Popovers!

One of my favorite restaurants in Maine, the Jordan Pond House, is famous for their homemade popovers. Popovers are a light hollow roll that is made from an eggy batter. If done correctly, they "pop" up while cooking, leaving the middle of the pastry filled with air. They are delicious served by themselves with butter and jam, or they can be stuffed with ice cream or chocolate to make a dessert, or with fish or meat to make an entree. The last time I was in Maine I bought a popover pan and popover mix, and today I finally attempted to make them.





A popover pan is similar to a muffin pan, except the cups are a little deeper, and they are separated to give the popovers room to expand. In theory, popovers can be made in a muffin pan, but I highly recommend a popover pan if you've never made them before.







Making the batter was very easy. I mixed 2/3rds cup milk with one egg, and then folded in 2/3rd cup of the popover mix I bought. I don't believe the store-bought mix is essential; since the only ingredients in it are flour and salt. There were a few tips on the side of the popover mix that were very helpful, however.

First of all, the egg(s) should be at room temperature before you use them.
Second, you should use whole milk instead of skim or low-fat. This prevents the popovers from burning. I used skim because it was all I had, and the popovers did come out a little brown, so maybe next time I'll try to pick up some whole milk.
Third, you should chill the batter for 30 minutes before baking it.
Fourth, you should warm the popover pans in the oven for a few minutes before pouring the batter into them.

After chilling the batter, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees per the instructions on the mix, warmed the pans for a few minutes and filled each popover cup 1/3rd full. (The amount of mix I used made 4 popovers). The instructions said to cook the mix at 450 degrees for 25 minutes and then lower the temp to 350 and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes. However, after about 20-22 minutes at 450 my popovers had clearly popped and were looking nice and golden brown, so I took them out of the oven.

The fifth important thing to remember is not to open the oven door while baking! If you need to peek at them, use the oven light. The popovers will not rise correctly if you open the door.

My popovers turned out looking (and tasting!) absolutely delicious! The second picture shows the inside of the popover, nice and hollow! Definitely a successful experiment :)

Homemade Bertucci's Silano Pizza!

One of my favorite pizzas in the whole world is the Silano from Bertucci's, so I decided to try to make it at home the other day. For those who aren't familiar with it, the pizza is a white pizza - it doesn't have tomato sauce and instead is broccoli and chicken and mozzarella cheese in a lemon-cream white sauce.

I cheated and bought a refrigerated pizza crust, but other than that I made it from scratch. Here's what I used...
1 refrigerated pizza crust
1 medium head of broccoli, chopped and steamed until not quite tender.
8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1/3 lb of chicken, cooked and chopped
1/2 cup of ricotta cheese
1 cup whipping cream
1/3 cup lemon juice
pepper
several tablespoonfuls of grated parmesan

I spread the pizza dough on the greased cookie sheet as directed, and then mixed together the whipping cream, lemon juice, pepper and parmesan cheese to make the white sauce. I spread half the white sauce on the pizza and then added the broccoli, chicken, mozzarella and ricotta (which I dropped in tablespoonfuls on the pizza) and then poured the rest of the white sauce over the top of the pizza. I then baked it according to the directions on the package, until the crust was golden brown. I think it took about 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Here's my Silano pizza! It came out really well and tasted surprisingly like the Bertuccis version, minus the brick-oven crust of course, but that's hard to do at home.
The next time I make the recipe I'll make a few changes - first, I won't use any ricotta. I mostly used it because I had it on hand and I wanted to get rid of it (Bertuccis version doesn't have ricotta, I don't believe). It didn't really add anything to the pizza, anyway. Second, I wouldn't make as much white sauce and I definitely wouldn't use as much lemon juice (the lemon flavor was a little, um, overpowering). I would probably use 1/2 cup - 2/3 cup cream and only a couple tablespoonfuls of lemon juice. Other than that I thought it came out pretty well. And definitely use fresh mozzarella instead of the shredded stuff...it tastes soooo much better!

Revised ingredient list:
1 refrigerated pizza crust
1 medium head of broccoli, chopped and steamed until not quite tender.
8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1/3 - 1/2 lb of chicken, cooked and chopped
1/2 - 2/3 cup whipping cream
several tablespoonfuls of lemon juice
dash of pepper
several tablespoonfuls of grated parmesean