Simple is better

I have inherited simplicity from my peasant upbringing.
We ate what we grew.
We could taste every ingredient.
Fruit was dessert.
And bread was our sustenance.

So, when I crave the taste of home, I make this pizza.
Bread dough, sliced mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese baked for fifteen minutes in the hottest oven you can procure.

Come summer, heat up the BBQ and make pizza.

Going meatless?

Beginning this week, I prepared meals with no meat.

Pizza tasted light and flakier without all the extra toppings.
Burgers were savory with portabello mushrooms standing in for beef.
Pasta with peas and scallions never missed its pancetta.

And what happened to my appetite? It slowed down. My digestion was easier. Even my sleep patterns felt lighter.

I might just do meatless more often.

How to feed a man!

Young or old, all men want to eat comfort food, warm, filling, reminding them of all the good meals they have had in their lives. (Top picture: my hubby. Bottom picture: Jose. a friend of Brian, my son).

I include plenty of meals that cater to that sense of comfort.

Like pizza! Only, I cover the pie with veggies instead of salami!

Tacoes, with grilled chicken and plenty of chunky salsa made with fresh vegetables.

And chicken and dumplings!

All recipes can be found by scrolling on the dish in the sidebar.
Buon Appetito!

Pizza Night!

Home Made Pizza hot out of the oven!

To get a really fresh pizza designed to your nutritional needs, you need to learn a few things.
Making pizza at home may be too much trouble for most people. But, making a pizza that fits your dietary needs is worth the time and effort.

The dough: Flour, water, salt, and yeast.
The classing toppings: tomatoes, cheese, olive oil and herbs.
Add or subtract as you wish!

The secret?  Spreading the dough on parchment paper and then sliding it on to a pizza paddle and on  a pre-heated pizza stone at 500F for 15-20 minutes. 
When the pizza is  done, slide the pizza by pulling the parchment paper onto the paddle.

What if you don't have a paddle?

Use an upside down cookie sheet! The trick is to cook the dough on a VERY Hot Stone.

Next time, I'll tell you how to save some dough in a jar for the next time you want to bake. 

The food of LOVE.

Oh what I wouldn't do for a great slice of pizza!
(if you want this recipe, just scroll back to a previous post)

Pizza is a tricky thing to make. The natural bacteria in the air where you live will impart the special taste and structure to your dough, affecting the final result.  Now, here where we live, the Northwest, is similar to San Francisco.  Our pizza tastes more sourdoughy than other pizzas.

But, I digress. 
I want to talk about how cooking shares the chemistry and physics of love.
(No, don't interrupt! I'm on a roll here...)
Cooking requires  patience and flexibility.
Cooking requires accomodation to the tastes and likes,  the physical needs of the partners.


Let me illustrate by the making of pizza.
Say I want to eat pizza right now! (It's 7:20 am here.) If I pulled out my flour, etc., it would take a minimum of three hours to get a rise out of that dough. I would need to wait and wait.
(Oh sure, I can take bread, spread some sauce and cheese and bake it for a pretend pizza. NO THANKS!)

The real thing takes TIME.
The real thing takes ANTICIPATION AND SALIVATION.

Well, you get my point. I shall plan to have pizza for lunch or dinner.
Wouldn't it be easier to just go out and purchase a ready-made pie?

Surely, you want the real thing!

The cook controls health!

No matter how your family likes to eat and will eat outside your home, the cook is the main person to determine what the family gets fed.

The health and general welfare of everyone in your family depends on you, the cook.
How you shop, what you feature, how you prepare the food, how often you serve that meal, all these decisions will impact the health of your entire family, including future members' as well, because the example you set will influence your own children's and grandchildren's methods and ways.

Today, I want to talk about our ingredients, what we feature in our meals.  I've already listed some of these things in my ten rules for food consumption. As the white/eggplant and cheese pizza above indicates, serving more vegetables will improve your family's health right away.

Vegetables are under-appreciated. Most cooks think first of all about the main entree, the meat. Then, they think about the accompaniments.  In Italy, when I was growing up, our first course, the minestra was usually a concoction of vegetables with a starch, pasta or rice or...

I grew up featuring vegetables, until I married. Then, meat became the main melody. My husband's family grew up on a ranch, in Montana. Their meals were prepared for people who expended a great deal of physical energy.  They needed lots of calories and protein.

It turns out that the Mediterranean diet is heart-friendly. You too can adopt it easily with just a few changes:

1. feature vegetables
2. include legumes such as beans, peas, garbanzo, lentils, etc.
3. incorporate whole grains
4. use lean sources of protein as fish, poultry, game

My vegetarian pizza is easy to make and can change with the seasons. Add tomatoes, zucchini, green peppers, mushrooms. Use whole wheat flour and make your own. Search my Pizza in a Jar recipe and you can have pizza any time.

Let Them Eat Bread

Pissaladiere Recipe adapted from Cook's Illustrated.

My favorite food is pizza, flat bread covered with different ingredients and cooked quickly.
This recipe for Pissaladiere, a French version of pizza, without tomatoes, is my second choice. You can add anything else, actually.  My second picture shows one with grilled vegetables, including tomatoes.

The crust comes out crisp on the outside, but chewy on the inside.

Ingredients for Dough:
2C bread  or multi-purpose flour plus extra for dusting work surface
1envelope of instant yeast
1teaspoon of salt
1 Tablespoon of olive oil, plus additional oil for brushing dough and greasing hands
1Cup of warm water

Ingredients for Caramelized Onions

2 T olive oil
2 pounds of yellow and red onions, sliced
1/2 t. of salt
1 t brown sugar

Cook your onions at high heat, with salt and sugar, stirring frequently, until browned. Lower the heat, cover, add a tablespoon of water if needed, and continue heating for another ten minutes. Cool.

Soften the yeast in a cup of warm water and wait for ten minutes, until the yeast has had a chance to form bubbles.  In a big bowl, pour the flour and make a dent in the middle. Pour the water with yeast, a bit at a time, stirring the flour until all incorporated and still soft and sticky.  Remove the dough to a bread board and fold it into itself a couple of times, enough so the dough is smooth.  Wash the bowl with hot water. Dry it. Drop a tablespoon of olive oil and rub it on the bottom. Rub your hands with olive oil and pick up the dough. Fold it in the oil, cover it with a towel, and let it rest in a dry, warm place for one-two hours until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 500F while you cook the onions.

If you have a pizza stone, you'll be cooking directly on the stone:
On a pizza paddle, lay down parchment paper. Over the paper, spread half the dough, pulling it gently.  Brush it with olive oil. Lay the caramelized onions all over the dough.  The other half, you can save for another day, or try it out with different ingredients.

Slide the parchment paper and pissaladiere directly on the hot stone and cook for 13-15 minutes or until the bottom is golden.

If you do not have a pizza stone, lay your pissaladiere on a flat sheet brushed with oil and bake on the lowest rack in your hot oven.

Enjoy!