Chicago Deep Dish with Spinach and Ricotta; Berry Pizza; Blueberry Mint Peach Martinis

Today was my sister Pam's birthday.  She couldn't be here tonight, so we were forced to be extra festive on her behalf, split her portions of the pizzas, and drink an extra martini for her...  Oh, the sacrifices that we sisters must make for each other!

CHICAGO DEEP DISH WITH SPINACH AND RICOTTA

Adapted from The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani with Susie Heller and Steve Siegelman

Dough:

1-1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/4 cup + 4 teaspoons warm water

3-1/8 cups bread flour

3 scant tablespoons medium ground cornmeal

1 tablespoon diastatic malt

1 tablespoon lard, cut into small pebble-sized pieces

1 tablespoon butter, cut into small pebble-sized pieces

3/4 cup cold water

Spinach:

2 tablespoons olive oil

10 ounces fresh baby spinach

2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

The Rest:

1 tablespoon of butter

1/4 medium ground cornmeal

10 ounces fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced

1/4 cup Asiago cheese

1 tablespoon garlic

8 ounces shredded provolone

5 ounces shredded mozzarella

1-1/2 cups thick tomato-based pasta sauce

1 tablespoon Pecorino cheese

Make the dough:  Combine the yeast and warm water in a small bowl.  Mix thoroughly and set aside for at least five minutes.  Place the flour, cornmeal, and malt in the bowl of a large stand-mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Run the mixer at a low speed and add the lard and butter pieces.  Continue mixing while adding the cold water and the yeast-water mixture.  When the dough starts to come together, add the salt, and continue to mix until the salt is incorporated and the dough begins to cling to the hook.  This should only take a minute or so.  Knead the dough on a clean surface for about two to three minutes or until the dough ball starts to become smooth.  Put the dough in a bowl, cover with a damp towel, and allow it to rest at room temperature for an hour. After it has rested, place the dough on a plate or baking tray and wrap the dough and plate together with plastic wrap.  Place in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 days.  Take the dough out of the refrigerator and place in a warm, dry place until it becomes room temperature.

Make the spinach:  Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.  Place the washed and dried spinach in the pan.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover with the lid.  After about a minute, remove the lid and turn the spinach over.  The spinach that was on the bottom should have darkened and shrank a little. Replace the lid and cook for another minute.  Remove the lid again, and flip the spinach again.  Continue to flip/stir the spinach until the entire batch has wilted.  Remove the spinach from the pan and allow it to cook.  Squeeze out any excess moisture.

Assemble the pizza:  Preheat the oven to 500º F.  Sprinkle a pizza peel or board with a couple of tablespoons of cornmeal.  Roll or stretch the dough out to about a seventeen inch circle (a couple of inches larger than the pan you are going to use.  Butter a cake pan or deep dish pizza pan generously, making sure the butter extends up the sides of the pan and covers the corners of the pan.  Carefully place the dough in the pan, pushing the dough into the corners.  Press the dough along the top edge of the pan to secure it to the pan (If you are using a stoneware or other thick type of pan, I suggest baking the crust alone for 5-8 minutes at this point, with the top edges of the dough covered with a pie-ring or aluminum foil).  Lay the mozzarella slices over the bottom, allowing some of it to curl up the edges of the dough a bit.  Spread half of the spinach mixture over the mozzarella slices.  Sprinkle the Asiago over the spinach.  Cover the spinach and Asiago with the provolone.  Bake in the bottom third of the oven for fifteen minutes.  Rotate the pan 180º and bake for another 5 minutes or until the cheese is starting to brown.  Remove the pizza from the oven and cover it with the shredded mozzarella.  Return the pizza to the oven and bake until the cheese has melted and started to brown.  Remove the pizza from the oven.  Lift it out of the pan onto a cutting board.  Cut the pizza into the desired amount of slices (I like 16).  Pour the sauce over the top of the pizza.  If the remaining spinach is cold, heat it up a little in the microwave.  Drizzle the remaining spinach over the sauce and dust the top with the Pecorino.  Serve immediately.

The crusts The Pizza Bible all take a couple of days to make.  So far, the deep dish crust seems the least involved.  The other ones I have made so far require a starter that sits for a day, then a dough that sits for a day, then you "degass" the dough and let it rest for another day.  The deep dish only requires a 24-48 hour rest once everything is combined and kneaded.

With this in mind, I had intended to start the dough on Monday but had a case of the unmotivates and simply watched television after work instead.  Then, Tuesday came and went, and I didn't end up starting my dough until Wednesday.  The instructions say to weigh the dough when you are done and throw away anything over 27 grams, but being the carboholic that I am, I skip this step.  In my previous dough adventures, I always skipped the kneading and the "resting" of the dough.  I didn't have the patience, and I felt that my Kitchen Aide did a fine job of kneading the dough on its own.  I have since recanted this position.  I tried it once (I felt I should at least follow the instructions to the letter one time to determine if this was a necessary step), and found that the kneading was somewhat therapeutic.  Smashing the dough against itself against the counter, and pummeling it into submission works out a lot of frustrations.  I am still not convinced that it does a whole lot for the dough, but I rather enjoy it now.

With my dough resting, I decided to work on some other preparations for the following night.  I know from experience that if I leave the kitchen while the dough is resting, I may not come back again until the next morning, and the dough would have exceeded its nap time and started its rise a little early.  To occupy the time, I started in on the spinach.  The recipe originally called for a pound of spinach.  However, I am hard-pressed to find any packages at Cub that would make this amount convenient.  They only sell five ounce bags.  Sure, I could have sprung for a third bag and gotten really close to the full pound, but it really seemed like a large amount of spinach.  I know that it shrinks down, and it is one of the top billed stars of the recipe, but I just didn't want to do it.  The recipe suggests that you saute the spinach in a couple of batches, but, again, I am an impatient person and I didn't have as much spinach.   I opted to do one batch and just get it done.  Once it had shrunk down, it didn't look like very much, and I wondered if I should have gone for the third package.

I looked at the recipe for the sauce, and I looked in my overloaded fridge and immediately focused in on some leftover pasta sauce that was in there.  Jeff had suggested over the weekend that I ditch the next recipe idea and make a "leftover" pizza out of items left in our fridge.  To make at least a little effort to appease him in that respect, I opted for the leftover commercial pasta sauce instead of making yet another tomato-based something or other to stick back into the fridge.  It was a three-cheese generic sauce from Cub.  It was a little thick and very flavorful, and there was just the perfect amount left in the jar for my pizza.

The hour resting period wasn't over yet, so I thought I would get started on some of the preparations for the berry pizza.  Reading through the instructions, most of the steps could be done in advance, leaving only assembly for Thursday after work.

BERRY PIZZA

Adapted from  Revolutionary Pizza by Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau

Dough:

1 cup cold water

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

3½ cups bread flour

Toppings:

6 ounces fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons (loosely packed) fresh mint leaves

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

8 ounces strawberries (about 8 medium berries)

7 ounces sweetened condensed milk

4 ounces mozzarella "pearls" 

Make the dough:  Combine the water, salt, sugar, and oil in the bowl of a large stand mixer.  Vigorously whisk this together with a fork or whisk.  Place the bowl in position on the stand mixer and fit the mixer with the dough hook.  Mix at medium speed until the dough comes together, all of the ingredients are incorporated, and the dough starts to cling to the hook.  Remove the dough from the bowl and knead on a clean dry surface for about 2-3 minutes or until the dough becomes smooth.  Form into a ball and let rest at room temperature for about an hour.  Cut the dough in half.  Reshape each piece into a ball.  Freeze one ball in a freezer bag or double-wrapped in plastic wrap to use for another recipe.  Place the remaining dough ball on a baking sheet or large plate.  Wrap plastic wrap around the plate and dough ball, sealing the dough underneath the plate.  Refrigerate for 24-48 hours.

Assemble the pizza:  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Roll or stretch the dough on a cornmeal dusted peel or board to a 16 inch circle.  Pinch around the edges of the circle, creating a lip or raised edge all the way around.  Spread the sweetened condensed milk over the dough.  Rinse the blueberries and place in a large bowl with the mint leaves.  In a medium sauce pan, combine the water and sugar and bring to a boil, stirring often to make sure that the sugar dissolves.  Once it has reached a boil, turn the heat off and pour the syrup over the blueberry-mint mixture.  Allow to cool.  Skewer the strawberries and grill on a preheated grill until they start to blister.  Allow them to cool on the skewers.  Once cooled, carefully remove the berries from the skewer and mash with a fork.  Strain the berries and mint from the syrup, reserving the syrup for another use.  Arrange the berries and mint leaves over the pizza.  Sprinkle the mozzarella "pearls" over the pizza.  Arrange the strawberries among the berries and cheese.  Bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes or until the cheese has melted.  Dust with powdered sugar, if desired, and serve immediately.

I started with the dough.  This recipe just has you throwing everything together, mixing, and rising.  It seemed wrong to put the salt and yeast in the water together.  I always thought that the salt would kill the yeast before it had time to bubble up and cause the dough to rise.  Maybe that is what the author of the book had intended - maybe their style of pizza isn't light and fluffy but more cracker-like.  I just hoped it wasn't going to be more brick-like.  The instructions on this one were to let it rest for two hours.  Since I was already a half hour into the resting period for the first dough, I decided to give it an hour and a half.  I know, I am a rebel.

While the doughs were resting, I started in on the blueberries.  I made my syrup.  It seemed like a large amount of syrup, but I thought maybe something magical was going to happen when I added it to the mint.  It didn't.   Once it cooled, I put aluminum foil over the bowl and put it in the refrigerator, hoping that the magic would happen overnight in there.

I skewered the strawberries and was able to fit four on a skewer.  I was originally

thinking I would just hold the skewers over the gas stove flame and "grill" them that way, so I wouldn't have to go outside, but then I had a flash vision of me lighting my sleeve on fire, lighting the skewer on fire, dropping the flaming skewer on our new maple floors and starting the whole place on fire.

 I bundled up and went out to the grill instead.  I should have let it heat up first.  I light two of the three burners, laid the two sticks over the visible flame and closed the lid.  I checked it about 5 minutes later and nothing had happened to them (other than one end of the skewer was blackening  - I knew I should have soaked them first but didn't want to bother with it).  I turned off the center burner, turned on the burner furthest away from my skewers, and lined my skewers perpendicular to the grates to maximize flame exposure.  I closed the lid and let them bake for another 5 minutes or so.  Then, when I flipped them, the berries were starting to soften and there was a little blackening in a couple of spots.  I left them on the uncooked side for another 5 minutes, pulled them off and went back inside.  I tried pushing the berries off of their skewers with a fork, but it started smashing the berries.  I'm not sure why that seemed to make a difference to me, since I was going to mash them in the end anyway, but I decided to wait for them to cool and gently pull them off with my fingers.

When I got home on Thursday after work, I pulled my doughs out of the fridge.  I had put them on the same baking sheet, and they had started to grow together, looking like a large albino lady bug or something.

After they had gotten up to room temperature, I slathered my deep-dish stone with butter.  There is something about just sticking your hands in the butter and pushing it around the pan that I really like.  I think it makes it easier to get into the corners of the pan, you can feel where the butter hadn't covered a space, and it makes your hands really soft.

Once the pan was sufficiently slathered, I rolled out the deep-dish dough.  It seems strange that you would roll out a deep-dish dough so thin, but I guess it needs to be to get cooked all the way through, and the deep dish isn't necessarily about the bread, but all the stuff you cram into it, and there was a lot to cram with this recipe.

Jennifer and the kids had arrived by this time. Jonah went straight to the television room and plunked down on the couch for some mindless drivel, and the diligent Gracie sat at the kitchen table and worked on homework while Jen and I worked on the assembly process.  I had already slathered the dough for the berry pizza with the sweetened condensed milk.  I wasn't sure I was using the right thing, since the recipe did not mention "sweetened".  However, I am not aware of any condensed milk that isn't sweetened, so that is what I used.  My can was 15 ounces, so I will have to think of some other application for this item (yes, there is yet another thing left over and going into the over-filled fridge).

By the time Jennifer approached the pizza, the sweetened condensed milk had started to drip a little over the edge of the pizza.  I figured that was all it was going to do, because it was pretty thick.  I told her to go ahead and just leave it that way, but the blueberries still hadn't done anything magical and were just floating on top of the vat of syrup.  I told scoop the berries and mint out of the bowl and leave the syrup.  As a matter of fact, I hadn't yet decided what we were going to drink, but using mint-berry syrup sounded like the perfect thing!  She added the blueberries and mint, mashed the strawberries and added those, and then the milk started running over the counter.  I had not built a lip around the edge, so it was just running over the board and onto the counter.  We decided to bake it on a jelly roll pan, so the sides of the pan could catch the drips and not the bottom of my oven.

We returned to the deep dish pizza and started in on the first of the four cheeses.  Jeff had bought pre-sliced fresh mozzarella, and the recipe said to slice it very thin.  The slices that it came with were pretty thick - great for a caprese salad, but not great for covering the bottom of a 15 inch pizza pan.  I tried slicing the slices in half, but was not getting good results.  The cheese is really soft, so I decided instead to mash the slices down (roll them out like pizza dough) into a larger, thinner slice.  It worked for the most part.  It didn't have to be beautiful or perfect, because this cheese was going on the bottom of everything.  I didn't really have enough to get up the sides of the dough, but I was okay with that, considering that there were five more cheeses to go in there.  After the fresh mozzarella, half of the spinach went on.  Next to be piled on was the tablespoon of garlic (the recipe called for 1 teaspoon - and Jennifer and I just laughed at that) and the Asiago.  Then, the Provolone - this was really a lot of cheese!  The ingredients had reached the top of the pan, and we weren't even done yet!

While we were assembling this, we had put a Papa Murphy's Cowboy Pizza in the oven.  Jennifer will frequently bring a pizza that she knows her kids will eat, because there is a fifty percent chance that they won't even try the weird ones I make.  For this week, I wasn't sure Jeff was going to try the berry pizza.  He is allergic to strawberries, but we only put the strawberries on 3/4 of the pizza.  The Cowboy had just come out of the oven as we were finishing the initial assembly of the deep dish pizza.

Our deep dish went in for its first stint in the oven.  While this was going on, I started mixing up cocktails for us with items I found in the cupboard.

BLUEBERRY PEACH MINTINI

1 part blueberry mint simple syrup (see above)

2 parts peach vodka

3 parts plain vodka

Add ingredients to a shaker filled with ice.  Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with a blueberry or two.

After we had our beverages lined up, we checked on the progress of our deep dish pizza.  the dough had risen to a point where it had climbed right out of the pan.  It looked a bit like a souffle. 

We gave it a half turn and sent it back in.  After about half of the suggested time for second baking, we decided it was done (the book said 12 minutes, and it had been about five).  It was really pretty with the cheese starting to brown and the crust tall and towering above the cheese, I almost hated to add the second batch of mozzarella.  I said almost - I mean it is cheese isn't it?  And add it, we did and sent the heavy dish back into the oven for more melting.

 When we took it out of the oven again, the cheese had melted.  We tried to lift the pizza out of the pan with a couple of spatulas. It looked like it was going well, when suddenly, the bottom dropped out of one side of the pie.  Thankfully, it landed on the cutting board, and we were able to scooch it back under the pie.  In hindsight, we decided that we should have pre-baked the crust a little or used a metal pan which would have conducted heat faster to the dough.

We bucked the recipe instructions and put the sauce, spinach, ricotta, and pecorino on before we cut it.  We decided that may have been a mistake.  If the pie is cut before the toppings are added, there may be better coverage of those toppings.  Regardless, it was beautiful!

As for the berry pizza, we put it in once we had taken the deep dish pizza out.  As we feared, the sweetened condensed milk oozed off of the crust and pooled (and caramelized) on the baking sheet.  We didn't want to waste it, so we scraped it up and put it in a bowl to add a little crunchy topping as we ate it.

The deep dish pizza was delicious!  I think really should have been called Cheese Pizza with Spinach and Ricotta, since those two items were the smallest percentage of the pizza.  They were accents, really, not stars...  You could differentiate the creamy, soft mozzarella on the bottom from the tangy, rich provolone.  Once you think you have gone to some cheesy gooey overload, you get hit with the tang of the tomato sauce and finish off with another shot of creamy richness from the ricotta.

The berry pizza was good.  I'm not sure that the grilling of the strawberries did anything special for them.  Jennifer even suggested that they could have been regular frozen strawberries, and it would have tasted the same.  I really liked the pop of the blueberries, and the underlying hint of mint that came to the taste buds after the berry was gone.  I'm not sure what the cheese did for the concoction other than hold the berries onto the crust.  I think if I had made a lip around the pizza and kept the sweetened condensed milk in its place, we wouldn't have needed to add the mozzarella pearls.

Pepperoni Pizza and Deconstructed Jalapeno Popper Pizza

     Here I am again, back to the basics.  A pepperoni pizza.  Yes, we have done this before, but not with this crust, and not with this sauce.  Sometimes, little changes, little nuances can make all the difference in the world.  This crust that I have been making out of The Pizza Bible has been outstanding.  I thought my crust was good before, but this just takes to a whole new level.  This little gem of a pizza recipe was hiding in the introduction to the book.  I had already skipped over it, thinking it was instructions on the basics.  I didn't need to read about the basics - I have been making pizzas for years!

     In my opinion, there are several reasons why restaurants (or any other business, for that matter) fail, but one of them is the resistance to change.  If you have done something successfully, why change?  However, I believe that by changing, learning new things about old things, and combining them with your knowledge of how things always used to be, you can really create a masterpiece.  I decided to read the introduction and see if I could learn anything new.  And, here was this tutorial on how to create a great pizza.  I wanted to try it and see how it compared to the "old way" of doing things.  That, and I do really love pepperoni.

     The instructions started on day one of a three day process.  So, I started on Monday.  Monday's events started with weighing and measuring ingredients for the dough.  Okay, I didn't do that (the weighing part) before with the first couple of recipes I tried in this book, but I was willing to try to get down to the letter and try the author's methods.

     The weighing of ingredients was a little tough, considering all I have for a scale is a $19 jobbie that I bought at Costco on a whim one day.  It does measure grams, as the author instructs to measure everything by, but it only reports in two gram increments, and it starts at four grams.  So, measuring 4½ grams of active dry yeast was not going to be exact, nor 9 grams of sea salt, 9 grams of diastatic malt, etc.  Apparently, everything in this book should amount to an odd number of grams.  I did the best I could, though, and it seemed to be matching up to the described results in the book.

     The author chronicled each and every step and explained why each step was done.  I rather enjoyed that.  I had an education.  He instructed to knead the dough on a non-floured surface and suggested a granite surface.  I was in luck!  I have granite counter tops, and they were clean (a rarity, yes, but at that moment, they were clean).  I kneaded the dough as described in the book.  I have never been a kneader.  It seems like a superfluous step.  I was never really sure why it was done and figured whatever it was achieving (I assumed a better mix of dough), it could be done by my KitchenAide.  There was something therapeutic about it though.  Stretching and folding and smashing the dough with my palm.  I felt it was a surrogate for all of those people who had ever done me wrong.  Take THAT, Jack Goldenberg!  Take THAT, Super Ford Smasher lady at Bobby & Steve's.  Take THAT, rude lady in the Cub line!  I smash your face in with the palm of my hand, and your rubbery smushy white face gets pummeled into the granite.

     Okay, I may have gotten a little carried away with it, but I was sold.  Now, I will be kneading my dough for three minutes every week.  The dough was smooth and round and elastic and ready for forming into a ball.  Once formed, I covered it with a kitchen towel and let it "rest" for an hour (at this point I needed a rest, too, even though it had only been three minutes of pummeling).  Following the rest (for both of us), I dribbled a little water over the top of it, put it back in my mixing bowl, and blanketed it with a piece of plastic wrap.  Into the refrigerator it went for it's 24 hour "fermentation" process.

     Day two (Tuesday) involved degassing the dough, making the sauce, and making a garlic oil.  I won't bore you with all of the details.  If you want them - buy the book (ha!).  This is just the Cliff Notes version (do they have those any more?).            

     After degassing, balling, and returning the dough to the fridge for another "rest", I started on the sauce.  Here is where I fudged a little.  I deviated from the instructions just a bit.  I cannot seem to find anything labeled "ground tomatoes" at any of the stores I have been to.  What is that?  The recipe called for 4½ ounces (why did he switch from grams?) of ground tomatoes.  Is that like pureed tomatoes?  I was betting on it.  Why buy pureed, when whole tomatoes and a VitaMix will do.  So, I measured out 4½ ounces (my scale will measure ounces in odd numbers and fractions) of whole plump tomatoes from a can and placed them in my VitaMix with the tomato paste, oregano, salt, and olive oil.  In less than two seconds, the tomatoes were "ground" with the rest of the ingredients I had put in there.  I dumped the slurry into a bowl and added the "hand-crushed" tomatoes to finish off the sauce.

     

PEPPERONI PIZZA

Adapted from The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemingnani with Susie Heller and Steve Siegelman

Dough:

1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

3 ounces warm water

3 1/4 cups bread flour

8 ounces ice-cold water

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

2 teaspoons olive oil

Sauce:

3 1/2 ounces canned (drained) whole plum tomatoes, divided

1 ounce tomato paste

Pinch of dried oregano

Pinch of fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

The rest of the story:

Cornmeal

6 ounces shredded mozzarella

4 ounces sliced pepperoni

1 ounce grated Pecorino Romano cheese

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon garlic-infused olive oil

Dough:  Combine the yeast and warm water in a small bowl.  Whisk to combine.  Set aside.  Place the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment.  With the mixer running on low speed, add the ice water, followed by the yeast mixture.  Increase the speed of the mixer a little bit and continue mixing until the dough starts to come together.  Add the salt and mix on low for about a minute.  Add the oil, and mix again until the oil is incorporated, and the dough starts to cling to the hook.  Remove the dough from the bowl and knead for about three minutes on a clean, unfloured, smooth surface, such as granite or marble. Place the dough back into the bowl and cover with a clean, damp, lint-free towel.  Let it rest at room temperature for about an hour.  Spread a few drops of water over the dough.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 24 hours.  Remove the dough from the refrigerator and mix the dough in the stand mixer at low for about thirty seconds to "degass".  Cut the dough in half and shape each half into a ball. Wrap one ball in plastic wrap or seal in a zip-top bag and freeze or reserve it for another use.  Place the remaining ball on a baking sheet and wrap plastic wrap around the pan and dough together.  Put the pan in the refrigerator for another 24 hours.

Sauce:  Place 2½ ounces of the plum tomatoes, the tomato past, oregano, sea salt, and olive oil in the bowl of  a food processor or blender.  Puree until smooth.  Transfer the mixture to a small bowl.  Tear the remaining tomatoes into pieces with your hands and add to the mixture.  Stir the mixture to distribute the tomato pieces throughout the sauce.

Assemble:  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Roll or stretch the dough into a 15 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or board.  Spread the sauce over the prepared dough.  Evenly distribute the mozzarella over the dough.  Arrange the pepperoni over the cheese.  Transfer the pizza to the preheated stone, if using, or transfer to a pizza pan and place in the oven.  Bake for 10 minutes or until the pepperoni has started to crisp.  Remove the pizza from the oven and dust with the Pecorino and oregano.  Drizzle lightly with the garlic oil.

     Wednesday, I took a rest from working on the pepperoni pizza and started some preparations for my second pizza.  This pizza had all the elements of a jalapeno popper - those delicious little nuggets of jalapeno stuffed with cream cheese and deep fat fried.  Since my pepperoni pizza dough recipe made two pizzas' worth, I decided to use the second dough for my popper pizza.  

     I started with the batter recipe.  It called for a lager, but I didn't think I could add that the day before.  A little Internet browsing taught me that the bubbles in the beer is what makes the finished breading light and fluffy.  When the beer hits the hot oil, it causes it to foam, creating a light and airy texture in the batter.  Because of this, I decided to just combine the other ingredients and add the beer on Thursday, just before I was ready to batter and fry my jalapenos. Next, I fried up the bacon, sliced the jalapenos, and chopped the onions.

DECONSTRUCTED JALAPENO POPPER PIZZA

Adapted from The Revolutionary Pizza by Dimitri Syrkin-Niolau

Dough:

1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

3 ounces warm water

3 1/4 cups bread flour

8 ounces ice-cold water

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

2 teaspoons olive oil

Beer Batter:

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

4 ounces Modelo Negro

1 egg

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon lemon juice

The rest of the story:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

6-8 medium sized (or 3 large) fresh jalapenos,sliced into rings

Salt and pepper

Cornmeal - for dusting the pizza peel

3-5 cups vegetable oil - enough to submerge the jalapenos while frying

2 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese

4 ounces Neufchatel cheese

2 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese

2 ounces crisp thick-cut bacon, broken into small pieces

1/2 cup chopped green onions

Dough:  Combine the yeast and warm water in a small bowl.  Whisk to combine.  Set aside.  Place the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment.  With the mixer running on low speed, add the ice water, followed by the yeast mixture.  Increase the speed of the mixer a little bit and continue mixing until the dough starts to come together.  Add the salt and mix on low for about a minute.  Add the oil, and mix again until the oil is incorporated, and the dough starts to cling to the hook.  Remove the dough from the bowl and knead for about three minutes on a clean, unfloured, smooth surface, such as granite or marble. Place the dough back into the bowl and cover with a clean, damp, lint-free towel.  Let it rest at room temperature for about an hour.  Spread a few drops of water over the dough.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 24 hours.  Remove the dough from the refrigerator and mix the dough in the stand mixer at low for about thirty seconds to "degass".  Cut the dough in half and shape each half into a ball. Wrap one ball in plastic wrap or seal in a zip-top bag and freeze or reserve it for another use.  Place the remaining ball on a baking sheet and wrap plastic wrap around the pan and dough together.  Put the pan in the refrigerator for another 24 hours.

Make the fried jalapenos:  Mix the batter ingredients together, and whisk to remove any lumps.  Add the jalapeno slices and set aside for ten minutes.  Mix the flour and salt and pepper together.  Preheat the vegetable oil to 375º F.  If you don't have a thermometer, put the pan of oil over a high flame for several minutes.  Drop a dollop of batter in the oil.  If it sizzles and starts to brown immediately, it is ready.  Turn the heat down to medium-high to maintain the temperature.  Roll the batter-soaked jalapenos in the seasoned flour and drop them into the hot oil.  Cook until browned.  Remove the jalapenos from the oil and place on a paper-towel-lined plate to drain.

The Rest of the Story:  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Roll or stretch the dough into a 15-inch circle on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or board.  Top the stretched dough with mozzarella and transfer dough to the preheated stone, or transfer to a greased pizza pan and place in the oven.  Bake for 5-7 minutes or until crust is starting to set up, and cheese has melted.  Transfer the pizza back to the pizza peel (or place the pizza pan on a hot pad), leaving the oven on.  Spread the Neufchatel cheese over the mozzarella.  Distribute the fried jalapenos over the cheese.  Top with the cheddar.  Bake for 3-5 more minutes.  Top with the chopped bacon and green onions.

     On Thursday, as soon as I got home, I took the dough out of the refrigerator.



Again, I started with the pepperoni pizza, spreading the sauce over my newly rolled out dough.

As per the instructions, the cheese went on next.  Normally, I object to the cheese on the bottom, because you cannot get the warm, brown, bubbliness that is so wonderful.  However, since I was trying new methods, I thought I would give it a shot.  (There's nothing wrong with crispy browned pepperonis, either).

     We started putting on the pepperoni.  And, putting it on, and putting it on.  I never realized how much pepperoni was in four ounces!

  When it came out of the oven, the pepperoni looked like it was self-deep-fat-fried.  It was shiny and crisp, and it had shrunk up a little to reveal the gooey cheese underneath.

When I added the Pecorino, it melted into the pepperoni.

I have to say, I think it was probably the best pepperoni pizza I have ever had.  The crust had a nice crispness to the outside, the inside of the crust was fluffy and flavorful.  The pepperoni was both crispy on top and meaty underneath.  The sauce was great, too.  The tomato flavor was hearty, yet not overpowering.

We, of course had to make the obligatory frozen pizza for the picky people.

Again, the jalapeno pizza started with the cheese on the bottom, and this time it was truly on the bottom.  And, it was baked some before the toppings went on.

It seemed a shame to cover up the gorgeous, bubbly cheese, but I was covering it with cream cheese, so how could that be bad?

The lovely, deep fried jalapenos went over the cream cheese (at least the ones that didn't go in my mouth).

A little more cheese went over the fried jalapenos.

After another short stint in the oven, the bacon and green onions went on.

This was truly a delicious pizza.  Again, the crust was perfect.  The creaminess of the Neufchatel tempered the heat of the jalapenos and evened out the saltiness and zip of the onions. Surprisingly, the jalapenos stayed somewhat crisp, and the entire piece of pizza was a treasure chest of textures and flavors.

Lamb and No Eggplant Pizza; Upside Down Cheese Pizza; and Punt e Mes Negroni

  You wouldn't think that Japanese eggplant would be such a difficult thing to find.  I started at Cub (of course), but they only had globe.  I was going to take the lazy route and just buy it, but Jeff said "either you're going to follow the recipe or you're not.  We can find it somewhere else later."  Little did he know I hardly ever stick to a recipe completely any more.  He checked Festival for me to no avail.  Jennifer tried Target and Lund's and couldn't find it either.  So, we (Jennifer and I) decided to skip it.  There were enough things going on for this to still be a tasty pizza - although we may have to revisit it when the right eggplants are in.  

     One of the recipes (the cheese pizza) came from a new book that Jennifer and her family bought me for Christmas.   It was the first recipe I made in it, and I am thinking that the author may be a little anal.  All of the measurements are in grams, which is fine - whatever works.  But, they are so specific (2.2 grams of yeast) that I had to improvise in places.  My scale, while it will measure in grams, is very limited.  It only measures 2 grams at a time, and it doesn't do portions of grams.  And, it doesn't start measuring until you hit at least 4 grams.  I tried to trick it by putting what I thought was about 2.2 grams on the scale (it didn't register), then hitting the tare button to zero it back out.  Then, I took the item off the scale to see if it would register a negative number that might give me a clue as to how much the item weighed.  It didn't work.  It still registered zero, but it was negative zero.  Oh well.  Improvising is part of the fun, I guess.

     The author had many other specifics that I was unable to follow.  Not just because it was a lot of reading after a long day of work, but because I would have had to take the entire Thursday off just to get the pizza on the table before 10pm.  Also, I can't take a cheese pizza recipe that seriously. Note - if you're going to make this the way I did, you will need to start making the dough the night before, if not earlier.

Upside Down Cheese Pizza

Adapted from The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani with Susie Heller and Steve Siegelman

Dough:

pinch of active dry yeast

2 tablespoons cold water

1/4cup + 3 tablespoons (roughly 55-56 grams) bread flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

3½ cups bread flour

2 teaspoons salt (I used Kosher)

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons ice water (divided)

2 teaspoons (about 10 grams) olive oil

Sauce:  

8 ounces canned plum tomatoes (roughly half of a 15oz can, reserve the remainder for the topping)

4 tablespoons tomato paste 

pinch of dried oregano

1 teaspoon olive oil

Rest of the story:

Cornmeal for dusting

8 ounces sliced mozzarella

6 ounces canned plum tomatoes (or the remainder of the can), drained and crushed

2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese

pinch of oregano

1 tablespoon of garlic infused olive oil

Dough:  In a small bowl, combine the pinch of yeast with the 2 tablespoons of cold water and set aside for about five minutes.  Add the "55 grams" of bread flour and stir to combine.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 10-18 hours.  This is the "starter".  In a very small bowl, combine the 3/4 teaspoon yeast with the 1/4 cup of warm water, and set it aside for about five minutes.  Put the flour, salt, and olive oil into the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Stir at a low speed to thoroughly mix.  With the mixer running, add the 3/4 cup of ice water.  Then add the yeast mixture.  Use the remaining two tablespoons of ice water to swish out any remaining yeast mixture from the small bowl and add it to the flour mixture.  Run the mixer at medium speed until the ingredients start to combine.  Add the "starter" and mix at medium speed until the dough comes together in a ball and clings to the hook (stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl, if needed, to make sure all of the ingredients get incorporated).  Cut the dough in half.  Place one half in a freezer bag and refrigerate or freeze for another use.  Place the other half of the dough in a greased bowl.  Lightly oil the exposed portions of the dough and drape a damp towel (or loosely drape plastic wrap) over the bowl.  Set aside to rise for at least two hours (original recipe recommended rising it in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours; I set it on the counter in my 63º house for roughly 11 hours). 

Sauce:  Combine all sauce ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth.

The rest of the story (assembly):  Preheat oven to 500º F, with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Dust a pizza peel or board with cornmeal to cover.  Stretch and roll dough out to a 15 inch circle.  Shake the peel or board to ensure that the dough will still slip off its surface. Lift the edges of the dough and slide more cornmeal underneath, if necessary.  Arrange the mozzarella over the dough.  Spoon the tomato sauce over the cheese, spreading it almost to the edge of the dough.  Slide pizza into oven onto the preheated stone.  Bake for twelve minutes, rotating the pizza halfway though baking.  Remove the pizza from the oven.  Top with the crushed tomatoes and sprinkle the Romano over everything.  Drizzle the garlic olive oil over the top.  Slice and serve.

     As I mentioned, there were a lot of details that I glossed over.  I hadn't read the recipes completely before I started in.  I started measuring out the ingredients for the starter, then read that it called for something called diastic malt.  I had never heard of that before. I had to Google it (what did we ever do before Google?).  Apparently, it is a grain that has sprouted.  Then, it is dried and ground into a powder.  It is supposed to improve the texture, crumb, and browning of the crust.  I thought I might try and see if Byerly's carried it, but with the snow and below freezing temperatures, my laziness won out.  It was going to join the eggplant in the "items not used" category for this week.

      Wednesday night, I started with what the cookbook author called the "tiga", which is the starter for the dough.  Since I had no malt powder, it was simply water, yeast, and four.  It was really thick, as I had been warned in the book, but I assumed that meant it was going to be like a paste.  It was more like a mini pile of dough.  I was instructed to let it rest at room temperature for 18 hours, so I moved on to the next thing - the sauce.

     The original recipe called for "ground tomatoes" and "hand-crushed" tomatoes.  I'm not entirely sure what "ground tomatoes" are.  Did he mean tomatoes that were ground up?  Or, did he mean tomatoes that grow on the ground, like ground cherries??  I went with the assumption that he meant tomatoes that were ground up.  I'm not sure how that would be different than pureed tomatoes, so I threw whole (canned) plum tomatoes in my VitaMix along with the rest of the ingredients.  It called for 4.5 ounces of the ground and 2 ounces of hand-crushed, so I was planning on using in 6½ ounces of whole tomatoes, but I over-poured and ended up with about 8 ounces. I read later that I was supposed to add the "hand-crushed" after everything was pureed - Oops!

     After preparing the sauce for the cheese pizza, I started in on preparing the toppings for the lamb pizza.

Lamb and No Eggplant Pizza

Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner

Dough:

pinch of active dry yeast

2 tablespoons cold water

1/4cup + 3 tablespoons (roughly 55-56 grams) bread flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

3½ cups bread flour

2 teaspoons salt (I used Kosher)

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons ice water (divided)

2 teaspoons (about 10 grams) olive oil

Corn meal (for rolling out the dough)

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

Toppings:

14 ounces ground lamb

6 ounces thinly sliced red onion

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

28oz can plum tomatoes, drained and crushed

1 teaspoon dried oregano

2 teaspoons fresh thyme

8 ounces soft goat cheese, crumbled

2 teaspoons olive oil

Salt 

Freshly ground black pepper

Dough:  In a small bowl, combine the pinch of yeast with the 2 tablespoons of cold water and set aside for about five minutes.  Add the "55 grams" of bread flour and stir to combine.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 10-18 hours.  This is the "starter".  In a very small bowl, combine the 3/4 teaspoon yeast with the 1/4 cup of warm water, and set it aside for about five minutes.  Put the flour, salt, and olive oil into the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Stir at a low speed to thoroughly mix.  With the mixer running, add the 3/4 cup of ice water.  Then add the yeast mixture.  Use the remaining two tablespoons of ice water to swish out any remaining yeast mixture from the small bowl and add it to the flour mixture.  Run the mixer at medium speed until the ingredients start to combine.  Add the "starter" and mix at medium speed until the dough comes together in a ball and clings to the hook (stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl, if needed, to make sure all of the ingredients get incorporated).  Cut the dough in half.  Place one half in a freezer bag and refrigerate or freeze for another use.  Place the other half of the dough in a greased bowl.  Lightly oil the exposed portions of the dough and drape a damp towel (or loosely drape plastic wrap) over the bowl.  Set aside to rise for at least two hours (original recipe recommended rising it in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours; I set it on the counter in my 63º house for roughly 11 hours).  Preheat the oven to 450º F.  Lightly coat a 15-inch deep-dish pizza pan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil.  Roll or stretch out dough and press it into the deep-dish pan, creating a thicker rim around the edge, going up the sides of the pan.  Prick the dough with the times of a fork.  Bake for five minutes. Remove it from then oven and brush it lightly with another tablespoon of olive oil.

Assembly:  In a large, non-stick skillet, brown the lamb with the onion and garlic, cooking until no pink remains in the lamb.  Drain well.  Spread the lamb mixture over prepared crust.  Spread the tomatoes over the lamb.  Sprinkle with oregano and thyme.  Top with the goat cheese crumbles.  Drizzle with 2 teaspoons of olive oil and lightly salt and pepper.  Bake for 25 minutes or until cheese starts to brown and the crust is golden.

     Ok, the original recipe only called for 8 ounces of lamb, but the smallest package I could find was 14 ounces.  I put it all in, rationalizing that if there were no eggplant in the pizza, the extra lamb would fill in the gaps.  It may have been a little too much, but I didn't hear any complaints (or, at least, I chose not to).  

     The lamb and onions cooked up quickly and filled my house with homey, warm aromas - perfect on a night that was -10º F with a wind chill factor of -30º (why do I live here again?).  I drained it, let it cool, and packaged it up for the fridge.
     In the morning, before work, I mixed up the dough.  Since the dough recipe for the cheese pizza made twice as much as the pizza called for, I decided to use the other half for the lamb pizza.  I wasn't sure how that was going to work, since it was a deep dish, but I went for it anyway.
    The instructions were very specific about when to add each ingredient and what speed and how long to mix after each addition.  Being impatient and having a short attention span, I pretty much just put everything in at once and ran the mixer at medium speed until it became dough.  At this point, the instructions were to knead it by hand (skipped that), form it into a ball (skipped that), and let it rest at room temperature for an hour before covering it and putting it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  I just removed the dough from the mixer, sprayed the now empty bowl with cooking spray, replaced the dough, sprayed the dough with cooking spray, covered it and left for work.
     When I got home (an hour and 12 minute commute in the snow that day for a 13 mile journey), I started working on the dough.  Just as I started, Jennifer and Jonah showed up.  I put Jennifer to the task of completing the cheese pizza while I worked on the lamb pizza.
     There was a lot of lamb.  It practically filled the deep dish pan.  As I was putting the tomatoes over the lamb, I started to wonder if Jennifer would like it.  She is not a huge fan of tomatoes, and there were lot here. I know that almost half of the 28 ounces in the can is juice, but weight-wise, there was almost the same amount of tomatoes as lamb, even after draining.
     Jennifer was a little more diligent than I was.  She made sure to spoon the sauce into the center of the pizza as instructed by the recipe.  Then, she used the back of a spoon in a circular motion to spread the sauce to the rim.  I would have tried to pour the sauce to cover as much space as possible on the outset and zig zagged the spoon any which direction to get the sauce to go where I wanted it to.
     There were two pizza stones in the oven when I had turned it on, and she read that we were to bake the pizza for six minutes on a stone positioned in the top third of the oven.  After the six minutes, she rotated the pizza 180º and moved it to the second stone, as instructed.  I had planned on ignoring those instructions and just bake it on one stone for 12 minutes, rotating it only if one side looked more done than the other - that way, I could enjoy my drink for a little while without having to do anything else.

Punt E Mes Cocktail

1 ounce gin

¼ ounce Punt E Mes

¼ ounce sweet vermouth

juice of ¼ of a lemon

Place all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker.  Shake vigorously for a few seconds.  Pour into a chilled cocktail glass.  

     A couple of years back, I saw a lot of cocktails with the ingredient Punt E Mes.  I was never really sure what it was and couldn't seem to find it anywhere.  Recently, I started playing around with our computer software at work (I work at a liquor distributorship) and discovered that we carried this product.  I immediately got some and brought it home.  Then, of course, I couldn't seem to find any of those recipes I had seen earlier for it.  It is a vermouth, and there are apparently several different kinds of vermouth.  I imagine it is a bit like gin, where each brand has its own secret blend, resulting in a unique flavor profile.  This is a little bitter, with a sweet after taste.  It is very dark in color and a little bit thick.

     I stumbled across a recipe for a Punt E Mes Negroni.  It had equal parts gin, Punt E Mes, and sweet vermouth.  We tried that first.  While it was good, it was a little too bitter for our tastes, even with the sweet vermouth.  It needed to be mellowed out a little.  We reduced the amount of Punt E Mes and sweet vermouth and added lemon.  It was much better.  The first taste was crisp and citrusy, and as I swallowed, there was just a bite of bitter that gave it a nice little zing.  

     The cheese pizza was done first.  Even after Jennifer added the crushed tomatoes, Romano cheese, oregano and olive oil, the pizza wasn't much to look at.  It reminded me of the pizzas in the eighties that came in a box, and you assembled it yourself with their wimpy, thin, sugary sauce.  The taste was far from that.  I am usually not a fan of the cheese on the bottom, because it doesn't get the chance to brown and bubble and caramelize, but this was really good.  The crust (despite the lack of malt) was crisp on the bottom with a nice soft texture inside.  The sauce was bright and flavorful.  The smooth, silky texture of cheese against the chew of the crust and the wetness of the sauce was amazing.  We kept marveling that such few and simple ingredients could taste so good.  We all agreed that the crust was much better than the previous crusts I had been making.

     The lamb pizza took quite a bit longer to bake.  When the goat cheese started to brown, we took it out of the oven.  There was a lot of liquid in the bottom of the pan.  I am not sure if I didn't drain the meat well enough, or maybe the tomatoes should have been drained better, or both.  The crust, even though it had been pre-baked, was soggy in the middle and a little gooey.  The outside edges appeared to have been boiled, which makes me think it was more of a tomato issue than a lamb issue, because I think if it was mostly grease, the crust would have been crisper, essentially deep-fat fried.  The toppings, though, stole the show.  It was rich and meaty with the nice, creamy tang of the goat cheese.  I cannot imagine how eggplant would have improved it.

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Shrimp and Feta Cheese Pizza; Ricotta Calzonetti Dolce; Raspberry Berry Martinis

     Shrimp - as I mentioned before, a great healt food - paired with kalamata olives and feta make a perfect Mediterranean combination.  The saltiness of the olives and feta are balanced out by the soft, sweet, shrimp and the tang of the tomatoes underneath.

     For dessert (along with Rum Fudge Bundt Cake for Jennifer's birthday), we had the Ricotta Calzonetti Dolce.  These were little pockets of dough, filled with sweetened ricotta that was combined with black cherry jam, chocolate and almonds.  Baked to perfection and sprinkled with colored sugars, it made a very festive addition to the meal.

Shrimp and Feta Cheese Pizza

Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner

Dough for Crust:

½ cup warm water

½ teaspoon active dry yeast

½ tablespoon sugar

1-2/3 cups bread flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

Sauce:

1 large garlic clove

9 ounces Roma tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

½ teaspoon dried oregano

2 large basil leaves, chopped

pinch of red pepper flakes

freshly ground black pepper to taste

Toppings:

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 lb medium shrimp, peeled, deveined

½ cup pitted Kalamata olives

2 ounces thinly sliced red onion

½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

4 ounces shredded mozzarella

salt

freshly ground black pepper

Make the dough for the crust:  Combine the water, yeast, and sugar in a small bowl.  Set aside for at least five minutes.  Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Stir to distribute the salt evenly through the flour.  Add the yeast mixture and the olive oil and continue to stir at medium speed until the dough comes together. Turn the mixer off and scrape the sides of the bowl to ensure that all of the ingredients get incorporated into the dough.  Stir on medium speed until the dough clings to the hook and looks smooth and elastic.  Place the dough in a greased bowl.  Cover with a damp towel or drape loosely with a piece of plastic wrap.  Set the bowl in warm, dry place for about an hour.

Make the sauce:  Push the garlic through a garlic press over a medium-sized bowl.  Finely dice the tomatoes, discarding the seeds.  Add the tomatoes to the bowl of garlic.  Stir in the tomato paste, salt, oregano, basil, and freshly ground pepper.  Set aside.  This can be made ahead of time and stored in your refrigerator until ready to use.

Assemble the pizza:  Preheat the oven to 500º with a pizza stone inside.  Roll or stretch the dough out to approximately a 15 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted peel or board.  Brush the dough circle with a tablespoon of olive oil.  Preheat a large non-stick pan to medium-high with one tablespoon of olive oil in it (I used a combination of harissa flavored and rosemary flavored olive oils).  Once heated, add the shrimp in a single layer.  Cook for 1-2 minutes per side until they have barely started to change color (do not overcook at this point, because you will be cooking them again in the oven).  Remove shrimp from pan and set aside.  Spread the sauce mixture over the oiled dough.  Arrange the shrimp over the sauce.  Arrange the olives around the shrimp.  Sprinkle the onion slices over the shrimp and olives.  Sprinkle the rosemary over the pizza.  Top with the feta.  Sprinkle the mozzarella over all.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Slide the pizza off the peel onto the preheated stone.  Cook for 5-10 minutes or until the cheeses start to brown.  Slice and serve.

The "sauce" was easy enough to make, but I still chose to make it the day before.  Not only does every little bit of preparation I can make before-hand help get things on the table faster, but I think with sauces and such, doing it a day prior helps meld the flavors together.  This sauce was more of a mild Italian salsa or a bruschetta preparation than an actual sauce.  It smelled wonderful when I pulled it out of the refrigerator the next day.


 

I also precooked the shrimp.  I started with raw, deveined, tail on shrimp.  I sauteed them just a little bit in olive oil until they were halfway pink,  Since I was cooking them again, I didn't want to rubberize them. I put those over the tomato mixture and arrange the olives over and around the shrimp.

I filled in the gaps with the feta cheese.

Then the onions and mozzarella made an appearance, blanketing those lovely little sea creatures.  A couple grindings of pepper went over that, and the whole thing went into the oven.

Ricotta Calzonetti Dolce

Adapted from James McNair's Vegetarian Pizza

Dough for Crust:

1 cup warm water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

3¼ cups bread flour

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup olive oil

Fillings, etc:

15ounces whole milk ricotta

½ cup all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons sugar

4 ounces dark chocolate chips

3 ounces black cherry jam

3 tablespoons sliced almonds

4 tablespoons melted butter

Colored sugars for decorating

Make the dough for the crust:  Combine the water and yeast in a small bowl.  Set aside for at least five minutes.  Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Stir to distribute the salt evenly through the flour.  Add the yeast mixture and the oil and continue to stir at medium speed until the dough comes together. Turn the mixer off and scrape the sides of the bowl to ensure that all of the ingredients get incorporated into the dough.  Stir on medium speed until the dough clings to the hook and looks smooth and elastic.  Place the dough in a greased bowl.  Cover with a damp towel or drape loosely with a piece of plastic wrap.  Set the bowl in warm, dry place for about an hour.

Assemble and cook:  Preheat the oven to 500º F.  Divide the dough into 15 equal pieces.  Roll each piece out to 4 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted board.  Spray a cookie sheet with Pam or line with parchment paper.  Combine the ricotta, flour, sugar, chocolate, jam, and almonds in a medium sized bowl.  Put about two tablespoons of this mixture onto one side of each of the circles.  Fold the circle in half over the filling and pinch the edges to seal.  With a sharp knife, cut small slits in each of the Calzonettis for venting.  Bruce each piece with the melted butter and bake until they are puffy - about 10 to 15 minutes.

     Wednesday night I had combined the filling.  The original recipe had called for candied fruit.  This is apparently hard to find in October.  According to a Cub employee, they only have that in stock around Christmas for people to make their fruit cakes.  I decided instead to swirl in some black cherry jam that I had on hand.  That sounded to me like a better pairing with the chocolate than candied fruit.
     When Pam and Gracie showed up, I put them to work rolling out the little balls of dough for the Calzonetti.  They grumbled about it a little, so I started up the martinis (we made a virgin one for Grace, because she really wanted to drink out of the fancy glass).

Raspberry Berry Martini

Fresh raspberries

¼ ounce ginger syrup 

3 ounces Red Berry Ciroc

1 ounce fresh lemon juice

Ginger syrup:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

Put all ingredients for the ginger syrup into a small sauce pan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar is dissolved.  Let sit for 10 minutes to infuse the ginger.  Pour the mixture through a sieve into a clean container.  Keep in refrigerator up to three weeks.

Place a couple of raspberries in the bottom of a cocktail shaker.  Muddle the berries with a muddler (in other word, smash the berries with a narrow blunt object, such as the handle end of a wooden spoon).  Fill the shaker with ice.  Pour the syrup, Red Berry Ciroc, and lemon juice over the ice.  Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Once the girls had all of the little dough balls rolled out, it was time to fill them.  

Fresh out of the oven, they were cute little golden pockets.

Next step was to butter them and dust them with the colored sugar.

Jennifer brought a sausage and black olive pizza on a gluten-free crust.  Who makes dinner on their own birthday??

Return to the top Return to the Shrimp and Feta Cheese Pizza recipe. Return to the Ricotta Calzonetti Dolce recipe. Return to the Raspberry Berry Martini recipe.