Road trip to Chicago

Yes, it was a bit since the last blog, but a nice trip to Chicago ran Tuesday's post aground.  We started on Friday afternoon and drove our way all the way there, and it took about 5 hours on Friday.  We drove our way in and ate at what is supposed to be the best of Chicago style pizza pie.  It is also interesting to note that Chicago now serves thin crust pizza.  They still call it Chicago style, even thought it is really St. Louis style. 

It was about 9pm, we got a seat for the seven of us and we ordered.  It took about 45 minutes for our 35 minute order to come to us, which seemed to be entirely our server's fault, considering that the first pizza was pretty warm and not hot at all.

We ordered a Tropical Pizza, which is basically a Hawaiian Pizza and we ordered a veggie one.  I only had time to try the Tropical one and this is why:  I normally do like to eat a lot of food, but my body is not used nor does it like to eat food after 9pm.  I'm one of those old fashioned St. Louis natives where 6pm was dinner time and sometimes it went to 7pm, but that was it.  My wife and I normally have our dinner over by 8 and we are getting the kids to bed by 9 so we are not used to dinners after 9pm.  So, anyways, the pizza came and it was huge.

So, you have a giant pizza that is about 2 inches thick.  How thick was that?  Take a look...

So, what we have here, is a thick slice of pie, that has some pineapple and Canadian bacon on it and lots of cheese.  The crust was actually tasting more like a biscuit dough and didn't have that pizza crush flavor at all.  Call me anything you want, but I wasn't crazy about it.

Later on in the trip, besides many trips to the Hellish Golden Arches, we ate at the fantastic Weber Grill.  We saw the restaurant featured on foot network and we had to go and see for ourselves.  This is what I saw:

The cook's line had your basic setup of fries, oven and steamers for certain things and then had about 5 of these giant grills.  I watched the cook as he would check the computer screen for the next order, make a burger or two and then lift the lid and place it on the grill and close the lid quickly.  The fans over the line were always on, making it a very loud cook's line.  The rest all gathered their foods from a side of the line that was also open to the customers and one stood to expidite orders. 

So, in a grill restaurant what did I pick?  Burgers are the norm so I picked something strange to cook on a grill: meatloaf.

I have no idea how they cooked meatloaf, over a hot grill with flames and left it as juicy and moist as it was.  It was awesome as well.  I gave it a 5 out of 5 as it tasted like your best home made meatloaf but had the wonderful charred flavoring and was just perfect.

So, my thought is that if you are looking to get impressed and have time to enjoy yourself: go to the Weber Grill.

It goes together like banana and strawberry...

Does banana and strawberry really go well together?  I don't know when the pairing of those two fruits first came to be. So they say that bananas were first domesticated about 5,000 years BC.  The strawberry that we know, was the result of a crossbreed from two different types, and was done in France in 1740.  So, I would guess that the first strawberry was eaten with a banana, maybe in 1740 in France. 

Now, what did or what could that duo of flavors have tasted like?  Maybe something like this:

Well, what is it?  That, which may not look like much, is my strawberry and banana pie.  Here is what I did:

These are my bananas and I took some softening strawberries:

I made some simple pie crust: ice water, flour and butter

Okay, as anyone does with a pie, made the dough, placed it in the dish, cooked it for 15 minutes at 355 degrees F with a piece of foil on the bottom, then removed it and cooked it for another 15 minutes.  Then sliced the bananas first and layered as much of the strawberries I could, into the dish.  Covering it wish some another piece of dough and into the oven it went for 45 minutes.  What came out wasn't necessarily the best looking item, but was a very, VERY, tasty treat.  If you want more info or the recipe for the pie dough, email me.

Sugar free and low GL apple pie

Ever since my father-in-law found out that he had diabetics, I found it a little bit hard on him.  Meaning: as a chef, I enjoy it best when other people enjoy my food and meeting people who can't eat this or that because they physically cannot take it then it makes me sad and inspires me to do something about it.  I met a man who was type 1 and he was telling me how he loves to eat things that are really bad for him.  Like he loves to eat cookies but they could potentially kill him.  So what do you do?  Experiment.

 Have you tried to eat one of those sugar-free cookies that you can buy at the store?  The sugar-free chocolate chip cookies taste like someone sprayed a pieces of cardboard with a chocolate scent.  It tastes nothing like a cookie should and that is a problem.  In regards to what I made last night, pie, I know people who always wanted an apple pie, but can't have it because of the sugar.  We are not just talking the added sugar and brown sugar but also the natural sugars in the flours and such. What I did, was make a pie crust, from scratch and then make filling from scratch, both with no sugar and low GL's.

Things like all-purpose flour and other grains have a high carb content and also have a high glycemic load, so it takes longer for your body to break down the sugars.  So, replacing your all-purpose flour which has a GL of 66 per cup with something like whole wheat flour which has a GL of 44 per cup and barley flour which has about 28 GL per cup, definitely reduces the overall GL's. So about 2 cups of flour go into the dough and instead of having 132 GL's in the total crust, I had 71 GL's, which is a considerable difference.  I also replaced all sugar with truvia and added extra cinnamon, which was enough to completely take out those added calories and GL's.  So, that cup of sugar was replaced with Truvia.  So that was 774 calories, about, and about 139 calories that was flat out removed.  Everything else was the same except I did add one teaspoon of molasses,  which added about 20 calories and 3 GL's. 

 How did it taste?  Well, if you love apple pie because of the super sweet sugary taste, then you would not have liked it. But if you like apple pie because of the apples, flaky crust and spices, then you would have liked this.  I made a perfect crust, but because the whole wheat flour became more crumbly than normal, my wife called it an apple crumb pie, which seemed to fit.