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Today
is Doyle’s 30-year anniversary appearing on WILL. On July 2,
1977, he did an interview on what he does for the Fourth of
July. He thought today might be an opportunity to revisit that
topic. Thirty years ago, it was simply hot dogs and hamburgers,
though Doyle went to one event where there was roast lamb (in
the Greek style) at a pool party. Hamburgers might have a layer
of blue cheese in them, that was about as exotic as people got
in 1977.
The
Fourth remains an occasion for celebration, usually some sort of
outdoor picnic type of activity. What are you going to have?
What do you do for the Fourth of July?
MAKE IT AN OCCASION
Get an
oriental rug and put it outside instead of sitting on a beach
blanket; it will feel like you’re having a party. Use crystal
and real silver.
A
NEW QUICHE
Doyle
is going to a friend’s house, but he is going to make a dish for
a “pitch in”, a new quiche recipe.
-
1 onion, chopped (not too finely)
-
1 large zucchini, chopped
-
1 yellow squash, chopped
-
½ red pepper, chopped
-
pie crust (deep dish)
-
2 eggs
-
1 cup fat-free half-and-half
-
3 Tbsp pesto*
-
1 Tbsp corn starch
-
½ to 1½ cups cheese, gruyère or baby swiss
Sauté
the onion until it turns a little brown, don’t burn it. Add the
zucchini and squash and sauté them. Add the red pepper and
sauté the mixture. Set aside to cool. Blind cook the pie
crust.
Prepare the wet ingredients: mix together the eggs,
half-and-half, and pesto. Add the corn starch to the wet
ingredients, and then a “whole lot” of cheese (the recipe just
calls for ½ cup, but Doyle uses as much as 1½ cups.
Drop
the vegetables into the wet ingredients, and pour into the pie
crust. Cook at 350° for 25 minutes. This is easy, and you can
cook it ahead of time.
*You
have Doyle’s permission to buy ready-made pesto. A good brand,
very rich, is San Remo, which is available at Art Mart and
perhaps elsewhere. There is also a good pesto available at
Sam’s Club, though it’s a large amount.
A
caller from Downs prepares a very similar quiche, but using
Swiss chard. She sautés the stalks (ribs) of the chard with the
onion, and uses just zucchini (no squash). The chard is chopped
and added to the sauté pan at the end just to wilt it, and then
thrown in the crust with the liquids. She hasn’t used pesto,
but it sounds good. Her recipe uses milk instead of
half-and-half, and gruyère cheese.
PIZZA AND FOCACCIA
Last month’s recipe for grilled pizza
dough led to a discussion of how Doyle uses the same recipe
for focaccia. There is no difference from pizza dough, and in
the long run it is cooked the same way, but the preparation is a
little different. After you’ve let the dough rise for about 30
minutes, you spread it out in a pan (half of a baking sheet
works). With your fingers, poke dimples in it, then pour olive
oil and smear it around, and then figure out what you want to
add. Last night Doyle used fennel seeds a bit of salt; a few
days before he used caraway seeds. If you go ahead and put
vegetables and other toppings on it, you’ve got pizza. Chopped
olives available at Schnuck’s are good smeared on top, with a
few sun-dried tomatoes. No cheese is necessary.
Looking for a Fourth of July pizza? Tomatoes and mozzarella
cheese give you the red and white, but what’s blue?
Blueberries wouldn’t really work. Perhaps eggplant? Jay Pierce
suggests using mozzarella, tomato, and blue corn chips.
Mozzarella melted over blue corn chips should be good. So our
Fourth of July pizza is blue corn chip pizza with sun-dried
tomatoes. A caller suggested using blue cheese on that pizza.
ICE
CREAM
A
caller recalled Fourth of July celebrations in Yorkville where
they made homemade ice cream by hand. You’d wait for hours,
people would change off on the cranking. After all that work,
you’d get just one dip. You had to break up the ice in a gunny
sack, and use rock salt.
A
caller from Urbana reports that her family made homemade ice
cream because they had a peach tree. There is no better thing
to eat than real ice cream made the old fashioned way with
peaches ripe off the tree.
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
Doyle’s childhood Fourth of July celebrations always included
watermelon, served in pie tins. Only family. Not a whole lot
of celebration.
CURES FOR GARLIC
A
caller from Champaign asked about the use of garlic years ago.
It seems that garlic is now in everything when you eat out, but
she does not care for garlic. It is difficult to eat in
restaurants because they put garlic in everything.
A
caller from Urbana reports that she used to be bothered by gas
when eating hot onion soup, garlic, chili. But she thought, you
can use lemon juice to remove the odor of onions from your
hands, perhaps whatever it does will work internally too. So
now whenever she cooks these ingredients, she adds a bit of
lemon juice to the recipe, and sure enough, those foods no
longer bother her. Perhaps people who object to garlic and
onions do so because their digestive systems react this way.
But some people just don’t like the taste.
Roasting garlic does moderate the taste. 40 Cloves of garlic
chicken: baked and cooked with the chicken, the garlic mellows
down and gets very soft, doesn’t have that hard-hitting flavor.
SERBIAN POTATO SALAD
A
caller from Urbana once attended a picnic that some Serbian
friends had. They made a simple potato salad with hot
potatoes, fresh sliced raw onions, and oil and vinegar and salt
and pepper, that was it. When potatoes are hot, they soak up
the vinegar. Hot potatoes and cold onions were a nice
contrast. Very flavorful.
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