Red, White, and Green Pizzas & Bellini-tini

RED, WHITE, AND GREEN PIZZAS

Adapted from The Everything Pizza Book by Brenda Hulin

29 ounces whole tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

6 ounces tomato paste

4 tablespoons chopped garlic

4 ounces finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried basil

Pinch of thyme

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 cups of water

1¼ teaspoons active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

½ teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt    

3¼ cups bread flour

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

6 ounces shredded Provolone cheese

6 ounces shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

12 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese

2 cups roasted red pepper strips

2 cups thinly sliced boiled potatoes (about two medium Russet potatoes)

2 cups chopped blanched broccoli

Puree the tomatoes in a Vita Mix or high powered blender until smooth.  In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, combine one tablespoon of olive oil and the tomato paste.  Cook and stir for about two minutes until well-combined and a little darkened.  Add tomato puree, stirring to break up any clumps of the tomato paste mixture.  Add the next 8 ingredients (garlic through water).  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and simmer for two to three hours, stirring often.  Sauce should be reduced and thick.

Combine the yeast, water, and sugar in a bowl and set aside for at least five minutes.  Stir the salt and flour together in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the yeast mixture and one tablespoon of olive oil and stir on a low speed until the mixture forms a ball around the hook.  Continue mixing a little longer  until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Let rest for an hour in a greased bowl in a warm, dry place.  Punch dough down, and divide into three pieces.  

Preheat oven to 400º with three pizza stone inside, if using (if available, use the convection setting on your oven).  Roll or stretch each piece out to a 13 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted board or pizza peel. Distribute one cup of sauce over each of the three dough circles.  Combine the cheeses in a bowl and toss well to combine thoroughly.  Evenly distribute the cheese among the three dough circles.  Arrange the pepper slices over one pizza, the potato slices over another, and the broccoli florets over the third.  Slide each pizza onto its respective pizza stone and bake for 15-20 minutes (can be baked separately) until cheese is golden brown.

     After all of the exotic ingredients we have used over the years and the strange combinations of myriad toppings, I wondered how a simple pizza, featuring only one topping was going to go over with me.  As I had said before, we have had so many fantastic flavors and combinations of toppings, that the simple somehow just doesn't thrill me any more.  I had to fight the urge to add things to the recipe to "take it up a notch".   I had even thought about combining all three of the featured ingredients on one pizza, but in the spirit of the mission, I refrained.
   I had a job interview on Thursday afternoon (finally!), so Thursday morning I was working frantically to get as much done by way of pizza preparations as possible before I had to change and get ready for my interview.  Also, it was a good way to take my mind off of the anxiety of interviewing.
    A quick glance at the recipe told me there were several steps I could do in advance.  There was dough to be made, sauce to be made, provolone that needed shredding, potatoes that needed boiling, and broccoli that needed blanching.
    I decided to start with the potatoes.  I cleaned the potatoes, threw them in a pot, and covered them with water.  I have learned that it is a good idea to start potatoes in the pot with the cold water and get the water boiling with the potatoes already in it.  This way, the potatoes heat up with the water and cook more evenly, whereas, if you put the whole potato in the boiling water, the outside starts to cook long before the inside.  The outside then tends to get mushy long before the inside is cooked.

     While the water was heating up, I started thinking about the sauce.  The directions said to cook it for two hours to three hours.  I didn't think I would be able to do that, but I could get a rough start on it.  I had considered using a regular jar of sauce to save time, but then I remembered all of the green tomatoes I had picked a month ago and set inside the greenhouse to ripen.  There was a whole grocery bag of them out there, and it seemed like a good use for some of them, and I would think that some would be ripe by now.
     I made the walk out there, and found that half of the bag was ripe.  I filled up my tomato bowl with the ripe ones and brought them inside.  I wasn't sure what to do about the rest.  Will they ripen before they freeze?  Should I find some recipe to use them as green tomatoes?   Those were thoughts I needed to put off for another day.
     After I washed a few and cut the cores out, I weighed out 29 ounces worth of pieces and tossed them into my Vita Mix.  In less than a minute,  I had tomato sauce.  Have I mentioned that I love my Vita Mix?

     The potatoes weren't quite done yet (I was unable to get my fork into the potatoes without exerting a fair amount of pressure).  I decided cut the broccoli up into florets.  I was going to actually measure out the two cups that the recipe called for, but I thought better of it.  Neither my husband nor I are broccoli fans, and I knew that if I didn't blanch it all, it was unlikely that we would eat the extras.  We may not anyway, but at least it was already chopped and blanched, so it gave it a chance to be eaten.
     I loaded the florets into my pod, and they fit perfectly.  My potatoes were done at this point, so I plopped them into an ice bath to stop them from cooking any further and cool them down, so I could hand on to them while slicing them.  Since the pot of hot water was already there and already boiling, I dunked my pod of broccoli into it for about a minute - long enough for me to pull the potatoes out of the ice batch and make room for the pod.

     I still had a few minutes before I wanted to start getting ready for the interview, so I thought I would get the sauce actually cooking.  If it wasn't done before I had to leave, I could always turn it off and start cooking it again when I got home.  The oil and tomato paste went in (I do love a recipe that calls for the entire can of tomato paste!).  I stirred in the tomato sauce, breaking up the paste clumps that were floating around in the pan.  Once it came to a boil, I covered it with a splatter screen and let it go.

     Just a quick side bar here about splatter screens - they are an absolute must when reducing tomato products.  Tomato sauces "burp" large heavy blobs of goo when they boil, aiming for your shirt, your wall, the floor, and anything else that may be in the near vicinity of the pot.  It does no good to put a lid on it, because the idea is to evaporate the moisture and thicken the sauce.  If there is a lid on it, the moisture that gets boiled out condenses on the lid and goes right back in to the mixture.  The splatter screens are definitely worth the investment.
     At this point, my potatoes were cooled enough for me to handle, and I thought I would just cut them up before I put them away.  The nice thing about boiling whole potatoes with their skins on, is that the skins slip right off with a minimal amount of pressure.  I kept some of the skins on, but a lot of it just fell off while I was slicing.

     I turned off the sauce when I left for my interview.  When I came home, it looked pretty thick already, so I didn't put it back on the heat.
     I made a batch of dough.  Every time I make this dough, it seems to turn out differently.  Sometimes, I need to add an extra half a cup of water, sometimes a quarter cup, sometimes none at all.  I think next time, I may have to weigh my flour to see if that is the issue.  The only other thing I can think of is the humidity levels, but I wouldn't think that would make that much of a difference.  It definitely needs more research on my end.
     It was interesting to me that this recipe called for half a batch of dough, the same amount of dough as many of the other recipes in the book that claimed to make two 12 inch pizzas, and this one was claiming to make three 14 inch pizzas.  It seemed like a mathematical impossibility.  I was only able to roll each dough out to a 13 inch circle, and those were pretty thin.

     I divided my sauce up between the three dough circles.  When I finished spreading the third pizza with sauce, I looked back at the first one and realized that I probably didn't cook the sauce long enough.  It looked thick on top, but there was a thin, transparent stream of liquid coming out from underneath the bulk of the sauce and running onto my counter.  I cleaned that one up, and ran to catch the matching streams from the other two pizzas.  Unfortunately, a drawer was open under the third one, catching a puddle's worth of pink liquid in the meantime.
     There was a lot of cheese on these pizzas - two cups or half a pound - per pizza.  There wasn't a chance that these pizzas could taste bad with all of that cheese.  It wouldn't matter what was on top after that.

     I still have an entire grocery bag of peppers from my garden in my refrigerator, but I had to go buy roasted red peppers, because I didn't have any red ones.  Let me rephrase that - I didn't have any red peppers that weren't hot, and I didn't think we were ready for an entire pizza with hot peppers scattered over everything.  Especially since the hot ones I do have are really hot.
     I was trying to pull a pepper out of the jar, and it was proving to be very difficult.  They were a bit slick, and every time I would grab an edge, it would rip off, leaving me with a tiny speck of pepper between my fingers.  When I was finally able to grab a good portion of a pepper, I pulled it out, and it was one giant red pepper.  It looked a little bit like a squid when I laid it out on the counter.

     After cutting that into strips, I sprinkled it over one of the pizzas.  The directions said to arrange them in a spoke pattern, but I didn't want to do that, because I was afraid that when we were ready to cut the pizza for slices, some of the slices wouldn't have any on them, depending on how many pieces we were going to cut out of the thing.  I like randomly placed toppings.   The broccoli was distributed over another of the pizzas, and the potato slices went on the third, and I was ready to work on our drink.

BELLINI-TINI

2 measures vodka

½ measure peach schnapps

2 measures peach puree

Pour all ingredients in an ice filled shaker.  Shake and strain into a chilled martini glass.

   

      I cut one peach in half and removed the pit.  I cut off two small wedges for garnish, and threw what was left of the two halves in my Vita Mix - instant peach puree!  I measured out enough liquor and puree into my cocktail shaker to make two drinks.  I left out the ice for the moment, so that the drink wouldn't get diluted before Pam arrived.  I filled two martini glasses with ice water to chill them down before serving.  Pam arrived and informed me that she was on call and couldn't drink.  I would have to drink them both myself.  Well, I was willing to take one for the team.

     It was smooth.  It had a little bit of a creamy texture, even though it wasn't thick.  It was light and fruity without being overly sweet.  It was really a hardship to have to drink two of those.  It's a good thing I love my family and am willing to make those kinds of sacrifices for them.
     We had put a frozen pizza in the oven to make sure that there would be something that the kids liked.  However, in our (my) drinking and catching up with our events of the week, we had lost track of it.  The cheese got a little brownish (blackish) on top.  The other three were perfect.

     The pepper pizza was the favorite, even with the kids.  The peppers were sweet and tangy and gorgeously nestled in a bed of cheese.  The potato pizza was creamy and gooey - a perfect comfort food.  The broccoli remained al dente, which was nice.  It gave the "green" pizza a little texture and interest.  All three were marvelous, and I was reminded that sometimes simple is better.

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Provolone Pizza; Tri-Color Pepper Pizza; Bebbo

                                      

TRI-COLOR PEPPER PIZZA (a.k.a. Olive Pizza)

Adapted from James McNair's Vegetarian Pizza

3/4 cups warm water
1-1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1-3/4 cups bread flour
1-1/4 teaspoon salt


¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1 cup of yellow pepper strips (membrane and seeds removed, sliced into thin, long strips)
1 cup of green pepper strips (membrane and seeds removed, sliced into thin, long strips)
1 cup of red pepper strips (membrane and seeds removed, sliced into thin, long strips)
1½ cups of thinly sliced onion (about one large onion)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons minced garlic
½ teaspoon minced dried bay leaves
½ teaspoon dried summer savory
1 teaspoon dried basil
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon crushed dried rosemary
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 pound shredded Fontina cheese, divided
1 cup pitted assorted oil-marinated olives

Combine the water, yeast, and sugar.  Set aside for at least five minutes or until mixture becomes foamy on top.  Stir together the bread flour and salt in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the yeast mixture and stir at a low speed until dough forms a ball around the dough hook.  Place in a greased bowl.  Cover with a towel and place in a warm, dry place for at least an hour or until dough has doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside (if using).  Roll, stretch, and shape dough into a 15 inch 
circle on a corn-meal dusted pizza peel or board.

Heat ¼ cup of olive oil in a sautè pan over medium-high heat.  Add the onions and peppers and cook over a medium-low heat until the vegetables have become soft and are starting to brown up.  Add the balsamic vinegar, bay leaves, savory, basil, oregano, and rosemary.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Cook for an additional 15 minutes at a low heat.

Brush one tablespoon of olive oil over the dough circle.  Spread the Dijon over this.  Sprinkle 8 ounces of cheese over the mustard.  Arrange the pepper mixture over the cheese.  Slice the olives in half and distribute evenly over the peppers.  Top with remaining cheese.  Cook in preheated oven for about 5 minutes or until crust is golden brown and the cheese has melted and is beginning to develop some brown areas.

_____________

PROVOLONE PIZZA

Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner

3/4 cups warm water
1-1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1-3/4 cups bread flour
1-1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup slow-simmered pizza sauce (see Nov. 3, 2011 for recipe) 

3 ounces shredded Provolone cheese

1-1/2 ounce shredded mozzarella 

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Combine the water, yeast, and sugar.  Set aside for at least five minutes or until mixture becomes foamy on top.  Stir together the bread flour and salt in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the yeast mixture and stir at a low speed until dough forms a ball around the dough hook.  Place in a greased bowl.  Cover with a towel and place in a warm, dry place for at least an hour or until dough has doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside (if using).  Roll, stretch, and shape dough into a 15 inch 
circle on a corn-meal dusted pizza peel or board.  Brush the crust dough with the olive oil.  Spread the tomato sauce over the dough, leaving a half inch border. Mix the cheeses together and cover the sauce with it.  Toss oregano evenly over the cheese.  Bake on pizza stone (if using) for 5-10 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown.

     When I started working on these recipes Thursday afternoon, I was already behind the eight-ball.  Apparently, when I went shopping for the ingredients, I somehow missed that I needed Provolone for the Provolone pizza.  I had intended on stopping at Cub on my way home from class Thursday, but I had (of course) forgotten and had to venture out again.  I purchased my Provolone, got home and realized I was out of onions, and the Tri-Color pizza had onions in it.  I really didn't want to go to the store, so I called my sister, Jennifer, who lives two blocks away.  Thank goodness she had one to spare! 

     She asked me if I needed anything else or if one onion was enough.  I told her I was sure I only needed one onion, even though I hadn't double-checked the recipe before I came over.  I couldn't imagine there would be any call for more than one onion on a pizza.  When I got home with my newly acquired onion, I read the recipe again, and it called for two cups!  I knew I was going to get close with the one onion, but it wasn't quite going to be 2 cups.
     When planning this week's menu, I bumped the Tri-Color Pepper pizza recipe up a week, because I had peppers NOW, and they weren't going to last much longer.  However, I didn't have any yellow peppers and it seemed like that was important to the aesthetics of the recipe.  I ended up buying those.  The size of the two yellow peppers that I purchased at Lund's put my little red and green peppers to shame.  They were twice their size.  When it actually came time to cut up the peppers, one of the yellow peppers was the equivalent of two of my home grown peppers, so I decided to leave one of them out.

          The peppers and onions practically overfilled my 12 inch sautè pan, but I was confident that they would cook down to half their size.

     My assumption was correct, but once they had cooked down, and I added the balsamic vinegar, garlic, and spices, they barely resembled their original color and brightness.  I think I could have done without the yellow peppers and it wouldn't have been noticed.

     I was pretty excited about the olives I had found at Lund's.  There were some varieties in the mix I had never seen before.

     The original recipe had called for 4 cups or 20 ounces of Fontina.  I cut that down to an even pound, because it just seemed like an inordinate amount of cheese.  It still looked like (dare I say?) too much cheese.  I wasn't sure if it is possible ever to have too much cheese, so I kept with the entire pound.

     Jennifer arrived just after I had finished loading all of the ingredients for our drink into the shaker.  I added ice, shook it up, and poured it out.  It was a beautiful light orange color, and it tasted like summer in a glass (or is it considered a bowl?).  It was all of the flavor and joy of freshly squeezed juices, but without the cloying sweetness that lingers on your tongue.

BEBBO

2 spoonfuls runny honey

2 measures gin

½ measure freshly squeezed orange juice

1 measure freshly squeezed lemon juice

Stir the honey and gin together in a shaker until honey is dissolved.  Add ice, gin, orange juice, and lemon juice.  Shake.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Float a thin slice of lemon on the surface of the drink.

     I promptly put her to work assembling the Tricolor Pepper Pizza.  We debated about the placement of the cheese.  The directions said to put it on first with the remaining ingredients on the top of the cheese.  We recalled the irritation of having to continually pick up our sun-dried tomatoes last week that fell off, because the cheese wasn't holding them on.  We decided that the cheese should be split into two applications - half before the onions, peppers, and olives, and the remainder after to hold everything in place.

     Meanwhile, I worked on assembling the Provolone Pizza.  I had found some slow-simmered tomato sauce in my freezer that we used instead of the recommended sauce for the pizza.  It was a little zippy, but it was nice.
     The amount of cheese called for in the recipe wasn't enough.  I briefly thought about taking some of the Fontina designated for the pepper pizza and putting it on, but thought better of it.  If I had done that, it really couldn't continue to hold the title "Provolone" pizza - we might have to change it to "Three Cheese Pizza" or something like that.  I had already pumped up the amount of mozzarella a little before adding the Provolone and sprinkling it over the pizza, but there were still some bare spots that I couldn't tolerate.  I shredded an additional couple of ounces of the Provolone and filled in the gaps.

     Both pizzas were assembled and ready for the oven.  Our first batch of Bebbo had disappeared somehow, and I was just mixing a second one when Pam arrived.  She took a sample sip and decided she needed one of her own, which we promptly provided.

     When the Tri-Color Pizza came out of the oven, it was gorgeous!  Unfortunately, you couldn't see any of the colors of peppers, but the colors of the exotic olives bled right through all of the cheese.  The oil from the olives and probably some from the cheese had crisped up the crust and made it a lovely golden brown.

     The Provolone Pizza was no slouch in the looks department either, but it really did seem ordinary looking once we had already been graced by the reds and purples of the pepper pizza.

     Just as we were sitting down to eat our creations, Jeff came home with some wine that we were required to sample.  He wanted our opinions on them, because he was thinking about carrying them in his wine shop.  We begrudgingly obliged.

      The Tri-Color Pepper Pizza was the star - not only in looks but in taste as well.  I propose changing the name to Olive Pizza, though because the olives truly dominated the flavor.  Yes, we could taste the wonderful carmelization of the peppers and onions, but they were just background noise for the olives.  They provided a nice, warm, almost-sweet base to the rich, salty, tangy flavors of the olives.  I am not a huge fan of olives, but this pizza may have converted me.
     Unfortunately, this overshadowed the Provolone Pizza.  It had great flabvor, mind you, but it had been dwarfed.  I couldn't appreciate the subtle tang of the provolone with the underlying sharpness of the sauce.  It was there, and I did like it, but I was only thinking of my next bite of olive pizza.


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Four Cheese Pizza; Shrimp Canapes; Crab Canapes; Basil & Honey Daiquiri

     We had a great turnout this week!  My parents were in town for Grandparents' Day at Gracie's school.  They were going to bring Gracie and Jonah over with them.  Pam wasn't working, and Roger got off work early, so everyone in the family was coming except for Jennifer.  She was going to try to catch an earlier flight from her business trip, but, unfortunately for us, she didn't make it.

     I hadn't gotten as many preparations done on Wednesday as I had planned, and I had a class all day on Thursday.  When I got home and went outside to pick basil for the pesto and the drink of the week, I was met with disappointment.  The basil that had made it through the first frosts wasn't looking well, and there certainly wasn't enough left to cover both recipes. I had specifically picked the basil & honey daiquiri for the drink of the week to use up the rest of my basil.  I really didn't plan well, though, because the shrimp canapes called for a pesto sauce, using 2 cups of basil as well.  I could have chosen a different drink at this point and maybe saved the shrimp canapes for another time, but it would have taken me hours to make a decision on what to make in its place.  Instead of spending that time, I just ran to Cub and bought one of the last two boxes of basil they had left in their produce department.  Neither one of the boxes looked great, so I picked the lesser of the two uglies and went on my merry way.

     I had actually started the day, thinking that it was just going to be me, Pam, and Jeff for dinner.  My mom had called and left me a message while I was in class that she wanted to join us.  Later, when I got home, I tried calling her to see when she was going to arrive, so I could plan the rest of my afternoon accordingly.  I wasn't able to get through to her, so I pulled a trick that my dad uses all the time:  I called him.  Dad always calls me when he can't get a hold of Jeff, so I thought I would return the favor.  He said he was coming as well, and he was bringing the kids.  Later, he called back and informed me that Roger had gotten home early, and he was coming as well.  Whew!  I tried to speed up my pace a little bit.

     Wednesday, I had made a batch of classic crust to split between the three recipes.  They were sitting on the counter all puffed up in their little freezer bags, waiting for me when I got back from the grocery store.  I had divided the dough into three bags - one with a fourth of the dough for the cheese pizza and one with half of the dough for the canapes, and the third with another fourth of the dough to put in the freezer for another use.

CLASSIC CRUST
Adapted from The Everything Pizza Book by Belinda Hulin

(makes four 12-inch pizzas)

2½ teaspoons active dry yeast

2 cups warm water

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt    

6½ cups bread flour

2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine the yeast, water, and sugar in a bowl and set aside for at least five minutes.  Stir the salt and flour together in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the yeast mixture and the olive oil and stir on a low speed until the mixture forms a ball around the hook.  Continue mixing a little longer until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Let rest for an hour in a greased bowl in a warm, dry place.  Punch dough down, and divide into four pieces.  Roll and shape each piece as recipe indicates.

     I wanted to start out with the cheesy cream sauce for the crab canapes, because that seemed like it would take the longest amount of time.  The recipe for the sauce made three cups, and I only needed one cup.  I didn't think this was something I could make all three cups worth and freeze the remaining two for future use.  I wasn't sure what freezing would do to the texture of the sauce, so I started out by writing down the ingredients in the amounts I would need for a third of the recipe.  I have found that if I just try and figure it out as I go along, I inevitably mess something up (like I did for the cinnamon pizza last week).  I still might screw the measurements up, but it is less likely.

CRAB CANAPES
Adapted from The Everything Pizza Book by Belinda Hulin

¼ recipe Classic Crust dough

3 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon minced green onion

7 tablespoons heavy cream

2 ounces Parmesan cheese

½ ounce Romano cheese

salt 

pepper

6 ounces lump crab meat

Preheat oven to 425º F.  Divide the dough into 12 pieces.  Roll or stretch each piece into two inch circles.  Place on a greased cookie sheet.  Bake for 8-10 minutes or until crusts are starting to brown.  Remove from oven.  In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.  Add garlic and onions and cook, stirring constantly for a couple of minutes.  Slowly whisk in the heavy cream.  Cook until cream is hot, but not yet boiling.  Combine the cheeses.  Add a small amount of cheese at a time, stirring until cheese has melted.  Add salt and pepper to taste and remove from heat.  Divide the sauce evenly among the twelve crusts.  Top with the crab meat and serve.

     I find that some measurements don't divide well, so the flavors aren't necessarily the same, but I thought I could get it close.  For this recipe, there were some things that didn't seem practical to divide by three - like the green onion.  The original recipe called for one tablespoon of finely minced green onion, which I found to be one single onion.  I could have put in one teaspoon (one third of a tablespoon) of green onion, but I knew that if I put the rest of the onion in a teeny tiny container to use for another time, I would forget it in my refrigerator and it would be some unidentifiable green liquid I would have to dispose of at a later time.  Also, for me, green onion is a little bit like garlic.  Some is good, more can only be better.  I used the entire onion.
     For the cream, it called for 1-1/3 cups.  That comes out to 21.33 tablespoons, so for a third of the recipe, it would be (roughly) 7 tablespoons of cream.  Somehow, my math at the time came up with 6 tablespoons of cream.  Oops!  

     Dad showed up while I was shredding my cheese.  I set him up with a chair and a beer, and we chatted while I made my sauce.  I was noticing at this point that the cheese wasn't melting into the sauce as nicely as I thought it should.  It started out melting nicely, and I thought it was blending into the butter and cream, but when I took it off of the heat and gave it another stir, it was really stringy.  I thought maybe if I just left it alone, it would eventually melt in.

SHRIMP CANAPES

Adapted from The Everything Pizza Book by Belinda Hulin

1/4 recipe Classic Crust dough

1-1/4 cups fresh basil leaves
4 tablespoons minced garlic
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 ounce Parmesan cheese
1/2 ounce Romano cheese
1/3 cup olive oil
12 large boiled shrimp, peeled

Preheat oven to 425º F.  Divide the dough into 12 pieces.  Roll or stretch each piece into two inch circles.  Place on a greased cookie sheet.  Bake for 8-10 minutes or until crusts are starting to brown.  Remove from oven.  In a blender or food processor, combine the basil, garlic, pine nuts, and cheese.  With machine running, drizzle in the olive oil.  Blend until well combined and smooth.  Divide the sauce evenly among the canape crusts.  Top each with one shrimp and serve.

     Next on my agenda was to make the pesto.  I opened my box of basil and found that even though the leaves that I could see through the plastic mostly seemed nice and green, some of the leaves on the inside were brown and a little moldy.  I picked out all of the ugly pieces of basil and washed the rest off really well and hoped that I would still have enough for the pest and the drink of the week.  I should send a nasty letter to Cub, but the time it would take me to write such a thing might be worth more than the $4 I spent on the rotting foliage.

     I love my VitaMix!  I threw the basil leaves, the garlic, pine nuts, shredded Parmesan, and shredded Romano into the bowl of it.  I turned it on and started drizzling the garlic into it.  In less than a minute, I had a smooth green sauce.  When I took the tamper out of the machine, it had a little sauce clinging to the end of it.  I swiped it with a finger and sampled a little.  The garlic was indiscernible.  I added another tablespoon.  That was much better.

     Mom, Roger, and the kids showed up just after I finished this, but they wouldn't come in, because my attack-cat was guarding the front door.  He was sitting on his "welcome" mat, so I just pulled the mat away from the door to allow them to enter.  Roger had brought two frozen pizzas to add to the party.  Pam showed up shortly thereafter.

     I opened up my large bag of dough for the canapes.  I divided it in half and divided each half into 12 pieces.  Mom offered to help, so I assigned her the task of rolling and stretching them out into little two inch circles.

     It is times like this that I am really glad that I have two ovens and almost wish I had three.  I had the top oven preheating to 500º F for the cheese pizza; I had the bottom oven preheating to 425º for the frozen pizzas; and the canape crusts were supposed to bake at 350º.  Initially, I threw them into the bottom oven while it was preheating, figuring that for some period of time, the temperature would be close.  However, the natives were getting restless, and I wanted to get the kids' pizzas in and out of the oven as quickly as possible.  I moved one of the pans of little crusts to the top oven, put one frozen pizza on the stone in the top oven, and one on the stone in the bottom oven.  After a couple of minutes, I changed my mind and pulled the frozen pizza from the top oven and put it into the bottom on the same rack as the first one.  

     The crusts in the top oven didn't take long at all - about five minutes - at 500º.  I took them out and let them cool while I assembled the cheese pizza.

FOUR CHEESE PIZZA

Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner

¼ recipe Classic Crust dough
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 ounces sharp provolone cheese
2 ounces crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
2 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
½ ounce grated Romano cheese
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
2 ounces marinated sun-dried tomatoes, drained and finely chopped, oil reserved
1 tablespoon oil from the sun-dried tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 500º F.  Roll or stretch the dough out into a fifteen inch circle on a floured or corn-meal dusted peel or board.  Brush the dough with about a tablespoon of olive oil.  Toss the cheeses together.  Distribute half of the cheese over the dough.  Sprinkle with pepper.  Distribute the tomatoes over the top.  Spread the remaining cheese over the tomatoes.  Drizzle with a little of the reserved oil from the sun-dried tomatoes.  Bake for 5-10 minutes or until the cheese is starting to brown.

     This went together rather quickly, since there were few ingredients, and I had already grated the cheese and tossed it together.  The original recipe had me back the pizza without the tomatoes and sprinkle them on afterward, which I did.  I didn't like the result, though. The tomatoes refused to stay on the top of the pizza.  When I cut the pizza, the tomatoes stuck to the pizza cutter or just fell off.  I put them back as well as I could, but when serving the pizza, they fell off again.  We put them back on, but as we lifted the slices of pizza to our faces, the tomatoes fell off again.  It was a little annoying.  I didn't see any benefit to putting them on after the pizza had baked.

     While the cheese pizza baked, I finished up the canapes, but I ran into a problem with the crab canapes.  By this point, so much time had passed since I made the cheesy cream sauce, that it somewhat solidified.  I was having trouble getting a spoonful to spread onto the little crusts.  Mom said it would be fine, it would spread out when they were put back in the oven.  I explained that it wasn't supposed to go back into the oven, this was supposed to be a room temperature dish.  However, she had a point, so I cut chunks of the sauce up and placed them on the crusts and threw the crusts back in the oven for a couple of minutes.  The sauce melted nicely (it still wasn't really a cohesive sauce - more like cream sauce with cheese in it) and spread out, just like Mom had said.
     The kids thought they were starving, so I told them to go ahead start on the previously frozen pizzas while I finished up plating the canapes, baking the cheese pizza, and making myself a drink.  Dad is strictly a whiskey and beer drinker.  Jeff and Roger never participate in drink of the week.  Mom doesn't drink at all.  Pam wasn't drinking for caloric reasons.  It was going to be all for me, which turned out to be a good thing, since I was so short on basil at this point.

BASIL & HONEY DAIQUIRI

1 teaspoon runny honey

2 measures light white rum

6 fresh basil leaves

½ measure freshly squeezed lime juice

Combine honey, rum, and basil leaves in an empty shaker.  Muddle the leaves until the honey has dissolved and the leaves are bruised.  Add ice and lime.  Shake and strain into a chilled martini glass.  Garnish with a single basil leaf.

     The drink wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as some of our previous ones had been.  It was mostly clear with a green tinge to it.  There were flecks of basil floating in the liquid, because I might have over-muddled the basil.  I wasn't able to float a basil leaf on top, because I had used all of the remaining (good) basil to build the drink.  It was a little sweet, a little citrusy, and had that nice undertone of almost-licorice from the basil.
     When I sat down to try the pizzas, Gracie was already begging for another crab canape, Jonah had already rejected both the crab canape and the shrimp canape.  I started with the cheese pizza.  It was good - I liked the fun little burst of sweetness when hitting one of the sun-dried tomatoes.  It balanced out the cheese quite nicely, but as I mentioned before, I was irritated by the lack of cohesion on the part of the tomatoes.

       
     The crab canape turned out to be my favorite.  I had been skeptical about the crab.  Cub used to offer refrigerated lump crab meat in a plastic container in their seafood department, but that was unavailable when I went.  I didn't want to buy actual crab and have to shell it, which seemed to be the only "fresh/frozen" alternative.  After going back and forth with Jeff about whether to buy canned crab, fake crab, or this weird little pouch of crab the seafood department offered, I decided to try the pouch, even though there was no hope, in my mind, that it was going to be any better than canned.  However, it was wonderful.  It had that sweet salty taste that "fresh" crab meat has, and it wasn't the least bit fishy.  With the cheese and sauce it was a rich, delicious combination.

     The shrimp was a close runner up.  The pesto was lovely and dressed the shrimp up quite nicely.  The sauce was sharp and tangy and the shrimp cooled it down and evened it out.  Even though it was pre-cooked shrimp, it had been cooked perfectly, too.  It had a little give to the bite, but it wasn't rubbery or over salty as some can be.

     For dessert, we had Pam's world famous monster cookies, which neither the kids nor my father can resist, and they all kept asking when we were going to dole those out.  These are wonderful cookies with peanut butter, M&M's, nuts, and chocolate chips.  I think that there is oats in there somewhere, too.  They are big and hearty, sweet and delicious - a great ending to a great meal.

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Return to Classic Crust Recipe.
Return to Crab Canape Recipe.
Return to Shrimp Canape Recipe.
Return to Four Cheese Pizza Recipe.
Return to drink of the week.