OOOOHHHHHH FUDGE!

Hi again folks, it's ME, Chef G., and today I'm going to help you make a sweet, sweet holiday treat.  It's a treat so sweet that it will single-handedly transform your boring family Christmas into a week-long, end-of-the-year, festival of chocolate & sugar.  It's a treat so sweet it will make your taste buds dance with delight.  It's a treat so sweet that I can almost guarantee three or four brand new cavities for the brand new year.  It's a treat that will send your primary physician into a state of shock the next time he checks your blood glucose levels.  In fact, it's SO sweet that even ants, honey bees and hummingbirds want nothing to do with it for fear of lapsing into a diabetic coma.

Q: What is this treat of which I speak?

A: It's FUDGE.  

Or, as my family calls it, "BUDGE."

 

I'll be using my mom's tried and true recipe.  It's better than any fudge you can buy on Mackinac Island, on the boardwalks of the eastern seaboard, or any other U.S. tourist destination.  Maybe that's because of the love she put into it.  Her annual batch of budge was a major holiday tradition that my brothers and I looked forward to all year long.  After she died, I took it upon myself to carry on the tradition.

Guess what?  The holiday season is upon us.  Ergo, it is time to whip up a beautiful batch of budge.  Let's go!

Next, add a whopping 4-1/4 cups of sugar to the mix. 

Bring the sauce to a boil while stirring frequently.  When it becomes a bubbly golden syrup, turn down the heat and let it simmer for six more minutes.

This is where the real fun begins.

At the six minute mark, add a 12-oz. bag of San Francisco semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Stir them into the syrup and watch them quickly melt.  It's cool to see the mixture slowly transform from golden to light brown to dark brown.

Then you'll add 12 oz. of Baker's German Chocolate . . . 

. . . followed by 8 oz. (or 7 oz.) of marshmallow creme.

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At this point I think it's appropriate to expose a little foul play by the Kraft Foods Corporation--the worlds largest manufacturer of marshmallow products.  Sometime in the last few years, they changed their 8 oz. jars of marshmallow creme into 7 oz. jars.  I have no doubt in my mind that they knew a lot of recipes call for eight ounces of their sticky white stuff and they saw an opportunity to trick consumers into buying an extra jar every time we made whatever we were making.  In this case, budge.

I admit I was suckered into that scam for the first couple of years, but not THIS year.  Seven ounces will certainly do the trick.  Sorry Kraft, but you can jet puff that last 8th of an ounce straight up the tail end of your digestive system.

                                      

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Some people like walnuts in their budge.  Not me.  Whenever somebody asks me if I like my budge with or without walnuts, I paraphrase the great Minnesota Vikings wide receiver, Randy Moss.  I proclaim, "straight budge, homey."

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So, I was stirring the 7 ounces of marshmallow into the concoction when I noticed something pretty cool.  I summoned my film crew to make another fine Chef G. video.

After a few more minutes of stirring, it was ready to pour.

So I poured it into a 9" X 13" pan lined with parchment paper and selfied one more video enlisted my cinematographer to film one more video.

                

After a few hours of cooling, you can safely take the budge out of the refrigerator and flip the contents of the pan onto a cutting board.  My mom always cut the big slab into pieces approximately 1.5 square inches in area.  That's what I do too.  

Then I stack the pieces in a container with wax paper between each layer.

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I'll let you in on a little secret.  I don't really care for sweet treats all that much.  Not pie.  Not cake. Not candy bars.  Not ice cream.  Not cookies.  Maybe that's because I ate so much of that stuff in my first 50 years of life.

I make an exception for my mom's fudge.  (And, once in a while, Oreos.)

Well, it is now time to taste test my batch of budge.

The second it hit my taste buds, I recognized perfection. 

The second it hit my teeth, I knew I'd have to visit my dentist after the New Year.

PRETTY GOSH DARN GOOD PIZZA WITH HOMEMADE FREAKIN' INGREDIENTS

Hi folks, Chef G. here, and once again I'd like to warmly welcome you to the Chef G. Cooking Channel.  

Before I get started though, I feel like I should apologize for the salty language in the title of today's episode.  It is quite unusual for me to use such foul swear words (in public) and there is absolutely no excuse to take Gosh's name in vain like that.  But in this case I was so excited to share my latest creation that I couldn't help myself.  That nasty language just burst out of me like a bad case of diarrhea.

Now that you've forgiven me, I assure you there is nothing nasty about the recipe I'm going to present today.  PIZZA! Pizza is America's favorite food and I am America's favorite celebrity chef.  That's a pretty potent combination.

Now don't go thinking I'm going to teach you how to throw a frozen pizza into the oven.  I admit to making hundreds of pizzas that way in the past, but I have too much chef-ly integrity to do that on my internationally famous cooking blog.

I've also called a multitude of pizzarias for the delivery of a large pie, but I'm certainly not here to instruct you on how to dial the phone and tell the Dominos employee that you want a large, thin crust pizza with pepperoni, sausage, onion and extra cheese.  That would be ridiculous.

No, I am going to attempt to make the most "from scratch" pizza possible (within my capability.)  I mean, I didn't grow my own onions and mushrooms, I haven't learned the art of mozzarella cheese production, and I don't know how to make pepperoni--YET.  Still, at least I am going to try home-made crust, sauce and Italian sausage.

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I began by going shopping for fresh ground pork. Vidalia onions.  Mozzarella cheese.  Mushrooms from some deep, dark Minnesota cave.  Ingredients for dough.  Tomato sauce and tomato paste.  I already had all the spices I needed. 

I paid no attention to the frozen pizza aisle on my way to the vegetable section.

So I gathered my ingredients, packed them in my panniers, and rode my bike home to start cooking.  The first order of business was the Italian sausage.

1/2 pound of ground pork  
One tablespoon of fennel seed
A Pinch of garlic powder
A Pinch of salt 
A Pinch of black pepper
A Pinch of Onion Powder
A Pinch of Red Pepper Flakes
Slightly more than a pinch of Italian Seasoning
SMOOSH it all together by hand and refrigerate the mixture for a couple of hours.

After a couple of hours in the fridge, fry the sausage.  Flatten it frequently with a spatula and break it into small pieces.

The second order of business was the pizza sauce.  I could not believe how easy it was to make.

All you have to do is pour one eight-ounce can of tomato sauce and 1/2 of a six-ounce can of tomato paste into a jar.  Add one-and-a-half tablespoons Italian Seasoning, 1/4 tsp. garlic powder, 1/4 tsp. onion powder, 1/4 tsp. sea salt, 1/8 tsp. black pepper, and stir like crazy for about a minute.  No cooking required--just put a cap on the jar and refrigerate.

Chef G.'s Pizza Sauce in a jar

The big questions in my mind were:  1) Will my homemade Italian sausage be as good as the stuff the meat department at my local grocery store makes?  2) Will my homemade pizza sauce be as good as the many options available in that same grocery store? 3) Will my homemade sausage and sauce be enough to make more than one pizza?

In all three cases, the answer was a resounding "HECK YEAH!"

(Again, I apologize for my foul language.  It's totally inappropriate for a professional chef like me to resort to such words.  [Then again, there is Chef Gordon Ramsey, whose ratings seem to thrive on much worse language.])

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While the flavors in my sauce and sausage were melding in the refrigerator, it was time to roll out the pizza dough followed by the part I've wanted to do ever since the first time I saw a pizza master do it on TV.  That would be the part where I throw it up in the air in a twirling motion.  I guess that helps dry it out which results in a crispier crust.  That's a good thing since I prefer a thin, crispy crust over those thick-crusted pizzas advertised on TV as being "Chicago-Style."  Dang it, those thick crusts are like eating 80% bread.

There I go again.  Sorry about that "dang it" outburst.

I enlisted Mrs. Chef G. to photograph and video my pizza twirling operation.

The end result after a few tosses

Now that I've got the crust, sauce and sausage prepared, it's time to put it all together in the form of the finest pizza ever made by me or any other son-of-a-beechin' pizza chef this side of Italy.  (Sorry, once again, for writing another disgusting curse word.)

My favorite pizza toppings. 

After baking the empty crust in a 500-degree oven for five minutes, I spread a layer of sauce on it, put the sliced onion, shrooms, sausage, & pepperoni atop the sauce, and finished it all off with about three-quarters of a pound of Mozzarella cheese.  Now you know why pizza tastes SOOO good, but is SOOO bad for you.

Turn the oven heat down to 400-degrees and place your pizza on the middle rack.  Let it bake for about 10-12 minutes.  After that amount of time, it will look something like this:

Then you can cut the bastid (oh man, I can't help myself) into eight slices and serve.

Since we're having a special pizza party, I recommend serving a special beer.  To my taste, Surly's seasonal ABRASIVE ALE is the best beer on Gosh's ever-lovin' earth.  (There I go again, ruining a perfectly good post with swear words.)

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In conclusion, WOW!  You'll be surprised at how bloody good your homemade pizza can be.  The jury is still out on whether a pizza that requires three hours and $30 worth of ingredients is worth the extra effort over a decent $5.00 frozen pizza, but it was a heck-of-a-fun pizza to make.