4 posts tagged “pizza”

Okay, I take back most of the nasty things I've said about summer, because figs have arrived at my local farmer's market this past weekend. I did a happy little boogie and dragged my poor mother over to the booth so I could examine them closely, and I ended up leaving with a basket of black and green figs in hand  and considerably happier than I'd been walking in.

(And that's already pretty happy, since I love our local Saturday morning farmer's market.)

Of course, the poor figs have been languishing in my mini-fridge since then while I indecisively thumbed through my file of fig recipes. Due to problems with the big fridge, the college mini-fridge has once again become my main refrigerator-- Which means I don't have crème fraîche, and I lost the Salem blue cheese that I ordinarily love to broil figs with in the toaster oven, and so on, and so on...

And then, thanks to my recent obsession with Serious Eats, I found just what I was looking for on the site's new source for food porn feature, Photograzing.

Oh, yes. That's JUST what I needed for inspiration.

.. These herbed frommage blanc fritters are definitely next on the list to make, once I have a fridge with enough room for all my beloved types of cheese.

Fig & Prosciutto Pizza

1 12-14" pizza stone or tin
cornmeal for scattering

1 TJ's garlic and herb fresh pizza dough

White sauce:

1/4 cup olive oil, divided
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2-3 tbsp fresh shredded Parmesan
1 tsp balsamic vinegar, preferably white

Toppings:

1 pint black figs, de-stemmed and sliced thin
2-3 oz. prosciutto
4 handfuls quattro formaggio cheese mix
1 handful fresh shredded Parmesan

Preheat oven to 500 deg F with your pizza stone / metal pizza tin inside. Let the dough rest and rise for about 20 minutes while the oven's getting warm.

While things are heating, make the sauce: Put the four cloves garlic and one tbsp of the oil into a small blender, mortar and pestle, or other hand-chopper and go to town 'til it forms a small, thick amount of paste. Drizzle in more oil and add in your desired amount of Parmesan: Repeat. Drizzle in the last tablespoon and the balsamic vinegar and stir until combined -- This will make enough to thinly paint your pizza dough. Scale up as you feel necessary, but the cheese will more than make up for any perceived dryness.

Carefully remove the pan / stone from the hot oven with heat-protectors of choice: Scatter lightly with cornmeal to keep the dough from sticking too much. Stretch the dough out roughly 12" with your fingertips and do your best to center it on the hot round: It WILL stick the moment you put it down, with the dough starting to cook. This is good, it'll prevent the dough from slipping away while you put the toppings on. Roll or pat the dough out further, taking care not to burn yourself.

Paint with the white sauce, and sprinkle with about a handful of the quattro formaggio. Lie down strips of prosciutto, cut to your desired size. (I went for long, thin strips, draped around in a spiral.) Sprinkle with another handful and a half of cheese. Top evenly with the thin-sliced figs, and sprinkle evenly with the desired amount of the remaining quattro formaggio and Parmesan.

Pop it in the oven and reduce to 450 F. Check it after ten minutes, and every 2-3 minutes thereafter: My thin-crust pie was perfect after 15 minutes. Enjoy!

I loved how the sweet of the figs paired with the salty of the prosciutto, and the savory of the cheese and garlic 'sauce.' I have to remember to make this one again the next time I get my hands on a pint of figs -- though how can you go wrong with figs + thin slices of cured ham + cheese?

And in case you don't want or happen to have access to pre-made quattro formaggio, here's the proportions:

1 cup (4 oz) shaved provolone cheese
1 cup (4 oz)  mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup (2 oz) shaved Asiago cheese
1/4 cup (1 oz) freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

I've begun to suspect I'm insane.
Reasoning: I've got plenty to do this evening, between making up some homemade pizza (and I've decided to use a long pan instead of the usual hole-bottomed pizza pan, as I haven't been happy with its results lately) and getting the house ready for an imminent termite inspection, so what do I do?

Pick up my size 2 double-point needles and start two socks at once.
Barking mad, probably.
But, the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so I had to cast on: I'm currently working in complimentary shades of TLC Essentials -- which I don't particularly like the feel of, but it's part of my early stash and needs using -- in a burnt orange and their Falling Leaves ombre.
Never knit a sock in my life (though crocheting is a different story -- and I've several pairs, thank you!), and then I get the wild hair to do two at once.
I'm also planning on trading off the colors at cuff, heel, and toe, as if I weren't already confusing myself as it is.
Should be some pretty sweet socks if I can do it right, though, and I won't be afraid to wreck them through wear.

Note to self: I want this in Wild Wild West. Just one skein, but I've got a sock pattern in mind that I'd love to try.
... Well, maybe Blue Bayou, too.

Anyhow. Tonight, pizza.
The fiance and I picked up another of Trader Joe's pre-made pizza doughs in the garlic and herbed crust variety, and I'm currently contemplating whether I want to use a tomato sauce as the base or just go with garlic and olive oil as a pseudo-white sauce... I mean, olive oil and garlic. Good stuff, especially when you consider I've got mozzarella and roughly shredded parmesan to put on top, and then cover with prosciutto, salami, and capocollo. I'm also debating whether or not to add sun-dried tomatoes to the list or not: Alas, though I can see the tomatoes getting bigger by the day, there are still none ready for eating on my tomato plants.

... Don't think that I'm not looking up how to make sun-dried tomatoes for when that crop finally comes.

It does sound like a good, if meat-heavy pizza... And since it's going to be a pan pizza, that means it's going to be a bit more square than usual. (Alas, I can't guarantee thicker... Though I have rolled the dough out and I'm leaving it to rise some more, so. If I'm lucky.)
I suppose I do have some bell pepper strips in the freezer, and can also go that route. The fiance's kinda meh on the topic of olives, though, and tempting as it is to go viciously harvest the sneaky mushrooms in my yard... Probably not advisably edible, and since I haven't any criminis in the fridge, that means no mushrooms for the pizza.
That's life: Ought to get to making that pizza, or at least gathering the ingredients.

I was contacted by my 'upstream' Secret Swap pal today -- That is to say, the person that's going to be sending me yarn. I'm thrilled -- She apologized for being late, but the way I look at it, she had 'til the 25th to pipe up so I wasn't stressing it.

Life. It's what gets in the way when you're making other plans.

Now, for something I am letting stress me out a wee bit... My tomato pots have mushrooms.
Sneaky little field mushrooms that I can't always pluck out before they open their little gills and start the whole damned process of germination and growth over again. Every morning, I'm out there, tossing out as many as I can find... And yet, there are always more.
Irritating, to say the least: I'm halfway starting to consider buying the necessary equipment to turn said tomatoes into a hanging garden... Maybe then, the mushrooms won't find a place to be.
I can hope, right?

I'm a little on the bummed side: I stopped at the new, considerably more local Whole Foods for my lunch break today, hoping to find the refrigerated sweet potato gnocchi I'd seen there their opening week: None there, and they had some interesting looking fresh sun-dried tomato gnocchi, but half the bag had been squished by an overzealous shopper and there weren't any more to be had.
Means there's a Trader Joe's run in my future for the evening, since I'm out of milk, eggs, quatro fromaggio and pizza fixings.  (After the barbecue chicken pizza I picked up from the Whole Foods pizza stand and had for lunch, I'm really in the mood for home-made pizza with unusual toppings.) Also, it would probably be nice to make another grab at their frozen meat section.

Now, to chase the cats off the fiance so we can go make that TJ's run...

Today is clearly the day of even more foodie-like things.
This evening, it was a Trader Joe's 'found' pizza:

- One package refrigerated garlic-herb pizza dough
- A third of a small jar of their new pizza sauce
- some quatro frommagio shredded cheese
- eight to ten crimini mushrooms, washed
- between six and ten sun dried tomatoes in oil, chopped roughly
- two fresh hothouse tomatoes from the produce section
- chicken, mushrooms and asiago sausages

And yes, I realize I know several people that are not terribly fond of the 'shroom, but the fungi is my friend and I find it exceedingly tasty.

However! I preheated the oven to 400 F and set a plate on the vent burner of my stove, putting the dough in the center to rise while I cut everything else up. I love thick pieces of mushroom, so I cut them accordingly, wedged two of said hothouse tomatoes into eighths, drained the oil from the sun dried tomatoes, and cut a sausage into rounds. (Yay, three more left for me to play with in cooking!)

Through with that, the dough had risen nicely: I ended up oiling the pizza tray with olive oil, since I seem to have utterly misplaced my cornmeal for dusting, and then stretched the dough by hand and laid it out on the pan. Sadly, I'd miscalculated slightly, tore the center of the dough, and balled it up to start from scratch again. It didn't quite recover that lovely round shape, but honestly -- If homemade pizza were meant to look perfect, I'd never bother making it.

Currently, I had a well-oiled pan and stretched pizza dough. Next ingredient is obvious: Sauce, and whatever the hell else I want to put on it before the cheese goes on! Today, it was just sauce, shallot salt and a little pepper: If it hadn't been a garlic-herb crust, you can bet what else I would've added.
So the sauce went. Then sun dried tomatoes. Then mushrooms, cheese. Then more mushrooms, and the fresh tomato pieces, and chicken sausage. It starts to look a little topping-heavy at this point, so I sprinkle more quatro frommagio on it.  Into the 400 F oven it goes for twenty minutes: When the timer goes off, it comes out looking fabulously golden around the edges. I set it aside, let everything cool 10 minutes, and then it's time to cut it up and serve.

It was a good pizza -- Not one of my best, but still very tasty.
I think the sun dried tomatoes were sadly unnecessary: I wasn't able to taste them beneath everything else. And perhaps next time, I should go back to using the bruschetta toppings for sauce, since though very oily, they tend to have more texture and a more memorable flavor.

... Of course, it was still completely delicious.
I know I had three pieces around here somewhere, but they seem to have disappeared....