Sunday, January 22, 2012

Comfort Foods: Pizza

Today's tried and true: pizza.

What do you start with when you're making a pizza? The dough of course! The dough is a recipe I've been using for a while and works just fine with all-purpose flour (00 flour is recommended, but all-purpose is great too). I changed the recipe slightly by adding in 2 more tablespoons of flour, a minced garlic clove, and 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese. 

To make the sauce, I used an excellent recipe from Good Eats, but didn't have a food mill (on the wishlist!), so  I had the skins mixed in with the sauce and it turned out just fine. 

Bake at 500 for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and bake directly on rack for 2 minutes to brown and counteract any moisture the veggies may have added and to crisp up the crust.

Any toppings work of course, but I happened to have quite a few vegetables on hand, so I made a veggie pizza:

2 tablespoons chopped black olives
3 tablespoons chopped red bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped spinach
1/4 cup caramelized yellow onion
1/4 cup browned mushrooms
Top with 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley and sprinkle of dried oregano


Yum!







Saturday, January 21, 2012

Mission Possible!

So after three years of being "all grown up," I have truly found both a passion and a hobby in cooking. Yes, I love good food, but I wouldn't call myself a foodie quite yet - I'm not financially able to go out all the time to try out restaurants; so instead, I cook. And now I'm going to start blogging about it rather than teaching (because who wants to blog about what they do all day when it can be stressful sometimes?) or funny things I find on the Internet (because I really am not "in the know" about those kinds of things. Instead, I will do what I love and love what I do in my cooking adventures!

Background: I am not formally trained in any way besides watching my mom and grandma cook and various cooking TV shows
Challenge: post a new recipe I found, tried, reviewed, and accompanying photos
Frequency: at least once per week
Requirements: variety of recipes from savory to sweet, from baking to cooking, from meat to vegetarian, from Asian to African, to European
Optional: write & post my own riffs on recipes