photos by Janis Jean Photography –
The hot, lazy days of August are the perfect time to fire up the grill – and pizza oven – and have a backyard get-together. We all have our favourite summer recipes, but this month, Steve Harman and Corey Makar from the Sidney Volunteer Fire Department share their go-to’s with Seaside readers. They hope that this summer you’ll try their offerings and experiment with something new. Join us for our Seaside Magazine Backyard Showdown!
Steve Harman, Firefighter,
Sidney Volunteer Fire Department
My choice for the backyard showdown came fairly easy to me as, when I decided to join the firehall four-and-a-half years ago, I was actually working a second job at The Woodshed Pizzeria (which is deeply missed) in Sidney. My training in the kitchen was formed at a young age (15) scrubbing dishes at Mary’s Bleue Moon Café. By the time I hit 19, I was into construction and out of the kitchen, but my love for food didn’t stop there. Cooking – especially BBQ and hanging in the backyard with friends and family – is such an amazing way to bring people together and I think that’s really why I love it so much. When it comes to cooking or hanging with friends, I’d rather do it outside on a beautiful patio area, surrounded by my friends and family, messing around with different ideas to try and to have them say “wow that was awesome; what was it?”
For this recipe we went to Italy, but not just Italy! I love a little fusion in food, so this was Italy with a side of Asian flare. I call it the Dumpling Pizza. It starts out with a beautiful 65% hydration Neapolitan-style dough that I make five days in advance to allow it to cold ferment in the fridge prior to hitting the Alfa One pizza oven. It’s topped with a beautiful Asian fusion sauce and marinated pork. Enjoy!
The Dumpling Pizza
Neapolitan Pizza Dough (makes four 12-inch pizzas)
548g type 00 pizza flour
356g cold water
13g salt
2.7g instant dry yeast
Sauce
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
sriracha to taste
Toppings
2 lbs ground pork
2 tbsp fresh ginger
4 – 6 tbsp garlic, minced
(to your taste)
few glugs soy sauce
healthy dash of sesame oil
handful of chopped cilantro
1 – 1.5 cups julienned carrot (to your taste)
1.5 – 2 cups grated mozzarella (to your taste)
Start with a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a dough hook (or hand knead if you don’t have a mixer) and dissolve the salt in the cold water. Add 10%ish of the pizza flour to the salt water and mix; this allows the water mixture to have enough flour to mix in the yeast without the saltwater killing the yeast. Slowly add the remainder of the flour, mixing and kneading until you end up with your dough ball. Remove from the mixer and allow the dough to sit at room temperature for 2 hours before setting it in the fridge for a 96-hour cold ferment. After the first 24 hours, remove the dough from the fridge and form four 230-gram dough balls, then put them back in the fridge. Remove the dough 2-4 hours prior to use.
Marinate pork for four hours.
Pan fry cilantro and cool.
Whisk together sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
Stretch and roll out dough to 12 inch circles. Top with sauce, then pork, carrots, cilantro and mozzarella.
Warm pizza oven until brick floor is around 800°F. Add pizza and cook for about 3 minutes, turning gradually to avoid burning! Once baked, drizzle the same sauce used for the base on top and add a sprinkle of cilantro for garnish.
For oven directions, visit https://www.stadlermade.com/category/oven-recipes/pizza-recipes/. This website and “The Pizza App” are my go-to’s for figuring out dough numbers.
Corey Makar, Assistant Deputy Fire Chief, Sidney Volunteer Fire Department
This is one of my favorite summertime dinners (or lunches!). This dish works because everything is so fresh and flavourful – we are so lucky to be on Vancouver Island where we can get locally-raised chickens, farm-fresh vegetables, and bread that is baked daily.
This is a concept that I encourage readers to apply to all their meals – use the freshest local ingredients you can find and it’s very hard to go wrong. In that spirit, you can mix and match any vegetables that you want, though the ones in this recipe are my favourite because of their complementary colours and flavours – they just seem to go together so well!
This dish is also perfect for after you’ve spent a day in the sun, either on the water or hiking in the forest, when you want a healthy tasty dinner that doesn’t require anything other than your BBQ (and maybe a locally-brewed beverage!).
BBQ Crispy Garlic & Lemon Chicken Thighs with Summer Vegetables & Toasted Paprika Crostini
Protein
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (skinless is fine too)
olive oil (a couple of glugs)
5 cloves garlic (red Russian variety – grown on Vancouver Island)
1 lemon
salt and pepper
Summer Vegetables
1 bulb fennel
1 sweet onion
2 tomatoes (grown on the vine)
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
basil
Crostini
1 French baguette or Italian filone
olive oil (a couple of glugs)
salt and pepper
paprika (smoked or not – your choice)
Directions
- Pre-heat your BBQ to get the grill nice and hot (400°)
- Prep chicken thighs by tossing in a bowl with a glug of olive oil and lots of salt and pepper.
- Remove stalks from the fennel and set aside (save those for your homemade vegetable or chicken stock). Remove fennel fronds and set aside (save those for later use in this dish). Cut fennel bulb in half from top to bottom, then cut each half into 4-5 sections, again cutting from top to bottom.
- Peel onion, remove the remaining root, but don’t cut too much off – this will hold your onion sections together. As with the fennel, cut the onion in half from top to bottom. Then cut each half into 4-5 sections, again cutting from top to bottom.
- Add chicken thighs to one side of the BBQ, skin side up. Turn down the heat on this side to MED or LOW but keep the heat going on the opposite side of the grill. The trick here is to slowly cook the chicken so that the fat doesn’t render down into the flames and then flare up, scorching the chicken. Close the lid and keep a close watch.
- Quarter the tomatoes; no need to remove the seeds but you may if you’d prefer.
- Halve the peppers and remove the stem, seeds and pith. Cut diagonally into bite-sized pieces.
- Collect all vegetables into a bowl and toss with a couple glugs of olive oil and lots of salt and pepper. Set vegetables aside for now.
- Slice your bread on an angle and set onto a tray. Set bread aside for now.
- Start cooking your vegetables on the BBQ grill side that is hot. This will take about 20 minutes, so try to time it so the veg is done when your chicken thighs are about to be done. Grill the veg so that there are some grill marks, but don’t burn them. You may turn down the grill if needed. Once all the vegetables are done, collect them in a clean bowl.
- By now your chicken skin should be getting crispy – if not cook a little longer on the skinless side. At some point, you should be able to flip the thighs and cook on the skin side down without any flare-ups or flames. Keep the heat on this side of the grill MED or LOW.
- Keep flipping the chicken so that the skinless side is getting a little charred, and the skin side is getting crispy. Once the chicken thigh juices are running clear, you know your chicken is done. Overall, this should take about 30-40 minutes depending on how hot you are grilling.
- Once your chicken is done, remove from the grill and place in a new clean bowl.
- Now that there is nothing else on your grill, turn the heat up to get the grill hot and ready for the crostini.
- Zest the lemons with a lemon zester or peel the lemon skin (but don’t take too much of the white pith. If you’ve peeled the lemon skin, slice very finely).
- Peel and crush the garlic. You will be able to tell how strong the garlic is by its pungent aroma.
- Add lemon zest and as much garlic as you can handle to the chicken thighs. Toss with one or two more glugs of olive oil and the juice from one half of the lemon. The chicken thighs should be nicely coated with lemon, garlic and olive oil but not so much that the skin loses its crispness. Taste the olive oil, chicken juice and lemon juice mixture that is coating the chicken. Add more garlic or lemon juice as needed.
- Chop the fennel fronds that you saved earlier and chop the basil as well. Add these herbs to the vegetables with one more glug of olive oil. Use lots of these herbs as this is a major source of flavour! Taste and adjust the salt and pepper as needed.
- Brush your crostini with olive oil, and add salt, pepper, and paprika (both sides).
- Grill the crostini so you get good char marks on each side of the bread. Taste the crostini and adjust seasoning as needed. Remove from the grill and turn off the BBQ.
Plating
- Place crispy chicken thighs along one side of a platter.
- Add as many vegetables as possible on the other side of the platter.
- Place crostini along the edge of the platter or serve on a separate dish.
- Enjoy with a local wine, beer, or non-alcoholic drink and enjoy living on the Peninsula!
