Dawn of the Dead + a Radio Interview

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Megan No Comments

Just before the holidays, we received a call from WGN Radio about doing a Slash & Dine interview with Chicago radio host Nick Digilio. To say we were thrilled would be an understatement. Nick has been WGN Radio’s movie guru for years now and we’ve been huge fans of his show. Besides being a lifelong horror fan, Nick loves to cook. Needless to say, this guy is right up our alley! We wanted to give our thanks to him the best way we know how, with dedicated recipes. During the interview we asked what film he would like us to cook for, and being the zombie fanatic that he is, Nick chose the master of all brain-eaters, Dawn of the Dead. We’re talking the original 1978 George Romero classic. So in honor of Nick and his love for Dawn of the Dead, we bring you these mall-inspired recipes. Enjoy! And don’t forget to listen to the full interview below the recipes!

Mall Pretzels-

Ingredients:

1 package active dry yeast (.25 oz)
1 cup warm water
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil or softened butter
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (or more all purpose flour)
3 Tbsp baking soda
Coarse salt, or pretzel salt if you can find some

Directions:

Add yeast and water to large mixing bowl and stir to dissolve yeast. Add sugar, salt, and oil. Add 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour. Stir to combine. Knead dough a few times, adding the rest of the flour, if needed, to form a soft dough. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Punch down dough and divide into 10 pieces. Roll each piece into a long rope. Twist the ends.

Fold the ends over to make a pretzel shape.

Bring a pot of water to boil (about 6 cups of water, depending on the size of your pan). Make sure to use a non-aluminum pan. Add the baking soda. Drop the pretzels into the pan, 2 at a time and cook for 1 minute. Flip and cook another 30 seconds. Remove with slotted spoon and place pretzels on a greased sheet pan. We were able to fit 5 pretzels on each sheet pan. While still wet, sprinkle with coarse salt. We sprinkled half of our pretzels with salt and the other half with cinnamon and sugar. If you are making cinnamon sugar pretzels, add a few more tablespoons of sugar to the dough. Bake for 15 minutes. Cool on rack. Serve with mustard or cheese sauce. For cinnamon sugar pretzels, we like to melt a little cream cheese frosting in the microwave and dip the pretzels in there.