizza and as Amy Thielen points out in the cookbook, in Minnesota we love thin crust pizza.  Now for just the three of us I made crust recipe twice.  There was pizza left over for breakfast for Cullen and lunch for Jim, but if the other two boys had been home I'd have had to probably quadruple the recipe and not had any left overs.

Cracker Crust Pizza 
(Adapted from The New Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen
First off pre-heat your oven to 500 degrees.  Yep, 500 degrees!  Which Amy points out is considerable lower than the 800-900 degrees that the New York style pizza requires.  Put your Pizza Stone in the oven at this time as well.

Pizza Dough
3/4 cup cool water
14 cup canola oil
1 tsp fie sea salt
2 cup + 2TBLS all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

Basically, I mixed the liquids and salt in the a bowl and added 1 cup of flour at a time.  Mixing well until all the flour is incorporated into the dough.  It was pretty easy peasie.  I split it into two (Amy recommends three), roll it into a ball an flatten it into a disk shape.  Let rest for 30 minutes.  You can let it rest for as much as 3 hours if something comes up.

Now she has a red pizza sauce recipe that sounds great, but calls for San Marzano tomatoes.  These are some truly great canned tomatoes and here in the Minneapolis area you can get them at Costco.  I didn't have any and wasn't up to running into Costco for just Tomatoes.  So instead of opting for some other type of tomato, I decided to just use the jar stuff from my grocery store - Classico.  I'll get the San Marzano tomatoes the next time I go to Costco and compare the two.

Homemade Italian Sausage 
1 pound of ground pork
1 1/2 tsp of fennel seeds (grind in you spice coffee grinder)
1 TBLS minced fresh Sage
2 tsp of sweet paprika
1 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper (Amy uses 1/8 tsp, but my family like spicy sausage)

Mix together with your recently washed hands.

Assembling your Pizza After you left your dough to rest bring out your parchment paper and a rolling pin. Put the dough between two sheets of parchment paper and roll it until it's between 12 - 14 inches in diameter.  I like this method with the parchment paper much better than flouring up my counter top/cutting board/kitchen and will try using in some of my other recipes.  Pinch the sides to make the crust much the same as you do making a pie crust.  Brush lightly with olive oil.

Cracker Crust Pizza with Homemade Italian Sausage

Spoon on sauce, spread with the back of you spoon.  Add sausage, fresh basil (if you have it), some slivers of yellow onion, sliced fresh mushrooms and mozzarella cheese.  Now Amy talks about using a pizza peel to transfer the pizza to your stone.  I just picked up the parchment paper and put in on my pizza stone.  I don't have room in my kitchen for a pizza peel and while the parchment paper gets a little brown this method works great.

I baked it for 10 minutes.  Amy says to bake it for 15-18 minutes and that made it too crispy for our taste.

Tarte Flambee

1/4 cup of Extra-virgin olive oil, for brushing and for a garnish
2 cups of whole-milk ricotta cheese
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1 1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Right from the oven Tarte Flambee with parchment paper

fine sea salt and fresh ground black pepper
2-3 slices of bacon sliced up into match sticks
1/2 Red onion, sliced up into slivers

Combine ricotta cheese, heavy cream and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese with a 1/2 tsp of the salt and pepper each.  (I had left over sauce and just put it in a container to be used later in the week for more pizza).  Pretty much assemble as above using the remaining ingredients.  I did add fresh spinach leaves as I like the favor profile with this type of pizza.  The only thing different from the above pizza is to be sure to finish it off with a drizzle of olive oil and black pepper.  I again only cooked this for 10 minutes instead of the 15-18 as instructed.  I also sliced my bacon pretty thin as I wanted to be sure it cooked.

Now I didn't copy these recipes exact, as I'm not sure about the copyright laws.  But there enough information here for you to replicate these recipes even so.  On the same hand I cannot say this enough, this cookbook is well worth it's $35 price tag.