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.
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.
(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
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!
Adapted from The Everything Pizza Book by Belinda Hulin
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Return to the beginning.
FOUR CHEESE PIZZA
Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner
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.
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.
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.
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.
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