Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, an ongoing state of Chaos, where one many just really sucks at scheduling his time, but excels at alliterative and assonant abasement. I’m Jon O’Guin, and today we’re exploring an incredibly simple recipe, with a weird history, and I’m probably going to pass out before I get ANY of this written up, so I guess Monday morning Jon will have to handle this. If you just want the recipe, BETRAY ME by clicking this link. Everyone else, let’s get funky, with the Monkey.

People Used to Say I Monkey Around. Until I Aped Them.

I can’t tell if that’s gibberish, or a disturbingly dark joke, Title Jon. Worried, but also slightly digging this edgy new direction.

SO, MONKEY BREAD.

Contains no monkeys.

If you don’t know it, now you do, because there was just a picture. If that picture didn’t make sense to you, or you’re blind, or Jon ever found his goddamn mic cable and recorded the audio file for this, let me first say, konichola. Me llamigato Jon, and I don’t know why the Blind speak in a terrible hybrid of Spanish and Japanese. The long-abandoned explanation of the picture, however, is that Monkey bread is a system of getting balls (heh) or pieces of yeasted (also heh) dough, coating those balls (double heh) with spices, sugar, or nuts (gay heh), and baking them into a…fuck if I know the proper term here. Cake? Mélange? Snack with two Cs instead of a K? Wikipedia says “pastry”, which feels double wrong…What is croquembouche called? That’s basically just a tower of cream puffs stuck together. Basically the same thing. “A dessert”. How helpful. We’re calling it a dish, because ‘snacc’ is TOO hip, and I’m not certain I’m spelling mélange right.

Kidding, I’m a huge fucking nerd. I know EXACTLY how to spell Mélange, and Kwizatz Haderach. (Full disclosure, I did accidentally write “kwitzatz” at first. BUT I KNEW IT WAS WRONG.)

Where did it come from? Maybe Hungary. Look, normally I spend a little more time researching these things, but this week, I fumbled the ball, because I THOUGHT I covered it when I first made monkey bread on the site, but it turns out that one was just an extended performance piece. So I looked up two sites, learned they didn’t agree, and said ‘Well, it’s already 2 in the morning. Maybe things would have gone better if we hadn’t listened to a podcast about whether or not the CIA wrote “Wind of Change” for the Scorpions as a psy-op”, or binged…5 hours of two guys fucking around (heh) in an adult video game (confused heh). To which I said “HEY, I watched that on 1.25 speed! So it was only FOUR hours of dudes fucking around in an adult video game. Maybe if YOU hadn’t written 3,000 words of political commentary and/or mathematical analysis of viral data this weekend, we’d be in a better place!”

“Whoever wins, me lose” - Caveman Jon.

The point is, as noted: bad time management skills. (Well, technically. Clearly, I at least very precisely TRACK my time spent on tasks, I just…you know, still do the dumb stuff.) Also, there was a minor chicken inconvenience that could have turned into a chicken emergency if not for the 10 minutes I spent fixing it! And the cat was unusually intrusive this evening, demanding more attention than usual, until deciding she’d had enough and scratching me, forcing me to take my allergy meds again. None of this is about Hungary, is it? SOMEWHERE IN THE MID-TO-LATE 1800’s

The magical AGE BEFORE COLOR.

In America, there was a dish being born called “monkey bread”, which referred to balls of yeasted dough, tossed in butter, and baked together. A sort of sibling to the Parker House Roll phenomenon. (If you don’t know what that means: Parker House is a famous Boston hotel that actually is like, the first American source for a lot of recipes. ANYWAY, they had a tactic where they intentionally crammed a lot of balls of dough for their yeasted dinner rolls onto the baking pan, so as they proofed and baked, they’d end up almost cubes, with a rounded top. The kind of standard “American Dinner Roll”, these days.

Here’s a picture of Bon Appetit’s version of that recipe, maybe correctly attributing the artist? I don’t know. I’m still bad at that too.

Anywho, you could make a more buttery version of that stacked up in a Dutch oven. Supposedly called “Monkey brain bread”, “monkey puzzle bread”, or “monkey bread” because (heavy sigh before affecting an impersonation of Judy Garland’s Dorothy Gale) “This dish is more fun than a barrel of monkeys”. Why do I think 1880’s society women sounded like Dorothy? I don’t know, that’s just kind of how I do 50’s housewife, and made it a little more rural.

AT THE SAME TIME, in Hungary, a dish called Arany galuska (which I ALMOST spelled right on the first try) or “Golden Dumplings” was also catching on. It consisted of “balls of yeasted dough, covered in butter, and rolled in sugar and crushed nuts, stacked together and baked until Golden”. Those Hungarians started immigrating to America in the 1880’s, because everyone did around that time, because we fucked over grain prices in Europe, and Germany was kind of losing its shit.

Around the 1940’s silent film actress ZaSu Pitts put out a cookbook, and talked about HER “Monkey bread” recipe, which was kind of the typical American one, except with SOME sugar mixed in with the butter. Then, in the 1970’s, Betty Crocker put out a recipe for what I would think of as a Monkey Bread (balls of dough, sugar, CINNAMON, maybe some walnuts) called Arany galuska, which they then labeled “Hungarian Coffee Cake”. The sweeter version caught on more, especially when Nancy Reagan started serving it around Christmas at the White House.

I did not expect this post to include a picture of Margaret Thatcher, who is…I think pretending to blow out the candles too in this pic?

Nowadays, the “mostly butter” version is essentially forgotten, other than one of its innovations of the form (the use of a Bundt pan) is not considered a core component in many households, while few people have HEARD of arany galuska, despite eating it. So NOBODY won!

Anyhow, almost none of that is relevant to today’s recipe. But that’s for morning Jon to tell you.

A New Savory Day Dawns

I mean, technically we’re afternoon Jon, since our sleep schedule is totally boned thanks to the Pandemic. But sure. And good job Late Night Jon, you said you were going to pass out, and got 1,000 words out before you did! A lot of them are a little crazy, but that’s okay. I’d say the biggest issue you have is your exaggeration for the dramatic. Because today’s recipe has a FAIR bit to do with the whole monkey bread/aranygaluska (it can be written either as one word or two, late night Jon just couldn’t find a good point to bring that up) thing.

As the title suggests, we’re making a Cheesy Monkey Bread, which has been a thing for a while now: the evolution of the dish from “buttered balls of yeasted dough” to “balls of yeasted dough tossed in sweet toppings” is now turning into “balls of yeasted dough tossed in ANY toppings”. Mostly you see things like “cheesy” monkey bread, or “pizza” monkey bread, “parmesan and Garlic” monkey bread, things where the melting of the cheese to make a sticky web replaced the melting sugar holding the whole thing together. I’ve seen a couple versions, but I found this one from Bon Appetit, which seemed like the easiest one, so I decided to make it.

Here’s the good news: the steps are all very simple, and, after a bit of a warm-up prepping things, are pretty easy/low-effort. The bad news is that that ‘bit of warm-up” is like, 10-15 minutes of mise-en-place. First, you’re going to want a medium-sized, oven-safe skillet. I used one of our mid-range cast-iron skillets.

There’s something about Cast Iron that makes it really photogenic.

Next, you want to make the dough balls. Could you make 1 pound of yeasted bread dough? Yes. Assuming you have yeast, which I still do not. So instead I just bought a pre-made yeasted pizza dough. And because they were OUT of the normal pizza dough, we got Whole Wheat. Already I’m making this a healthier dish! (This will be the last time that occurs) Then just cut up the dough into roughly 1” chunks.

Looks weirdly like chicken.
Or is that just me having recently seen weird freeze-dried chicken in TV dinners.

Now, you want the dough to be cold, or at least cool, when you toss it in the coating later, so I just tossed this cutting board into the fridge while I made the rest of the topping, but you could also just make the topping first, or have someone helping you to handle both things at roughly the same time.

The topping is the ‘complicated’ part, and even then, it’s not HUGELY complicated. You gotta chop up a couple cloves of garlic, a shallot, and some parsley. A lot of recipes call for both parsley and garlic, because the flavors kind of work together, and it has been LONG believed (ie, from the ancient Greeks) that eating parsley at the same time as garlic helps cut down on garlic breath/gassiness.

I would argue, given the centuries of parsley being included in garlic bread, and the fact that garlic bread still gives garlic breath, that that idea seems kind of hard to…parse.

Once the herb and aliums are chopped up, you gotta grate some dairy. First, you need 8 ounces of Monterey Jack cheese, which is, 800 straight calories into the pot. If that worries you (we’ll break the math down later) you could maybe use a low-fat version, or a lower fat-cheese. But Monterey Jack is pretty useful as a melting cheese. ON top of that, you grate an ounce of Parmesan, and ¼ cup of…this.

The pale strands of mystery.

That’s not the Monterey Jack, that’s butter, baby. Straight-up butter. Yeah, you need some more dairy fat to allow all of this to meld, and the melting butter will help the bread brown. Then you toss together the grated cheeses, butter, garlic, parsley, shallot, some red pepper flakes, and some salt and pepper. THIS is the topping you’re going to toss the balls of dough in.

It’s pretty.
And pretty FATTY.

Speaking of, it’s time to do that. Well, there’s a couple quick steps: First, you wanna reserve about 1/3rd of the topping for later. Put that in the fridge. Second, grease the skillet you’re going to use with butter or Pam, or whatever. From here, you just toss balls of dough in the topping and place the coated balls (heh) in the skillet, balls nestled up next to each other. If the balls don’t basically fill the entire pan…You need to change pans, which would SUCK, so try and get roughly the right size at the start. My pan was like, 10”?

It looks like I didn’t fill the bottom corner, but that’s because slope of the pan is lit strangely.

If you have any topping left over in the bowl (not the fridge bowl, but the one you JUST used), shake it all out over the skillet. Now it’s time to do nothing! You want to let the dough proof for a bit, so just put it in a warm place and let it sit for 30-40 minutes. I started preheating my oven to 375 and just set the pan on top.

After the dough’s proofed and swelled a little, it’s time to bake. Pop it in the over for like, 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted, and a little browned on top. Then, take your fridge bowl of reserved topping, and sprinkle it all over the top of the molten cheese.

Another 10-15 later, and the dish is done.

Look, Normally I do the plate shot as the title card. But I’m doing this one today, because holy shit that looks good.

You’re supposed to eat it “hot”, so we let it cool down just a bit before we tried to pry it out of the pan (a not-perfect process, as the pan wasn’t fully seasoned, leading to Nate having to vigorously scrape it clean later.) And Nate served me up my portion.

Ha.
Haha.
I’ll knife you.

Once he was done FUCKING AROUND, we actually let our mother serve herself first, then I went, and then Nate. And I have to say, other than the Whole Wheat dough adding some weird coloration to the dish, overall, it looked pretty much exactly as I expected.

Looks a little like brains, due to the grey color.

Flavorwise, it was perfectly fine. There was SOMETHING missing from it: maybe it needed just a touch more red pepper flake, or a touch more of a sharper cheese, or some garlic powder, but it was just slightly too one-note to be AMAZING to me. But for a first attempt, and a practice run at a broader framework, it was pretty damn good. 10 minutes of work for 4 servings of cheese, bread, and garlic? That’s a great deal.

Oh, right, speaking of bread and cheese, the math. Basically, the dairy and bread combined equal out to 2,380 calories. One clove of garlic has…around 3 calories, and one shallot has…7 per tablespoon. Look, we’re going to round up and say 2,400 for the whole shebang. Which means that, if you eat an entire quarter of this pan, you’ll consume about 600 calories. Which isn’t THAT bad. It’s about 2 slices of “cheese pizza” from Domino’s or Pizza Hut. (Which will vary based on sauce, cheese, crust, etc) And a reduced fat Monterey would actually only trim about 20 calories per ounce off, for an overall reduction of 160 from the total. Meaning you’d go from 600 calories to 560. Is it worth it? Shrug. But if you decided to do it, it wouldn’t be crazy.

WEDNESDAY: ARE WE STILL DOING THIS 3 TIMES A WEEK THING? AND IF SO, HOW LONG?

FRIDAY: DEPENDS ON A LOT OF STUFF. IF SOMEONE HAS YEAST JON CAN BUM (OR HE FINDS SOME AT THE STORE, SINCE HE NEEDS TO GO SHOPPING TODAY OR TOMORROW), WE’LL GET A BREAD-AND-EGG BOAT. IF NOT…WE MIGHT GET IT ANYWAY, JUST MUCH EASIER ON HIM.

WELCOME, TRAITORS, TO THE

Recipe

Cheesy Monkey Bread

Serves 4 as an entrée, 8 as an appetizer

Ingredients

½ pound Monterey Jack

1 ounce Parmesan

¼ cup (½ stick) cold unsalted butter

1 shallot, chopped

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

¼ cup finely chopped parsley

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Kosher salt; freshly ground pepper

1 pound cold pizza dough, cut into 1-inch pieces

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

Preparation

Coarsely shred both cheeses and butter on the large holes of a box grater. Toss cheeses, butter, shallot, garlic, parsley, and red pepper in a medium bowl; season generously with salt and pepper. Transfer one-third of cheese mixture to a small bowl; set in the refrigerator. Add dough pieces, a few at a time, to remaining cheese mixture in original bowl and toss gently to coat.
Lightly coat a medium skillet with nonstick spray. Arrange dough in skillet in an even layer; pour any leftover cheese mixture in bowl over. Let sit in a warm place until beginning to puff slightly, 30–40 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375°. Bake bread until top is lightly browned and cheese is melted, 18–22 minutes. Top bread with refrigerated cheese mixture. Continue to bake until edges of bread are golden brown and firm and cheese is melted and oozing, 10–15 minutes more. Serve hot.