Category Archives: Cooking techniques

Cooking techniques, Family, Food

Simple good things

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Last weekend my mom was in town for a visit, and on Friday night I came home and she had cooked a ton of food—the house smelled amazing! I can’t tell you how luxurious it was to come home and have dinner already almost done. She cooked loads of gorgeous yellow beets, green beans with shallots, roasted potatoes, delicata squash and sautéed chicken. We were set up with enough leftover that I didn’t have to cook anything from scratch all week.

The happy scene in the kitchen:

Beets are just so jewel-like. These were roasted and peeled, then sliced and dressed with a simple dressing to accompany a lovely arugula salad with goat cheese and walnuts.

Autumn colors! Orange beets, yellow squash.

Delicata are so delicious–roasted cut side down, the edges caramelize. We serve them with butter, salt and pepper, and they are creamy and sweet.

It sounds ridiculous, but I avoid cooking chicken; it makes me feel insecure. I have had fairly successful experiences so far, but I hate pounding the breasts flat, and I’m paranoid about overcooking. My mom cooked chicken on the stove to demonstrate how simple it is (this really does seem silly-simple, but oh well!).

After cleaning and pounding the breasts to an even thickness, pat them dry and rub them with olive oil, salt and pepper:

Get a heavy pan good and hot, then place the chicken in:

After a couple minutes flip the chicken, admire its lovely golden crust, then COVER while it finishes cooking. This is the step I didn’t think of, so the chicken tended to start burning before cooking through. This keeps it very, very juicy.

Edited to add better instructions from Mom: “Cook the first side 3-4 minutes until a nice crust forms (don’t move it or it won’t); cover and cook 2-3 minutes. Check for done-ness by touching the meat; soft and squishy means it’s still raw, springy means done, and firm means over-done. All meat continues cooking once it’s off the heat and it needs to rest a few minutes to resorb its juices before you eat it.

Easy! Here is our delicious dinner:

As for the leftovers, we ate some over the weekend, and I used half of the remaining chicken in an absorption pasta with some of the arugula tossed in at the last minute:

The other half I added to pasta with tomato sauce for a very last-minute dinner with a friend from B’s b-school class last night.

Cooking techniques, Food, Guest Post, Recipes

Guest Post: Self-shredding carnitas

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I have a very special treat today: the first-ever guest entry on the blog! (This looks like it may be a bit of a Guest Week, since my mom cooked us a great, simple dinner while she was here visiting, and all I did to “help” was steal beans and take photos.) Bridge faced an Extreme Meat Challenge this weekend, and has a recipe to share plus a cautionary tale about letting someone faceless do your grocery shopping.

———
After enjoying Kate’s delectable cider-braised pork with caramelized onions, I decided to give braising a go. We received a gorgeous cast iron enamel pot from E’s dad last spring, but anything we could think to cook in it seemed too heavy until autumn recently crept in. The pot is only four quarts, but in our tiny Manhattan kitchen, it seems like a real beast.

So, last week, I proposed that we get a pork shoulder from FreshDirect. I love FreshDirect for its convenience, but they’re not the most organized. This might explain why I once received an enormous box of Chocolate Peppermint Luna Bars in lieu of the bottle of apple cider vinegar I’d ordered. (I thought about donating the Luna bars but E pointed out that we will need them in case of a zombie attack, so they now reside on the top shelf of our cabinet. This is a true story). I truly believe that there is a Homer Simpson-type at the very end of the packing assembly belt, just throwing random items in willy-nilly before taping up the boxes and sending them off to the trucks.

The other problem with FreshDirect is that you can estimate the size of the meat you’d like, but what they throw in the box is what you get and what you pay for. Which is why I was surprised when E unpacked the boxes in our kitchen and asked me, “Why did you get two?”
“Two what?”
“Two pork shoulders.”
“I didn’t,” I replied, getting up and going into the kitchen. Indeed, they had sent two untrimmed pork shoulders, one weighing seven pounds and one weighing thirteen pounds.

We pondered our options – the smaller shoulder, the one we paid for, was certainly something we could tackle. We decided to make carnitas (more on that in a moment). The larger one, however, was an issue. Given that we’ve recently embarked on a strict budget-adherence mission, it seemed silly to give up free food. But there were several problems in keeping the large shoulder. One, we couldn’t store it whole. It absolutely did not fit in the freezer. It barely fit in the fridge, and there, it was only going to keep for two days or so before we had to do something. Two, we don’t own anything near large enough to cook such a large hunk of meat. It would have to be divided.


(Image from winewebcentral.com)
I think we got most of sections 4 and 5.

I called Kate and she suggested the same, advising me that there would be definitive points of amputation (my word, not hers – this thing was enormous, I swear). She told me to trim it into roasts and chunks (for stew meat, etc) and hopefully I could maneuver the smaller bits into the freezer.

Now, I thought “untrimmed” meant there’d be some excess fat on it and I’d have to do some cute and clever carving, like one does with a heavily marbled steak. I did not realize that “untrimmed” means that there is a hefty layer of skin covering the meat. In fact, I had almost finished trimming the seven pound shoulder when E came in and said, “That’s a lot of skin.”
“That’s fat,” I replied, hacking away with a sushi knife.
E shook his head, and upon closer inspection, I saw pores.

During the trimming process, I’d frequently run into the living room, shake my bloody knife in the air and bemoan the disgusting slab of carcass that had taken over our bright little galley kitchen. [Editor’s Note: The kitchen is not as tiny as some in Manhattan, but the counter space is severely limited. I honestly don’t know how Bridge found space for a 13 pound pork shoulder.] Our cat Giuseppe also took up residence in the kitchen, showing great interest in the meat, his tiny pink-padded paw slooooooooowly reaching toward the mountain of meat before being swatted away. Over. And over. And over.
[EN: Joe also likes to sit on anything Bridge bakes.]

Joe, feigning innocence:

So, the carnitas. I got this recipe from Epicurious and ignored the part about green onion rajas because I decided to make my own salsa.

The recipe is very simple. Take one 4lb pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into two-inch cubes, and put them in a pot. We ended up with more meat than they suggested, but I just threw it all in the pot and poured in a 32 ounce container of organic chicken stock. Add water until the meat is submerged by about a half-inch and bring the whole thing to a boil.

After it boils for a minute or so, lower the heat to a simmer and leave it partially covered for almost two hours, or until all the liquid is absorbed.

Two hours later, I went to check on it and…almost nothing had happened. The pot was still completely full of liquid and chunks of pork. We had some errands to run, so I opted to turn off the burner, cover the pot, and leave it for three hours or so.

Upon returning home, I let it simmer for another two hours and got to work on a simple salsa of plum tomatoes, scallions, chopped cilantro, jalapenos, a little olive oil, lime juice, and salt.

That’s when E got impatient and began poking at the pork chunks with a wooden spoon. I warned him that we had to wait for the liquid to absorb and then it would be time to shred the meat, but when I looked in the pot I was shocked to see that his poking had caused the pork to self-shred into a beautiful mound of white meat, thereby sucking up all the extra liquid. I simply added salt and cracked black pepper, plus a lime’s worth of juice.

With some warm tortillas, the fresh salsa, and a cold Corona, we both agreed it was one of the top ten meals we’d ever made. I think the trick with the pork is to gauge doneness by feel and texture, not by cooking time. The recipe was off by two hours, and the end result was well worth it. Also, minus the trimming debacle, it was insanely easy to make. Not to mention, we have tons of shredded pork left for sandwiches and tacos.

Now, any ideas for ten pounds of trimmed pork shoulder? In the end, we threw away an entire garbage bag of skin and fat, but we are still the very proud owners of two huge roasts, plus a gallon-sized Ziploc of stew meat. Thanks, FreshDirect. I think.

Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Inoteca salad and Braised pork

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Dinner on Saturday night got started very, very late–we ended up getting home three hours later than I expected, and then baked cake, etc, so we started the (braised) meat at about the time I thought we’d be eating, and ate at bedtime. I scaled back the plans because we’d been snacking and it was so late, which means I have a lot of chard that I need to do something with this week. Soup tonight, maybe…

To start we had a salad that Bridge and I always split at Inoteca: Romaine and radicchio in a red wine vinaigrette, topped with a mountain of ricotta salata. It’s so, so simple, but the combo is perfect–the sharp radicchio and vinegar are offset by the mound of cheese, which is salty and perfect. I know my mom has been making this salad ever since we went to Inoteca, and this was the second or third time I made it. (Of course, afterwards all I want to eat is Truffled Egg Toast, it’s Pavlovian.) Try this at home!

For dinner I made a variation on an old Gourmet recipe for cider braised pork with caramelized onions. Whole Foods doesn’t carry pork shoulder, on or off the bone, so I made do with boneless pork butt, which….well, it’s big mess to deal with, I’ll tell you that. It was held together with an elastic net, but I had to take that off to score the fat, and then all the lobes of meat were everywhere and did NOT want to be bound back together with kitchen twine. I got flustered and started browning it 1) before sticking all the slices of garlic in (I did a bit of that while it was in the pan, an ouchy process that Bridge watched with trepidation), 2) WITHOUT SEASONING IT. That’s right, I completely forgot to salt and pepper the meat before cooking it. Brilliant. Somehow I don’t have any photos except of the finished process, but basically I browned the meat, pulled it out, caramelized the onions, added the cider in, put the meat back, and braised for a while in the oven. About 45 minutes before it was done (the time was all weird because I had a totally different piece of meat than the recipe called for) I pulled the le creuset out, peered in at my messy, messy chunks of meat, and cut off a little bit to see if it was getting tender. No, not yet. Also, it tasted like a shoe, because it was still in the tough phase, before the braising tenderizing magic happens, and also I HADN’T SALTED OR PEPPERED IT. I added S&P then, and then just really drowned the pieces in the onion sauce mixture (which you reduce a bit) when I served it. I have to say, it ended up tasting good: The Braising Magic kicked in and the meat was super tender, and blanketed in the sweet onions it was flavorful enough. I wasn’t feeling well, though, so I only ate two bites!

Served without chard or noodles, due to the lateness of the hour:

I liked my apples/sherry more than the onions, but I think short ribs might be next on the menu. And the brussels sprouts the Amateur Gourmet blogged a week or two ago, which I’ve been thinking about ever since. My mom is visiting next weekend! Cooking ahoy!

Cooking techniques, Family, Food, Recipes, Travel

Oregon trip: Mirza

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Mirza. Mirza is a wonderful, wonderful thing, very much one of my Top Five foods. It is awful-looking, a brownish mush of eggplant, tomato and egg, but the smoky, garlicky flavor is divine. My Mom’s friend Linda (another wonderful cook) is married to a Persian man and learned to cook all sorts of wonderful food from her Mother-in-Law. We have been eating mirza since I was a kid, and I crave it at random intervals. Sadly Mom refuses to make unless it is eggplant and tomato season. Ah, seasonality.

We made it as part of our Tapas dinner, though, and I think it was one of the best batches we ever made! I forgot to take pictures until most of the way through, so bear with me.

First, take your eggplant, a nice big one or two small ones, and grill it whole over lowish heat until it the sides collapse if you poke them (carefully) with your finger. Do not puncture the skin! Once the eggplant is all charred and soft, put it in a covered bowl or something to sit and think about what it’s done while you prep everything else. Seed and chop three or four nice ripe roma tomatoes, and mince a LOT of garlic, 6-8 cloves at least. Then gingerly peel the eggplant, making sure you catch all the nice juices in the bowl, and chop up the flesh. Leave all the seeds and stuff. Sauté the garlic in a good amount of olive oil until it is soft, then add in the eggplant and cook until you break it down a bit and it isn’t in chunks. Add in the tomato and cook until soft. In a glass, scramble up one egg. Next, make a hole in the middle:

irza

And pour the egg into it. Scramble it a bit:

mirza

mirza

And then stir it through the eggplant mixture and get it all nicely cooked so there aren’t bits of raw white:

mirza

Not too pretty, eh? But oooooh man. Usually we eat it piping hot with hot pita triangles, but this time we had it with grilled bread (brushed with oil and rubbed with garlic before grilling) and that was even better. Everything was smoky and garlicky and fantastic.

bread

I made it again the other night, to make sure I remembered the steps (I actually had to call mom to check how many tomatoes) and it wasn’t quite as good. We have a gas grill, while Mom and Dad use real-wood charcoal. Can’t beat the flavor, but mine was still pretty good and it got better the next day.

Cooking techniques, Family, Food, Travel

Oregon trip: “Tapas” dinner on the patio

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Mom and I discussed a bunch of favorite foods to try to figure out what to cook for my second-to-last night home, and we realized that we could just make a bunch of appetizer type things and skip the main course altogether. Delightful!

First, a glamour shot of the Sungold cherry tomatoes I keep talking about, and which we ate by the bucket full all week:
t

Now. The menu for the evening:
-White beans with sausage, red onion and tomato
-Mirza (Persian eggplant dip and one of my all-time favorite foods)
-Grilled baby artichokes
-Prosciutto-wrapped grilled figs
-Grilled bread

OK, now I’m starving thinking about it.

I’ll follow up with a mirza post since it needs its own entry. It is simple but divine. And my mom made the white beans while I wasn’t paying attention, so I’d just be guessing if I made up instructions for that (though it was very tasty). But the grilled artichokes I carefully paid attention to, and the grilled figs are so beyond simple and SO delicious….

Artichokes. My mom buys bags of baby artichokes from Trader Joe’s because her friendly Farmer’s Market artichoke man has stopped showing up. I think we started with four pounds. That sounds insane, but we wanted leftovers and as you’ll see you throw away (compost, in our case) a LOT of trimmings.

Sadly I forgot to take photos until I was trimming the last few, so I don’t have a whole one to show here. But pretend you have seen the whole baby artichoke.

Trim it down to the tender leaves, cut the top third off, leaving the bases of the leaves, then use a paring knife to clean the bottom and stem, then cut each one in half (place in a bowl of cold water with the juice of a lemon while you keep trimming the rest:
art

This takes quite a while. Once you’ve done all trillion of them, admire the giant tub of leaves and trimming that your compost heap is about to enjoy, and marvel at the tiny bowl of water and artichokes that you are left with:
arti

Despite the lemon juice in the water, the artichokes may have discolored a little along the cut edges (you’re helping slow that down by putting them in water)–do not panic. Put them in a big pan with a couple whole cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed, cover them with water (or close to cover), and bring to a simmer. Cook until they are tender but not too soft:
artic

It’s like magic! The discoloration is gone! Eat one out of the strainer to celebrate. Now coat them in olive oil:
artich

Grill in a grill pan to prevent losing them into the fire. They’re already cooked, so you’re just adding that nice charred look and flavor. Salt and pepper. I like to hit them with a squeeze of lemon juice when they’re done. Now you can start sneaking them out of the bowl while you continue getting dinner on. (Leftovers should be added to pizza, or pasta, or sandwiches, or eaten cold out of the fridge.)

Delicious!
yum

Ok, the other fun grilled thing that night–I posted one photo already, but this is an appetizer my mom has been making for years, and it could not be easier.

pro

[If you’re using bamboo skewers, soak them in water for a couple hours before assembly!]
A note on figs: They have to be ripe ripe ripe for this to be as amazing as it can be. We had lovely ripe figs, and actually some were just ripe while others were *really* ripe:
fig

I have to say, though, I could barely tell them apart when they were cooked. That slightly sketchy-looking one might have been a tad more tender; it was certainly way juicier raw!
Cut slices of prosciutto in half the long way, so you have two strips from each slice. Wind one strip around each halved fig, and string a couple on each skewer. Brush with olive oil and grill.
mmm

mg

Devour while moaning incoherently.

City Life, Cooking techniques, Food

Birthday Spaghetti

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Sorry for the dearth of posts lately–I have barely been cooking and have been working full-time while we’re in NYC.

Ben requested spaghetti and meatballs for his birthday, which he shares with Harry Potter and my late grandmother at the end of July. (Mine is the 1st of August, so we always end up with more of a joint celebration!) I have never made meatballs but was game to try, despite the limitations of the Shiny-but-Squeezed kitchen in our corporate apartment:

kit

Actually it’s not that bad, though I’m not used to the flat-top electric stove (the pots slide when you stir! agh!) and the ventilation is terrible. It has about three feet of counter, which is three feet more than we have in Cambridge. The big downer is the glass cutting board, which makes horrible “I am killing your knife” sounds with every chop, and which sports a pebbly surface that makes it nearly impossible to chop things like parsley without just denting the leaves instead of cutting through them.

Anyway.

Mom sent me the Cook’s Illustrated recipe, which calls for white bread soaked in buttermilk. Mmmm, squishy.

read

I used a 1/3 pork, 2/3 beef mixture, with the bread, garlic, parmesan, parsley, salt and pepper. (Maybe I’m forgetting something?) I had heard so many dire warnings of meatballs that masquerade as musket balls that I was terrified of over-handling the mixture, and instead under-handled it.

mb

I shaped the meatballs with such a gentle hand that when I put the first batch in the oil to fry and then tried to turn them, they gave way and crumbled. I actually preferred them this way, since I like meat sauce better than meatballs, but still: This was not a proper meatball.

b2

(Excuse the dark and horrible photos. I got a new camera for my birthday and the amazing digital macro is about to revolutionize the photos here. Meanwhile I’m still using up photos from my old camera.)

I re-packed the next batch, making sure they were much tighter. I browned them very dark because I like a crispy outside:

mb2

mb3

Those held together much better, though they were still very delicate and tender.

The sauce in the CI recipe is really simple—a can of crushed tomato, basil, garlic, a little oil. It came together in about 20 minutes including cooking. I reheated the meatballs in the sauce while the pasta cooked, and ta-da! all done!

mb pot

spag

For dessert I skipped cake because Ben is more of an ice cream guy. I bought some dark chocolate cookies and coffee Häagen-Dazs, and made a big ice cream sandwich!

ice

ice2

ice 3

Happy birthday, honey!

Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Barb’s quick pickles

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Here’s a quick recipe that we used to make at home all the time. Our very dear family friend Barb taught my mom to make instant pickles with rice vinegar. All you do is peel and slice your cucumber, pour rice vinegar over it, add a liberal amount of black pepper, and let them sit for 30 minutes or so.

pickle

A note: They turned out really strong this time. Next time I might cut the vinegar with a little water if I want to eat them plain. But on sandwiches/burgers they tasted great! I really love pickles and am thinking of experimenting with real dill pickles. But maybe I’m better off just buying a jar of Claussens and calling it a day?

City Life, Cooking techniques, The Apartment

A peek into the pantry

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Yesterday I managed to get the oven turned on! This is big news and a big relief. There is actually an active oven pilot light, I found out when I took apart the bottom of the oven. It just doesn’t do anything unless you turn the oven dial to 400 or so, get it lit, THEN turn it down. Of course!

Last night we spent the evening wandering the aisles of the Container Store rather despairingly, and brought home a large number of items aimed at imposing order on the pantry. The kitchen doesn’t have a single cupboard or counter–not one–but there is a lovely butler’s pantry and a regular pantry right off the kitchen. I had heaved everything out of boxes and onto the shelves, and it looked pretty awful. I also had no way to organize all the sort of gadgets you’d normally keep in a drawer, like peelers and graters and measuring cups, since I don’t have any drawers.

Here are the results:

Before:

b

After:

a

I promise the difference is more striking in person.

Another view, since I’m pleased with my creativity in….shelf organizer selection:

Before:

b

After:

a

Note the in/out box trays used for gadgets in the lower left. It’s hard to see the desk-top cd box holding various boxes (brown sugar, corn starch). I’m very pleased with the different extra shelf thingies we got–smaller ones for the top shelf (there is a lot of space above the top built-in shelf; I may eventually put in another shelf or two for long-term storage) and a big one to use on the floor under the bottom shelf. I also used a big one on the lowest shelf, which is quite large. And the cleverest gadget I found was the thing that clips onto a shelf above it and gives you a place for sheet pans or other flat wide things. At last, I won’t have to unload every single other pan I own to get to the quarter sheet.

In case you think I’ve stopped cooking….you’re almost right. Hmm. I did make a nice pasta dish the other night, and Ben’s family was in town this weekend so we had a barbecue. I made caprese for that, look!

Mediocre tomatoes, sadly–I was hoping they’d be good but they let me down. That’s a BIG letdown, since caprese is only worth it with great tomatoes and great cheese. Luckily the mozzarella, a Vermont-made one, was extremely tasty.

t

I drizzled it with a dressing I made very quickly by pureeing a bunch of basil with olive oil, salt, and a dab of balsamic vinegar.

t

I want to try again with awesome heirloom tomatoes!

Coming soon: A whole slide show of house before and afters! Also a very tasty lunch.

Cooking techniques, Food, Home, The Apartment

Moved…

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Well, we moved. And now it looks like this:

m

Actually that was on Thursday, and things are slightly better now, but the painter hadn’t finished when we arrived, so we have everything piled in the middle of the living and dining rooms. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to, say, unpack a few pots and pans. We’ve been eating a lot of bread (with peanut butter or butter and honey), but last night Ben grilled sausages (the ones from Whole Foods aren’t as great as the Coop ones, we’ll need to find a new supplier) and corn. The corn was delicious, incredibly sweet and a little smokey.

Peel back the husk and remove the silk.
corn

Spread the ears with butter and pulls the husks back up.
corn2

Grill…until done. Sorry, this seems really imprecise and recipes online didn’t help. The first time I did this, with Tom and friends, we undercooked it. This time I had Ben cook it with the sausages for about the same amount of time.
dinner

Yum. And I had it with a glass of Lambic!

Cooking techniques, Family, Food, Recipes

Cooking with Mom (Part 2): Pizza tutorial

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Mom’s pizza. For as long as I can remember, my mom has been making pizza at home, always with no sauce, and with a series of ever-more-sophisticated toppings as the years went on. She uses big perforated pans to bake it, and there was always plenty left over, filling rectangular tupperwares in the fridge with the promise of delicious lunches for a few days afterwards. Long before my parents arrived for graduation we had agreed that we’d make pizza one night, so I could learn mom’s technique.

B had to go to Boston for work on Monday and Tuesday of the visit, so we decided to make pizza Monday night, and then make a nicer dinner when he got home Tuesday. We went to the store and gathered cheese and toppings, drove back to the house, and saw the street that leads to ours full of fire trucks and policemen and power company rigs. Uh-oh. Then I saw the giant moving truck in the exit from the apartment complex near our house. Then I realized that there was about a 99% chance that it was our friends Brian and Liz’s truck. Uh-oh, redux. Turns out the moving truck had hit a low-lying phone line (this was not the first time it had happened but the phone company was refusing to raise the line), and the line was so strong that instead of snapping, it pulled down the entire telephone pole, and with it all the electric wires as well.

Needless to say, we were without power at home. While the repairmen slowly removed the old pole, raised the lines, and put in a new pole, we got to work on the pizza, figuring that if all else failed we could cook it on the grill (one of my favorite summer treats, but much more of a pain than just baking two pizzas in the oven). Since we have a propane stove, the cooktop was useable, though the electronic controls put the oven out of service. Mom started by making the dough (I will put the entire recipe at the end):

Flour, water, salt and yeast (the bulk kind):
flour

Mix together into a loose dough (it’s not pretty at this point) and dump onto a floured work surface:

dough

Knead for about five minutes, adding a little flour to prevent sticking if you need to:

knead

The dough pulls together into a lovely little ball, nice and smooth. If you’re mom, you can knead this and retain the nice smooth ballness of it. If you’re Tom or me, you don’t have the knack yet, and each time you take a turn kneading it will get sort of sticky. Then mom will touch it and it will become perfect again. This part of the process obviously requires practice. We determined that she kneads with her right hand while picking up and flipping with the left, a smooth movement:

flip

When the dough is smooth and elastic, oil a bowl and place the ball in it to rise:

ready

Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise until it almost doubles, 45 minutes-1 hour (blurry pic, sorry):

dough

When the dough has risen but still has a little spring to it, punch it down and roll it out. We had to make little baby ones since we were grilling it and the pizza pan size would have been bigger than the grill:

roll

Here’s where the process differs since we were grilling instead of baking. While the dough was rising we had sautéed wild mushrooms and caramelized onions. We’d also washed and dried some radicchio, to emulate a pizza we ate in Italy a couple years ago.

mush

mushcook

radi
(A note on the radicchio: In Italy it was left whole on the pizza, but for some reason that didn’t work as well for us. A second batch with the leaves cut up was much easier to eat, though not as pretty.)

For grilled pizza you need all your toppings fully cooked, since they won’t be on the grill for long. We used the mesh pans I’d bought for baking the pizza, which made it easier to get the dough on and off the grill. After heating the grill up, we had the best luck with the heat turned to medium so things didn’t burn too fast. We put the dough on the grill, on the pan, and then closed the grill lid (the pan stuck out a bit):

grill

The dough puffs up rather melodramatically (this one made a perfect rear end, to the juvenile delight of Tom and me):

rise

And then the bubbles collapse, and the dough is ready to be turned:

fall

At this point I pulled the pan off the grill to flip and top the dough. Turn it over, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with cheese (not a lot since it won’t have much melting time before burning) and toppings, and put back on the grill. When the cheese was almost melted, I slid the pizza off the pan onto the actual grill surface to get a little more scorchy flavor. Be careful, it burns fast!

pizza

It’s best to have everything ready to go, and to eat them as they come off the grill. Unlike the baked version, these don’t hold very well for some reason. Some of my favorite toppings include mushrooms, pesto, fresh tomato, etc. Go light with the cheese and toppings and play around. This is really fun for a party, with everyone sitting around topping the pizzas and eating them right away!

pizzas

Naturally, right as we were about to cook the last little pizza, the power came back on. Oh well, this was much more fun!

The recipe:

PIZZA: From Kate’s Mom

Dough: 2.5 cups unbleached flour
1 T active dry yeast
1 cups warm water
.5 teaspoon salt
olive oil

Put dry ingredients in large bowl, add 1 cup of warm water, and mix. Water can’t be too hot or it will kill the yeast. The mixture will be very ragged. Sprinkle some flour on your counter and turn out the mixture. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding as little flour to counter or dough as needed to prevent sticking — 1/4cup total. The dough should be smooth and elastic when ready. Oil bowl with olive oil and turn dough into it. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 1 hour or until almost double; dough should still have some spring to it. While dough is rising, cut up tomatoes, grate cheese, and prepare any other topping you choose. Preheat oven to 450.

ASSEMBLE THE PIZZA
• Roll out dough 1/2 at a time into the right shape for the pan you are using.
• Brush dough with a little olive oil.
• Cover with diced tomato that has had seeds and pulp removed*.
• Cover tomatoes with coarsely grated cheese. (I use mixture of whole milk mozzarella and Italian fontina – not Danish).
• Add your favorite toppings, but not too many or the pizza gets heavy and complicated.
• Scatter a little oregano, a few red pepper flakes and some drops of olive oil. Salt lightly.
• Bake at 450 for 20-25 minutes. Alternate pans halfway through.
• When they are done, flip each pizza out of its pan, onto to bottom oven rack and let the bottom of the dough dry out for a minute or two; it will be crispier.

PIZZA TIPS
• Use granular yeast if you can, sold in bulk in natural food stores, rather than the brand name yeast in little envelopes.
• Use unbleached white flour or even better, organic unbleached white flour.
• Use fresh tomatoes, not canned. Plum or Italian tomatoes are best.
• Use fresh mushrooms, not canned. Put them on raw & they cook perfectly during baking.
• If using sausage or pepperoni, put them on raw & they cook during baking.
• For this amount of dough, you’ll need about .75 lb. cheese and 4 or 5 plum tomatoes.