Pizza Quesadilla; Focaccia with Rosemary, Garlic, and Coarse Salt; Almond Old Fashioned

     We were having appetizers for dinner again.  I do love appetizers.  I was a little worried that the focaccia was going to be a lot like the herbed flat bread we had last week, but such was the luck of the draw.  Besides, this time the herbs were going to be on top instead of inside the dough. 
     I started my dough just before lunch.

FOCACCIA WITH ROSEMARY, GARLIC, AND COARSE SALT

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

¼ teaspoon sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

2½ cups bread flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 large egg

Cornmeal for dusting

6 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped if the leaves are large

½ teaspoon coarse salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

     Combine yeast, sugar, and water in a medium bowl.  Set aside for at least five minutes.  Stir the flour and salt together in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the proofed yeast mixture and the egg and combine on a low setting until dough clings to hook in one cohesive mass.  Remove dough from bowl and knead a couple of times by hand on a floured board until dough is smooth and elastic (you may have to add a little more flour to keep the dough from sticking to hands and board).  Place dough in a greased bowl, cover with a towel, and place in a warm, dry location.  Let rise for an hour or more.

    Preheat oven (preferably with a pizza stone inside) to 500º F.  Dust a pizza peel with cornmeal.  Roll stretch the dough into a 16 inch circle and place on peel.  Push garlic slices into the dough with your fingers, making indentations as you go.  Sprinkle the rosemary over the top.  Sprinkle with coarse salt and drizzle olive oil over the top.

     Bake for 10 minutes or until dough is golden.  Serve warm.

     I had let the dough rise for about three hours by the time I came back to it.  I am not sure if the extra rising time did it or this was just a lot of dough.  The original recipe was for a ten inch focaccia, and the crust was "thin and crispy" according to the directions.  I didn't see any way this dough was going to become thin a crispy, and there was entirely too much dough to just roll it to ten inches.

     I rolled it out to sixteen inches and started poking my way into the dough to make pre-made indentations to put in the garlic and rosemary.  I had painstakingly distributed the garlic (which I had increased from 2 cloves to 6 cloves for ultimate vampire protection) evenly over the top of the dough, when I decided I had better check the dough for what I like to call "slip-factor".  This is a simple (but sometimes messy) test, where I pick up the peel by the handle and give it a good jerk forward and back to see if it slides around the paddle.  For a fully-topped pizza, this could mean toppings all over my counter if the test fails.  Also, if the jerks are too big, and there is good "slip-factor", the pizza could slip right off of the paddle onto whatever surface is immediately in front of me. 

     Fortunately, neither of those scenarios came to fruition.  However, the dough did not move on the paddle.  I had to lift one side and scatter some more cornmeal beneath that side.  Then, lift the other side and sprinkle some under there as well.  In doing so, all of my pretty garlic slices ended up piled in the middle.  I had to redistribute.  I was thinking, though, that it was somewhat inefficient to make the indentations and then try to fill them.  Why not just push the garlic into the dough as I placed it on there.  Viola!  A dent and a garlic application all in one stroke.
     I have two plants of rosemary outside that have just gone wild.  They might actually be considered bushes now.  I don't think there are enough recipes in my repertoire that contain fresh rosemary as an ingredient.  I decided since my dough was bigger and the garlic more plentiful, I should increase the amount of rosemary, too.  The original recipe called for 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary sprigs.  I find it difficult to measure sprigs in a tablespoon measure.  I stripped my sprigs of the leaves, and since the leaves were so large, I decided I would chop them and then measure them.  I ended up with three tablespoons of rosemary once it was chopped.  It looked like a good amount to me.  There was definitely good coverage.

     Jennifer, Roger, and the kids arrived, and I got Jennifer started on making the drink of the week.

ALMOND OLD FASHIONED

2 measures tequila

¼ measure amaretto

¼ measure agave syrup

1 dash orange bitters

Pour ingredients into a glass filled with crushed ice.  Stir vigorously to dilute the mixture a little bit.  Garnish with an orange slice.

     Our first portion of the drink was a little too bitter.  The original recipe called for 3 dashes of bitters.  For the second batch, she only added one.  It was much better that way.  We could now identify the slight hint of almond from the amaretto.  The agave and the amaretto mellowed the tequila, smoothing it out and just giving us a small bite at the finish.  We decided this was the right formula.  Although, we did switch tequilas, so perhaps the tequila was just smoother itself.  I am sceptical about that, though, because for the second version, we used el-cheapo gut rot tequila.  However, the first bottle of tequila was unlabeled, and I cannot remember what it was.  It doesn't matter - it was a good drink either way.

     The kids got into the spirit of mixology and combined Diet Mountain Dew, raspberry iced tea, grenadine, and Fresca to concoct their own mocktails.  We gave them each orange slices for garnish.

     With the drinks taken care of and the extra butts out of my kitchen, we were ready to work on the quesadillas.

PIZZA QUESADILLAS

6 (10-inch) flour tortillas

½ cup pizza sauce (I used leftover marinara from 7/19 that I had frozen)

2 cups chopped ham

1 cup mozzarella

½ cup Colby jack

1½ cups Monterrey jack

½ tablespoon melted butter

Preheat oven to 350º.  Put half of the tortillas on a greased baking sheet.  Distribute sauce evenly over the three tortillas.  Sprinkle the ham over the top of the sauce.  Mix the cheeses together and put one cup of cheese over each topped tortilla.  Place the remaining tortillas over the top of the three pizzas.  Brush with melted butter.  Bake for 10-15 minutes until the tortillas are lightly browned and the cheese is melted.

     Jennifer and I set up a sort of assembly line.  She spread the sauce while I chopped the ham.  She started distributing the ham while I finished chopping.  She sprinkled the cheese while I melted the butter.  She added the tops, I brushed them with butter, and into the oven they went.

     Just as we placed them in the oven, Roger announced from the back yard that Leslie was here.  Jeff had come home from the farm in Iowa on Monday with 7 coolers of fresh sweet corn.  Pam, Jennifer, my friend Debi, and I spent all of Tuesday afternoon blanching, cutting, and packaging the corn.  They each took some with them, and I had also given some to our friend Bill when he came over for lunch Thursday, and my friend Jeanine stopped by for some, but we were still left with one cooler full of quarts of corn that wouldn't fit in our freezer.  I had called Paul and told him if he wasn't going to come for pizza, he needed to at least come for corn.  Fresh corn only has a shelf life of a couple of days.  This may have lasted longer, since we blanched it.  Hopefully, we blanched it enough to kill the enzymes that turn the sugar into starch.  Assuming that was the case, it still wasn't going to last long sitting in the back yard in a cooler that we were constantly having to fill with ice. 

     It was great to see Leslie, and we loaded her up with corn.  We offered her a drink, but she said she had to get back to Paul.  He had made dinner, and he was waiting for her.   Nonetheless, we kept gabbing with her for a while, and in that time she could have had a drink.  Next time, I will just have to bring one without asking.

     The focaccia and the quesadillas took longer than we were expecting, which turned out to be a good thing, because we were preoccupied with talking to Leslie and weren't ready to eat yet.  The tortillas refused to brown on top, but the cheese was starting to leak out of the edges.  We gave it a one minute broiler session to get the job done.  They were beautiful.

     The quesadillas were wonderful.  The tops were crispy, but not crumbly.  The ham was a juicy, flavorful, and strong.  The cheese held the little packages together well and tied the ham and pizza sauce together.  The cheese that had oozed out the sides formed little crispy nuggets that were salty, chewy, and toasty all at once.  Jennifer and Grace and I tried to share delicately.

     The focaccia was pretty good, too.  It definitely wasn't the star of the show, but it was flavorful.  Jonah said it was good except for the herbs.  He informed me that he is not a fan of fresh herbs - weird kid.  We poured some kalamata olive oil onto our plates, sprinkled it with crushed red pepper, and dipped our focaccia in.  There were crispy parts were the indentations were deep and the olive oil had pooled.  The rest of the crust was soft and chewy.  The garlic gave it a sweet, nutty flavor.  Unfortunately, I found the kalamata olive oil to be a bit too fruity for this bread.  It would have been a great match for some really good regular olive oil.

     I had expected Jeff around seven.  He was helping a friend with changing over some outlets in his kitchen, but I thought he was coming straight home afterward.  We had divied up the pieces of both entrees, and there were two each left of each at the end of the meal.  We all stared at them, wondering if we should go ahead and eat them.  Roger texted Jeff to see if he was planning on eating when he got home.  It was after eight at this point - maybe he had already eaten.  No luck - he was on his way, and he was hungry.