Showing posts with label Mozzarella. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mozzarella. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Thin-Crust Pizza with Fresh Mozzarella, Veggies & Grilled Chicken

My pizza-making experience is quite limited. My pizza eating experience, however, is rather extensive, and  since I know how good it can be, I figured it was time that I learn to make my own thin, crispy crust. 

There are tons of recipes and tricks for pizza crust floating around the internet, but the technique I used comes from "My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method," by Jim Lahey with Rick Flaste. The book is fabulous, and I highly recommend it for really rich, flavorful bread with practically no effort. I've cut down his narrative a bit to give you the basic instructions, but his description is really helpful for novice bakers and general troubleshooting. This post might look like a lot of reading, but once you get the hang of it, whipping up a pizza crust will be easy peasey and totally worth it.

This crust recipe will make enough for two 13-by-18 inch pies. If you're not cooking for a crowd, store the other half of the dough in a well-oiled sealable plastic bag in the fridge for up to a day, or in the freezer for up to a month.
Extra dough waiting to be frozen. And yes, those are artificial flowers in an upcycled wine bottle!
If you freeze your dough, defrost in the fridge and bring it to room temperature before stretching.

Ingredients
Crust:
3 3/4 cups (500 grams) bread flour
2 1/2 teaspoons (10 grams) instant or other dry active yeast
3/4 teaspoon (5 grams) table salt
3/4 teaspoons plus a pinch (about 3 grams) sugar
1 1/3 cups (300 grams) room-temperature water
Extra virgin olive oil for pans, and sealable plastic bag, if you're storing some

Toppings: (in order of appearance)
About 3/4 cup pizza or pasta sauce (I used Walnut Creek tomato and basil organic pasta sauce, which was great)
8 oz. ball fresh mozzarella, sliced into discs (about 8)
1-2 cooked chicken breasts, coarsely chopped (I used some that I had marinated in basil & balsamic and grilled)
1/2 small onion, thinly sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 green bell pepper, thinly sliced

Directions
1. In a medium bowl, stor together flour, yeast, salt and sugar. Add the water and using your hand or a wooden spoon, mix until blended, at least 30 seconds.
2. Using a bowl scraper or rubber spatula, remove dough from the bowl onto a floured work surface. Gently form into a round ball, then divide the dough into two halves, spacing them 4 inches apart, and cover both with a moistened kitchen towel for 30 minutes.
3. When you're ready to make your pizza, oil two 13-by-18 inch rimmed baking sheets. Pick up the dough, flip it over  so it is floured side up, moist side down, and stretch the dough the length of the baking sheet. Using your palms, gently pull, press and stretch the dough to fill the entire bottom of the pan. (No need to make a crust or lip around the edge). Spread the dough as evenly as possible across the entire bottom of the pan, pinching together any holes that open up. If the dough sticks to your hands. lightly dust with flour or coat your hands with oil. (I prefer the oil method). Repeat with the other ball of dough, and top as you like.

Position a rack in the center of your oven, and preheat it to 500 degrees. Spread on the sauce a little thicker around the edges, since they will cook and brown more quickly, and thicker sauce will slow that down a bit. Make sure the sauce isn't pooling anywhere, then add the toppings in the order they're listed.  Bake for about 20 minutes, until golden around the edges, and serve!

A Note about Bread Flour
Jim Lahey is the guy who finally convinced me that high-quality bread flour was actually worth buying. I'd had some good results baking with all-purpose, but for a really good chewy bread or pizza crust, the extra protein in bread flour is essential. And I figure, if a bag of King Arthur bread flour is about $5, and with it I can bake four loaves of really excellent, easy-to-make bread, I'm still well below bakery prices for a product that is fresh, fabulous and totally home-made. And now that a simple pizza is part of my bread repertoire, I'm sticking with King Arthur. (And they're definitely not paying me to say that. Not yet, at least!)

Before baking
After, crispy and golden.
You may have noticed that while my recipe says to thinly slice the peppers, my pictures tell a different story. In this case, the story is a lack of foresight that lead to big chunks of peppers that while delicious, cooked a bit too slowly and released a bit too much liquid to call this pizza a true raving success. That said, boy was it yummy - just a teeny bit soft in some places. Even with the slight excess of liquid, the crust was chewy and delicious. I think with thin slices, this pizza would be pretty close to perfect.

Quote of the Day: Pizza is a lot like sex. When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good. ~ Anonymous

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Grilled Eggplant Sandwiches with Red Onion, Tomato & Fresh Mozzarella

I have a long-standing distaste for eggplant. As a kid, when I tried my grandmother's eggplant Parmesan, I was shocked. Her ravioli, Italian wedding soup, pasta (which she always called "macaroni) and incredible repertoire of Italian cookies were so delicious, so perfectly crafted through decades of practice, each all fantastic in their own right. But this - this mushy, squishy stuff - people actually liked this? And indeed, like it they did. At age 10 (which was probably the last time I ate eggplant, until tonight) I was so utterly horrified by the texture of the vegetable that I had effectively sworn it off.

But 1) it is eggplant season, 2) in theory we all must grow up eventually, and 3) "eggplant" is my favorite color, so I thought it was time I give them another chance. And Brady, the resident eggplant-parm connoisseur, told me that if I like grilled portobellos, then the texture of eggplant would probably not gross me out anymore. There are many varieties of eggplant, and I was lucky enough to find one of the fanciest-looking ones at my very own grocery store:


 This sandwich, which is somewhat like a Mediterranean veggie burger, combines two to three slices of grilled eggplant with fresh tomato, mozzarella, some thinly sliced red onion with a bit of balsamic vinegar on bakery rolls. The Kaiser rolls we had on hand were slightly over-sized with respect to the circumference of the eggplant, so for high presentation points you probably want to use a globe eggplant and/or smaller buns, or toasted English muffins (why didn't I think of that before?). Likewise, larger balls of mozzarella make for better stacking. My recipe serves two:

Ingredients:
1 eggplant of any variety, sliced crosswise into 1/4 inch-thick rounds
1 large ball of fresh mozzarella, sliced into 1/4 inch-thick slices 
1 slicing tomato, cut into... you guessed it, 1/4 inch-thick slices
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
2 buns or English muffins
Balsamic vinegar
Red or white wine vinegar
Cooking spray
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Directions:
1. Line a tray or platter with paper towels. Lay the rounds of eggplant on the paper towels in a single layer. Salt generously on both sides and allow to sit while you prepare the other ingredients.*
2. In a shallow dish, combine 1 tablespoon of the balsamic vinegar and 1 tablespoon of red or white wine vinegar, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Place sliced onions and tomatoes in the dish and turn to coat.
3. Spray a grill pan with cooking spray and heat it up over high heat.
4. When the eggplant slices have been sitting for at least 15 minutes, pat dry with paper towels and brush on both sides with olive oil. Grill for 3-4 minutes per side. Meanwhile, toast your buns, if desired.
5. To build your sandwich, first lay out your buns. Then stack two to three grilled eggplant slices, adding a slice or two of tomato and some red onion on top. Add a slice or two of fresh mozzarella and top with some fresh basil leaves.

Cook's Note: The salting-over-paper-towels step and general concept for this sandwich came from Elise's Grilled Eggplant Sandwich Recipe on SimplyRecipes.com. Her cooking instructions offer much more direction for using a traditional grill, but they can be easily adapted to grill pans, broilers or George Foreman Grills.
Sandwich construction: Phase 1, where I realize that Kaiser rolls are either too large or too small for this sandwich, and I can't decide which.
So, here's the thing. I can't really claim to be an eggplant convert. I can't say that the texture didn't gross me out a little, or that I didn't wonder what this fancy-looking vegetable was doing with all those thousands of tiny seeds. What I can say is that like many things, I can definitely enjoy it on a "once in a while" basis, or purely as a change of pace from my usual favorite ingredients. It didn't hurt that the other things in this sandwich - the mozzarella, the tomato, basil and red onion - are all among my top-10 favorites.
Still, I really can't hate on this sandwich. It's all the flavors of summer wrapped up in a soft, yummy roll. Get on it!

Quote of the Day: I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin