All Entries Tagged With: "Sausage"
Making Pizza from Scratch: Sausage, Fennel and Olive Pizza (Part 5 of 5)
Out of the four pizzas that the seniors made in the South Arm Cooking Club for seniors, I like this most. Perhaps, it’s the cooked sausage and sauteed onions and fennels which gives this pizza a lot of flavours. Joyce, Karen and Sydney worked together to make make this pizza.
Although I’m not a fan of olives, I find that the taste of these black olives is quite mild. I love the sweetness from the sauteed fennel and onion and a hint of spiciness from the Italian sausages. This Sausage, Fennel and Olive Pizza gets the thumbs up from me.
Ingredients
- 2 Italian sausages
- 1 red onion, sliced
- 1 fennel bulb, sliced
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 pizza dough
- 1/2 cup pizza sauce
- 1/3 cup black olives, sliced
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Washington DC: Ben’s Chili Bowl
Despite the name of this post, nope, this is not about my recipe. This is about an unpretentious eating place which had turned out to be a Washington DC landmark and had been here since 1958.
We went to Ben’s Chili Bowl right after our visit to the Library of Congress. We had actually wanted to also visit the US Mint too but … oh wow … those guys at the US Mint did not allow anyone who has a camera in. They don’t care if you put it in your bag, or even take out the batteries but if you have a camera, they won’t let you in. They don’t even have lockers for you to lock up your camera. Ooops … I digressed … back to food.
Sorry if I don’t understand food like hot dogs and sausages. What amazes me is how a place like Ben’s Chili Bowl had become such a landmark of a national capital. If I am not mistaken, I recall someone (Jason?) remarked on chowtimes that the food here is over-rated. I think that observation is right. But then it is still a great place to grab a quick bite.
Judging from the looks of the place, this is certainly a local favourite. Lots of people for sure but the place is larger than the looks from the outside and the table turnaround is very quick. I see quite a lot of office workers (or at least they look like office workers) here.
I read that Ben’s Chili Bowl had always looked the same right down to the furnitures, menu and look for the past 50 years.
Bill Cosby made Ben’s Chili Bowl famous around the world. Story has that this cheap guy brought his future wife to Ben’s Chili Bowl on dates. And that is dates with a “s”. He had also often had press conferences at this restaurant. That is why there is a posted sign here that says here a list of customers who can eat here for free … and that list has two lines: “Bill Cosby” and in capitals “NO ONE ELSE”.
Oh I went into their washroom and guess what I found. They actually provide chalks and encourage customers to draw grafitti on their walls!
The above is the food that makes Ben’s Chili Bowl famous — the Chili Half Smoke. I am not sure why they called it a half smoke as I can clearly see they grill the sausages. Anyway, a Half Smoke is basically a larger, meaner, coarser version of a sausage with more spices.
It is topped with chili con carne and diced onions … lots and lots of it. It came with sides of potato chips which I wished was fries. The above costs $4.95.
Eating this is messy — really messy. They gave us an unbelievable number of serviettes. It’s like they gave us a stack of four or five for each order item we had. The Chili Half Smoke is impossible to be eaten by hands. You really want to use the fork and knife they provide.
We also ordered the $4.95 Chili Cheese Fries. This is the most wicked looking fries. You can just get your arteries blocked just by looking at it. But they were absolutely delicous. Again, you need the fork for this. You can use your hands but it will be like eating, say, gumbo with your hands. LOL!
The above Chili Cheeseburger was my order … $5. Again it came with plastic knife and fork. It certainly had lots of meat in here. What I like best about the food here is the chili corn carne used as they made them more moist and juicier (I hate dry looking burgers and hotdogs).
We washed, or at least tried to wash it down with their famous Milkshake. It was awfully thick but noticed that it was not too sweet — ah, at least they have one healthy item on their menu. LOL!
On a side note … what do you guys think of the new chowtimes look? I had been playing around with this new template the entire weekend and I like it — clean lines and I could now change the colors with just a click! (OK, I admit I am a sucker for things like this).
And, could you please take a second or two to respond to the poll on the sidebar? I wanted to take a temperature check on what I should do with this Travel series. Cheers!
Taiwanese Pork Sausage
Lorna did it again. She amazed the cooking club by showing us how to make Taiwanese Pork Sausage. The Taiwanese Pork Sausage was fragranted with cinnamon. It is not the regular cinnamon powder we normally used for baking. Lorna bought the cinnamon powder from Chinese herbal shop (known as ‘yoke kwai’ in Cantonese). It is quite an expensive herb as two teaspoons cost $7.
The Taiwanese Pork Sausage can be baked, pan fried or grilled. The photo below is the baked version.
Ingredients
- 13 lbs port butt (ask the butcher to cut 12 lbs into small cubes and the remaining pound minced)
- 2 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 cup rice wine
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
- 4 1/2 tablespoons salt
- 1/2 cup garlic powder
- sausage skin (enough for 60 sausages)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons of Taiwanese Soy Sauce Paste (optional)
Lorna bought the sausage skin which is the pig small intestines from this meat shop in North Burnaby.
- Supreme Meat Company Ltd
- 1725 McDonald Ave
- North Burnaby
The sausage skin is preserved in salt and has to be rinsed thoroughly before use. Any remaining sausage skin can be preserved in salt and stored in the refrigerator for a few months.
Click on the link below for the instructions.
Casserole Sausage Rice
Everything has an end — except for a sausage which has two.
~ Danish Proverb
This was what Suanne made for dinner yesterday. She found the recipe from the internet. It has been one of the more frequently made dish at home. Suanne says that she likes to make this dish is because this is the only way she can make Nanzaro eat carrots. Here is how it looks like:
It’s quite an easy meal to make. It will take about 1.5 hrs in all, including baking and preparation time. It’s has everything one needs for nutrition … vegetables, meat, carbohydrates … all in one pot. Cleaning is also easy because it’s just one casserole and dry plates to wash. Email Suanne if you want the recipe.
