Anna’s Wood Fired Oven Blog

As Francis Mallmann puts it, “Cooking with wood fire is like going on a first date.  It is something you look forward to with great anticipation and a little anxiety.”

Perfect spot for a wood fired party

If you are like me, you will have a little bit of anxiety before entertaining, mostly to make sure everything runs smoothly upon the arrival of your guests and a the same time you don’t want to spend all your time next to the oven (well, maybe you do…), but you want to sit down and enjoy your friends.  Well, that’s the beauty of cooking in your wood fired oven:  your typical dish schedule – appetizer, main dish, side dish, dessert – works perfectly well with the high – medium – low heating cycle of your oven.  And the fact that simple recipes work best in the oven anyway, allows you to pick recipes that can be prepared ahead of time and that require minimum handling in the outdoor kitchen.

Although a wood fired oven doesn’t have a dial on it where you can adjust the temperature on and off, you will enjoy a very nice constant radiating heat as you cook, which is ideal for any dish, especially meat.  And once the wood fired oven is heated thoroughly it will stay hot until the next day.

It is important to keep a good stash of dry hardwood to make starting the fire really easy and enhance the taste of the food you cook.  Use Peter’s method of firing up the oven, so that you have a uniformly hot oven with a minimum amount of wood for a maximum amount of cooking time.

Appetizers are a wonderful way of greeting your friends and they keep everyone happy while other things are baking in the oven.  They are a great fit for the initially hot oven as it is easy to find recipes that can be baked at 650-600 degrees F, floor temperature.  Best way of measuring temperature inside the oven is by using a hand-held infrared thermometer and point it at the oven floor. (We include this thermometer in each oven kit, and it is also available in our online store.)

My favorite appetizers are oven made pizzarollis, and flat breads because they pair well with cheeses, or prosciutto and figs, and such fun starters.  Alternatively, if I am harvesting cherry tomatoes in the garden, I grill them quickly or place them in a cast iron skillet whole, with a bit of olive oil, close to the entrance of the oven, until they are burnished on the outside and release all their sweetness on the inside.  Then I smash them slightly with a fork and mix them with olive oil, a little bit of crushed fresh garlic, basil, salt, and spoon this goodness over a grilled slice of Italian bread, for a quick bruschetta, served along with local cheese.  To grill the bread slices, you can place them on directly on the hot oven floor or on a hot grill, and use tongs or a fork to turn.

Seizing up the appetizer

As the oven cools a little, it’s time for the main dishes. Leaving the door open will bring the temperature in the oven down to 550-500 degrees F (floor temperature) and this is ideal for  a chicken, or a lamb, or a small roast that you’ve prepared ahead of time in a metal pan.  Place a small piece of wood on top of the bed of coals that you moved to the left or right side of the oven, and slide the pan in, opposite side from the coals.  The meat will sear very nicely  as the dome of the oven reflects heat all around it, and will acquire a crispy outside flavored with the smoke of the fire. You can cover the meat loosely with foil either at the beginning or the end of the cooking cycle to brown the meat. (When using a recipe written for a regular oven, just add about a hundred degrees and reduce the cooking time to about a third.)

Fish I usually place on a oven proof dish and keep it closer to the door, since it doesn’t require high temperature.  Or  wait until the oven is at about 450 degrees F if you want to bake a tender fish filet.  It’s fun to grill a lobster, halved, on a grill placed close to the opening and with the coals raked under it.

Along with the main dish, you can fit a few pans with side dishes, such as potatoes, mushrooms, artichokes which all acquire a great smoky taste in the wood burning oven.  Or slide in an eggplant parmesan that your assembled the day before.

And lastly... dessert

Once you’ve taken out the main dish and the side dishes, the oven is ready for cooking a dessert.  Something simple with lots of butter and sugar… since these caramelize  deliciously in the pizza oven!  Your guests will beg you to invite them again.

Buon appetito from Los Angeles Ovenworks!

From the farm to the wood fired oven

In Italy I got accustomed to good, organic produce and it is a vital part of my cooking. We have been getting our produce straight from EarthWorks Community Farm in South El Monte. It is a beautiful location with fertile soil in the middle of the Whittier Narrow recreation area and we love spend some time connecting with the earth and the growing of things on Saturdays. Find out if there’s a farm close to your neighborhood at LocalHarvest.org.

Last week my husband picked fava beans, a large bag, and since these were my first taste of the season they never made it to the table! But I have promised my friends that next week I will hold off eating them all and make my all-time favorite bruschetta with fava beans pesto. You must try this, so easy and bursting with flavor!

We are also getting the beds in our small backyard plot ready for new tomato plants, since the sun is shining in California and welcomes these essential basics of Italian cuisine. So easy to grow, even in containers, and what a different pizza sauce home-grown makes!

Check out the Tomato Mania for all kinds of heirloom plants and seeds. If they are not located near you, then get your seeds from Seeds of Change, an organization that strives to preserve bio-diversity and promotes sustainable, organic agriculture. The old Italian tomato and basil seeds that have been grown in the USA and preserved for generations can be purchased from them. Try it, you won’t regret the flavor!

Heirloom Tomatoes are great for pizza sauce!

Carciofi, or artichokes, have made their springtime debut at the farmer’s markets in Southern California and baking them in your wood fired oven really brings out their full flavor.

Carciofi al forno — Wood fired Oven Baked Artichokes

6 large, globe artichokes

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 bunch of Italian parsley, chopped

1 handful of fresh thyme sprigs, l

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 yellow or white onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup bread crumbs

1/4 grated Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Wash the artichokes and trim the base so that they will sit flat. Pull off the leaves until you get to the tender inside leaves. Trim the top straight across with a sharp knife. You are going to stuff the artichokes, so you will need to trim off the leaf barbs in the middle as well, until the heart of the artichoke is exposed. Set aside in a bowl of water with some lemon juice added to it, to prevent discoloration.

Chop the herbs, the garlic, and the onion together and mix in a small bowl along with the olive oil, the bread crumbs, and the Parmesan cheese. Add generous amounts of salt and pepper, to taste. Stuff each artichoke with this mixture, pushing it in with a spoon. Wrap each artichoke in foil, closing it on top, and place in metal pan.

Bake in your wood-fired oven at about 500-400 degrees for 20 minutes. Take out the pan, open one of the foils and check. If it needs further baking, place back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so. Otherwise, open the foil carefully, and place the pan back in the oven for the artichokes to brown on top, this should take about 10 minutes.

Buon appetito!

Tuscan woods

Fall is the season for harvesting and storing, for bundling up and sitting around the fireplace. When I lived in Italy, the simple pleasures of harvesting started in late summer and early fall with mushrooms season, or as the Italians say andare a caccia di funghi, that is, going hunting for mushrooms. It meant hiking into the thick silence of the oak and chestnut woods, where the boars usually roamed undisturbed.

I was lucky that my neighbor, nonna Assunta, took me under her wing and brought me along. Nonna (grandma) Assunta lived a long life farming the land, overcoming incredible hardships with an indomitable spirit. Although 80 years old, she still worked 8 hours a day and pretty much left me in the dust when the carrying of bales of herbs was concerned. I loved listening to her and tried to absorb all she had to teach me. If late summer rains had brought about ideal conditions for mushrooms, she would lead me to her secret spots deep in the woods where we would harvest wild porcini and chanterelle mushrooms. We would victoriously head back home with our baskets full of our “hunt”, part of which was for enjoying fresh and most for drying.

Chanterelle Mushrooms

The woods around Oliveto, the small Tuscan village where I lived, were also rich in chestnuts, which we collected and roasted on the fire at night when the weather turned chilly. This is something you can do in a wood fired oven as well.

Wood-Fired Oven Roasted Chestnuts: Use a cast iron skillet or a metal pan, filling it with one layer of chestnuts that have been cut crosswise on top. Slide in the wood fired oven at 500 degrees and shake the skillet or pan a few times during the cooking period. When the skin of the chestnuts start to burnish and the cross cut opens, try one nut: if it feels soft when squeezed between the fingers, you know it is ready to enjoy. Fun to serve in small, brown bags!

Later in November it would be time for the olive harvest and, boy, this was hard work! In Tuscany the olives are pruned heavily to keep the trees small so that they can be harvested by hand. With the help of nets, ladders, and baskets one climbs each tree and running the hand over each individual branch collects the olive fruits. This method and the colder climate is what create the best olive oil on the planet, very low in acidity. We would try out the newly pressed oil on bruschettas, bragging that our oil was better than our neighbor’s!

Here’s a recipe for Wild Mushroom Bruschetta and while you are at it, check out the Holiday Turkey recipe on our website at www.losangelesovenworks.com as well, it will come in handy for Thanksgiving!

Wild Mushroom Bruschetta Serves 4 people

As it is hard to find wild mushrooms, I have adapted the recipe for Portobella mushrooms instead.

2 Portobella mushrooms, cut in half

For the seasoning

2 cloves of garlic, pressed

1 handful of Italian parsley, finely chopped

A few sprigs of fresh thyme and oregano, finely chopped

¼ cup virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Place a pinch of salt and pepper in a small bowl and add the balsamic vinegar. Mix until the salt has dissolved. Add the herbs and the pressed garlic. Add the olive oil. Let sit for 30 minutes.

Fire up the wood fired oven. Let the fire burn down, this will take about one hour. Move the fire and embers to the right or the left side of the oven. Rake some of the coals of the fire to the front-middle of the oven. Place a free-standing grill over the coals for a few minutes before placing the halved mushrooms on it.

Brush lightly the halved mushrooms with the seasoning mix, then grill the mushrooms.When they are done, chop them and add them to the rest of the seasoning.Grill 4 slices of Italian bread. Add the mushrooms and seasoning on each grilled slice and serve. Buon appetito!