Last Day of Summer

Asparagus & tons-o'-mushroom pizza (with Brie cheese) on the grill for supper tonight.

How glorious (and wistful) it is to realize that tomorrow is the first day of fall. Many cooking adventures await (pumpkin, mulled wine, pumpkin, soup, pumpkin, etc.), but many will be missed -- and the grill perhaps most of all.

Grape Leaf & Anchovy Pizza

Although most will not be pleased by such a combination, my ever-searching tastebuds were overjoyed!

Grilled pizza has become our default sunny-day recipe.

Grilled Pizza

We grilled pizza!

1. Make pizza dough

2. Stretch dough, and lay it on oiled, heated grill for about 4 minutes.

3. Remove; add toppings

4. Grill for (maybe) ten more minutes; until bottom is charred slightly.

Such a different taste than oven pizza! And so wondrous. Henceforth, we will have a summer pizza and a winter pizza.

Hee!

Tiny Apple

It's the eve of apple season! On a stroll, I found a tree so laden with apple babies that I am a'feared it will knock itself down in the coming weeks.

But I sampled one, and the cherry-tomato-sized apples were wondrous. Not unbearably sour, as a usual unripe apple! So I am sticking some in my lunch for tomorrow.

And dinner tonight:

Individual mushroom and cherry tomato pizzas on Ciabatta rolls, with goat cheese. The crumbled cheese adds simply the most glorious tang to the whole meal, and I can't describe how satisfying it was!

First Pizza in New House!

We haven't made pizza or bread for at least a month, so we didn't know how this would turn out. Our first pizza at Orange Street! We weren't even sure the oven worked.

Bean loaded the crust up with Cabernet tomato sauce, and scallions and hot peppers from our very friendly neighbor.

I added:

mushrooms

anchovy-filled olives

crushed red pepper

and much shredded mozarella.

...and it turned out grand!

Trader Joe's Meal (& Old Dad's Copper Dishes)

Asian Pizza

We are moving this weekend.

Away from Ma'am (as much as I love her) and Nii and Morgue, and into a gloriously big, old, rotting and beautiful house. It is the house Bean grew up in, and we spend tomorrow waiting (im)patiently for a call that tells us the current tenants have gone.

And so, I spent the night trying to cook dinner, but being inevitably drawn into packing all of the things we had acquired over the various years of our relationship. There are plates and cups and utensils, and there are things that have sat in the house but are used by no one but us. What to take?!

So dinner was late.

It was an Asian-inspired (I loathe that word) pizza. I made a lil' bit of dough, and spread it with:

sesame oil

seaweed sheets

fermented cabbage & carrots

(Ma'am has been experimenting with fermented vegetables, and these were perfect.)

When it was done baking I added some of Morgue's frozen fish eggs.

And after cleaning the entire kitchen (likely to be messied by various boys in our absence), it was scrumptious.

Prosciutto Pizza

Just a little late, ever-so-salty, ever-so-delicious dinner.

prosciutto

sliced onion

vodka sauce

mozzarella cheese

Played my first tennis of the season tonight!

Finally, an Oven!

In a fluke April storm, our oven stopped working. It has now been numerous weeks.

Whereas before, we made pizza-stone pizzas at least two times a week, we had to do without...

And today, we realized we could use the darned thing! And so here it is:

mushroom

spinach

onion

Feta cheese

mozzarella

chopped cherry tomatoes

And, of course, deliciousness!

(More) Mushroom Pizza

Just Another Freakin' Pizza

Sourdough Pizza

Two friends got married last night, and there was lots of much-needed happy dancing with friendly people. Lots of imbibing as well -- which prompted us to go out this morning for coffee and around-town musings. On a whim, we stopped at the bakery to wonder whether they'd sell us some of their sourdough starter. Bean expected quite a fight to be put up, but they easily parted with a coffee-cup full for $1.00. So we set to work!

The end result of much fighting with the dough was this: a glorious sourdough pizza. We were going to make it into bread and have it with fried eggs for dinner, but it didn't rise nearly enough. Stubborn little sonuva. But this came out wonderfully.

2011's First Pizza

(one of many, I presume...)

Cooking for Bean, for real

With the anticipation that last night's dinner-independence brought on, I decided to try my luck with a complete take-over of pizza preparations. The dough, which I have little experience with, was:

1/2 package rapid-rise yeastdissolved in

3/4 c. water

Bean started this when he got home from work (before me), which is the only addition he made to the meal.

When this had activated, I added:

3/4 c. bread flour

3/4 c. white flour

sprinkle cornmeal

sprinkle salt

sprinkle sugar

~ 2 tsp garlic spice mix

2 spanish olives, chopped

a bunch of olive oil

My measurements are lackadaisical, as always (I do apologize). We watched Fawlty Towers and then I added to the top more olives, a tiny mushroom, some basil leaves, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and lastly some freshly-grated Parmesan.

It was so beautiful before it went in; perfectly square and dotted with color.

But my inadequacies with the pizza peel caused the whole thing to tip onto the stone, causing a meltage breakdown in the oven. That's how the finished product ended up more like this:

Appetizer!

The company Halloween Potluck, complete with a costume contest, is happening tomorrow. I signed up for appetizers and am extremely pleased with how these turned out. They are, obviously enough, tiny pizzas! With olives! And real tomato slices!

What's not to love?!

There is nothing spooky about them, but having to survive the barrage of chili-dogs should be scary enough....

Anchovy Pizza

A pizza that was not mushroom for once! Bean was wary of having an anchovy even touch his part of the pizza, so he cut off a hunk of the dough and we did our own thang. Mine had a lil' can of anchovies, some broccoli, and a chopped radish, with mozzarella cheese and a bit o' sauce.

Man, this thing tasted like a salt lick! But still good. But still not as good as mushroom! But then again, what could hope to win that prize...

Tomato Pie

So!

Nick fixed Simon's car just as we were mixing up some pizza dough, and decided that a share of the yeasty bounty would be a fitting enough payment for his service. Since Bean and I usually make a whole pizza for ourselves, I embarked on a separate project: same ingredients in a different shape.

I took a quarter of our thick-crust pizza dough and let it to rest, stripped of the companionship of its flour-and-oil brethren.

Then I rolled it out and flopped it into a ramekin with some:

chopped tomatoes (from lovely Dani)

spinach

grated mozzarella and Parmesan

and brushed the top with olive oil and sprinkled on some more cheese for a delightfully delicious looking pizza kin. I left it in the oven for as long as the brothers' pizza did...probably ten minutes.

And even better was the fact that I was whisked away to fill up the moped's gas tank, and came back years later to find I had forgotten half of it, just as I was feeling as if I were missing something. My body (frighteningly often) neglects to tell me how it is feeling, and I was glad that tonight was a time when hunger would not go unnoticed by this stupidly stubborn brain o' mine.

Mushroom & Tomato Calzone

We make pizza so much. Too much? Perhaps. But this night we decided on a slight variation; the same ingredients with varying preparation.

That is, a calzone.

We made the crust as we would for a regular sized pizza; I rolled out one quarter of it and added

one tomato, chopped

one mushroom, chopped

some mozzarella cheese

some olive oil

basil pesto

minus, of course, the bits that were nibbled upon during preparation. Bean's had spinach and goat cheese, and was much larger.

They looked delicious in the oven, but were quickly determined to be too messy. Pizza won out. Helloooooooo next few days! :D

SURPRISE MORE PIZZA!

Artichoke Focaccia?

I guess that's what you'd call it...

Bean wanted a frozen pizza tonight, but I felt like trying something new, so while he popped his in the toaster and was done, I hopped about the kitchen in a state of strangely high spirits. I wanted pizza, but I also wanted to find a use for an opened can of artichoke hearts. Then, an idea! This dough was made of:

1/4 c. water

1/2 packet yeast

Proof.

And then add approximately 1 cup of flour, some dried basil, and two chopped artichoke hearts. I let that sit while Bean and I watched exactly one 20-minute episode of Futurama. Why is it a funny show? Unknown.

The dough rose so much that I split it in half, making one part into a miniature spinach and mozzarella calzone for a work-lunch. The other half I rolled out and topped with olive oil and mozzarella cheese, and some gloriously fresh basil leaves from the lovely potted garden. Then I let it cook while I ran about like a flailing idiot (probably ten minutes? Shorter than a pizza, in any case).

You can see artichoke pieces in the dough. I would like to know what to attribute the simple deliciousness of it to, but I am going to have to chalk it up to luck and hunger for now.