Grilled Focaccia Pie; Okono Mi-Yaki

     The recipe for the Grilled Focaccia Pie called for a pre-made focaccia.  Usually, I would take the easy way out, if it is offered, but I knew that I had a dough in my freezer labeled focaccia.  I took it out of the freezer on Tuesday, so I could make the loaf on Wednesday.  I had put it in the refrigerator to thaw slowly overnight, and before I went to work on Wednesday, I placed it on the counter to come up to room temperature.

     I had second thoughts about this whole plan when I came home from work on Wednesday, and the dough was still roughly the same shape and size as when I took it out of the freezer on Tuesday.  I didn't see a date on the bag.  I cannot remember when I made this dough.  Did I forget the yeast?  It's possible.  I didn't see any comments on previous pizzas that the foccacia dough didn't do it's thing.  As a matter of fact, I didn't see a foccacia dough pizza for a couple of years worth of notes. 

     I wasn't sure if there was something wrong with the dough or if my house had just been too cold during the day.  We hadn't turned the heat on and our windows had been open.  When I came home from work, the temperature was barely 60 degrees.  I was sure that was the problem.

     Apparently, that wasn't necessarily the problem.  The cooked crust was thin and dense and now crisp, since it was slathered with olive oil prior to baking.  I thought of heading for the grocery store for a premade focaccia at the eleventh hour, but my distaste for leaving my house once I have returned from work won out.  I was sure it would be fine once we put toppings on it.

     I still had some peppers from my garden.  Those days (and peppers) are numbered, and I used some beautiful red bells to roast for the foccacia toppings.  I cut them in half and laid them on tin foil with the skin sides up.  I had preheated the broiler and put them in it for about 4 minutes.  Once the skins were blackened, I transferred them into a heavy duty zip top bag to steam for a while.

     I next checked out the Okono Mi-Yaki recipe.  For the cabbage, I bought a bag of undressed cole slaw, which is basically just shredded cabbage with a couple of carrots thrown in.  It's a rip off, really, because you can buy a massive amount of cabbage for the price of this little bag of shreds, but some days, you just don't feel like dealing with it, and who needs a massive amount of cabbage, anyway?

     I have never grated an onion before that I can recall, and I used my larger Microplane grater.  The holes on this grater are rather small (and very sharp - I learned the hard way to keep knuckles and fingertips away), and running the onion over it produced a kind of slurry.  I used the same tool for the carrots and got the same result, only it was orange.   I poured the half and half in over it and closed up the container and put it in the refrigerator for the night.

     Pam got here before Jeff on Thursday, and I immediately put her on the roasted-pepper-peeling duty.  She was very efficient at it.  I blinked and they were peeled.  She cut them into thin strips, chopped a tomato, and cut up a green onion, all for our Japanese pancakes  - or mini pizzas.  Well, actually, the roasted peppers were for our focaccia, but everything else was for the pancakes.

     Pam and I had started working on some soy-bean hummus I had made earlier in the week as a sort of aperitif.  Jeff came home and tried it, even though he wouldn't try it when I had offered it to him a couple of days ago.  He said he liked it, but didn't eat much of it.   It is hard to say whether that has more to do with the hummus itself or the vehicles, i.e. the crackers, that wold have carried it to his mouth.  He is not a fan of Triscuits.  He opted instead for his own snack - dirty martini.

     Meanwhile, I sauteed the mushrooms briefly (I don't think it was for four minutes, but the time might have gone by unnoticed, because Pam and I were engaged in delightful conversation).

     She was still chopping when I was done with that, so I went to the fridge for the pesto sauce I had made a while ago.  I was under the impression that since pesto had so much olive oil in it, it was impervious to spoilage.  When I opened my Tupperware container of pesto, I realized I was clearly wrong.  There was a great fuzz over the most of the contents of the container.  I searched my cupboards for any premade pesto that may have been hidden somewhere behind a can of peas or a jar of applesauce, but I was unsuccessful in that mission.  I looked at my poor, suffering basil plant that Pam's friend Mary had given me.  Could I get enough basil out of it to produce enough "sauce" to cover my pathetic-looking "focaccia"?  I cut as many leaves off of the cute little plant that I felt it could give up without killing it.  I'm never sure how much I can cut before it will die.  I did the best I could.  Pesto takes a LOT of basil.  I took what I felt comfortable cutting off of my plant. 

     I added some greens from the scallions that didn't get chopped up for our Japanese pancakes.  I threw the basil and scallion greens in my little Oscar (small food processor) with some prechopped garlic and some Parmesan cheese.  Pam had brought pine nuts, so I added some of those, some olive oil (of course), and a little hot pepper flake.  All of it went in the mini-food processor.  It made a lovely, bright green paste, which I spread over the thin, crusty thing I had baked the day prior.

   

     We placed the thin strips of roasted peppers artistically (haha) over the pesto and sprinkled the pine nuts that Pammy so generously donated to the cause.

     After the pine nuts, we scattered shreds of Parmesan over the top of the entire pie and sent it to the oven.

     Once we had the "focaccia" assembled, we concentrated our efforts on the "pancakes".  I mixed the filling ingredients together.  I had my pan searing hot and threw in a handful of "filling" as the recipe referred to them. I think that my pan was too hot, or maybe we were too slow, or something, but the filling seemed to be burning and the batter wasn't getting cooked.  We left each of the pancakes on the pan a little bit longer than I thought that the fillings could stand, and the veggies turned out a little black.  We went with it anyway. Starting over didn't seem to be an option, so we kept with it.   We finished up the batches, but by the time we got to the end of the batter for the pancakes, we had run out of the filling.  We pressed on anyway.  We thought that maybe the batter of the pancakes would have merit all on their own, and the filling was just an added bonus.

     When we sat down for dinner, the three of us, we realized that my assumption about the stand-alone batter was apparently misinformed.  Jeff took the top pancake, which contained very few toppings, and declared it "OK", which in my opinion, is Minnesota-speak for: "I wouldn't spit it out, but I really wouldn't request it, either."  I strongly encouraged him to try another pancake to form an informed opinion, which he did, but I still received a milk-toast answer.  I suspect he fears his sustenance would cease to continue if he offended the source.  I believe this is a self-destructive stance, because I cannot improve the menu if I have no idea there is something wrong with it.

     Pam offered relatively the same opinion of the pancake.  I thought it was okay, as well, but it didn't wow me as an entree, and I was relatively confident that I would not make this again, but I still made my notes in my recipe book.  For instance, I suggested that there should be some garlic involved, and that the pan shouldn't be searing-hot, because the vegetables burnt before the pancakes cooked.  Maybe we will try these again in a different environment....

     I thought that the focaccia was a bit of a bomb as well. The overall flavor was good, but the crust was tough and crunchy, where I felt it should have been slightly crisp around the edges with a chewy, but fluffy center.  I may have to retry this recipe, too, but with a different crust.

 

Addendum: October 24th, 2011

While I was compiling my grocery list this week for The Ham Turnovers (scheduled for 10/27/11), I realized that I still had ham in my refrigerator from the week before.  I looked at a little closer and realized that I NEVER PUT IT IN THE PANCAKES!  It's no wonder we weren't impressed with the flavor.  Now, I am thinking we need to redo this recipe with ALL of the ingredients!