Chili Dog Pizza; Heirloom Tomato Pizza; Tex Collins

     Jennifer and Roger went to Cancun for a little twosome vacation while their kids were at summer camp Up North (for those of you not familiar with this term, Up North in Minnesota refers to any resort town north and/or west of the Twin Cities and usually includes a lake or two).  Pam said she would like to come but wasn't sure because she was on call and Delta may call her and have her take a trip. 
     It was just a coincidence that the tomato pizza was scheduled for when Jennifer would be gone.  I was sure that she would actually be relieved.  She has an aversion to tomatoes.  I am sure that she would have tried it and liked it, or if she didn't like it, she would be polite and say that it was good any way.  Timing relieved her of having to experience such torture.
     I found out last week that a company based in Bloomington holds a farmer's market here on Tuesdays.  I was hoping to check that out and buy some heirloom tomatoes there for the pizza, but I wasn't in town.  Jeff and I were in Nisswa, so Jeff could help wire the electricity for my parents' new garage.  When I found out I was going to miss that, I was going to try and hit another new market I had heard about that is held on Wednesdays over by the airport.  We got back too late to hit that one, too. 
     I got up in the morning and headed straight for Whole Foods, or "Whole Paycheck" as Jeff affectionately refers to it.  As I was pulling into the parking lot, I noticed a sign, announcing a farmer's market on Thursdays from 3pm-7pm.  That was exciting news, but I wasn't willing to wait until then to get my tomatoes.  I circled the produce department three times before I finally found the heirlooms - all three of them.  I grabbed two of them and headed to the checkout.  The cashier told me that she met the grower this morning.  It is one guy, who wears a cowboy hat, that grows all of their heirlooms.  It was nice to know that there was a person behind it instead of a corporation or a shipping company. 
     The chili dog pizza recipe called for a pre-made crust.  I had already decided I was going to use canned chili - the great debate at the grocery store was beans or no beans - so I thought I should go ahead and make a crust this time.  I was making one any way for the tomato pizza, so I just made two of the same crust.

HERBED PIZZA CRUST DOUGH

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cup warm water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

3¼ cups bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

¼ cup olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh sage

½ tablespoon fresh oregano

½ tablespoon fresh tarragon

1 tablespoon fresh basil

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary

In a small bowl, combine the sugar, water, and yeast.  Set aside for five minutes.  Combine the flour, salt, and olive oil in a Kitchen Aid mixer or regular stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the yeast, water, sugar mixture and mix at a low speed until a dough ball forms around the hook.  Add the herbs and continue at a low speed until the surface of the dough is smooth and elastic.  Place in a well-oiled bowl and set it in a warm place until it doubles in size (about 45 minutes).  Roll into desired shape and bake as directed in your pizza recipe (I recommend a pre-heated 500º oven for approximately 10 minutes).

     Since the crust for the chili dog pizza was supposed to have been pre-made, which usually means par-baked, I decided to bake my dough for a little bit.  I originally was just going to make a plain white crust (like the squishy white buns Jeff likes to eat with his chili dogs), but my herb garden just exploded, and I couldn't resist adding them.

     I put the shaped dough in a 500º oven on a preheated pizza stone for approximately 8 minutes.  I didn't want it to completely bake through, because I wanted to be sure that the outside edges didn't get burned when I added the toppings and baked it again.  It was pretty when I took it out of the oven.  It puffed up a little bit, and some of the places where it rose higher than others were just on the verge of browning, and the rest was sturdy but still soft to the touch.

     While that cooled, I worked on my heirloom tomato pizza.  One tomato was orange in color and the other was a lemon yellow.  I had hoped to get a bigger variety than that, but I didn't have a whole lot to chose from.  The one I left behind was green, which would have been pretty, but I wasn't very knowledgeable about heirlooms, and I was leery of it.  I wasn't sure if I would know the difference if they put an unripe tomato on the heirloom shelf, because they just wanted to get the extra dollar per pound for it. 

HEIRLOOM TOMATO PIZZA

1 recipe herbed pizza dough (see above)

cornmeal

4 tablespoons olive oil (divided)

8 ounces shredded mozzarella

1 pound heirloom tomatoes (preferably in a variety of colors), sliced

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven (with pizza stone, if using) to 450º.  Roll dough out into a 10x15 inch rectangle on a board dusted with cornmeal (or stretch it into a 10x15 pan).  Brush with two tablespoons of olive oil.  Top with the mozzarella.  Arrange the tomatoes decoratively over the cheese.  Drizzle with the rest of the olive oil.  Salt and pepper as desired.  Transfer pizza to the preheated stone (or place pan in oven, if using).  Bake for 12 - 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and the tomatoes appear to sweat a little.

     I had a difficult time trying to get the dough into a rectangle.  Mine was more like an oval with delusions of rectangulardom.  It was what I like to call "rustic".  If it were too perfect, no one would believe I actually made it myself.

     After I brushed the dough with olive oil and topped it with cheese, I started slicing my tomatoes.  The yellow one had a pretty pink "x" in the middle of it.  It looked like a stick drawing of a ballerina in flight.  I hoped that it would keep its color and shape after it was cooked.  The orange tomato was orange all of the way through.  Once I had gotten both tomatoes on the pizza, I really wished I had gotten the green one.  Side by side and sliced up, the two varieties looked nearly the same.  I also found it difficult to get good distribution of them on the cheese, because they were different sizes.  I had to kick my OCD in the head and let the pizza be asymmetrical and risk that one piece of the finished work may not have an equal amount of both tomatoes on it.

     With that assembled, I started on the chili dog.

CHILI DOG PIZZA

1 recipe of herbed pizza dough (see above)

1 15-ounce can of chili without beans

½ pound all beef hot dogs (we like Ambassador)

8 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Preheat oven and pizza stone (if using) to 450º.  Roll dough out into a 15 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted pizza paddle (or stretch dough onto a 15" pizza pan, if using).  Bake on preheated stone (or on pizza pan in preheated oven) for about 8 minutes until just barely starting to brown at its highest points.

     I weighed out a half pound of dogs and started slicing them up.  As I was slicing them and piling them up on my prep plate, I was amazed at how large the pile was getting.  The pile kept growing and growing.  A half pound of links didn't seem like much for a large pizza, but once they were sliced, it really looked like overkill.

     The chili I had purchased, Hormel Chili No Bean, was really thick.  It was more like a meat paste than an actual chili, and I wondered if I had made the wrong decision to not make my own.  Still, I forged onward.  I spread the entire can over my pre-made crust, covering all of the beautiful flecks of green interlaced in the dough.

     Next was the sprinkling of the dogs.  They didn't look quite as copious as when they were piled up in one spot on my plate, but it was still a lot of wienie slices.

     And last, but not least, the cheese.  The original recipe had called for mild cheddar, but I just don't believe in mild cheddar.  To me, it doesn't have enough flavor to warrant its use in anything, and it certainly should be able to hold its own against chili.  I like the salty tang of sharp cheddar.

     The Delta gods were working in my favor, and Pam was able to make it after all.  She showed up just after I had assembled both pizzas and was ready to throw them into the oven.  I had some iced tea ready for her when she came, and I briefly considered skipping drink of the week to keep her company in her abstinence, but it seemed like it would go against the grain of the rules of the evening.  I fixed myself a Texas Collins, because it seemed like an all-American drink to go with the all-American chili dog.

TEXAS COLLINS

2 measures gin

1 tablespoon honey

2 measures grapefruit juice

2 measures soda water

Lemon slice for garnish

Combine gin, honey, and grapefruit juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice.  Shake vigorously to dissolve the honey.  Strain into a collins glass filled halfway with ice.  Top with soda and garnish with a slice of lemon.

     It was the perfect drink.  It was fruity and a little tart.  The gin got a little lost, but that is from someone who likes their gin straight up in a martini glass.  The drink as a whole was quite refreshing and was a lovely sipper to combat the richness of the chili.  It was perfect for dinner outside on a warm summer day.  It just may become my new summer cocktail.

     The cheese and chili on the chili dog pizza had become an island of lava over a mountain of fluffy dough.  I pulled it from the oven before the cheese had a chance to brown the way I like it to, because I feared an oven spill-over, and the edges where the chili wasn't covered with cheese looked like they were starting to burn.  I had tried to cut it right away, but the cheese and chili were still in such a liquid state, that the toppings self-healed, and I couldn't tell where the cut had been made without looking at the edge of the crust.

    It was rich and flavorful and very gooey.  It was messy, just as a chili dog should be.   It also could have used some onions for texture - even raw ones sprinkled over the top, like we would have done with our dogs. It was a quick and easy pizza, but I think it would have been better had the chili been home-made.  It lacked the zing of chili made the way I like it.  I am not sure why I expected anything different from canned chili, but for the ease of preparation, this pizza was downright satisfying.

     The tomato pizza was a delight!  It wasn't the most beautiful pizza I had ever seen, but the flavor was fantastic.  It was incredible how those few ingredients came together to make something so delicious and almost elegant (not the look of it, but just the taste).

     The tomatoes had still retained their shape, but they were a little soft and almost sweet.  The coarsely ground pepper on top of them just intensified their flavor.  These tomatoes only had a hint of the acidity that their beefy red cousins put forth.  They were juicy and elevated the plain old mozzarella into something that resembled a creamy brie.  I put this recipe in my entertaining go-to book for an appetizer for my next dinner party (although I would make sure to get tomatoes that were roughly the same size in order to make it a little prettier).