Pizza

Making pizza is one of my favorite things to do with my family. My husband and I started making pizzas together nearly 15 years ago. At the time we lived in Minneapolis and making pizza was a double bonus – not only did we get something great to eat in the end, but we also warmed up the entire house!

Today we make pizza primarily on our grill. We have a pizza stone that we place right on top of the grate and can get our grill up to well over 500 degrees (we have a Big Green Egg – which is like having a brick oven as a grill). But, if you don’t feel comfortable putting the pizza on a grill, try getting a pizza stone. We keep ours in the oven all of the time – it works great for warming up breads and pastries, too. Whatever you do, I just urge you to try making pizza at least once totally from scratch: dough and sauce.

One of the reasons we enjoy making our own pizzas, other than the fact that it costs less and tastes 100-times better, is that it’s something to do when you’re throwing a casual dinner party. Hand your guests a beer or glass of wine, a knife and cutting board and tell them to cut up some garlic/onions/tomatoes/etc. and conversation just starts to flow. I am a firm believer in participatory dinner parties. I think it helps relax people and give them a place to focus their energy if they’re feeling uneasy. It’s also great to see a bunch of people come together and think of new combinations for pizzas.

If it’s just us, we’ll sip a beer and just have fun watching the girls participate in making their own amazing creations.

The key to keeping it simple is to start your dough just before you start cutting up your toppings. I make a batch in my food processor. It takes about 5 minutes total to mix, and the rest of the time it’s just rising.

The sauce is my favorite because it serves as a great non-intrusive base to a simple pizza. The flavors of the toppings really shine and are not overrun by the taste of a jarred “pizza sauce” which is frequently filled with a bunch of nasty additives and way too many “Italian Seasonings.” Go for simple and your taste buds will be rewarded!

A Simple Pizza Dough Recipe:
1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour or white whole wheat
2 teaspoons coarse seas salt
1 ¼ cups lukewarm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
In a food processor fit with a metal blade, add yeast, flour, and teaspoons salt. Process to mix. With processor still running, add water and oil slowly. Process for only about 30 seconds at a time, taking a moment to scrape down the sides if necessary. The dough should quickly come together into a ball. If it’s too dry, add a couple of tablespoons of water to the mix.
Take dough out of processor and on a clean, well-floured area give it a few kneads until the dough is smooth and supple. In a large bowl add a bit of olive oil and spread it around. Add the dough and turn it once or twice to cover it with the oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or simply put a plate on top. Let sit while you finish prepping your sauce and veggies. Dough can sit up to two hours or if you want to make it well before your pizza-party starts you can put the dough in the fridge until about 2 hours before you’re ready to make the pizzas.
Dough makes 1 very large or 2-3 small pizzas.
Roll out dough into whatever thickness you’d like, put in oven or on grill (make sure grill is well oiled) with a sheen of olive oil over the top. Cook at 475 degrees for about 5 minutes. Remove and put whatever toppings you’d like on top. Cook again for another 5-7 minutes until crust is perfectly browned and toppings and cheese are well cooked.

And An Even Simpler Sauce:
1, 28oz can of whole tomatoes
Puree in your blender or food processor.
Pour pureed tomatoes into a small pan until slightly reduced, about 15 minutes.

Our favorite toppings:
Buffalo Mozzarella
Goat Cheese
Green Olives
Fresh basil
Fresh tomatoes

Burgers

Meatless burgers are everywhere these days. Even the greasiest spoon in town will often stick a Gardenburger or Boca burger on its menu. And believe me, I applaud all of those efforts to please and appease people who don’t eat meat or just want to cut back every once in a while. But unfortunately, most of those burgers taste pretty much the same: variations on a theme of cardboard

Desiring a burger once in a while to “fit in,” for years I made lentil burgers, but I never really loved them. I tried. I pretended they were great, but they weren’t. They were either soggy and loose or dry and inedible. When I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t like them, I never tried strolling down the homemade veggie burger path again. That is until February, when Mark Bittman, one of my favorite cookbook authors and a columnist in the New York Times’ Wednesday food page, published a series of three recipes for veggie burgers. I was skeptical, but printed out the recipes. Later that month I realized nothing was planned for dinner, and it was 5 p.m. Four mouths would want feeding in an hour. I opened the drawer where I keep all of my loose recipes and the Walnut Burger recipe caught my eye because I knew I had all of the ingredients. I put aside my antipathy for the veggie burger, and moved on: I had the ingredients and it looked simple and fast. Fifteen minutes later the burgers were made and formed into little patties ready to be cooked.

Thirty minutes later they were gone and no one went to bed hungry. In fact they were good – really good. My husband and I topped ours with mustard and greens, my oldest topped hers with lots of ketchup and the youngest with pickles and more pickles and a few olives thrown on for one more sodium hit.

Ok, so you might have all of the ingredients on hand except miso and walnuts. Here’s a piece of shopping advice. Go to Costco and buy a 2 lb. bag of walnuts for $9 (it will cost you nearly 3 times that amount if you buy the exact same walnuts in the bulk section at one of the natural foods stores) and keep the bag in your freezer (nuts go rancid quickly, especially in the warmer weather). Then buy a little tub of miso from either an Asian grocery store or one of the natural food stores. The miso will keep for about a year in your fridge.

Below is Bittman’s recipe that I have modified substantially to fit my usual cupboard ingredients. What appeals to me other than the fact that these burgers really do taste good is they are loaded with great superfoods: garlic, walnuts, miso (soy), oats and egg.

And, while on the subject of vegetarian food, check out the latest installment of the Meatrix at www.meatrix.com. It’s a bit over the top, but it’s really well produced and provides great information and links.

Walnut Burgers

1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 cup walnuts
1 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons miso
1 teaspoon fennel, crush slightly to release flavor
1 teaspoon dried basil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 egg

In a food processor pulp onion. Add walnuts and oats and grind together, being careful not to make it like mush. Add miso and spices. Add a little water if it’s too dry.

Let the mixture stand in the fridge for about 30 minutes (use this time to finish the rest of your meal: salad, side dish, etc) and shape into four burger. In a nonstick skillet, add a puddle of olive oil and warm. When sufficiently hot, but not burning the oil, add burgers. Cook for about 5-7 minutes without turning. When ready, turn carefully with a spatula and cook on the other side for 4-5 more minutes until very firm.

Serve with typical “hamburger” accompaniments.

Yoga...

This winter I discovered what I believe is Stapleton’s hidden jewel: The Phoenix Yoga Studio in Town Center. In fact, it might be the only redeemable thing about this bizzaro, freaky 'hood I live in. I had done yoga over the past two decades a middling amount -- from college where I practiced in a lobby of a local theatre to my early working life doing it in a sterile gymnasium to prenatal yoga in a fancy, overpriced, tv-blaring, iron-body-type sports club. None of these places ever made yoga more than another form of ho-hum exercise. And then one day in mid-December I walked into Phoenix Yoga for my first class and walked out profoundly changed. The serenity of the light-filled, mellow, peach and lilac toned walls enveloped me as I sank clumsily into one pose after another. Unlike other yoga I had done, the peace and clarity present in Phoenix Yoga is powerful. It came as a needed respite from the nonstop chattering of children, the endless drone of neighbors asking “so, who’s your builder?!”, the ringing of the phone, etc. I’m still as lost and often quite clumsy as I attempt my practice, but I’ve found my oasis in Stapleton.

And as millions of others before have found that the more you practice yoga, the more your body wants to do anything it can to assist the process. One of those things is eating lighter. I’m not talking about a fruit-only diet or anything extreme, just simply becoming more conscious of the food we put in our body and how it affects us. A few months ago, pre-yoga conversion, I created this meal that we now have on average twice a week in our house. I call it California Roll in a Bowl or Cucumber Roll in a Bowl or Shrimp Roll in a Bowl -- you get the picture. And, although I’m 100% certain that I’m not the first to have thought of this easy-Japanese style dinner, I am certain that I have created a new standard of comfort food for my family.

One of my other latest conversions has been to the world of rice cookers. I always thought they were only for serious Asian food lovers/cooks, but what I found was that it’s an amazing time-saving device that produces incredible rice every time. If you can, check out the Asian supermarkets on Federal or go to Han Au Rheum in Aurora to not only get a great deal, but also to pick up some basic “____ in a Bowl” staples at half the price of the fancy gourmet/natural food stores.

Basic Recipe for California Roll in a Bowl
Serves 2

2 cups brown rice
4 oz. steamed shrimp, salmon, crab or tofu (or none at all)
2 sheets nori
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
½ cucumber, diced
½ carrot, grated or julienned
½ avocado, diced
Pickled ginger
Wasabi
Soy Sauce
Sesame oil

To prepare:

In two soup or cereal bowls divide rice equally. Divide protein, if using, on top of rice. Top with cucumber, carrot, and avocado, equally divided. Crumble one nori sheet and sprinkle sesame seeds over everything. Serve with pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce.

Staples to purchase at Asian supermarkets: large bags of rice (I recently got a 10lb bag of brown rice for only $7), nori sheets, sesame seeds, wasabi, pickled ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil. If you have all of these things in your cupboard you are more than ¾ of the way to having “____ in a Bowl” nearly any night of the week.

And lastly, why brown rice? Here’s the skinny. Compared to enriched, processed white rice, unenriched, unprocessed brown rice has 349% more fiber, 203% more Vitamin E, 185% more B6 and 219% more magnesium and 19% more protein. ‘nuf said?