Last week, I posted a snide remark on a post on Macheesmo's site claiming that I could make a curry any color of the rainbow. I mean, I have made red, green, and yellow, massaman is sort of orange and panang has a pinkish hue. What's left? I got this email from Nick 3 minutes later: "Can you make a purple curry?! Because I think you should." He called my bluff! I replied back with:"hmmm, should I use cabbage or blueberries" "I'd go blueberries" was his reply. At first I shrugged this off as a casual joke amongst friends, but it's like Leo says, once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. It was all I could think about all week! Tuesday I hit the farmers market on my way back from work, because it was the only place I knew that I could find purple basil...

My friend Lorraine has been bugging me to cook sauerkraut for a few weeks. I was looking through some of her family recipes, and saw something her grandmother used to make called "kapushniki" (mostly referred to as "pagach" on the web), that was lovingly known as sauerkraut pizza to her relatives. This was a savory pastry dough filled with potato or fried sauerkraut and usually served on holidays, particularly Christmas. I thought I would use the kapushniki as inspiration, and combine the 2 varieties into one awesome pizza at my latest pizza party. I told some people what was on the menu as they arrived. Pizza margarita, salami with arugula, mac and cheese pizza, BBQ chicken, steak with roasted red peppers, and of course sauerkraut pizza. This was greeted with a strange reaction by most of my friends, and even a few "I will have to pass on that one" comments, but at the end of the party, 10 out of 12 said that the mash potato sauerkraut pizza was by far their favorite of the night!

Everyone on the internet knows about and has made the no knead bread recipe, but what about the pizza dough? Since I have had some success recently with the no knead bread, I decided to try the pizza version out. I went to Co. last time I was in NY, and loved the pizzas there, so I figured it could work. (Co. is where the no-knead guy Jim Lahey makes pizza). There was one main thing I was worried about. I have made a lot of pizza, and my recipe for dough is very involved. If this no-knead method works, does it mean I have wasted over 20 hours of my life making pizza dough with a double knead-autolyze period?

The short answer is yes, it works, but this recipe isn't for everyone. The dough is VERY wet. I normally use a wet dough, but this thing is soaking. I would almost go as far as calling it a batter instead of a dough! Because of this, you need to be a pizza expert to be able to make pizzas. (good thing I am). The time saved not kneading, was wasted later swearing at the dough trying to get it to cooperate. This dough would not have gone over well at my more hectic pizza parties in Bermuda, and more pizzas would be in the trash than in the oven. I even threw away about 4 of them, one sad one had the toppings on it and everything. My friend at the party made pizzas for years professionally and couldn't even get the thing shaped. The pizzas came out great though. But were they better? That is a hard call to make. I was using my normal dough in Bermuda with my sick wood fired brick oven. These were just on a pizza stone at 550. For now I am going back to kneading, but i may revisit this recipe again in the future.

I ate this meal last weekend late night in Chinatown. Some of the best meals seem to be when I least expect them. The meal is actually very simple to make, the hardest part is finding the red pepper paste. It is sort of the pork version of bulgogi, in fact, the Korean name of the dish is "Daeji Bulgogi". In Chinatown, I skipped all the veggies and just ate the meat piece by piece with my chopsticks(It was late. hah). Making it myself, I decided to have it the way they had meant for me to eat it.

Normally, when a party is a sausagefest, it is not a good thing. In this situation however, it was awesome! Here is some fun pics of my friends enjoying an array of sausages and good times on the beach last weekend. Happy B-day Kim!

I have wanted to make hot dogs pretty much forever, so I made sure to finally check that off my list when I had access to the sausage stuffer. These hot dogs came out soo good! Next year, I want to make a huge batch of these at the beginning of spring, freeze them, and use them all summer! As awesome as they were, I would change a few things for next time. They definitely weren't dry, but they also weren't juicy, next time I would up the fat content. Secondly, the chipotle maple was subtle in these dogs and needed to be turned up a bit. Despite these shortcomings, they tasted great with an unmistakable beefy hot dog flavor and the natural casing had a perfect snap when you bit into it. Not bad for my first time!

There are a few reasons for sausage week this week. One was because the green curry sausage was hitting Tablespoon yesterday. The Second reason is because I suddenly have access to an amazing professional sausage stuffer. This thing is awesome! It totally beats stuffing sausage with a pastry bag! It is really easy and fun to use. The third reason was my friend Kim's Birthday was this weekend so sausages were a good thing to bring to the party.  I could cook for the party, but not have to do any prep there.  This sausage variety came about because green beans and mash potatoes are two of Kims favorite foods, so why not combine them with pork and into a portable/edible form?