Pizza

December 19, 2014 / featherheadlady / 3 Comments

Almost everyone loves pizza! Hot pizza or cold pizza, deep dish or thin crust, lots of cheese or lots of sauce, meat lovers or veggie, white or red. There are so many variations, pizza can make almost everyone happy. You can divide the dough into small balls and roll out little individual pizzas. Let everyone choose their own toppings; a particularly fun thing to do with kids. Pizza. It’s what’s for dinner.

Pizza night starts with the crust.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups tepid water

2 1/4 tsp dry yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1 T olive oil

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp each dried oregano and basil (optional)

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Place tepid water in a bowl and mix in yeast and salt. Add the olive oil. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour, garlic, and herbs and stir with a wooden spoon. Add remaining flour and knead for five minutes until you have a smooth dough. Grease a bowl and allow the dough to rise until doubled in size, approximately an hour.

Divide dough in half or in smaller portions if making small, individual pizzas. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface.

Preheat the oven to 450.

Once you roll the dough out place on a lightly greased pizza pan. Fold the edges over, lightly rub down with olive oil and pre-bake for approximately ten minutes. This helps to keep the crust from getting soggy.

Now we are ready to top the pizza. There are many prepared sauces that you might like or you can use fire roasted tomatoes, a little olive oil, and some herbs.

Blend the tomatoes, 1 T of olive oil and herbs to taste. Spread the sauce on your pre-baked crust.

Choose your favorite toppings. Tonight I’m using onions, peppers, artichoke hearts, portabella mushrooms, tomatoes and some organic pepperoni.

Spread the toppings.

I used romano cheese and fresh mozzarella. Grate the hard cheese over the toppings and distribute slices of mozzarella.

Bake for approximately 25 minutes until cheese is golden brown and bubbly. Enjoy this thing of beauty with a cold beer, soda, a nice wine or a glass of milk.

Like I mentioned earlier there are countless pizza toppings for every taste. Sausage, bacon, ham, pepperoni. Spinach, fresh basil leaves, arugula. Sweet peppers, banana peppers, peppadews, green olives, kalamata olives, black olives. Mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, roasted garlic, artichokes, asparagus, zucchini. And pineapple…my least favorite topping. Love it in an upside down cake but leave it off my pizza.

Mozzarella is the most common of pizza cheeses but provolone, feta, Parmesan, Romano, asiago, goat cheese, even Gorgonzola are great options. Different cheeses pair well with different veggies and meats. Most grocery deli sections and frozen food aisles have countless types and brands of pizzas. If you don’t have time to make a pizza from scratch doctor a grocery pizza up with fresh toppings and extra cheese to make it your own.

Note: The crust recipe makes enough for 2 large pizzas. If you only plan to make one, freeze half the dough BEFORE you let it rise. Divide the dough and place half in a zip lock freezer bag. When you’re ready to make a second pizza let it thaw/rise and your ready for pizza #2.

Angel Hair Pasta with Oven Roasted Tomatoes

October 27, 2014 / featherheadlady / 1 Comment

This weekend we had very special friends visit from out of town. Pasta dishes are always favorites with them so I decided to make pasta two ways. Two ways that were both new recipe interpretations for me which is only a safe thing to do if your guests love you unconditionally. One pasta was a red dish, the other was white. One was meatless, the other had sausage. Both of them turned out very well. I’m going to share the meatless red here. Angel hair pasta with oven roasted tomatoes…it’s what was for dinner and again for lunch the next day.

This recipe is only something you’ll want to try if you will be home all afternoon and if you love the smell of roasting garlic and tomato. Everyone who walked in that afternoon commented on the strong aroma of garlic. You could roast the tomatoes without the garlic but the flavor would not be the same. The first part of this dish is the time consuming part…not a lot of work, just time.

Get ready to roast your tomatoes. Preheat the oven to 350 with the racks in the top third of the oven. I combined different kinds of tomatoes…Romas, beefsteak, and small heirloom tomatoes.

Slice the romas and the beefsteaks. Leave the cherry/grape tomatoes whole. Put the tomatoes in a large bowl, add 1/2 cup of olive oil and toss the tomatoes to coat. Spread them out in a single layer on jelly roll pans. Peel and smash a dozen or so cloves of garlic and distribute between the two pans of tomatoes. Lightly salt. Turn the oven down to 225 and put the tomatoes in. Roast them for six hours switching the position of the pans after three hours.

I told you this process was not at all difficult. It won’t take long and the garlic aromas will begin to permeate the kitchen. These tomatoes are so yummy. You won’t ever want to buy sundried, jarred tomatoes again. Throw the garlic away. It will be tough. The flavors have married the tomatoes and olive oil.

Now for the pasta sauce.

3 cups of oven roasted tomatoes (rough chop slices)

2-3 cloves of garlic thin sliced

5-6 anchovy filets

2 T olive oil

1 tsp crushed red pepper

2 T tomato paste

1 pint jar diced tomatoes

20 or so kalamata olives coarsely chopped

10 or so large green olives coarsely chopped

3 T capers

fresh grated asiago cheese

Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot and cook pasta according to package instructions.

Heat olive oil in a heavy skillet. Briefly sauté the garlic slices. Add the anchovy filets and sauté until they melt into the oil. Add the pepper flakes and tomato paste. Add the chopped tomatoes, the olives and capers, and the oven roasted tomatoes. Simmer until thoroughly heated.

Combine the sauce and pasta and toss. Add a half cup or so of the pasta water if necessary. Top with fresh grated asiago cheese. Serve with a tossed salad and some crusty bread.

If you have more than three cups of oven roasted tomatoes there are any number of uses for them in addition to just eating them straight up. They would be great in an omelet, on a sandwich, in a salad. I used the tomatoes I had left tonight when I roasted a pork loin with Brussels sprouts and baby Yukon gold potatoes. I added them to the vegetables when the cook time was almost up.

Canned Stewed Tomatoes

August 21, 2014September 13, 2014 / featherheadlady / 1 Comment

Today was a canning day. Stewed tomatoes for lots of soup and chili days this winter. I bought a bushel of beautiful tomatoes from the farm market yesterday.

Because I was making stewed tomatoes the first thing I did was diced one large sweet onion, two sweet peppers and three or four stalks of celery. I did red and yellow peppers but green will work too.

Next step was to peel and core the tomatoes. I core and then put them in a pot of boiling water for a minute or so until the skins crack and slide off easily.

I core and peel about a quarter bushel at a time. Then I did a bite size dice and put them in a large stainless steel kettle over medium heat.

Once the tomatoes begin to simmer I stir in my diced vegetables and simmer them about 30 minutes.

We like garlic so I stir minced garlic into the tomatoes just before I begin filling my jars.

I use a canning funnel to ladle the hot tomatoes into jars that have been sterilized in boiling water. Once the jars are filled I add 1/2 tsp of sea salt and 1/8 tsp of citric acid.

The last step is putting the jars into a hot water bath making sure I have a couple inches of water over the jar lids. Once the water comes back up to a boil set the timer…35 minutes for pints, 45 minutes for quarts.

Now I have awesome tomatoes to enjoy all winter long.

Canning is a bit time consuming but not difficult at all. A half bushel of tomatoes yielded about 28 pints of stewed tomatoes. I will omit all the veggies for the second half bushel and hot pack a simple diced tomato.

Home-canned tomatoes make the best soups and chili and tomato sauce!