Cabbage pie

"Ooh, I know what I'm going to make! A cabbage pie!"
"a what?"
"Cabbage pie! Or maybe more like a tart. A cabbage tart."
"ehrm..."
"It'll be good. Promise."
"I'll try it, to be polite. But it sounds gross."

I'll admit, it sounds a little strange. But, we picked a massive cabbage last week ("we"), and I'd only used about a third of it in my broiled cabbage dish. I was thinking that when purple cabbage cooks down, it gets kind of silky and smooth and might go very nicely in tart format, especially if you went with that sort of deep earthy flavor profile of thyme, toasted walnuts, and blue cheese. And I have to say, it turned out beautifully. I think maybe I should have beaten an egg into the mixture, just to help it hold together, but knowing Ed's general reaction to quiche, that didn't seem like a more reliable way to win him over.

Crust
1.25C flour
Pinch of salt
6tbs butter, cut into chunks
Cold water, one spoonful at a time until crust holds together

First step was a pie crust. A food processor makes that a cinch to whip together, though in retrospect I should have made a short crust, since I was just pressing it into the tart pan anyway. Blind bake that, until it's set, ish, as you prep the cabbage.

Filling
~1/2 head of purple cabbage
1 onion
2-3 slices bacon
~1/2C walnuts
~1/4C fresh thyme and sage
Salt, pepper to taste
2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
~2C water or chicken stock or milk
~1/4C blue cheese

(sorry about all the approximate amounts. I don't think it really matters too much. I didn't pay that much attention, hence the guesses)

Slice an onion, and cook that down until it's starting to caramelize, with as much olive oil as necessary to do the job. Chop the cabbage into small-ish pieces, and saute that with a few splashes of vinegar and some chicken stock if you need more liquid. Salt, to encourage some water release, and then cook til tender. Transfer to a big bowl.

Chop and render some bacon. Two slices? three slices?

Harvest a bunch of thyme, chop some sage leaves, and throw that into the bacon pan after draining off most of the bacon grease. Either use that bacon grease or some butter to make a roux, and once the roux is nice and brown (I think it was at this point that Ed said "something smells really good"), whisk in some crumbled blue cheese.

Toast some walnuts in the oven, until toasty.

Mix everything (cabbage, bacon, roux, walnuts, herbs) in a big bowl. Spread it into the tart crust, and bake for ~20 minutes. Sprinkle more blue cheese on top, let it cool long enough so that you can handle it, and serve!








This got a great Ed-rating. He was all worried that the cabbage would be overcooked into mush, but no need to worry, it still had some chew. Also, we took a perfectly healthy cabbage and buried it in cheese and butter and bacon, and that definitely improved the flavor, texture, and satiation.




I highly recommend. Even though it's a little more involved than the light summer fare we've been making lately, this seems like a good one to repeat.

That pile of veggies next to it is matchsticked zucchini sauteed ever so briefly with the remainder of my pesto, topped with butter-toasted almond slivers and fresh tomatoes cut into spears. Quite delicious.

Dressed up tomato toast

We were watching some sort of Bon Appetit video online the other day, and Carla made some delicious-looking middle eastern-inspired tomato flatbreads. She described them as "dressed up" tomatoes on toast, and it looked really delicious. So with those big gorgeous tomatoes that we got in the CSA, plus all the herbs we had on hand, we figured that would be pretty tasty. We weren't wrong, this was amazing. The key is that every component was amazing on its own, so combining them just amplified things. We'll be making this again. 

There are four components to this piece of deliciousness: Flatbread, tzatziki, smashed chickpeas, and seasoned tomatoes. Each element is delicious alone, but together you've got a real symphony in your mouth. 

The one on the left has both the tzatziki and the chickpea smash, the right still only has the tzatziki

Flat bread

The flatbread we sort of winged it. Could have made a traditional yeasty bread with yogurt for tanginess, but instead went with our trusty sourdough for the tanginess (is that a word? spellcheck doesn't seem to agree with me that it's a word). 

About a cup of starter, a cup of warm water, and two cups of flour. 1.5ish teaspoons of salt. Plus a sprinkle of instant yeast to help it poof. Not sure if that was necessary. Knead it well, and then let it rise while preparing the fillings. For extra tanginess, you can mix up the starter and a cup of flour the night before, and let the starter eat all that yummy flour so that when you knead in the next cup, it's got even more tang. We went with that approach, because we'd started making bread the night before and then got lazy and went to bed instead.

Anyway, after you've assembled the fillings, divide your dough into six balls, and roll them out or stretch them out. Heat some oil in a pan, and start frying up your dough. Somehow, this makes things so much stretchier than just baking it. Once the bottom is nicely browned, brush the top with oil, and flip. I think it was about 5 minutes for the first side, and maybe 2 minutes for the second side. They'll stay flexy after cooking, don't worry. 

Tzatziki

This has got to be one of my favorite ways to eat cucumbers. Herby and creamy and cool, it complements all sorts of things. It's also a delicious way to eat yogurt. You can't go wrong. 

1 cucumber, peeled (could use two, if you're got an over-abundance)

1 small red onion (or shallot)

1C (maybe? it was whatever was left in the yogurt container) greek yogurt. Regular would work too

juice of half a lemon

pinch of salt

1 tsp chopped mint

1/2C chopped parsley

1/4C chopped cilantro*

1/4C chopped basil*

*You could totally get away with just using mint and parsley, or in a pinch, just mint. But more herbs make it taste even better!

chop the red onion and cucumber finely. Chop the herbs. Mix everything together. You could make this the night before. The longer it sits, the more the flavors meld. 

The red onions that we got from this week's CSA are amazing - not at all that overwhelming raw-onion flavor you get from the big ones, rather just sweet and crunchy and juicy and just the right amount of spice. I'm so in love with those onions! I've never loved raw onions before, this is totally a game changer. Anyway, the crunch of an onion is different than the crunch of a cucumber, so it's nice to have both in the sauce. 

Chickpea smash

Again, you could make this the night before, because the longer all the things sit together, the more the flavors meld. This is another easy one - 

1 can chickpeas, drained

juice of half a lemon

2 good pinches of salt

~1/2C roughly-chopped parsley

~1/4C chopped cilantro

Put the chickpeas in a bowl, and mash them a bit with a fork. You're not making hummus, leave some big chunks. Add everything else, stir it around, and you're good to go.

Seasoned tomatoes

This is the sort of dish to make when tomatoes are perfectly ripe. The sort of dish to make when you've got those big heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market, the sorts of tomatoes that when you sniff them you swoon. Because the tomatoes are the star of this show.

Slice them into rounds, maybe 1/4" thick. When you place them on the flatbreads, sprinkle with salt and za'atar and sumac. You could skip the sumac, since there is already sumac in za'atar. But don't skip the seasoning, as it brings out so many more flavors. 

Assemble

On a piece of flatbread, spread some tzatziki, then some chickpea smash, then lay down some tomatoes and season. Cut into wedges, and eat with your fingers. 

We also served this with some roasted carrots, since we have a LOT of carrots right now. 

This is my newest favorite summer dish. Enjoy! 

CSA Week #1

After years of wanting to do this, we finally signed up for a CSA, from RedFire Farm, in Granby MA. Ed is mostly excited about visiting the farm and picking herbs and stuff, I'm mostly excited about having a new challenge of cooking in-season and using different vegetables than my usuals I get every week from Russos. Of course this is a little more expensive, but I like that our money is going directly to a farmer, and our food is coming from somewhere less than 100 miles away.

I figured this was an excellent reason to reinvigorate the blog a bit. I'm going to try and post the recipes that we're cooking with this stuff, and how I'd improve on what I've made. I'm sure my photos will consider to be mediocre at best, but the food will be good.



This week, we got:
2lb carrots
1lb spinach
2 heads redleaf lettuce
1 bunch green garlic
1 head napa cabbage
1 head red russian kale
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch radishes
2 cucumbers

Some of this stuff I knew I wanted to use quickly - radish greens, for example, wilt quickly. When I picked up the radishes, the greens looked gorgeous, but I knew they wouldn't keep.

The kale, carrots, cabbage, parsley, radishes, and cucumbers, on the other hand, would keep all week just fine.

So, the first thing was some roasted carrots with a radish green pesto, served alongside a spanakopita-like thing. Sort of a spanakopita cobbler. In the future, we're going to skip the cobbler part, and either do a pie crust as an upside-down pie, or just bake the filling and spread on toast. I mean phyllo dough would also be fine, but that's finicky.

Roasted carrots with radish green pesto
1 pan's worth of carrots, washed but not peeled
~1tbs olive oil
a pinch of kosher salt

1 bunch radish greens
1 handful walnuts
1 clove garlic
1 sprig green garlic
half a lemon's juice
salt to taste
A glug or two of olive oil

Dump the carrots on the pan, pour on the olive oil and roll them around until they're coated. Sprinkle on some salt, and put in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes until they're as done as you like them. If you put them into the oven as it's pre-heating, you'll get more concentrated heat from the heating elements, which will help brown the side closest to the elements (for my oven, that's the bottom), without overcooking the carrots. I like my veggies with good caramelization, but not overcooked.


For the pesto, toast the garlic clove and the walnuts in a pan. Once those are fragrant and slightly browned (not blackened), dump into a food processor with all the greens and some salt and the lemon. Blend, adding oil as needed to make it blend right. Not enough oil and you won't get a paste. Taste, adjust seasoning, taste.

This will keep for a week or two, if you don't use it all immediately on the carrots.



The carrots with their radish green pesto, served alongside the spanakopita thing and some fried loukaniko sausages. The sausages, while delicious, weren't really necessary.

Spanakopita Thing
I started with this recipe. But I changed things, so here is my version:

1lb spinach
4 cloves garlic
1 small onion
2 scallions
half a bunch of parsley
Salt to taste
~1/4lb feta cheese
4tbs olive oil, divided
2 eggs

1.5C flour
1/2tsp baking powder
1 tbs olive oil
1/4tsp salt
1C water

I used a cast-iron pan, so that I could cook all the things in one pan, and then stick the whole thing in the oven to bake.

Sweat the onion and garlic in about a tablespoon of oil. Roughly chop the spinach, and add to the pan with a pinch of salt to help it lose moisture. You may need to cook in batches. Chop the parsley, scallions, and green garlic, and add near the end. You may need to add more oil as you go, in which case, do that.

Mix together all the stuff for the topping. It'll look like pancake batter. Like pancake batter, don't overmix, or it'll get too gluten-y.

In a big bowl, crumble in the feta cheese, and mix it all together with the spinach stuff. Beat the eggs together and add to the bowl. Put more oil in the pan just to lube things up again, then dump in the filling. Smooth it out, then put globs of filling on top. No need to try and make it a crust, let it be more like a cobbler or biscuits. Bake for 40-50 minutes at 400F, until the topping looks golden brown.



Changes for next time:
- The filling could absolutely use the squeeze of a half lemon
- The topping was entirely unremarkable. Next time either make a pie crust and lay on top, or make biscuits and drop on top, or bake without a crust and serve on toast/in pitas/with a spoon/as a pie with no crust
- could have used more egg

The flavor, however, was delicious! Would we make this again? Absolutely, with an alternate crust.

Pizza

Pizza needs anchovies, right? Anchovies, bay scallops, pesto, sauteed leek, and cheddar (I think?). 

Delicious. But maybe a *few* too many anchovies. 

I use a basic bread recipe with maybe four glugs of olive oil into the dough while mixing to make a pizza dough. I only rise it for 15-20 minutes, then get on with rolling it out. It'll still taste delicious (if not quite as full a flavor), and we're hungry NOW. 

Pesto - 

Grind a hunk of parmesan with a clove of garlic in a food processor

Add as much basil as you can fit, a few shakes of almond meal, and a few pinches of salt

A glug or three of olive oil

Process until green and smooth

Add more oil if it won't grind

Taste, and adjust

Pizza and summer drinks

It's not the artsiest of photos, and I left the salad dressing in the middle of it, but hey - you gotta see the pinkness of that pink drink!

Ed has been really into making cocktails lately, mostly thanks to Grand Ten's awesome liqueurs and good spirits. This one was absolutely perfect for a hot summer night, just the right balance of sweet and tart and only mildly alcoholic. Not sure what to call it... how about just Pink Drink.

Equal parts (~3/4 oz)

- Craneberry (Grand Ten product)

- Angelica (Grand Ten product)

- Campari

A dash of grenadine

Several ice cubes

Fill the glass with cold Rose wine

Delicious. 

The pizza was also worth mentioning. The crust was the NYT no-knead bread recipe, with one of the three cups of flour a white whole wheat. We determined that this recipe functions just fine as pizza dough, but is not perfect. It's loose and gloopy, rather than stretchy and handle-able, and serves better as actual bread. But, it was perfectly functional for our pizza last night!

The toppings were where it's at, though. We parboiled a potato, and slowly caramelized a leek in butter, and soaked some old mushrooms in white wine and then cooked for a while in more butter. Then we drizzled olive oil all over the crust, sprinkled on a whole bunch of fresh sage, and added those toppings, plus a whole bunch of very delicious ricotta cheese (from Purity Cheese, found at Russos, not that water mass-produced crap). Overall, delicious combination of flavors. 

Prosciutto pizza

Promise, we've been making dinner, I just haven't blogged about it. This is a quick one - awesome combo of things to put on a pizza: 

- Ricotta

- Arugula

- Prosciutto

- Sage

- Caramelized onions

Pizza is tough to make into a quick meal; even when you take shortcuts. I don't rise my pizza dough very long, just while caramelizing the onions, which is a good 30 minutes. That also gives time to make the ricotta - dump all your about-to-go-bad milk (because why else are you making ricotta?) into a pot, heat til nearly boiling, add a couple glugs of lemon juice, and set aside after stirring so it'll curdle. Strain, and this doesn't need much compressing, since you're just going to turn around and put it on pizza. 

We also made one cute little calzone, pictured. Same stuff, inside. 

Even though each pizza only takes 5-10min to cook, you still have many little pizzas to cook. The best situation is probably to be doing it a la group dinner style, just eating them as they come out of the oven, but we cooked all of them, because we happened to be using the kitchen table to stage all the ingredients. Poor planning!

Spinach Ricotta Pie

I first had a spinach-ricotta pie at Anna Mcloon's house, and it was from this awesome cookbook she had from the Moosewood cafe. It was good enough that I wanted to make it again, but I was worried about Ed's reaction, because he's not a huge fan of quiches. But, we were in luck, because the spinach and the ricotta create a firm enough texture that it's not quiche-like at all - no jiggling here!

The recipe is basically this one. I don't think I actually changed much, but I did just use my usual pie crust recipe. This was tasty! It got a good Ed-rating, and even his colleagues liked it when he brought in the leftovers. So, don't hesitate, make yourself a spinach-ricotta pie!

Cauliflower and cheese galettes

I don't remember where I got the idea for this, but I know that somewhere on the internet, I'd seen somebody making little single-serving galettes filled with vegetables and cheese.  It looked good, and like the perfect thing for a picnic, because you could just eat them with your hands, since since we were traveling off to Saratoga Springs for a weekend of orienteering racing, picnic-type foods are what you want.  Also, I'd so much rather refuel with real food than with random bars and gels and stuff.  Tastes better.  So, real food it is!

These are Ed-approved, because they tasted good, but he wasn't such a fan of the whole planning ahead for food at races idea.  He's not really into the whole planning ahead deal in general.  Not like that stopped him eating them after the race.


They're filled with a grated summer squash, some roasted cauliflower, ricotta cheese, and possible some parmesan? I can't remember.  And an onion, and some garlic.  And an egg.  You mix together all those things, put them in the middle of a small round of pie crust, fold up the edges, and back until the top of the crust is golden brown.  I'd guess around 20min, but this year nearly a month ago that I made these, so things are a little fuzzy.


Pretty tasty with a side of crispy kale, too.  I topped them with some grated sumac, which has a delicious lemony-flavor, so tasty!  But you could skip that part.  You could also fill these with anything at all.  Pretty flexible, as long as it's relatively uniformly textured and not too gooey.

I'll definitely make these again!

Tomato tart season!

I've got this cookbook, that I love, from Ottolenghi, the pastry/catering shop around the corner from my grandfather's place in London.  I haven't cooked my way through it yet, but I'm slowly attempting to.  Anyway, in a nod to my easily distractible nature, I discovered that Yotam Ottolenghi has a blog, on the guardian.co.uk website, and I copied down a bunch of links to recipes I wanted to try.  I want to try them all!!  Unfortunately, though his food is delicious, his recipe-writing occasionally leaves something to be desired, and if you blindly follow the recipe and don't use your brain, you end up with a flop.  

This happened to me recently, with his tomato and almond tart.  In theory, this should have been amazing.  All the pieces are things I love to eat - fresh tomatoes, puff pastry, almond frangipane - but it didn't work that well all together.  This is as much my fault, since I should have noticed that all the stuff on top of the puff pastry was going to weigh it down too much to puff.  Alas and alack, I didn't notice, and this rich tart wasn't everything it could be.  Don't worry, though!  I'm not just reviewing a bad recipe, I'm posting a tomato tart recipe that totally worked, and is awesome, after the flop!  

The Ottolenghi tart promised to be a most luscious layer of rich, nutty sweetness, after the almond paste soaked up the juice of the tomatoes.  cool, that sounds tasty.  I suppose an option would be to make 1/4 of the amount of almond stuff called for, so it's thinner on the puff pastry, and to slice the tomatoes way, way, waaaay thinner.  Here's the link to the recipe:

link

The end result, unfortunately, revolved around the fact that there was too much stuff on the puff pastry.  It took 40 minutes to cook, rather than 25, and even then wasn't fully puffed.  It was also way too buttery - the whole thing just oozed out grease, constantly.  I find that kind of gross.  The overall tart was just very heavy tasting, and not a great use of puff pastry.  A pie dough would have stood up better to that sort of abuse.

With that in mind, I'd say my next tomato tart was a ringing success!  It didn't get a great Ed-rating, because he didn't try it when it was fresh, and the tomato juices had soaked into the pie crust of the leftover piece and made it all soggy, but it also didn't get a bad Ed-rating.  I liked this tart because I thought the ricotta filling did a nice job making the whole thing taste a little heartier and goopier, more like a pizza really.  Because pizza is awesome.  I recommend making this version, especially if your garden is still overflowing with tomatoes.  It's been a great way to use up our landlords' tomatoes… 

Alex's vastly improved tomato tart

1 shell of pie crust, pre-baked

2-3 *good* tomatoes (not the mealy supermarket kind.  this tart relies on good tomatoes), sliced to <1 p="p" thick="thick">

~1/2C caramelized onions

~1/2C ricotta cheese

~1/2C chopped basil

1 egg

salt and pepper, to taste

~1/4C grated hard cheese (pecorino or parmesan)

1 can of anchovies, optional

If you haven't got caramelized onions hanging about, cut an onion in half from end to end, and then slice off some half-rings from that, so you end up with long pieces.  Pan fry those for 20-30min on medium-low in some olive oil, until they're just beyond golden brown, but not yet burned.  They should taste sweet.  and delicious.

To make the ricotta filling, mix up the basil and ricotta and hard grated cheese and some salt and pepper, and taste.  Season with more salt or pepper however you like it.  Then add the egg, and beat until everything is of one mixture.

Spread the filling over the pie crust.  

Spread around the caramelized onions.

Lay the tomatoes out around the pie.  Maybe sprinkle with a little more grated cheese and a dash of salt.

Bake for 20min at ~350F. 

 Enjoy!

Pizza with caramelized onions, beet stems and ricotta

Coming back from Europe, there wasn't much in the house by way of food, aside from some veggies mouldering in the fridge and half a quart of whole milk.  Ed has been in Vermont a lot lately, and eating up there, so I guess it wasn't entirely his fault that the food situation was so dire.  Anyway, he went off to the midatlantic somewhere this weekend to test radios for the upcoming North American Orienteering Championships (he installs these radio gizmos at a certain control, and that gives information to the announcer about who is in what place at an intermediate control.  But, getting these things set up so that there is a signal back to the stadium can be a bit delicate, and takes pre-planning), leaving me on my own for dinner.  Since I made eggs last night, I figured I probably shouldn't do that again, but I wasn't feeling all that inspired staring at a bundle of beet stems whose leaves had long since been used.  They were sorta shriveled at the edges, but at least they were pink and crunchy in the middle.  I also was feeling a wave of laziness, that totally kept me from going to the store.  Then it hit me - put it on a pizza!  

But pizza needs cheese.  No matter, I have that leftover whole milk.  Within minutes, the dough was kneaded, and I had some milk heating to turn into ricotta.  Meanwhile, I caramelized an onion and sweated the salvageable parts of the beet stems.  

Once the milk was close to boiling, I added the vinegar, watched it curdle, and dumped it into a cheesecloth over a colander.  That drained while I finished the onions and beets, and stretched the pizza dough.  I made it with whole wheat, so it tasted too dry, despite smearing the top with some butternut squash seed oil we've had living in our pantry for a while.  Ah, well.  Onions and beets onto the pizza, I squeezed the ricotta to hurry its draining, crumbled it with my fingers on top of the pizza, and cooked it for 15min or so at 450.  Voila! pizza!  

Coulda used some goopier cheese... at least it filled my growling belly.

Tomato tart

There are a bunch of tomatoes trying to fall onto the ground and rot right now, so I picked them, and some herbs that were hanging out nearby, and figured I'd use them up somehow in a dish for the potluck last Saturday. Inspiration struck in the form of a tomato tart, with caramelized onions and cheese. Can't go wrong with those ingredients. It was utterly delicious, confirmed by pretty much everyone who ate any of it.


Tomato Tart with caramelized onions and swiss cheese
1 recipe of pie dough, for an open tart
~2 fresh tomatoes
fresh basil
fresh thyme
fresh rosemary
~2C shredded swiss cheese (in this case, Jarlsburg)
2 onions
olive oil
kosher salt

The herbs are somewhat optional, but not really, because they tasted delicious. I also wouldn't bother with those tasteless store-bought tomatoes, since they just aren't that tasty. Not being a snob, just being realistic...

You can make your own pie crust, or buy some sort of pre-made thing. I made my own, and it took less than 5min. Here's a recipe.

First, caramelize some onions. I cut them in half, and then cut slices, so you end up with long pieces. It took maybe 1/4C of oil to get them properly caramelized, but it's worth it. Throw some salt on the onions as they cook, that'll help draw out the water. It was a 15-20min process to get them properly brown, but don't be impatient.

Then, blind bake the pie crust for 6 minutes or so, just to get it initially set. From there, I put the onions down first.


Then, I added the herbs.


Then, a layer of cheese, and then tomatoes! Slice them relatively thick.

More cheese, and maybe some little cherry tomatoes on top, because they're pretty.

We ate this the next day, and it was still freakn delicious. Make this.

Creamy turkey en croute

Yup, we cooked a turkey, the smallest one we could find (at 13 pounds) for three people. Because Jenny doesn't eat turkey. Needless to say, we have lots of leftovers.

mmm, so good at the time, so not-good as leftovers. But that's referring to the cold type of leftovers. This is totally transformable. I think my hatred of sandwiches extends to cold turkey breast.

We also had some leftover pie dough, enough for one pie. I thought about making another pie, but Ed took the pie dough and made little mini-pie-crust-things, and we put a leftover turkey mixture into those. Actually quite delicious! I will call it, turkey en croute! Sort of.



The shell was a blind-baked pie crust. Roll it out, and cut into squares, I think they were ~4" per side. Stuff those into a greased muffin tin, poke a bunch of holes (with the tines of a fork) into the bottom, and bake them at 350F for ~15 minutes, until they're golden brown. You'll end up with pretty little cups for putting filling into.

Creamy turkey filling
Made enough for four hungry eaters

Olive oil
~2C leftover turkey (white or dark), cut into bite-size or smaller chunks
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
~1/2C turkey stock (optional?)
~1/2-1C greek yogurt
salt and pepper, to taste
~2 tsp rosemary

We happened to have some greek yogurt, so that is what turned into the creamy part of the creamy turkey filling. Greek yogurt is awesome, by the way - tangy, thick, and almost (if you squint your eyes) good for you. Buy the full-fat stuff, by the way, it tastes better. We got ours from the greek place, which means its definitely full fat.

So, heat some olive oil, toss in the onion, add some kosher salt, and let that sizzle away for a few minutes. Add the rosemary and let that sizzle until things smell like rosemary. Add the garlic, toss it around until it smells fragrant, then add the other veggies and the turkey stock. Cook those down until they're basically done, taste one to see how crunchy it is. Add the turkey, toss it around until its warmed up, then pull the pan off the heat and stir in the greek yogurt and some pepper. Taste, and adjust the seasonings as needed.

Lump some creamy turkey into the pie dough shells, and serve while warm. Its delicious!

Ratatouille pizza

I had half the pizza dough from last time in the freezer, so I decided to use it up with some of the veggies I'd just gotten from the little farm stand by the university. I decided that a ratatouille-like combination of veggies would be good, so I sliced everything thinly and layered it over some of the basil hummus/pesto stuff and under some ricotta salata. Which you could make on your own, all it takes is milk and lemon juice, but the small block of it at the store only cost me $3.36, and I only used half.

The dough was my standard pizza dough:
1C lukewarm water
1 tbs yeast
1 tbs sugar
1/4C olive oil
1 tbs salt
~3C flour

Dissolve the yeast and sugar into the water, and once the yeast is proofed, mix in everything else. Keep adding flour a cup at a time, until the dough is dry enough to knead with your hands. Knead for 5-10 minutes, then let it rest on a floured surface while you prep the veggies.

This dough freezes really well - I used a version that had been frozen for a couple weeks, and that really made it stretchy, so I could stretch the pizza crust rather than roll it out. Something about gluten continuing to develop even in the freezer? I wouldn't know, talking out of my ass.

Ratatouille pizza
1/4 of a medium-sized eggplant
1/4 of a zucchini
1/4 of a summer squash
1 tomato
~1/2C pesto, optional
~1C crumbled ricotta salada
Kosher salt
pizza dough

Slice the veggies very thinly. Salt both sides of them, and let them sit for 10 minutes, or more if you have time. Do this with the tomato, too. This pulls out some of the water, and keeps them from making the pizza crust soggy.

While they sit there sweating, you can roll out the pizza dough. Mine was enough to fill a regular-sized cookie sheet. Once you've rolled/stretched/cajoled your pizza dough into a large enough shape, sprinkle some coarse cornmeal onto the pan, then gently put the dough down, stretching to make it fit the corners. For a 3C batch of dough, half the batch stretched to a full sheet makes a very thin-crusted pizza. That is how I like it, but some people (ahem. Ed.) like thicker crusts. In their cases, I'd use all the dough in one pan.

Spread pesto over the pizza. I used up some of that pesto/hummus stuff I'd made. If you don't have pesto, I'd recommend at least spreading some olive oil over the crust, it'll just make things taste better.

By now the veggies should be done sweating. Rinse them in a colander, then dry them with a towel. Yeah, its weird, but it keeps the dough from getting soggy. Spread the towel out on a counter, lay a batch of rinsed veggies on the towel, then put another towel on top and push down to extract more water. Do this for all the veggies. Yeah, it'll take 5 minutes, but its worth it.

Layer the sliced veggies over the pesto, in whatever artistic manner you feel like adopting. I did rows of different veggies. Sprinkle some more olive oil on top of that. Crumble the ricotta on top.

Bake at 500F for 10-20 minutes. Depends on the thickness of the crust. The cheese should be slightly browned on top when you pull out the pizza. Just a warning, this cheese doesn't melt at all, so its likely to fall off when you eat the pizza. You could try putting it under the veggies, or just use mozzarella like normal pizzas. This was an experiment, and I thought it tasted good.

Pizza!

This was sort of a use-up-ingredients pizza, but pretty tasty anyway. Pesto/hummus (its not pesto, but not hummus...), onions, mushrooms, spinach, sardines, and cheddar. That's sort of a strange combination now that I think about it, but it tasted good. The best part is the hummus/pesto stuff.



The hummus/pesto was basically a ton of basil, some chickpeas, some toasted walnuts (they turned it gray, not very appetizing-looking, despite being delicious), some toasted garlic, salt, and lots of lots of oil trying to bring it together into a smooth paste. Didn't quite work out like that, but it works as a spread and tastes delicious.

The onions got sweated, as did the mushrooms, and the spinach, before I put them on the pizza. The dough was fairly standard, ~2C of flour to a cup of water and ~1/4C oil, and lots of salt. And yeast. No real rise time, just while I was prepping vegetables. We'll call it free-form pizza, since there isn't much of a recipe to go along with it. Worth making all the same though!

Pesto pizza

As you can probably tell from this photo, I like pizza that has lots of stuff on it. We had pesto left over from when we made it, and that stuff doesn't stay good forever, so it was time to use it up. I felt that a pizza would be an excellent use for it. We loaded it up with mushrooms, radish greens, caramelized onions, and ricotta, all on top of that delicious pesto.

My pizza dough recipe used to be the King Arthur one, but I've gotten lazy. Now, I put about a cup of warm water into a bowl, add about a tablespoon of both yeast and sugar, pour in a bunch (2-4 tbs?) of olive oil, pour in about a tablespoon of kosher salt, and knead in flour until its not sticky anymore. Then I just let it rest until the toppings are ready and the oven is pre-heated, roll it out, and go. Its probably not ideal, but it does taste good. I recommend going and finding a pizza dough recipe that you love and believe in, and using it. There are a lot of good ones out there. They all taste good, and they're all relatively easy.

The first (and longest-to-prepare) topping I made was the caramelized onions. They weren't totally caramelized, but they were close enough, and since they were cooking on pizza, close enough was as close as they had to be. Its pretty easy to do, and you can get away with not using a ton of oil if you don't care that they're perfect. (I don't). Chop an onion in half and then cut it into slices so that it makes half-rings. Heat about two tablespoons of oil in a pan, and once that shimmers, throw in the onions with a good dose of kosher salt. The salt will help the onions lose their water faster.
After about 5 minutes, they'll look like this, sweated. Keep stirring them.
After 10 minutes or so, they'll be looking more like this. Starting to be a bit brown around the edges.
I generally go another 5-10 minutes, depending on if the other toppings are ready yet and how hungry I am, before I call them done enough. If you taste one, it should taste sweet.


While cooking the onions, I cooked down some mushrooms, in oil, with lots of kosher salt (again, to get rid of water), in a different pan. Here we have a giant oyster mushroom and one or two regular crimini mushrooms. They'll take ~10min to lose most of their water. I don't like putting anything watery onto the pizza, since I like my crusts crispy.

Once the mushrooms were done, I threw in the radish leaves (any dark leafy thing would do here), and just wilted them. We happened to have eaten the radishes the day before, and it turns out radish greens are edible, they're just bitter.

The last topping was the ricotta - this happens to be homemade ricotta. Which is actually really easy to do, and we had some 2% milk that wasn't going to last forever, so I turned it into cheese. Heat 'til almost boiling, add vinegar and water, remove from heat, let sit for an hour or two, put dish towel in colander in a bowl, drain into bowl, let sit another couple hours in the fridge, and done! This one drained for eight hours overnight, so was pretty dry, I didn't need to squeeze it at all. It had the consistency of feta cheese, almost, just less salty, and more ricotta-y tasting.


Finally, assemble your pizza. Sprinkle some coarse cornmeal on the bottom of the pan, put down the rolled-out pizza dough, spread a generous layer of pesto on the bottom, top with all your toppings (more is better), and pop into a 500F oven on the bottom rack. Cook for 10-15min, start checking after about 8min, and take it out when the crust is just starting to look golden and a little browned.

We had enough dough for two pizzas, so the second one got half "regular" and half white pizza. We didn't have any mozzarella cheese, so I put down some basil and cheddar and mushrooms on the tomato-sauce-side, (which, honestly, didn't taste that good, cheddar is just not a pizza cheese), and the white pizza side got olive oil, toasted garlic, a little basil, and cheddar. The cheddar worked very well on the white pizza - it was delicious. Not as good as the pesto pizza, though.

Pizza night!

We made pizza the other night, when I came back from Costco with two pounds of mozzarella, that was just begging to be shredded and put on pizza. The crust was pretty straightforward, ~1C warm water, ~2tsp yeast, ~2tsp sugar, and then enough flour to make a pretty slack dough. We let it rise maybe half an hour, while we prepped the stuff to go on top of the pizza, and then rolled it out. I like my pizza crusts super thin and crunchy (french style, or something like that), Ed likes his pizza puffy. We ended up using tomato sauce, broccoli rabe, oyster mushrooms, and anchovies as toppings. Pretty good, once it was all together on the pizza.

I also made a calzone with one of my allocated pieces of pizza dough. It was awesome for lunch the next day, warmed up in the toaster oven - the outside got all crispy, the inside got warm, but not so hot that it burns your mouth. Awesomeness.


And of course, more pizza was made last week at the Sierra ski-o, but since Ken sr. only eats spaghetti (as far as I can tell, anyway), I made part of one of my pizzas a spaghetti pizza. It actually wasn't bad.

mmm, spaghetti pizza...