Catalonian Pizza

It seems I am relatively lackluster when it comes to posting. I have a good excuse, I'm sure. Somewhere.

Last night, I made pizza. It was delicious and everything pizza should be. The crust was thin and crisp and the cheese was melty and happy. I'm relatively picky about pizza, because with food that's simple, there's less of a margin for error. Translation: there's lots of bad pizza out there. This was very good pizza.

The recipe originally came from Wine Bar Food, which I constantly flip through looking for ideas and inspirations. My favorite so far is a recipe that basically amounts to grown up pizza rolls. This one is a close second. I did make one fairly substantial tweak to this recipe. The original recipe called for two pounds of manchego cheese. Two pounds. I love manchego; it's delicious and wonderful and reminds me of Spain. But two pounds? Depending on where you get it, manchego can cost you between $12 and $20 a pound. I may love pizza, but there's no way I'm dropping $40 on cheese for these bad boys. So say hello to mozzarella, which has a far more wallet-friendly price point:

Catalonian Pizza, adapted from Wine Bar Food to reduce the cheese by half and switch to mozzarella, which does not cost $40.
Serves 4
1 recipe pizza dough
6 oz chorizo
4 fresh tomatoes, sliced thin
12 oz mozzarella, grated
1/4 c cilantro

Preaheat the oven to 500° F.

Saute the chorizo until browned, about 5-7 minutes. Drain any grease. Divide your pizza dough into four pieces. Roll each into a 12 inch square.

Move the dough to a baking sheet and top with 1 cup shredded mozzarella, then thinly sliced tomatoes, then the chorizo.

Bake 12-15 minutes, until the cheese is browned. Remove and top with the cilantro.

Serve.

Rolled Eggplant

Sometimes a recipe calls for a particular pan. Sometimes I ignore the recipe and use whatever pan is closest or prettiest. That is not always a good idea, because you'll get to the point in the recipe where you're supposed to be done, and your pan will be more than half empty. The pretty pan, you see, is quite a bit larger than the 9-inch pan called for in the recipe, and the eggplant rolls look sad and lost.

But the pretty pan is pretty. And the 9-inch pan is not as pretty.

This was so good. I'm pretty sure I could eat this once a week, and would, if it wouldn't likely have an adverse effect on my ability to fit in my pants.

Rolled Eggplant with Sausage and Mozzarella, adapted slightly from Cooking from the Farmers' Market
Serves 4
2 Asian eggplant, cut lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices
1/4 c plus 2 T olive oil
salt and pepper
5 oz Italian sausage, casings removed
2 c crushed tomato
1 t oregano
1/2 t salt
1 t pepper
1 c ricotta
4 T mozzarella, cut into small pieces
2 T Parmesan
1 T parsley, chopped

Preheat the oven to 450F. Brush the eggplant on both sides with the 1/4 c olive oil, then salt. Bake until lightly browned on the bottom, 10 minutes, then turn each piece and bake 7 minutes more. Remove from the oven and set aside. Reduce the oven temperature to 350F.

In a medium skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage until browned, 5 minutes. Stir in the crushed tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer 10 minutes.
In a bowl, mix the ricotta, mozzarella, half the Parmesan, and parsley. Season with salt and pepper.

Spread half the tomato sauce on the bottom of a 9-inch pan. Place a spoonful of the cheese mixture near the wide end of each eggplant slice, roll up, and place upright in the sauce. Spoon the remaining sauce between the rolls. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan.

Bake until bubbling, 30 minutes. Serve immediately.

Tuscan Bean Soup, the Happiest Soup Ever

I've been making this soup for years. I don't remember when exactly, but a friend gave me the Food for Friends as a gift. I have a lot of cookbooks, but this is one that stays in the kitchen because there are some definite keepers in here, recipes that I come back to again and again, tweaking them here and there; adding this, trying that.

This is absolutely one of those recipes. It's delicious in its simplicity and so easy to adapt based on what you may have in the pantry. When the crisp fall air comes to visit, here's just something so comforting about soup, and this soup in particular.

If you have it on hand, this is also really good with thin curls of Parmesan on top. But cheese makes everything that much happier, doesn't it?

Tuscan Bean Soup, adapted from Food for Friends
Serves 6
1 T olive oil
4 oz pancetta
1 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, diced
2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 can cannelini beans, rinsed
4 Italian sausages
1 quart chicken stock
1 bay leaf
bunch of parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

1. Heat a large dutch oven over medium heat; add olive oil, carrots, celery, garlic, pancetta, and onions. Saute over medium heat 8-10 minutes, until softened.
   
2. Add the beans, sausage, stock, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 30 minutes.
   
3. Remove the sausages from the soup and slice on the diagonal. Return the sausages and their juices to the soup.
   
4. Add the parsley, remove the bay leaf, and serve.

Pizza: Spinach and Sausage

Summertime is made for pizza and decks and cold beer. Ideally, that is. In a perfect world, Clive and I would have eaten this pizza on the deck late one evening while the weather cooled off and the dog hunted bees. We would have sat outside, chatting and watching twilight set in. In reality, however, we ate this on the living room floor as we huddled around the coffee table. Are we really that lazy that we couldn't have walked the extra 10 feet to get outside to glorious summer?

No.

No, we are not that lazy. We live in Seattle, and I made this pizza as consolation for the fact that it was August and raining. A lot.

So while pizza may be made for summertime, it's also good for rainy days.
This was a fun pizza to make, and it evolved as it went. There's a thin layer of roasted tomato paste on the bottom that intensifies the flavor, but doesn't overwhelm or compete with the other flavors. I used my (clean!) fingers to spread it around because the back of the spoon wasn't cutting it.

The tomato paste was followed by a thin, think layer of grated gruyere and a layer of tomatoes. That's the other wonderful thing about summer: fresh tomatoes. I have tomato plants on the deck, but they're ... a bit lackluster. I have five plants, and I'm on track to harvest four tomatoes. I'd like to blame the plants or the weather, but I'm getting closer and closer to acknowledging that perhaps, just maybe, I don't have a green thumb. The farmers' market, fortunately, fills that gap nicely.

I steamed spinach and cooked down onions and sausage and piled that on top of the tomatoes. Grated Parmesan topped it off.

When it came out of the oven, it looked like this. It didn't look like this for very long, though, because as soon as it was safe to eat without burning the roofs of our mouth, we devoured it.

Poof. Just like that, it's gone.

Spinach and Sausage Pizza
1 recipe pizza dough
1 T roasted tomato paste
1/4 c gruyere
2 heirloom tomatoes, sliced
1 lb spinach, wilted
3/4 lb sausage, casings removed (or bulk sausage)
1 onion, sliced
2 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1/2 c parmesan

1. Spread or roll our your pizza dough and cover the top with the tomato paste. Don't be afraid to use your hands to spread the tomato paste into a thin, even layer. Sprinkle the gruyere over the top, then evenly space the tomatoes.
   
2. In a pan over medium heat, sautee the onions and sausage until the onions are translucent and the sausage is browned. Add the spinach to the pan along with 1/4 c water and cover. Keep an eye on it, but cook until the spinach is wilted - 2-3 minutes.
   
3. Squish the excess water out of the spinach as you transfer the mixture to a bowl. (If you don't squish out the water, the pizza crust will end up soggy and icky.)
   
4. Spread the sausage, onion, spinach mixture over the tomatoes, and sprinkle lightly with salt. Crumble the goat cheese evenly over the top and grate Parmesan over the whole pizza.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the crust is dark golden brown and the cheese is lightly toasted.

The Calendar Says July but the Weather Says March

It's July 1. We're definitely, officially, 100%, smack-dab in the middle of summer. And yet, today, in Seattle? 62 degrees. That was the high. The low was 54.

And so on this summer day, I had polenta and sausage, which can be found on the List of Things to Eat When It's Frozen Outside. It was wonderful and I loved it. In concession to the calendar, I did put mizuna, fresh tomatoes and avocados on top. I heart avocados lately. Mizuna belongs in the "green stuff" family, if you're not familiar with it. It's a little spicy like arugula, though it's technically in the mustard / cabbage family.

Polenta intimidated me for a good long while. It seemed like it was hard work and there was all that stirring.

If a recipe includes the words "stir constantly," odds are good that I'll skip it. Particularly if they're followed by the words "for 30-40 minutes." If I'm stuck to the stove for that long, there damn well better be chocolate involved. Fortunately, Alton Brown rescued me with a baked polenta. It does still require a whisk, but not 30 minutes of constant whisking, thankfully. I wholeheartedly recommend this recipe. I've never had polenta turn out with clumps, or burnt to the bottom, or icky in any way. It's always been delicious.

Once the polenta has been cheese-ified, stack on the sausage.

Tomatoes, salt, and pepper.

Delicious, happy mizuna and avocado.

I liked the difference in texture from the polenta and sausage and mizuna. The mizuna also made it a little more interesting.

Polenta and Sausage
1 recipe polenta
1 T olive oil
6 oz beer
4 sausages
1/2 c diced tomato
1/4 c diced avocado
1/4 c chopped mizuna
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper

1. Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the sausages and the beer. The beer should just shy of halfway up the sides of the sausages. Cook over medium heat for 20-25 minutes, turning them periodically.
2. Slice the sausage into 1/2 inch pieces.
3. Layer the polenta, the sausage, the tomato, the mizuna, salt and pepper, and top with avocado. Serve.