The Summer of Pizza

This summer I’ve been craving an inordinate amount of pizza. I’m trying to avoid becoming a regular at the pizza restaurants in my new neighborhood so I’ve been making a lot of pizza. I’ve already blogged about BLT pizza on super flat bread and my failed beet pizza, but since then I’ve made at least two more interesting pizza recipes.

The first was a pizza potpie I read about in another blog I read, Plain Chicken. She made Chicago-Style Pizza Pot Pies, but I tried to make them with some veggies I had on hand. The concept is similar to an upside down cake. You put the ingredients on the bottom of a ramekin, starting with the cheese, then the vegetables and meat, then the pizza sauce. Finally, you lay a circle of dough over the top of the ramekin.

You bake it like that, then flip it over onto a plate when it comes out of the oven. We made these when my sister and her family were visiting and they were a hit. Everyone got to make their own pizza and it was a fun way to eat an old favorite.

I also tried something a little different for my most recent pizza, although I cooked this one right side up. I started by mixing fat-free ricotta with some homemade pesto. I put about a half cup on the crust and then topped that with about an eighth of a cup of pizza sauce. I topped that without a half cup of reduced-fat mozzarella cheese. Then I topped it with some chopped zucchini, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Because it was a heavier pizza, I used a thicker crust. I cheated again with a store-bought frozen loaf. The key was pre-baking it for about 10 minutes before adding the ricotta and other toppings. It was crispy enough to stand up to the heavy topping.

It was good the first time I ate it and made tasty leftovers for two lunches. It was definitely better than the beet pizza and in the same league as the BLT.

Balkan Spiral Pies

It’s cabbage time. I love cabbage and have no problem coming up with recipes for it. In past CSA seasons I’ve been making borscht, cabbage rolls, and sweet and sour cabbage. With my last CSA box, I ended up with two heads, thanks to the swap box.

I used the first head in Cabbage and Cashew Salad for a dinner this week with my Cooking Light cooking club. It was a perfect coleslaw made even better with cashews, but wasn’t very adventurous. That’s why the second head went into a more daring enterprise: Balkan Spiral Pies with Cabbage Filling.

The recipe was hiding away in The Cabbage Family section of my Bon Appetit Vegetable cookbook among the more familiar cabbage recipes. A couple things interested me:

1. The word pie. I love them sweet or savory. Even with cabbage they had to be good?
2. The recipe called for phyllo dough. I love that too. It’s one of my favorite Greek ingredients.
3. It also called for bacon. Can’t go wrong there.

With that I was off to the grocery store to obtain the ingredients I didn’t have, namely bacon and phyllo dough. The recipe starts with cabbage and bacon, but more interesting are the spices used. In addition to sugar, two tablespoons of Hungarian paprika and a teaspoon of crushed caraway seeds, seasoned the cabbage, onion and bacon mix that is the filling for the pies.

Because I was trying to cut down on the fat and calories, I used non-stick cooking spray to soften the phyllo sheets. After ripping the first a few in half, I finally got the hang of it. I sprayed each one with cooking spray before folding it in half horizontally. It was only later that I realized I should have probably folded them lengthwise. After that, I added the filling about an inch from the crease before rolling it up like a cigar before coiling it into something that was about as big as a cinnamon roll.




Later after I ate them, I looked up Balkan Spiral Pies and found this product, which let me know that I hadn’t rolled mine up the right way. The other difference was that the recipe said it would make 12 pastries, but I only ended up with nine slightly smaller portions.

In any case, looks didn’t really matter, since they tasted the same no matter the shape or size. The filling was a nice mix of spicy, from the caraway and paprika, and sweet from the sugar and the maple-flavored bacon I used.

I’m looking forward to trying the recipe again with the cabbage filling, but I’ also am going to make spiral pies the next time I make spinach pie. I also froze a couple of the cabbage spiral pies for later. I think they’ll taste especially good on some upcoming cold winter’s night.

A Food Moment

I remember the first time I ate peanut sauce. Well, not really the moment, but the taste. I have no idea what restaurant it was at or with whom I shared the meal, but what I do remember is how much I loved the taste of that sweet spicy peanut-infused sauce.

It was a food moment. I’ve had a few in my life. The first time I ate pesto. Biting into my first stuffed grape leaf. Eating a garlic blue cheese burger. Something that tastes so good and different, it changes the way I look at food.

I had always been a fan of sauces, but this one blew my mind. Sauce, with nuts in it? I was really getting exotic now! I remember that not long after my meal I came upon jarred peanut sauce and couldn’t believe my luck. I plucked it off the shelf and took it home where I scooped it out of the jar and smeared it over noodles with sautéed vegetables until I had scraped the last bit out off the bottom of the glass. It seemed a little thick and I knew it was probably not very good for me, but I was willing to suffer a few extra pounds for something so tasty.

Luckily, when I went back to the same store to find a second jar, I found that the supply had disappeared. After several more trips and the shelf not being replenished I gave up. Over time, I forgot about peanut sauce and treated myself only occasionally when I saw it on a Thai menu.

It wasn’t until I came across a recipe for Peanutty Noodles in Cooking Light that I realized I could make this dish at home. The bonus was that the sauce had to be lighter than that served in a restaurant and I’m sure much better for me than the goop I found in that jar.

Tonight I had a crookneck squash and carrots on hand but wasn’t sure what to make with them. As I paged through my recipe binder I came upon the recipe and knew I had my meal. When I looked a little closer at the dateline below the clipped out recipe I was surprised to see that it said May 2000.

As I mixed up the sauce, sautéed the squash, peeled the carrots, and boiled the soba noodles I tried to remember the circumstances of that first dish, but I couldn’t recall. As I mixed all my ingredients together and the sweet, spicy scent rose up to my nose I thought a memory might return, but I couldn’t think of anything except how good it tasted.

Every One is Not a Winner

Just because a recipe sounds good doesn't mean that it will be a winner when you make it. This can be true even when the beautiful picture depicting it makes your mouth water just looking at it or if it contains some of your favorite ingredients. When you collect as many recipes as I do, you’re bound to run into a few flops. This week I ran into a bunch.

The first, Black Bean Pork and Zucchini from Cooking Light, sounded like my kind of recipe. I like black beans. I like zucchini. What could go wrong? Well first off, I must admit I didn’t exactly follow the recipe. I had chicken in my freezer, but not pork, so I actually made Black Bean Chicken and Zucchini. I’m not sure if chicken and pork made all that much difference in the recipe, but something didn’t taste all that great about this recipe to me. I think it might have been the black bean sauce or the ginger. In any case, I don’t think I’ll be making it again. I’m hoping to find another recipe I do like with black bean sauce since I have a whole jar of it in my refrigerator.

The second flop wasn’t a huge surprise – Roasted Beet Pizza. It actually wasn’t that bad, considering it was a pizza with beets on it. My big mistake here was that I didn’t let the beets cool long enough after roasting them and before slicing them to put them on the pizza. Since they were so hot, I couldn’t slice them thin enough. If they had been sliced thinner the pizza would have been easier to eat. Instead, the beets fell off as I bit them. I forgot to put the honey and salt on after cooking and also substituted red beets for the golden beets the recipe called for. The pizza was topped with shallots and feta cheese, which tasted good together and may be all I put on my pizza next time.

Finally, I made Sesame-Miso Cucumber Salad. I can just about make creamy cucumber salad in my sleep, so I thought trying something new would be good. The dressing is a spicy Asian one that is supposed to made with sesame seeds, white soybean paste or soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and honey. Having spent all my grocery money on black bean sauce, I used soy sauce for the soybean paste and olive oil for the sesame. This one wasn’t the biggest flop, but I don’t think I’ll save the recipe either.

So three recipes, three flops. But is there one common denominator? Actually there is. Well, besides me, anyway. All the recipes were not made according to specifications. Would making them exactly as described, with the exact ingredients have made a difference? There's probably a lesson to be learned there, but I guess I’ll never know. I have too many other mouthwatering recipes in my stack to try.

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Submarine Pizza

Tomatoes! What a surprise to find one in my CSA box today. With bacon in my refrigerator and a head of lettuce in the box as well, I had BLT on my mind. But I still wanted to try something a little different.

After a little searching, I settled on BLT pizza from a recipe I found on allrecipes.com because it would require minimal preparation and still feel as if I had done a little cooking.

Side note: I usually like to make my own pizza crusts, but I had two packaged flatbreads on hand from when I moved, and I knew they would speed up the preparation. If you haven’t tried them, the flatbreads are a brand called Flatout and they make a great substitute for homemade crust for personalized pizza. And the best part is they only have 100 calories and have 8 grams of fiber.

The original BLT pizza recipe called for topping the crust with olive oil, mozzerella, tomatoes, and bacon before heating it in the oven. When the pizza is done, you top it with shredded lettuce that has been dressed with mayonnaise.

Although I’m sure that would have tasted fine, I wanted to try something different with the lettuce and make it a little more salad like. I made a vinaigrette with olive oil, red wine vinegar, basil, oregano, and garlic powder. It reminded me a little of the oil and vinegar dressing I remember from a sub shop when we were kids. On top of the pizza after it had been removed from the oven, it tasted a bit like a BLT sub sandwich.

The pizza was a good combination of hot and cold and it was a fun way to try an old favorite. Plus the tomatoes tasted wonderful among the bacon, lettuce, and of course cheese.

Fabulous Fennel (and Grapes)

I’m having all kinds of discoveries already this CSA season. As noted in my last post, only on my second box, I’ve found a favorite new way to cook zucchini (with raisins!), and today I found out that I like fennel. What’s even more strange is that this recipe has grapes in it. That has to be the surprise ingredient of the season.

The recipe was so simple it barely had a name, only appearing as Fennel, Chickpeas, Peppers and Grapes on the piece of paper I had torn from Whole Living magazine. It was part of an article titled, “Culinary School” and fell under 2. Roasting.

The article said that most people know about roasting vegetables, but that adding fruit or beans to roasted vegetables could add a greater dimension. The instructions were simple, just slice the vegetables, drizzle with olive oil and toss in some herbs and salt and pepper.

In addition to the aforementioned fennel, chickpeas, peppers and red grapes, the recipe also called for garlic. For spices, I used dried oregano instead of fresh, since I didn’t have any on hand. After tossing with olive oil, I cooked them at 450 degrees for about 30 minutes, stirring halfway through.

Roasting took the edge off the fennel, a vegetable that for my taste tends to overpower a dish. Part of the problem I’ve had in the past is finding the right flavors to go with its licorice taste. This dish, which combined the spicy taste of peppers and the sweet taste of grapes, along with the roasted chickpeas somewhere in the middle, seemed just right. Roasting also seemed to soften both the flavor and texture of the sometimes stringy vegetable.

All in all I was surprised again by the addition of the sweet grapes in such a strong dish. But the article was right. The grapes, and the chickpeas, did add a different dimension. This recipe will go on the top of my fennel recipe pile for the future. It's also a good reminder to try adding a few unexpected tastes here and there.

Trying Out the New Kitchen

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I like zucchini pretty much any way you slice (or shred it). It was a nice surprise to find it last week in my CSA box, only the second of the season. It seemed early, but I wasn’t about to complain.

Since I’ve only been in my new home about a week, it’s nice to have an old friend, and something I can cook with my eyes closed, at my side. I’ve been eating it raw and on pizza, but I wanted give my new kitchen something a little harder to produce tonight. Well, not really hard, but at least little more complex, if only in flavor.

I found the recipe for Spaghetti with Zucchini, Walnuts and Raisins in a stack of those I shoved in my hutch before I moved. I had been tempted to toss the whole stack out in the last days of packing, but luckily my hutch could be moved with the contents intact as long as they weren’t breakable. Knowing a stack of recipes fit the bill, I felt better tossing them in there than in the trash.

I had most of the ingredients on hand, only substituting penne for spaghetti. The raisins were picked out of a bag of trail mix. I thought about leaving them out entirely, as they’re not my favorite ingredient, but decided to keep them in as they were pretty much the thing that made the recipe different from any other I had made before.

The recipe was from Real Simple, which as the name suggests means it was pretty simple. But as with most of their recipes, they don’t tend to be too boring, even if they are easy. It was a good recipe to try out the flow of the kitchen. I was pleased with how the kitchen worked and was able to whip the whole thing up in about 15 minutes. I was also pleased with the taste when I sat down at my new table.

The raisins gave the dish a nice unexpected sweet taste against the garlic and toasted walnuts. Of course the pasta and zucchini were good, but there’s no surprise there. I’ll be adding this recipe to the binder I keep of successful CSA recipes. That is, as soon as I find it.