Dips definitely have a place on your appetizer or bar menu, so don’t look down on them as being a food that has lost it edge. Those tasteless dips (most made with onion soup and all that) we had been urged into trying at a party might have left a b...

Appetizers come first in the meal, but do they come last on your priority list? They shouldn’t, because if you put as much attention into your starters as you do your main dishes, your bottom line can benefit. “Appetizers are an opportunity for u...

Call them chicken tenders, chicken fingers or chicken nuggets — they all sound good to diners. According to Technomic’s Appetizer Consumer Trend report (March 2009), two-thirds of consumers polled say that they order chicken strips “sometimes�...

I have been thinking about adding take-and bake pizza to my menu. Can I use my regular dough, or do I need a special dough?     Making take-and-bake pizza can be a pretty simple proposition, or it can be a bit more in depth, requiring a spe...

White pizza is the hot new trend in fi ne dining Italian restaurants. For example, a fi ne-dining restaurant here in Chicago recently switched cuisines mid-bite –– it went from contemporary American to Italian –– and one of its featured dishe...

Giving a pizza a Mediterranean spin is as easy as saying “tomatoes, olives and anchovies.” But, then that would be giving short shrift to so many other flavors that make up the colorful portfolio of delicious Mediterranean ingredients. For exampl...

My pizzeria’s love affair with steak began over eight years ago when restaurant consultant Big Dave Ostrander convinced me to put steak on my menu. Of the 53 toppings I offer, it’s a standout. In fact, in the past 10 months, steak has been respon...

As a child Sergio Vitale traveled throughout his father’s native Italy. “I remember having potato pizza in Tuscany — it stood out as a unique combination. and i loved how simple and delicious it was,” he says. Today, the chef/owner of Baltimo...

Why bother roasting? Roasting intensifies an ingredient’s natural flavors. it also cooks away the rawness and pulls out some of the moisture that can result in a soggy finished pie. It is a cooking method where the vegetable is exposed directly to ...

Q: We are making a thick-crust pizza but it doesn’t maintain any crispiness after we put it into the box. What can we do to make a crispier pizza? A: One of the most commonly encountered causes for a thick crust pizza to lack or loose crispiness is...

Attention to detail — and patients — delivers superior baked pasta results Hot, hearty and comforting, baked pasta will assuage any winter blues. John Coletta, executive chef/managing partner at Quartino in Chicago, Illinois, has prepared and ser...

Q: Do you use the same flour in your starter as in your batch? A: Not necessarily. In some cases I may not use a Caputo starter with a Caputo batch. I might use a Central Milling starter, “Keith’s Best”, and use 20 percent of the starter in my ...