Pizza Party

Earlier this week, a good friend of mine emailed to see if I'd be interested in a weekend pizza party. Transcript of his email: wanna have a pizza party on saturday? ive been experimenting with goat cheese.
My response: [...] I'll make the dough if you bring the cheese!
Clearly, we are a delightful group. So, friend sent out a mass email to other friends and, as the week wore on, said friends grew more and more excited about homemade pizza.

Well, tonight, all our pizza dreams came true, with a few mishaps thrown in for fun.
I spent the day at the farmers' market, church, and CostCo, so I actually had very little time at home. I'd started a poolish with one of Peter Reinhart's to-die-for recipes, but later realized the dough needed yet another day of refrigeration to make it take on full flavor. As I am not willing to waste poolish that's been squandering space in my fridge for a full night, I went with a completely fresh dough, ignoring the pre-ferment pain. And where did I find this delightful dough? No other location than my darlingest food blog, Smitten Kitchen. I found this amazingly simple dough recipe and planned on making it a few hours before the party for a richly risen dough treasure. Of course, I had no flour, so an emergency grocery run and a few distractions later, the party was just getting underway and I was just beginning my dough mixing.

I enlisted a slightly unwilling Boy, and we whipped up this dough (three batches in, oh, maybe 10 minutes), swaddled them in plastic wrap, and shoved them into our goodie bag to head to the pizza party.

We let the dough rise a bit on top of the oven, then the baker-boys took over, stretching, nay, throwing my dough into perfect circles then dressing them from a gorgeous assortment of condiments, from pesto to carmelized onions and back around to raw mushrooms (fresh from this morning's farmers' market) and Kalamata olives. If I remember correctly, we made a total of 7 pizzas, 3 with my dough and 4 with miscellaneous donations from Trader Joe's and another friend's CuisinArt. By far, my dough got the most applause, and that for dough hurriedly whipped up and not even allowed to fully rise . Clearly, this is a spectacular recipe. Allow me to share!

That's pizza in that pan there -- we made many types and shared!

Spectacular Pizza Dough
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Makes one 12" pizza

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (organic if possible, part whole wheat, if you're adventurous. I used only all-purpose this time, though I'll likely sub part whole wheat next time)
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp active dry yeast (if using other yeast types, adjust accordingly)
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water (give or take a few drops)
  
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

1. In a large-ish bowl, throw all the dry ingredients, even the yeast, together. Stir them up and then add the water and olive oil. Mix the ingredients together, but don't sweat it if they're stubborn.
2. Dump the bowl's contents onto a lightly floured counter/workspace and gently knead until the dough forms nicely, about 1-2 minutes. All the extra floury bits should come together at this stage to leave you with a smooth dough.
   
3. Lightly (lightly!) oil the bowl and put the dough ball into it, turning to coat evenly. Cover the bowl in plastic wrap. OR Lightly oil some plastic wrap and wrap the dough ball into it.
   
4. Let the dough sit for an hour or so until it's risen, then stretch out, place on cornmeal-dusted parchment paper, and top with delicious everythings.
   
5. Transfer the parchment paper to the oven, preferably onto a warmed pizza stone, but a cookie sheet works ok and bake on your oven's highest temperature until the cheese is melted and the crust is wonderfully brownish.
   

Regional Food Affairs

Occasionally, everyone has affairs. I figure, if Bill Clinton can, why can't I?
Thus, my regional food affair.
Not only am I in love with the food of my countrymen (that's the Pennsylvania Dutch, famous for pot pie and scrapple, and Italians, famous for all good food, everywhere), but I also love the food of other regions, like wherever Brie comes from (I know it's France!) and Mexico (mmm, tortillas!).
Mostly, though, I love food from home, wherever home may be. TheBoy made a particularly apt statement while we visited family for the holidays "back east." He mentioned that we are now so firmly citizens of both the east and west coasts that we can be those annoying jerks who crave foods "from home" no matter where we are. In PA, we sorely missed our beloved In-N-Out, but here in Cali, I can't even begin to tell you how much we miss good pizza, hoagies, cheesesteaks, and, above all, Wawa. ::sigh:: My stomach growls even thinking about all the delicious Amoroso rolls, salami, provolone, capicolla, and vinegar. ::sigh again:: So, when we visited, we stopped by all the best places to get a taste of home. First stop, Wawa, of course!

We got the full meal: lemonade iced tea, an Italian hoagie with oil, vinegar, and all the veggies, and TASTYKAKES. We hesitated between visions of butterscotch crimpets and kandykakes, but had to stick with the latter. Why? Because they had the EAGLES on them!
Only later did we find crimpets with Eagles logos, too. Wow!
Later, we went to Pepper Mill (you who don't know.. I'm sorry) and I got a cheese steak while TheBoy got an Italian grinder. There are no pictures for the same reason there are no leftovers -- too good! Even better about our Pepper Mill trip: a good friend of mine works there and when we "complained" about the food, he gave us a full refund. *wink*


Despite the fact that I love Wawa and everything it serves, I have to carefully balance my cravings with the realization that almost everything that Wawa serves is totally unhealthy, unsustainable, and not always all that tasty. Yes, I am talking about Wawa coffee. Ew.

What I do love, though, is how food becomes such a vital part of a place. I couldn't imagine the Greater Philadelphia area without Wawa or cheesesteaks, just as I couldn't picture Los Angeles without In-N-Out and taco trucks. The feeling of community is irreplaceable.
What food is vital to your region? Share in comments!

Holiday Food Treats

I hope everyone just had a lovely set of holidays. Around here, we celebrated entirely too much and, well, the cookies were basically endless (future posts about them.. .yeah). How about I ease into the new year, though, and highlight some food/foodie things received.

TheBoy's gift to me was both thoroughly unexpected and wonderful. A FONDUE POT! Now, I will have to become Strongbad in order to lend out my newly prized possession. I imagine my next encounter will somewhat resemble this Homestarrunner cartoon.

One of my very best friends (who happens to be one of my bridesmaids) gave me a delightfully food-filled gift. Now only did she handcraft a delightful pair of onigiri earrings, but she also delivered some intensely sweet powdered ginger drink. She knows of my great love for ginger, and decided to conveniently deliver. This friend, A, then accompanied TheBoy and me to the craft store for some fun times -- A is an artist (chemical engineering major--artist) and I needed some new yarn to satisfy my cravings. While we were there, A decided that she had not delivered a fully spectacular Christmas gift, so proceeded to purchase two packs of Wilton's adorable mini cookie cutters, one in the "romance" theme and one "Noah's ark" theme. Obviously, A knows me too well. In fact, A is the wonderful roommate who first introduced me to bento, mini cookie cutters, and all things tiny, precious, and edible.

There was only one negative to A's fabulous food contributions: that honey ginger drink is entirely too sweet. Like, mouth-curdlingly sweet. So, how did I remedy this situation? Well, I'm adjusting how much of an individual packet I put into my cup of hot water. Unfortunately, the packets are not resealable and I actually really hate cutting open individual packets. So, this morning I took the only logical step to correct this issue: I cut all the packets opened and dumped them into an infrequently used Nalgene bottle. Now, I will be able to use a long-handled spoon to easily pull out just exactly the right amount of ginger powder without wasting half a packet or having to pull out the scissor. A, are you proud of my food engineering?

Do you have any interesting ways of storing powders or correcting for flavor imbalances? Share in comments!

Holiday Lunches, Again

Over here in LaLaLand, we're all gearing up for holiday hiatus and you know what that means, right? Minimal updates!

Instead of leaving you totally bereft over the holiday season, though, I thought I'd treat you to a second dose of festive food.

Here we have my accidentally festive lunch from December 18th. I justsohappened to use a green box and those wonderful farmers' market-found cherry tomatoes couldn't help but cheer up my lunch. The less exhilarating companion to the green box is a microwavable Lock-N-Lock container filled with the same leftover beef stew we've been suffering from (actually, it's delightful, but I'm glad to see it gone). Inside the green box are some of those tomatoes, some small bite-size chunks of homemade bread, and some unsweetened dried mango slices from the bulk bin -- pretty healthy and awesome, in my opinion. If you notice that I packed the green box pretty lightly, you're right: together, the Lock-N-Lock plus the green sidecar is entirely too much lunch for me, so a mostly filled beef stew and lightly packed side are the perfect amount for a filling, wintertime meal, especially in our arctic office environment. Frigid!

Though the last meal was accidentally holiday-themed, this next bento set was purposefully crafted as a tribute to our Christmas spirit. Taking some of the spicy shortbread cookies that I made and coupling them with leftover spaghetti with sausage, and happy green peppers was a great start. Throwing those delightful cherry tomatoes completed the package in the best way. For TheBoy's lunch, I simply cut slices off the top of a green bell pepper and set them aside. I sliced until the bottom of the pepper was shallow enough to sit in his lunchbox. You can see some of the extra slices plugging a hole next to the "wreath" pepper and, of course, over in my box, covering my leftover lasagna. He also got a layered snack area filled with banana chips, salted almonds, and a single spiced shortbread cookie -- I got the same, just with smaller portions.

TheBoy loved how much thought (he thinks) I put into this lunch and gobbled it up in record time. He loves anything to do with spaghetti and tomatoes and peppers, so this was a huge hit. I also loved my lunch and we both got compliments on our wonderful meals. So, I'll sign off now for the holidays with a clear blog-conscience. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Festive Food

Because L.A. is so different from my old, cold Christmas home, I've been having some difficulty getting ready for the holidays. So, to help me, I've started making festive food choices. Beginning with my holiday cookie spree and edging into our lunches, Christmas has started to seriously invade the kitchen here.
Let's start with a small example: Saturday night hit and cookie craving set in bigtime. I needed my fix, so I made another batch of Chocolate Rocky Road cookies. These ones didn't turn out quite so beautifully as the last ones, but were delightful, especially when photographed on holiday wrapping paper!

A little bit of red and green has snuck into our lunch boxes in the form of lasagna and green grapes. Let me tell you a bit about the lasagna. First, I started by making the sauce. You can find the recipe at the bottom of the post, but mostly it's a sham-recipe -- I just throw in whatever I have around. While the sauce is bubbling away, I work on the ricotta (following the directions on the lasagna noodles box... too easy!). While both the sauce and ricotta are getting delicious, I'm also, sometimes, heating up hot Italian sausage to mix into the sauce. Then, it's just a matter of throwing all those ingredients into the baking dish and making delicious, holiday lunches with the resulting leftovers. The other defining holiday aspect of these lunches are my Christmas cookies. A recent post dealt with the cookies, so I won't go into too much detail, but... they are pretty festive, aren't they?

How about the naturally red and green produce from our local farmers' market? Swiss red chard is big in my book, I've even blogged about it before. I love how it looks, smells... I even love how it feels. I took some of that fabulous vegetable and cooked it up into a sort of Mediterranean stir fry: Swiss red chard, zucchini, mushrooms, and, of course, garlic and olive oil combined to make MMM the best stir fry I could whip up. And plenty of leftovers for the next week. It's even in the red and green bento pictured in this post.

Chard was not the only festive farmers' find this week. I got tons of great red and green produce there. Take a look at our veggie basket, brimful of bright red heirloom tomatoes, pretty purple onions, and, best of all, a subtly colored and heavenly smelling bunch of thyme. I can't wait to use it in the Parmesan-Thyme Savory cookie recipe I have stored up in my recipe file. This image of our produce basket even has my "rolling pin" off to the side. You can read about my wine bottle rolling pin reuse project over at my eco blog, Light Up My Room.








Homemade Sauce Recipe

• 1 huge can (smaller than a basketball, bigger than a softball) of stewed tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp. tomato paste (for thickening. give or take for taste and preferred thickness)
• 1 Tbsp. fresh, or 1 tsp. dried, basil leaves (or to taste)
• 1 Tbsp. fresh, or 1 tsp. dried, Italian herbs (I use a dried blend, but you can use parsley, sage, oregano.. whatever)
  
• 1-6 cloves garlic, minced (have I mentioned we LOVE garlic?)
• Olive oil for the pan
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat olive oil in a tall-sided pot and add garlic. Don't let the garlic brown, just get your kitchen smelling delicious.
2. Add the stewed tomatoes, crushing each one with your hands (OVER the pot! or else you'll make a huge mess!). Crush or cut to your preferred texture; I like chunky sauce. TheBoy calls it "stylish"
3. Add spices and stir well.
4. Let it cook until the tomatoes have started falling apart and the taste is to your standards. It's really up to you how this sauce turns out. If you decide to add meat, especially sausage, make sure you either buy loose ground meat or crumble it up before browning, because it's a hassle if you try to crumble after cooking.

Recipes with Molasses: Cookies

Imagine Wednesday of Thanksgiving week: the dough is already whipped up and chilling in the fridge. (After much searching for the appropriate recipe, I went with the one on the molasses bottle... find it at the bottom of the post). TheBoy and I went out to find a rolling pin to tame the dough and... no place had one! Well, Target had one for $20, but I couldn't see myself buying a stick with handles for that much money. One extremely unpleasant (though productive) Wal-Mart visit, later, we were ready to head back to Target to pick up that over-priced pin.

Well, there must have been a serious run on rolling pins because there were no absurdly expensive cooking implements left. At all! Commence calling: I called TheBoy's mother (future Mother-in-Law of yours truly) and asked if I could use her rolling pin and oven at Thanksgiving (she said yes, but I was able to avoid that fate, anyway) and TheBoy called our wonderful friend J----- for his help. J----- suggested a floured wine bottle and, voila!, we had our answer. We rushed home to the already-opened bottle of FishEye and TheBoy chugged it down (my Tylenol-cured headache prevented me from joining him) so that I could fill it with cold water, which both added heft to the pin and kept the dough extra cold so I could work with it longer.
Overall verdict: I will likely NEVER buy a rolling pin, I'll just drink more and more Merlot to sustain my baking habit. The cookies turned out delicious (if I do say so myself) and everyone ate them right away.

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
makes uncounted dozens of mini cookies (probably about a gallon, if you must know)

• 3/4 cup molasses, light or dark (I used dark)
• 3/4 cup margarine or butter (I used butter)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 3 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1 egg

1. In a saucepan, heat the molasses, butter, and brown sugar until the mixture boils, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, cool.
2. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.
3. Stir egg into molasses mixture and mix together the flour and molasses mixtures.
4. Put the dough into the fridge (I left it in the bowl, but you might want to wrap it in plastic wrap) for 1 hour or more.
5. Divide dough in half. On a floured surface, roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/8 to 1/4 inch. Use floured cookie cutters to make precious little shapes (I used everything from a mini gingerbread man to a lion).
6. Bake at 350 F for 6-14 minutes, shorter for softer cookies.
7. Remove from pan to cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Recipes with Molasses: Bread

Well, I made two over-long posts both featuring molasses-heavy recipes... so how about a single over-long molasses post! On better thought, how about a two-part series?


As for the Honey Molasses Whole Wheat Bread, this yeast bread was really really easy and bakes to be ENORMOUS. I was terrified of using yeast... so I stuck to beer bread. But now.. mauahahah! No yeast bread is safe from my kneading and mixing.

I had a wonderful time making this bread. Because I was making it for a special occasion, where more than just TheBoy would suffer if I created a lousy product, I was particularly careful to follow the directions. I measured things precisely and didn't stray from the recipe at all! Let me tell you -- it was a crazy experience. But, my diligence definitely paid off. We came home with only scraps and our host was more than delighted to keep the rest.
My little bread pan was overwhelmed with flavor and expansion. I've always stayed away from bread-baking in the past to avoid the hassles of yeast and the troublesome rising, kneading, and patience required, but this loaf was a pleasure to make: no kneading and only very minimal time to rise. I was really impressed with this easy bread and I will definitely be making (and blogging about) more loaves in the future. Do you have any favorite yeast bread recipes? Please share in comments!



Easy Honey Molasses Whole Wheat Bread Recipe
makes 1 loaf
Recipe shamelessly lifted from ZestyCook. Thanks!

• 2 Tsp. honey
• 2 2/3 Cup lukewarm water
• 4 tsp. dry yeast
• 3 Tbsp. Molasses
• 5 Cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 Cup wheat germ (you can forego the wheat germ, but it's so useful that I splurged)
  
• 1 Tbsp. Oatmeal (for optional decoration)

1. Preheat oven to 400 Degrees F.
2. Stir 2 teaspoons honey into 2/3 cup lukewarm water and sprinkle yeast over the mixture. Set aside for 10 minutes.
3. Combine 3 tablespoons molasses with 2/3 cup warm water and combine with yeast mixture.
4. Stir the mixture into the flour. Add salt, wheat germ and 1 1/3 cups warm water. Dough will be sticky. (I mixed all the dry ingredients first)
5. Pour the dough into a loaf pan -- I grease just the bottom of mine and everything comes out great. Don't grease the sides!
6. Smooth the top of the loaf with a wet spatula and sprinkle on the oatmeal, if you choose to.
7. Let the dough rise to the top of the pan, then stick that baby in the oven for 30-40 minutes. The bread will rise like crazy. I had to take the top rack out of the oven to prevent the bread from baking into it.
   
8. Cool the bread - in the pan - on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn your bread loose into the world. Let it cool down some more (if you can stand to wait!) before slicing into it and devouring every last wholesome morsel.