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Yesterday I went to Ohio with Sander.

Every time I fly with Sander, the flight attendant has to make modifications to the seating plan to accommodate an ‘unbalanced weight.’

coincidence? I think not.

What I forgot to mention in that last post is my new passion for making pizza doughs. I tried a basic recipe off the internet… it was “eh” at best. Then I pulled one out of my Beard on Bread book. It was delicious… but didn’t have the structure I was hoping for.

Earlier today you read about the DiDonato Italian Feast. Helping out at this event was Chef Sarah. After I got my pizza stone I sent her a question about how to make a good dough. She wrote back with the following:

Funny that you mention pizza dough. I literally used to have to make it every Saturday and Sunday morning when I worked at Tresca in the North End. I don’t really have the exact measurements because I kind of put ingredients together and based a “good” dough on texture and sight, but I can tell you secrets:

Always allow your yeast to “come alive” in warm water (110 degrees) with a little sugar.

Make that your first job and set aside until you see foam at the top of your bowl. This means the yeast is active. Then, in a separate bowl combine flour, salt and yeast mixture. (If you have a kitchen aid with a dough hook perfect, but if you don’t do not be discouraged.) By the time you are done incorporating all of the flour necessary you should have a ball of dough that is wet but not wet enough to stick to your hands in full. What I mean is if you placed the palm of your hand in the center of the dough ball and raised it the dough would stick to a point but would eventually fall back into the ball.

As soon as you are done with this step, taste a bit of the dough. You will be able to tell if there is or is not enough salt according to your individual palate. If there isn’t, don’t worry. Add a little more and knead until completely incorporated. Once incorporated coat a large container or bowl with a small amount of olive oil. Roll the dough around in the container and cover. Place in a humid environment - the microwave is awesome if you do not have a shelf warm enough above your stove - and set until the dough doubles in size.

Take out and punch down. Put back in or on the microwave or shelf and again allow to double in size. Once it has doubled, you are ready to form the dough onto a baking sheet, stone, pie plate, whatever you have. So the dough does not stick after it comes out of the oven, sprinkle liberal amounts of semolina on the bottom of your “pan” of choice before forming the shape of the pizza.

Once you have formed the dough proof one last time again in a warm environment. This time don’t cover it. Allow to double. Without punching down and making sure you don’t, carefully cover the dough with toppings of choice. Leave about 1″ the circumference free of toppings . (I would suggest if you like vegetables on the pizza blanch, saute or roast them first because it does not take long for the pizza to cook and you’ll end up with crunchy vegetables) Bake in the oven at 375 until the dough is a gold, uniform, color and the cheese begins to bubble. Take out and set on a cooling wrack for at least 10 minutes. For best results of a gold, uniform color on your crust make sure to gently brush the edges with olive oil before baking.

Using some of Chef Sarah’s tips… I made a fantastic pizza.

I recently got a pizza stone and a pizza peel, and I’ve probably talked about both on this website. As I sifted through my photographs, I realized that I had this picture of a pizza I made pre-stone. Check it out!

I’ll have to snag a picture of a pizza one of these days to show you how it comes out when made on a stone.

You’ll need this.

Oh delicious food
How I ache for your sweet taste
Please stop tempting me.

Spinach and Mozzarella Polenta
with roasted vegetables, herbs, and balsamic

Roasting must be one of the simplest of all cooking techniques. It reinforces the idea that when good quality ingredients are used, very little has to be done to them. It brings out the natural sweetness of the vegetables and here this is complemented by the contrasting, oaky flavor of balsamic vinegar. Include as many different colored vegetable as possible, cut them into different shapes and don’t be tempted to cook everything at once.

Polenta (cornmeal) rounds
5 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup polenta or yellow cornmeal
8 scallions, thinly sliced
4 oz. spinach, thinly sliced, about 1 cup
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 oz. mozzarella cheese, sliced

Roasted vegetables
1 ½ lb. butternut squash, peeled, cut in half, with seeds removed
1 red Cubanelle pepper, halved and seeded, or regular bell pepper
1 yellow Cubanelle pepper, halved and seeded, or regular bell pepper
2 red onions, cut into wedges
1 whole head of garlic, cloves separated but skins left on
4 heads of baby fennel, quartered, or 2 medium heads, thickly sliced
A handful of thyme sprigs, stalks left on
A handful of oregano sprigs, stalks left on
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
¼ cup olive oil
8 oz. cherry tomatoes
15 asparagus spears
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 large baking trays, 14 x 9 inches
A cookie cutter, 3-inch diameter

SERVES 4

Instructions:

To make the polenta, put the butter, oil, and garlic in a medium saucepan. Cook lightly, then add the stock and bring to a boil. Pour in the polenta, beating constantly, and then add the scallions and spinach. Add salt and pepper to taste, and then continue stirring. Cook as instructed on the polenta package – the time will vary depending on the type of polenta used. Spoon into one of the baking trays and set aside for about 2 hours, or until firm to the touch.

To cook the vegetables, put all the vegetables, except the tomatoes and asparagus, on the second baking tray. Sprinkle with the herbs, o9live oil, salt, and pepper and mix well. Roast in a preheated oven at 400F for 30 minutes, and then stir in the tomatoes and asparagus. Continue cooking for a further 20 minutes until all the vegetables are tender.

Invert the polenta onto a work surface and cut out 8 rounds with the cookie cutter. Brush the baking tray with olive oil and arrange the rounds on the tray. Tope each round with a slice of mozzarella and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

Put 2 rounds of polenta on each plate, add the roasted vegetables, and then sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Serve immediately.

Variation

Try this with chunks of eggplant, carrots, zucchini, patty pan squash, or sweet potatoes.

Notes:
• We used “instant” polenta, made in 3 minutes, dropped in the fridge while the vegetables were roasting. Worked great.
• Butternut squash are big, you don’t need much. We only used half of one “medium” sized one, and it was plenty.
• Used regular bell peppers since Cubanelle weren’t at the store
• 2 red onions is a lot. Use small onions.
• Used 2 medium fennel bulbs. It was a ton. 2 small is probably fine unless you LOVE fennel
• We used all dry spices since we already had them. Seemed fine.
• Used large tomatoes diced instead of cherry tomatoes since we had them around.
• The vegetable tray was LOADED while roasting. The bigger the tray you have the better. Pre-mix everything in a HUGE bowl, it will help a lot with homogenizing the seasonings (and help with NOT dropping a ton of stuff on the floor – trust me).
• Round cookie cutters are boring (you’ll see what I mean)
• We think it serves 6

On a recent Sunday I headed back to Boston where my family was meeting for a cooking event of epic proportions.

The D’s: Me, Dad D, Mom D, Alicia D-P, Dwane P, and Tree D were accompanied by my Uncle John, Family Friends Peter and Joan, and College Friends Tom & Mykal.

The venue? Eurostove in Beverly Mass.

The food? Italian.

We arrived around 2:30 and got started pretty much right away. Susan Lacy, a woman of incredible culinary skill, lead us in a mass cooking party. We made intense tuna salads, oysters, manicotti, honey balls, beef wraps… the list goes on.

Check out pictures… here!

Today’s April 720 event will be dedicated entirely to food. Delicious foods and stories of food.

Enjoy!

4. Peanuts are a legume.

Check it out here.

Dear Internet,

There it is. 744 posts. One an hour for the entire month of January 2008.

What a weird month. During a normal cycle of blogging, I find 20 minutes here or there to do posting for a day. This month… I would have five days in a row of no posting what-so-ever… and then sit down for 7 hours of post preparation in a single day. It was really annoying at times (the airport quiz? Good Heavens. that took freakin’ forever), but it was only a bit overwhelming for the last week or so. Most nights this last week required my staying up until 11:30 or 12:00 to get the next day ready to go. Not Cool.

Will I do this again? Never. Not a chance. First of all, the night posts were usually useless. If I were to ever do a mass posting event again, I would only schedule new content maybe from… 7am to 7pm. Those appear to be the hours that most people read. Heck, had we done that we could have gone on for TWO straight months.

A few people asked if I’d be so worn out by the marathon of posting if I’d ever get on the computer to put a post up again. Is this the end of MikeDiDonato.com? Nah. probably not. Even during all the mayhem I’d occasionally wish that I didn’t have automatic posts scheduled because I had some wild story to share. So there will be more in store on this website.

When can you expect the next update? Well. It won’t be in an hour. That’s for sure. I may take a day or two off to let the smoke settle. Either way I’ll probably be back in the normal schedule within a week.

Thanks again to all the readers and contributors. I hope you had loads o’ fun.

We’ll talk soon,
Mike D.

If I ever do a full month of posts again* I’m doing it in February.

*I won’t.

I sincerely apologize for inflicting this idiot scheme upon you all. — Mike D

I sincerely apologize for thinking up this idiotic scheme. — Ryan Schenk

Yes. In fact, the last week required four consecutive nights staying up until well past Midnight to get the posts ready for the next day. Ugh. Obnoxious. I hate 720.

This post was started 12 minutes before the hour it was suppose to get put up. It was actually scheduled… just two minutes before appearing. And even then, I read a mistake afterwards and had to change it four minutes after it appeared.

That readership went up. I was wholly expecting people to be overwhelmed by content. I really expected that by the end of January my readership would have dropped to new lows.

Were there any mistakes in 720?

Well yes. But nothing major. Occasionally I had a picturee that was posted incorrectly. And quite frequently I would forget to change the year of automatic posting. So instead of a post hiding in the depths of January 2008, waiting to appear magically at 4 in the morning…. it would randomly insert itself into 4am of January 2007. Oops.

The biggest error happened on January 10th. I mistakenly posted the picture of the Giraffe with a Cobra on its head a WHOLE DAY EARLY. Patrick even commented on it. Thankfully i fixed it within a few hours.

Were there any missed hours?

No.

Where there any double hours?

Actually yes. A few. I don’t remember which. so really, this was probably a 750 post month.

Interestingly, Google power seems to have dropped slightly over the month of January. Pre-January MikeDiDonato.com was coming up in the number three of number four spot on google searches for Mike D. Now, it’s five or six. Likewise, the common Britney Gallivan search resulted in this website at number 5 instead of the recent number four.

Oh Google. you are a tricky one.

I just found a way better graph that shows page visits and unique visitors. Check it out HERE.

January 1. BIO
January 2. Haiku
January 3. Recipe
January 4. CoolWord
January 5. T-shirt
January 6. Poptart
January 7. FreeSwim
January 8. Culture
January 9. Interesting
January 10 Brevitous
January 11 Love&BB
January 12 Airports
January 13 Poptarts
January 14 FreeSwim
January 15 HairStyle
Januray 16 Facial Hair
January 17 Name that Rock Riff
January 18 Bandname
January 19 Kurt
January 20 Poptarts
January 21 FreeSwim
January 22 Mom
January 23 ComicBook
January 24 KitGadge and Ink
January 25 BandNames
January 26 MnstTruck
January 27 Poptarts
January 28 FreeSwim
January 29 Tats&sngs
January 30 Leftovers
January 31 720recap

The quest for the ultimate band name has nearly come to a close. It’s now down to two bands.

Vote for your Favorite:

Same Day Surgery

versus.

Feast of Comets

Let the best bandname win.