Pizza and a Salad -- A Perennial Favorite

The Pizza

I've posted about making pizza before but I have a few changes/improvements in my method--not earth-shattering new techniques, but things I need to remember to do that really improve the outcome:

1.  Drizzle olive oil directly on the pizza before putting it in the oven.

2. Always add salt and pepper in generous amounts.

3. Put the pizza pan on the lowest oven shelf to cook. This way, the pizza cooks with a perfectly crisp bottom in about 20 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. I stopped using my pizza stone and actually gave it away on one of my newest obsessions, the Buy Nothing Project website for my town. (Having to put the pizza stone in the oven way ahead of time to heat for 30 minutes was something I couldn't be bothered to do!)


The Salad

Sometimes I like a perfectly plain lettuce salad with pizza, dressed only with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. But tonight I had some extra ingredients on hand and had a salad as interesting and varied as the pizza. If you look closely, you'll see fresh kale, Romaine lettuce, olives stuffed with garlic cloves (delish!!), roasted red pepper, red onion slices and toasted sunflower seeds.

Pizza and Salad -- Again!

 
We eat a lot of pizza and salads. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Who wouldn't want pizza and salad for dinner every night, I ask you?

Tonight's was a pretty basic version -- tomato sauce, goat cheese, mushrooms, basil and a bit of Parmesan on top. Click here, and here for other pizzas I've posted about.

Lately I've been using the pizza stone I've owned for about 20 years. I used it once or twice way back when, but the pizza stuck, so I stopped using it. Now, I just put the pizza on a cookie sheet directly on the stone so sticking is not a problem. It really does help crisp up the crust.

Every once in awhile I like salad with just lettuce. Period. Then I toss it first with olive oil, the vinegar, then salt and pepper.

But most of the time, I like to load up salad with lots of other healthy treats. Tonight's salad had: watercress, red leaf lettuce, left-over radish sprouts, left-over green beans, left-over basil leaves, and half a left-over half avocado --  aha, a pattern emerges!
 

We had really great peaches for dessert. The first of the season for us. Sprinkled with lime juice and sugar and left to macerate for just a bit while we ate dinner. So good -- they didn't need yogurt (which I sometimes thicken and put on top of fruit) or ice cream or anything.

 

I buy this frozen pizza dough at Central Market.

 

The dough starts out in a fairly small circle.



I try for a vaguely rectangular shape to fit my cookie sheet. Also, I use whole-wheat flour when I roll it out, so by the end of the process, I figure that the crust is half white and half whole-wheat.

Voila!

 

Pizza with Potatoes -- It Works!

I've been wanting to put potatoes on pizza for quite some time now. I did it last night and really loved the taste and texture of creamy soft potatoes along with the mushrooms, kale and bits of seasoned tofu crumbles.

The potatoes here don't look especially attractive, I'll admit -- I might have turned the broiler on for a minute or two to brown them up. But the taste was just right.

Because I have an unreasonable fear of using yeast, I don't make pizza dough from scratch. Once or twice in the past, I had bread dough that didn't rise and ever since then, I hesitate to try using it again.  (You think maybe because the yeast was over 10 years old?) So instead of making pizza dough myself, I buy frozen dough from the grocery. (Click here for my last pizza with frozen dough.)

Here's my recipe:

Slice one Yukon Gold potato into 1/8-inch slices and stand them on end around a wire steamer basket.  Cook them until tender. Lay the slices on a dish towel to absorb excess moisture, turning them once.

Remove the stems from about four large kale leaves and wash the leaves. Chop the kale and sauté it for two or three minutes. Add two cloves of chopped or minced garlic and continue cooking for two to three more minutes. 

Sauté about three large mushrooms, sliced. I used to use uncooked mushrooms when making pizza, but my pizza was always way too juicy, because I'm not shy about using lots of mushrooms. So now I cook the mushrooms briefly, just until they release most of their liquid and the problem is solved.

Sauté about 3/4-cup of tofu crumbles with 1 tbsp. of fennel seeds and 1 tsp. each of cumin seeds or ground cumin, sage and thyme along with a sprinkling of crushed red pepper, salt and pepper.

Layer the ingredients on the pizza beginning with mozzarella. I skipped tomato sauce with this pizza because I wanted the flavors of the other ingredients to be prominent.

Add a drizzle of olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper over everything and bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Pizza for Dinner

When I bought a can of artichokes at the grocery store recently, I envisioned myself making some sort of creamy crab-spinach-artichoke dip, but that has never happened. Instead, a few artichokes ended up in a salad. Since they were the unmarinated kind, it didn’t really work out. That bowl of unfinished artichokes was my inspiration for pizza.

I discovered frozen pizza dough a few years ago and love to use it now and then. My plan yesterday was to stop at the grocery store before going to the gym at around 12:30. The problem with the plan was that even though it was the middle of March, the temperature was in the mid-forties – far too cool for the dough to begin thawing in the car. But wrapped in its plastic bag, I thought it might get a head start in my gym locker in the toasty woman’s locker room!

 Unfortunately, after my workout, the dough was still pretty frozen. What did the trick was placing it on a metal baking sheet. The metal conducts heat from the air to the frozen item or disperses the cold molecules away – I’m not sure which, but food thaws faster than if left directly on the counter.

My pizza recipes vary. For this one, I made a basil pesto and topped it with mozzarella, mushrooms, and the artichoke hearts.  I like to add salt and pepper, and sometimes some red pepper flakes. What made this pizza really great was dried tomatoes--they have a very strong and bright taste.  I bought my dried tomatoes in the bulk section at the grocery store, but I think I'll try making some from fresh tomatoes from this recipe. I'll let you know how it goes.