It's official: I am now turning to Michelle for all of my yeasty dough endeavors. You might recall that it was Michelle's recipe that restored my faith in homemade hamburger buns. Now she's done it again, and this time it's pizza dough.
I've posted a recipe before--it's not worth linking to it now--but my feelings about it were lukewarm at best. What I really wanted was a chewy, substantial crust with great flavor and not too much bulk. I thought that I simply couldn't get it at home, at least not without building a dedicated pizza oven on my tiny little back patio. I was wrong. 
My problem was not the oven I was using (though I remain convinced that the very best pizza comes from those extra-hot ovens), but the dough. All that fuss over kneading, all that wondering whether I should use more oil or less, feeling like I couldn't make pizza on a weeknight unless I got home from work at 4pm: it's all over. Thanks to Michelle, I'm going the minimalist route from now on.
And I'm not kidding when I say minimalist. The ingredients in this recipe can be counted on one hand. The active time is under 10 minutes, and that includes the kneading. The paltry amount of yeast will draw one of your eyebrows inexorably upward. In short, apparently there's an inverse relationship between the complexity of a pizza dough recipe and the quality of the resulting dough. This is the easiest dough recipe I've ever used. It's also the best pizza I've ever made. 
And it's not just shrug your shoulders and say "yeah, I guess it's better." This is a whole new ballgame. If you've been looking for a good, chewy crust, give this one a try. Don't be put off by the small amount of yeast, by the seemingly insufficient mixing and kneading, or by the lack of rise in the dough before you bake it. The gluten develops beautifully as the dough rests--I was amazed at how thin I could stretch the dough without it tearing--and the edge of the crust will bake up with just enough rise to give it a nice feel as you sink your teeth into it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Once you've made your dough, once you've let it rest overnight or for two nights and you're ready to bake it into something delicious, you'll need a topping. I'm certainly not one to turn up my nose at a good, old-fashioned tomato sauce and cheese pizza, but sometimes I like to branch out into something new and different, maybe even new and extraordinary. And let's be honest: sometimes I'm helped along by having a lot of something in the fridge and wanting to enjoy it before it spoils. 
Yes, it's a bowl of peppers. I confess I'm not very good at using peppers. Oh, I can cook them just fine, the question is what to do with them. It wasn't very long ago that I first started liking them at all, so I'm still building up my arsenal of recipes for the summer months, when I get them by the bagful in my weekly CSA share. I've latched onto a few solid keepers, and this is one of them.
This pizza comes from Chez Panisse Vegetables, and I could eat it for weeks. It is nothing more than peppers and onion, thinly sliced, tossed with herbs and a light vinaigrette. The result: sweet and tart, with a hint of bite from the onion, gathered together and grounded by the herbs. I'm often tempted to skip the pizza and eat the topping raw, as a salad, just so that I can enjoy it sooner. But the high heat of the oven brings out an extra layer of sweetness in the peppers, and they nestle so cozily into the cheese, that the pizza version is (so far) irresistible. Did I mention that the crust is pretty good, too?
Sweet Pepper Pizza
Ingredients
Directions
Notes
Pizza Dough
Ingredients
Directions
Notes
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I mentioned recently that one of my strategies for using up a bunch of apples is to make muffins. Well, I have a confession to make: it's not actually a very good strategy, namely because making muffins doesn't really get you through that many apples. After all, there's only so much apple that you can pack into muffins without your muffins falling apart.
Yet this notion persists in my head (and I'm sure that it's completely in my head) that making muffins is a good way to use up apples. Not only good, but "better" for you than making something like a pie, which would of course use up even more apples than these muffins do. And it's silly, isn't it? A fruit pie, at least the way I make my fruit pies, isn't terribly unhealthy as far as desserts go. Oh, there's the crust, but it's not so bad; and the rest of the pie is simply fruit--maybe with some seasonings, but quite little added sugar or fat.
Muffins, on the other hand... Well, let's face it: they're essentially little bits of cake. We can tweak the ingredients all we want in various efforts to turn them into something healthy, but at heart they're bits of cake. Perhaps that's why I love them so.
That said, while these muffins are still, you know, muffins, they do have a couple of saving graces. First, they contain whole wheat flour. Now, whole wheat flour alone does not a health food make, but it does bump up the nutrition value at least a little bit. At least you're getting some vitamins and fiber along with your fat and sugar. The apples help with that, too.
Second, thanks to their being deliciously dark and moist, they keep better than any other muffins I've made. Most muffins lose a lot of their luster by the second day, but these keep for three or four (or five) days, meaning that you can space out your indulgence over several days. That is, you can try to space it out.
Let me just say right now that I take no responsibility for what happens to your willpower after you taste these muffins. I typically think of whole wheat baked goods as heavy, perhaps tough, and not always very pleasant to eat. These muffins have blown away that particular notion. Honestly, I tend to forget that they have any whole wheat flour in them at all, and I bet you will, too. Of course, that assumes that you make them, but really, why wouldn't you? 
Whole Wheat Apple Muffins
Ingredients
Directions
Notes
Tomorrow morning I will finally face the music. I've been listening to it (or rather feeling it) growing louder: six months ago it was pianissimo, but in the last week or so it ramped up to forte. I thought I was done with this particular concerto; but as it turns out, dentists are not infallible, and the two wisdom teeth my dentist said would never even descend did in fact come in. I suppose the technical term is "erupt," but that puts me a little too much in mind of cataclysmic explosions--not exactly what I want to think about on the eve of the surgery to have them out.
And that's what this is all about, this business of putting up a post about chocolate when I would otherwise be writing about apple muffins. (But fear not! That post is coming, probably next week.) In preparation for having a couple of teeth yanked, I have been all a bustle in the kitchen. Cool, soft food is the order of the day, so in addition to stocking up on ice cream, I've been making applesauce and pudding. Two kinds of pudding, actually: rice pudding and, as is probably obvious from that leading image, chocolate pudding. 
I don't recall what made me think of chocolate pudding as good post-op fare; but as soon as it occurred to me, a switch was thrown, and it was all I could do not to rush home from work at that very moment to make it. I hadn't even decided on a recipe yet. I poked around a bit, and there are plenty of chocolate pudding recipes out there, but most of them didn't quite hit the spot. I wanted something creamy, slightly eggy, and richly chocolatey. Eventually I settled on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that uses not only chocolate, but cocoa powder; not only milk, but cream; and three egg yolks. It sounded like it might fit the bill.
And indeed, it does fit the bill. Better than that, it's everything I was dreaming of in a chocolate pudding. The knowledge that I would be one very unhappy post-op patient if I ran out of pudding too quickly was the only thing that kept me from inhaling half of the batch before it ever made it into the little ramekins I had set out. I can't say that I'm looking forward to the having those teeth out tomorrow, but at least I'll have chocolate pudding waiting for me afterward.
Double Chocolate Pudding
greedy hungry you areIngredients
Directions
Notes
Well, it's about time. After more than a week of temperatures that felt better suited to the dog days of August than the first few days of fall, on Monday we finally got our first breath of fresh fall air. Stepping out of the office into a pleasant 70F afternoon, the air felt almost brisk. Well, brisk compared with the 90F days we've had recently.
This morning, even more so: the skies were overcast, and a breeze with aspirations of being a wind swept in cool air to replace the remaining warm. (You know fall is really starting to hit when the cats are at the window, transfixed by rustling, falling leaves.) By this afternoon, you could taste fall in the air, as if it were whispering, psst! I'm here.
And not a moment too soon. For a few weeks now I've been accumulating apples from my CSA share, and this weekend I reached a point where the word "overrun" was not an inaccurate description of my kitchen counter. Between my regular share and my extra fruit option, I get 12-18 apples per week, and even an apple a day won't make all those apples go away.
I needed to do something with them, something that would use up a bunch of apples at once and didn't involve making a lot of muffins. I love apple muffins, and in fact I've been meaning to put up a post with my new favorite recipe. But I can only make so many batches of apple muffins--even of the "they're whole wheat, so they're not quite as bad for you!" variety--before I start anxiously eyeing my waistline.
The problem, of course, was that it was still hot outside--or at least it was on Sunday, when I decided to take back my kitchen counter. I love my apples spiced, with cinnamon and cloves and allspice, and eating cozy spiced foods when it's hot outside just doesn't feel right. Get me far enough into September, though, with enough apples on my hands, and I get over my squirmy feeling about ill timed spiced apples. Weather be damned, it was (technically) fall and I was going to make my house smell like it. 
And what better way to do that than with hours of slow cooking over low heat, with aromatic spices and fruit full of flavor? Applesauce is one thing--it's delicious, and it has its place. But for the slow cooking and the spices, it's all about apple butter.
This was my first time making apple butter, and I can't say that I'm disappointed. Not just with the results, which included making the house smell like everything that is good and delicious about fall, but with the fact that making apple butter turns out to be surprisingly easy. Did you know that you don't even have to peel and core the apples? Extra flavor hides in the peels, and extra pectin in the cores. You want both the flavor and the pectin, so you quarter the apples and cook them as they are. Brilliant!
You'll need a food mill eventually, of course, as you don't want the peels or cores in the butter. And after the milling, all you need to do is cook and stir, cook and stir. Maybe you adjust the seasonings, and maybe you adjust the heat, but all it needs is a little attention every few minutes.
I do mean every few minutes, mind: you don't want it to scorch, and as it thickens it will be more prone to sticking and scorching. You definitely want to keep an eye on it, so this is not one of those recipes where you can get it going and then forget about it for a few hours. (Unless you use a crock pot.) It is a recipe that requires patience, perfect for a rainy day when you're entertaining yourself inside. Fix yourself a cup of tea, clear off a big table, and dig out a puzzle to work on as you tend the apples. I would say make sure you have some bread on hand so that you have toast for when you finish the apple butter; but in truth, there's no reason not to eat it with a spoon, straight out of the jar.
Apple Butter
Ingredients
Special Equipment
Directions
Fall might be just around the corner, but looking at the weather forecast around here, you wouldn't know it. Far from giving up without a fight, summer is hanging on like a bulldog with a juicy bone in what I can only hope is the last heat wave of the summer. Like many of you, I'm sure, I'm ready to trade in breezy skirts for wool trousers, and sleeveless tops for snug overcoats; but Mother Nature has other plans.
While there's not much we can do about those plans, we can at least make ourselves more comfortable until the winds change. Watermelon has a well deserved place in the pantheon of classic hot weather refreshments: cool, crisp, and juicy, it shines without any interference whatsoever. But if we're in the mood to take a good thing and make it even better--and let's face it, when it's nearing 100F outside I'll take all the "better" I can get--we can add some lime.
You can squeeze a lime over slice of watermelon, of course, and for quick-and-easy, that's the way to go. (Plus, who doesn't love biting into a big piece of watermelon and feeling the juice dribbling down your chin?) But if you're looking for slightly more dignified, a tidier option (at least after the prep is done) is to take the watermelon, the lime, and anything else you want to include, and turn it all into something you sip. The Mexicans figured this out ages ago: they made aguas frescas, or "fresh waters," out of all manner of fruits and other foodstuffs. In the end, that's all this is: watermelon agua fresca, laced with lime and a hint of sugar.
I'm not going to write up a proper recipe this time, because the proportions are simply what you want them to be. You might like a lot of lime, or not much at all; plenty of sweetness, or perhaps a dash of salt. It's easy to adjust the flavors, so taste early and often. Unless you have a very small watermelon, you will probably have to do things in batches, which makes it easy to test out lime and sugar levels on a small scale before fully committing.
For the first step, you'll likely want some sort of electric blender or food processor. Alternatively, you could do it by hand by pressing the watermelon chunks through a sieve, or perhaps gathering them up in a large piece of cheesecloth and squeezing until you've extracted all the liquid. (Now that I think about it, that method actually sounds like a lot of fun, if very messy indeed.) To keep things easy, though, I recommend a blender. Toss a bunch of watermelon chunks and their accumulated juices into the blender--maybe with a bit of water to get things moving--and blend until smooth.
Next up is the (slightly) tedious part: passing the watermelon liquid through a sieve to get rid of the tiny solid bits. It's a pain, but it makes for a cleaner final product--and if you're looking for a bright side, it's not as bad as passing pureed raspberries through a sieve. My watermelon, about 10-12 inches in diameter, yielded about four cups of juice. Your mileage may vary.
With juice in hand, the only thing left is to play with the flavors. You can use granulated sugar to sweeten your agua fresca, but I prefer to use simple syrup. Otherwise, you might have a hard time getting the sugar to dissolve in the cool liquid. To make simple syrup, place two parts sugar and one part water (by volume) in a sauce pan and bring to a boil, stirring often. Stir until the sugar has completely dissolved, then let cool. You can store any unused syrup in a jar or bottle in the fridge; it keeps for quite a while. 
When it comes to lime, I tend to err on the side of more rather than less, but I adore lime and can't get enough of it. You might start with the juice of one lime for every two to three cups of juice, and work your way up from there. Add salt if you wish--I understand from the Suitor that salt on watermelon is a southern staple--but I confess I find the idea of a salty summer beverage a bit odd. (Unless you add tequila, in which case all bets are off.)
Typically the fruit juice for agua fresca is cut with water, so that it's more of a flavored water than a juice. Plain water does the job just fine, but I find that sparkling water (such as club soda or, if you prefer, mineral water) takes the "refreshing" factor and kicks it up a level or two. Either way, whether you use sparkling or still water, you'll have a drink that's brilliant for beating the heat--and giving summer a sweet sendoff. 
Confession time: I like meat. Despite my awareness of the ethical and environmental problems of producing it, despite my efforts to eat less of it (largely successful, photographic evidence to the contrary notwithstanding), and despite my budget's plaintive pleas for me to get my protein from dirt-cheap beans rather than organic, sustainably and humanely raised animals, I like meat. In particular, I like hamburgers. They're not good for me, and they're not good for the planet, but taste buds don't lie.
Mindful of those truths, I typically indulge my appetite for hamburgers only when I have the quasi-justifiable excuse of feeling anemic, which works out to every few months and/or when I've just given blood. Last weekend it was the latter. At my local blood bank one has the option of giving not one unit of whole blood (red blood cells + platelets + plasma), but a double unit of only red blood cells. It's a pretty cool process, but I won't go into it for fear of driving away readers who might be squeamish. (Focus on the pretty pictures, people. Food! Pretty pictures!) 
Anyway, they were low on my blood type, so I did the double donation, the result of which was one exhausted and woozy blogger. Perfect time to be working with fire, right? Perhaps not, but in any case, burgers were on the menu. And where there are burgers grilling, there must be buns waiting.
There are plenty of hamburger buns to be had at the shops near me, ranging from eggy and fluffy brioche rolls to firmer, chewier ciabatta-like ones. Many of them are very good, but I haven't been satisfied with simply purchasing my hamburger buns. That's not to say that I wish to give up store-bought buns forever. After all, there are few things that take to being rushed more poorly than yeasted doughs, so when you're pressed for time, there's no shame in a good purchased bun. But I would at least like to demonstrate to myself that, given the time and the inclination, I can make a respectable hamburger bun.
As it turned out, producing a satisfactory bun was more difficult than I thought it would be. Originally it was a Gourmet recipe that piqued my interest, but after reading about Deb's disillusionment, I was less enthusiastic. I turned to a recipe that several readers mentioned in the comments of that post, one from King Arthur Flour, and was promptly disappointed. My buns looked nothing like the ones in the picture; they were flat and insipid-looking, and the taste did not improve my opinion of them. A little while later, I went back to that Gourmet recipe (but for hot dog buns, not hamburger buns), and I was as unimpressed as Deb was*.
Now, keep in mind that I've never claimed to be particularly adept at yeasted doughs, so some of these failings might be down to me and not the recipes. If you've been longing to try either of those recipes, please don't let me be the one to dissuade you--you might have better luck than I did. But whether due to yeast-ineptness or mediocre recipes, this was starting to get frustrating.
Then, just in time for my weekend burger plans--and just in time for Labor Day grilling, should any U.S. readers (or expats) have burgers on the mind--my mom reminded me about the hamburger bun recipe in our new favorite cookbook, The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook. Another confession: I have never actually eaten a hamburger at the Big Sur Bakery. All but one of my meals there have been for dinner, and the burger is only on the brunch and lunch menus. That said, 1) I have it on good authority that they are excellent, and 2) I have all the confidence in the world in Michelle's recipes. That was enough for me to try their hamburger bun recipe, so I refreshed my stock of yeast (the recipe calls for an eye-popping 1 1/2 tablespoons, or nearly 3 packets) and got to work.
First sign of success: this dough is a joy to work with. Okay, that doesn't necessarily presage a stellar finished product, but it does make me love this recipe that much more. Second sign: it rose beautifully. Not just the dough rising (which, let's be honest, probably had something to do with all that yeast), but the buns as they baked. They rose into a Goldilocks-approved not too flat, not too puffy bun with a lovely dome on top of a good-sized base. Sealing the deal were the baked buns' mild, pleasant flavor and soft-but-substantial crumb.
If "mild and pleasant" sounds like damning with faint praise, let me explain. This is not a fancy, flashy bun. That's not the Bakery's style. Simple, down to earth food is their style--simple, down to earth food done really, really well. True to that ethos, this bun is a good, hearty, solid foundation on which to build your burger--whether your burger be meat- or veg-style. But I think it's obvious which style mine is. 
Big Sur Burger Buns
Ingredients
Directions
* As it turns out, the ingredient lists for Big Sur Bakery recipe and the Gourmet recipe are virtually identical (the Gourmet recipe is simply twice the Bakery recipe), except for one key difference: the Bakery recipe uses nearly twice as much yeast. I also assembled the ingredients in a slightly different way, which also might have made a difference. Whatever the reason, the difference in the finished product was striking.
Remember a wee while back when I said I used to be a picky eater? Well, to be completely honest, I haven't outgrown all of my picky eater dislikes. I've gotten over the majority of them, but a few of them linger. Eggs are the biggest one, but not far behind them is eggplant.
I won't go into all the reasons I dislike it--after all, this is a blog about liking food--I'll just say that overall, I try to steer clear. I can appreciate it aesthetically, and I'll grant that its smooth, shiny skin is pleasant to the touch. Eating it, however, is just not for me.
Of course, it's never that simple. In addition to the cold, harsh reality that sometimes we need to eat things that we don't much care for, just for the sake of politeness, there is the small matter of my weekly installment of the season's bounty. There are certain fruits and vegetables that my CSA farm doesn't grow, despite all my wishing that they would. Peas and tomatillos are among them; sadly, eggplant is not.
Now that we're in high season for the fruit-bearing nightshades, alongside the tomatoes and peppers I'm getting eggplant. Fortunately for me, I have a mother who not only loves eggplant, but also lives close enough that I can dispense with the eggplant fairly easily. Still, I feel a duty to try, at the very least, one or two recipes to see if I can get myself to a point where I can use the eggplant myself--and hopefully even enjoy it. I've become a convert to the theory that you can like anything as long as it's prepared in the right way; surely there's an eggplant recipe out there that will win me over, right?
So, when I saw this recipe in a recent issue of Gourmet, I flagged it. It's been my experience that sometimes a previously objectionable vegetable will become palatable when cooked with very high heat, and I was hoping that that would be the case with my eggplant. Rather than sauteing it, baking it, braising it, or what have you, this recipe calls for grilling it. And if there's any iffy fruit or vegetable that isn't improved by grilling, well, I haven't tried it yet.
The grilling wasn't the only thing this recipe had going for it: it's pizza. Hard to go wrong, right? And it's grilled pizza, to boot. (You could, of course, do it in the oven if grilling isn't an option.) Toss in some cheese, some olives, and some garlicky olive oil, and I was on board.
If you've never grilled pizza before, or even if you have, it can be a little scary. Perhaps "thrilling" is a better word. Ordinarily, making pizza is a straightforward affair that involves, at its most complicated, sliding the prepared pizza from a peel to a pizza stone, and back again once it's cooked. Everything's flat, everything's solid, and unless you're a little overzealous in the jerking motion you use to transfer the dough to the stone, it's hard to lose the dough along the way.
On the other hand, when you grill pizza, it's a bit more hair-raising, or at least it is for me. I have this constant fear that I'm going to drop the dough either wholly or partially down through the grill grate, and that it will be ruined in any number of different ways. Covered in ash, burned and blackened, misshapen, and so on. At first I figured that I'd approach it the way I do pizza in the oven: prepare the dough on the peel, and slide it quickly (hopefully effortlessly and perfectly) onto the grill. What could go wrong?
Well, I realized that I had to brush one side of the dough with oil and put the dough on the grill with the oiled side facing down, that's what. So much for my effortless sliding. In the end, I put the dough on the peel (not before shaping it beautifully and oiling it on a different board, necessitating an awkward transfer to the peel and resulting in the loss of the beautiful shape) and in one determined-but-not-quite-fearless motion, flipped it over, oiled side down, onto the grill. Success! I don't have a picture of the dough on the grill, but trust me, it worked perfectly. Nothing slipped through the cracks, it was aligned directly over the coals, and I was on my way to grilled pizza.
Not just that, I was on my way to a good grilled pizza. You know what? Grilled eggplant isn't half bad. My faith in the principles of "anything's okay if you cook it right" and "everything's better with high heat" remains intact. It's a curious combination--the smoky eggplant, the briny olives, and the slightly nutty provolone--but somehow it works. I wouldn't say that this is my favorite pizza ever, but it's one I'll make again.
What foods have you had trouble convincing yourself to like? Are there particular recipes that helped you like them? Please share!
Grilled Eggplant, Green Olive, and Provolone Pizza
Ingredients
- 2 medium or 1 large clove of garlic, minced
- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 1/4 pound eggplant, cut into rounds 3/4-inch thick
- 1 pound pizza dough, store-bought or homemade (see note), at room temperature
- 5 ounces grated provolone cheese
- 1/3 cup coarsely chopped pitted green olives (about 12-18 olives, depending on size)
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- salt and freshly ground pepper
Directions
- Prepare your grill for medium, direct heat. The coals are ready when you can hold your hand 5 inches above the grill grate for 3-4 seconds.
- Combine the garlic and olive oil in a small bowl, and stir together.
- Brush both sides of the eggplant slices with garlic oil, and sprinkle them with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
- Place the eggplant slices on the grill. Cover the grill and cook the eggplant, turning once, for 6-8 minutes, or until tender and browning. Transfer the slices to a plate and, when cool enough to handle, cut them into rough 1-inch pieces.
- Roll or stretch the dough (see note) into a rectangle approximately 12 by 10 inches on a large baking sheet or a pizza peel. Brush it with with the garlic oil.
- Flip the dough onto the grill so that the oiled side is facing down. Brush the top of the dough with more of the garlic oil, then cover the grill. Cook the dough until the underside is beautifully golden, about 2-3 minutes (start checking after 1 1/2).
- Use some long tongs to transfer the crust back to your baking sheet or peel, grilled side up. Brush it with a bit more oil, then scatter the cheese, olives, eggplant, and parsley over it.
- Slide the crust back onto the grill (topped-side up, obviously), cover, and cook a further 3 minutes or so, until the underside is golden and the cheese is nice and melted.
- Transfer to a cutting board, slice, and serve.
Notes
- This recipe is a fairly good basic pizza dough. It's easy, it's reliable, and I think it tastes pretty good. The dough is even better the next day--it's easier to work with and has better flavor--so don't hesitate to make it a day or two ahead of time. You could even mix it up before work and just let it rise in the fridge until you get home!
- When shaping the dough, I find that it's easiest to get the dough started with a rolling pin, and then switch to stretching it by hand. I hold it near the edges and work my hands along the edge, so that it stretches under its own weight. It develops a flat bed and a nice swell of a crust.