Once I dragged myself into the kitchen to get started, I went to work on the cheesy cream sauce. I reduced the recipe by a third, because I only needed one cup, and the original recipe called for three. I had to make a couple of adjustments to the recipe, for my own personal preference (like MORE GARLIC) and because some measurements couldn't be easily divided by three.
CHEESY CREAM SAUCE
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon finely minced green onion
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup shredded Parmesan
salt and pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and green onion and stir constantly for about two minutes. Slowly whisk in the cream. Continue whisking cream over medium heat until the cream is hot and just starting to boil a little around the edges of the pan. Turn the heat to low and slowly whisk in the cheese. Continue whisking until all of the cheese has melted. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in salt and pepper to taste.
After I had melted the butter, sauteed the garlic and green onions, added the cream and cooked it down a bit, I added the cheese. It was a little hard to tell whether or not it was melted or not, because it acted a little bit like glue on the whisk and trapped all of the pieces of onion onto the whisk. I wondered it the clumps were partially melted cheese or onion bits. After I while, I decided it was mostly onion bits and took the pan off of the heat. The liquid was still somewhat runny, but I was confident that the sauce would thicken upon standing.
I was encouraged that it only took me about twenty minutes to get the cream sauce done. I like a recipe that calls for equal parts cheese and cream. No one can go wrong with that kind of formula!
I was encouraged that it only took me about twenty minutes to get the cream sauce done. I like a recipe that calls for equal parts cheese and cream. No one can go wrong with that kind of formula!
Next on the agenda was the dreaded freezer dig. When I shopped for the pizza ingredients, I had considered buying pumpkin puree just to make my life easier, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I knew there were several packages of "mystery squash puree" in the downstairs freezer. Jeff and my dad had planted a bunch of squash on the farm in Iowa last spring. At the end of the summer, Jeff cooked a whole bunch of various types together, pureed them, and vacuum-sealed them. I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to get freezer points - especially when we have very little income right now.
I actually lucked out! There was one package right in the front. It was about twice as much as I needed, so I took it out of the package and tried to cut in half while it was still frozen, so I could re-vacuum the remainder up and put it back where I found it. My first attempt was unsuccessful. I took the largest knife I had and tried to cut into it. Nothing happened. I turned the knife perpendicular to the counter and tried stabbing it straight down. The chunk of squash slid out from underneath the ice, fell on the floor, and skittered across the kitchen. I picked it up, brushed it off, and tried a pointier knife. That did the trick. It took a little wiggling to get it into the squash, but as soon as it starting going, it slammed all the way through, splitting the block into two almost equal pieces. I took the smaller half and sealed it back up for another nap in my freezer.
I thawed the other half in the microwave. There was a lot of liquid that came out of it when I took it out of the microwave. I debated about whether to mix that back into the squash or not and decided not to. I was worried that it might make my calzones too wet if I left it in. Once it was thawed, I measured it to see how much it was. It was 1½ cups - ½ a cup shy of what the recipe called for. I had struggled really hard to get the other half of the squash in its vacuum-sealer pouch. The pouch was a little small, but I had already dirtied it, so I didn't want to get a new one. I ended up cutting the squash into two smaller pieces, so it would fit. Theoretically one of those pieces would be about half a cup.
I thought back to the last several calzones I have made from this book and decided not to cut the sealed squash open. Almost all of the previous recipes have had too much filling in them, and I knew the ricotta for the calzone was going to be a little shy, too, so I decided to go with the amount I had thawed. I also saved another vacuum-seal pouch that way.
I mixed in the spices, including the Roasted Saigon Cinnamon. It didn't call for that particular type of cinnamon, but that is now my favorite secret ingredient. I bought it at the same time I bought just plain, old, generic cinnamon, thinking that I may find one better than the other in certain applications. So far, I have decided that the roasted cinnamon is better in everything, and I haven't even bothered to open the regular stuff. It has a wonderful toasty flavor to it and none of the powdery, dusty texture I find most regular cinnamon to have.
Once I had it all combined, it was a very unattractive color. I thought it might be a good thing that it will be inside a calzone instead of on top of a pizza, where it would be seen by all. I put it in the refrigerator for later.
Then I started in on the dough for the shortcake. I double checked the amount of baking powder - 1 tablespoon seemed like an awful lot. I don't remember any other recipe calling for that much. I googled shortcake recipes and found that a tablespoon was close to normal. There were four recipes I looked at and three of them called for 4 teaspoons for 2 cups of flour, so it must have been correct.
None of the recipes I looked at called for yogurt. It looks like, where this recipe was using yogurt, the rest used milk or cream or a combination thereof. I wondered what effect that would have on the dough. I could find no information about this on the Internet. That is where those food science classes I never took would come in, I suppose. I imagined that it would add a little tanginess to the finished cake, but I couldn't be sure. I also suspected that it would affect texture - how I don't know, but I was sure it would. I made a mental note to ask my friend Karen - the food scientist - that question when next I saw her. Since I have never made shortcake before, it would be difficult for me to decipher the end result.
I didn't follow the directions exactly. It said to combine all of the ingredients, then knead it with some flour until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. I didn't want to do that, when my Kitchen Aid will do it for me, so I just let it do its thing. I realized after a couple of minutes that since I wasn't kneading it on a floured board with extra flour, the dough was going to be too sticky. I ended up adding 3/4 cup additional flour. It was still pretty tacky.
I plopped the gooey dough onto a plastic sheet onto which I had dropped a generous amount of flour - just about another quarter of a cup. I rolled it out as well as I could, incorporating the flour into it as I went. In the end, it still stuck to the sheet, so I ended up prying some of it up and scooting some cornmeal underneath it.
Jennifer called while I was about to put this beast of a dough onto my preheated pizza stone. I didn't want that to slow me down, so I attempted to pick the plastic sheet up with one hand and give it a quick jerk to slide it off and onto the stone. As I picked it up, the plastic started to bend in the middle where my thumb was pinching it against my palm. I thought speed would be the key, so I rushed it over to the oven and attempted the transfer. When I jerked back on the sheet, the back half of the dough jumped up and folded over on top of the front half, and nothing ended up on the stone. Fearing that the dough would stick together in that position, because it was so sticky, I pulled the sheet back out of the oven and dropped it onto my counter. I tried to unfold it, and it fought me. It wasn't pretty, but I was able to make it resemble a circle again with a couple of thin spots adding character to it.
The original recipe instructed me to put this dough on a pizza pan with a rim and to make the dough have a rim, too. I was unable to comply with that request, and frankly I was done messing around with this flabby mess. I put it on the stone and placed a pie plate in the center to keep the middle from bubbling up. I found out later that I should have greased or sprayed the pan first, because the dough baked right to the bottom of the dish. The nice thing, though, was that the crust around the glass rose up around it, creating the ridge I was supposed to have put in it prior.
STRAWBERRY (or blueberry) SHORTCAKE PIZZA
3 cups all-purpose flour (plus extra for rolling)
8 ounces plain yogurt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 large egg
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon of salt
25 ounces of strawberries or blueberries
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons superfine sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat the oven to 450º with pizza stone inside, if using.
Put the flour, yogurt, baking powder, egg, and oil into your mixing bowl fitted with a dough hook. Mix ingredients at a slow speed until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Heavily flour a cutting board or a counter top and place the dough in the center of the flour. Roll dough out, adding more flour, if necessary, into a 14 inch circle.
Slide dough onto the preheated stone or onto a pizza pan. Place a greased, oven-proof object (like a pie plate) in the center of the dough, greased side down to prevent the dough from bubbling up while baking. Bake for 15 minutes.
With oven mitts, carefully remove the oven-proof object from the crust. Remove the crust from the oven and allow it to cool completely.
Whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla until stiff peaks form.
Mash half of the strawberries with the brown sugar to form a chunky sauce.
Spread the whipped cream over the cooled crust. Pour the sauce over the top of the cream and sprinkle the remaining strawberries over the top. Cut and serve.
I had forgotten to take my "classic crust" dough out of the freezer the night before. I had taken it out this morning, and by the time I finished the shortcake crust, the dough for the calzones was still quite cold and firm. It was early yet, and I had an appointment at 3:30, so I decided that was the end of my preparations for the moment.
When I got home from my appointment, the dough had warmed up thoroughly and was pressing itself against the sides of the freezer bag, waiting to be freed. I rolled it out into three circles about 10 inches across. Once that was taken care of, I grabbed the cheesy cream sauce out of the refrigerator and immediately wished I had left it out. It had become quite thick and firm. It was the consistency of cream cheese. It made it easy to divide it into three for each one of the dough circles, but it was difficult to spread.
Pam arrived at this point, so I let her distract me from my task for a little bit, hoping that the sauce would quickly warm up and cooperate with me.
It still hadn't softened up and definitely wasn't playing nice, so I started working on the cream for the shortcake. The original recipe called for two cups of cream, and one of my cups of cream was at Jennifer's house, so I put everything into my whipper (less the one cup of cream) and waited for Jennifer to arrive.
She showed up shortly thereafter with the extra cream (I was convinced that she was going to forget) and a frozen pizza for the kids. I put her to work on finishing the cream preparations - I have a ISI whipped cream and dessert maker, which is a wonderful thing. You just pour the heavy whipping cream into the container, screw the lid on, and then screw a nitrogen cartridge into a portal on the lid. Give it a little shake, and you have instant whipped cream. I don't know why, but the assembling of the cartridge into the lid of the thing always makes me nervous. I am afraid I am not going to seat it correctly, and it will lose pressure, and I still won't have whipped cream until I get out another nitrogen bullet. Most of the time there is an occasion to have whipped cream, the whole family is here, so I always make Jennifer do it. Tonight was no different.
While she did that, I got out the ingredients for our drink of the week. the star fruit I had purchased earlier in the week was already looking pretty sad. All of the fruits at Cub were a little brown around the edges. Some of them were really green, some of them were slightly green, and then there was the one I purchased, and it was mostly yellow. I consulted my smart phone to get guidance on what it was supposed to look like when I buy it. I learned that it is normal for the corners (the points of the star, if you look at it from one end) to be brown. The site I had found informed me that they are ripe when they are all yellow (except for the points, which would be brown). I grabbed the one yellow one at that time. Now, when I was handing the fruit over to Jen to deal with, I realized that the one end had gone beyond brown and was actually quite soft and almost liquid. Also, it had become a little blue and fuzzy on that end. She didn't miss a beat. She cut off the ugly part and started slicing the thing into beautiful star-shaped slices.
The kids were curious about what it tasted like, and we didn't have an answer for them, so we let them try it. It wasn't a big hit with them. Jennifer, Pam, and I each tried some to see. It was a little like a slightly sour grape, only not as sweet. We determined that it really didn't taste like much of anything. I wondered if that was due to the fact that these items are grown thousands of miles from my Cub, and I probably bought a bum one. She did a great job of cleaning the fruit up to make a beautiful drink.
EMERALD STAR
1 measure white rum
2/3 measure Midori
1/3 measure apricot brandy
1/3 measure lime juice
1/3 measure passion fruit puree
Shake all of the ingredients well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Float a slice of star fruit on top.
I liked the fact that the measurements were all easily multiplied by three for the three ladies' drinks. The math was really easy to make a batch for us. The resulting drink was a beautiful lime, almost neon, green. The drink was slightly sweet, but not linger-in-the-mouth sweet. It was slightly tart and completely delicious. It would make a great accompaniment to seafood.
While she assembled this drink, I worked again on the pumpkin calzone. My cheese sauce was spreading now, and it was time to add the ricotta. I spread that over the top of the sauce, trying not to displace any of the sauce while doing so. Then, for the lovely squash concoction. As I was spreading this over the other two items, I was starting to regret that I hadn't added that extra cup of squash. It seemed that the squash was going to be overpowered by the whites in this little pocket. Too late to turn back, I forged ahead and evenly divided the "pumpkin" between the three calzones.
Now, my new resolution after last week was that every calzone gets an egg wash whether the recipe called for it or not. I like the golden color and glossiness it gives the surface of the dough, and it seems to add a little extra crispness and snap to the chew of the crust. However, that being said, this recipe had me brush the surface with butter and sprinkling shelled pumpkin seeds over the top. I decided to go back on my work and try the butter.
I am now going to reiterate that all calzones should have an egg wash over the top. Sure, they were a little browner than they would have been without anything, but they weren't shiny, it didn't crisp out the outer portions of the crust, and it certainly didn't make the pumpkin seeds stick to the dough.
I didn't have the issues that I had in the past with struggling to close the calzones. I guess reducing the amount of ingredients helps with that. I still need to work on the sealing aspect of these treats, though. They seamed sealed but when I brought them out of the oven, there was some cheese and stuffing sticking out through the edge.
The taste of the pumpkin was a little lost with the cheese, as I had suspected. I think that reducing the amount of ricotta by a third would help things out immensely. Jeff thought they were too bland, and, while that word seemed a little harsh to me, I had to agree that the flavor wasn't as pumped up as our usual fare. The squash that did make it through was wonderful, though. It was earthy and sweet and toasty. The cheese sauce was completely lost in the mix. It might require further testing, but here is the way I think the recipe should be:
SAVORY PUMPKIN (or squash) CALZONES
½ recipe Classic Crust dough
1 recipe Cheesy Cream Sauce (see above)
1½ cups ricotta cheese
2 cups drained pumpkin or squash puree
1 teaspoon roasted Saigon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon cayenne
salt and black pepper to taste
1 egg, beaten
2tsp milk or water
3 tablespoons shelled pumpkin seeds
2 tablespoons cornmeal
Preheat the oven to 375º. Separate the dough into three pieces and roll into three 12 inch circles. Divide the cheesy cream sauce between the three circles and spread it out over half of the circle, leaving a half inch border around the edge. Spread half a cup of ricotta over the cream sauce. Combine the pumpkin with the cinnamon, cumin, ginger, cayenne, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Distribute one-third of the mixture over the ricotta on each calzone. Fold the dough over the filling to form a half moon. Press the dough edges together, brushing with a little water if necessary to seal. Beat the egg and milk or water together in a small bowl. Brush the calzones with the egg wash and sprinkle pumpkin seeds over each. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray and sprinkle the cornmeal over the pan. Place the calzones on the cornmeal. With a sharp knife, cut two or three slits in the tops to vent. Bake at 375º for 20-25 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Remove from oven and let stand a few minutes before serving.
On one quarter of the shortcake pizza, I just sprinkled blueberries over the whipped cream. Nothing fancy - no smashed berries with brown sugar, no sauce of any kind, just pure unadulterated blueberries. I wanted to make sure that Jeff had something to eat while we were devouring the strawberry portions. I made sure that the sauce from the strawberry sections of the pizza didn't touch his blueberries for fear that his tongue would swell up.
He refrained from comment on his portion of the pizza, and none of us tried it, since there was the pretty strawberry side to eat. The crust was lighter than I had expected it would be, and the cream wasn't as sweet as I thought it should be (I have adjusted the recipe above accordingly). I decided that there needed to be more strawberries, and not just because I jipped one whole quarter of the pizza of this lovely red fruit, but I put the entire amount it called for on the other three-quarters, and I still felt like it wasn't enough. With the thickness of the dough (which also wasn't sweet enough, by the way - but I think with the extra sweet whipped cream as altered above, it will even out), and the fluffy creaminess of the whipped cream, the strawberries weren't the star of this show.
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