Adapted from James McNair's Vegetarian Pizza
Crust:
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
3¼ cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup olive oil
Red Sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
4½ ounces minced onion
2 ounces minced carrot
2 ounces mincced celery
2 14½ ounce cans diced tomatoes, drained
1 tablespoons chopped garlic
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons shredded basil
White Sauce:
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons Wondra (or fine flour)
2 cups milk
Eggplant:
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup olive oil
½ cup canola oil
1lb globe eggplant, peeled and sliced crosswaise about ½ inch thick
The rest of the story:
2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese
3 ounces grated aged Gouda
2 tablespoons shredded basil
Make the crust: Combine the yeast, sugar, and water in a bowl and 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 yeast mixture and the ¼ cup 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 bowl in a warm, dry place.
Make the red sauce: In a saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery and cook, stirring frequently until the vegetables are soft, but not brown - about five minutes. Add the tomatoes, garlic, and vinegar. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook until thickened and most of the liquid evaporates. Stir in the shredded basil.
Make the white sauce: In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Whisk in the Wondra, blending until smooth. Cook for a couple of minutes, but do not brown the flour. Whisk in the milk. Continue whisking until mixture is smooth. Simmer, stirring frequently, until thickened to the consistency of a rich cheese sauce - about 30 minutes.
Fry the eggplant: Sprinkle both sides of the eggplant with salt and place in a strainer for about a half hour. Press on the eggplant to extract a little more liquid. Rinse eggplant slices of the salt and pat dry with paper towels. Pour both oils in a deep pan and heat over medium-high heat. Place the flour in a shallow dish. Dredge the eggplant slices in the flour, lightly coating them. Once oil is heated, place two or three slices of eggplant in the pan (however many will fit in the pan without overcrowding). Brown the eggplant on both sides. Transfer the eggplant to a paper-towel-lined plate. Repeat dredging, frying, and draining until all of the eggplant slices have been cooked.
Assemble the pizza: Preheat the oven to 500º F with pizza stone inside, if using. On a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or board, roll or stretch dough to a 15 inch circle. Distribute the fried eggplant slices over the dough. Spoon the white sauce over the eggplant and top with the tomato sauce. Combine the Parmesan and Gouda together in a bowl. Sprinkle about 3/4 of the cheese over the red sauce. Transfer the pizza to the preheated stone or place on a greased pizza pan and put in the oven. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the edges of the dough start to brown. Remove from the oven and top with the remaining cheeses. Sprinkle with the remaining shredded basil.
Then, I tackled the sauce. The original recipe called for regular flour as a thickener, but I had Wondra, and it really is wonderful for sauces. It thickens up more quickly with less clumps than regular flour.
Once the butter foamed up, it was time to add the magic thickening dust.
And whisk.
Add the milk and whisk some more.
These were the beautiful eggplants I purchased for Thursday's dinner. My husband claims to hate eggplants, although every time I make something with them in it, he comments that it wasn't so bad (which is guy-speak for "I don't want to admit it, but I really liked that"). The recipe had called for two pounds of eggplants, which turned out to be two eggplants. I actually peeled them as the recipe instructed, even though the picture accompanying the recipe looked like they weren't peeled.
I started out with three slices of eggplant. I dredged them in my little cereal bowl and placed them on a plate. Then I walked them over to my pan of hot olive oil. The recipe called for equal portions of olive oil and vegetable oil. In my mind, olive is a vegetable, so I just used all olive oil. I realized later that was a mistake.
Overall, the eggplant slices I did fry didn't look too bad. There were some that were a little darker than I had anticipated, but I tried some of the dark ones on their own, and they didn't have an adverse taste. I saved the remaining eggplant in the event that I would want to make new fried eggplant on Thursday.
After that fiasco, I decided to start on the red sauce. It starts as any good red sauce starts with mire poire - or the holy trinity - or whatever you want to call it. Almost every culture starts a sauce, soup, or stew with onions, celery, and carrots, and they all call it something different.
These lowly vegetables get sauteed until they're soft and then other ingredients are added to make them delicious. Or, more delicious, if you are a celery-onion-carrot lover (I am not - onions, yes, celery and carrots - no). Here I added tomatoes, garlic, and balsamic vinegar. Immediately, the aromas changed. There were wisps of tangy acidity from the balsamic, a warm sweetness from the cooking garlic, and robust, almost citrusy wafts from the tomatoes.
After that concoction had cooked down to a nice, thick, ragu, I boxed it up and put it in the refrigerator. The original recipe called for it to be pureed into a uniform consistancy, but I kind of liked the idea of having a chunky sauce over my fried eggplant. I also envisioned that the pureed sauce would end up running off the edg eof the pizza and into the bottom of the oven. I also thought about the additional tools or containers I would have to wash if I transfered the sauce to the Vita Mix or used my Cuisenart stick blender to make the sauce uniform. I was saving that decision for Thursday evening.
Pammy and Gracie showed up first on Thursday, and I put them both to work. I started Gracie on rolling out the dough for the mini pizzas and Pam on the dough for the eggplant entree. Gracie complained a little bit about the dough being a little cold and stiff. Pam said hers was fine, and maybe Gtracie didn't have the upper body strength to properly roll the dough out. Gracie blamed the insufficeincy on the tools she was provided. She said Pam was doing ok with her dough, because she had the large rolling pin, and all Gracie had was the little one-handed roller. Pam came over and finished the little dough circles with the large rolling pin. She tried one with the small one, and said (under her breath, so Gracie couldn't hear, of course) that maybe there was something to the tool issue. She said it was much easier to roll out with the regular rolling pin than the one-handed roller.
I also polled Pam on whether she thought that the red sauce should be pureed. She wouldn't offer her own opinion, but suggested that if I am making the recipe, it was up to me to decide how I wanted to make it. I said I didn't want to dirty any more dishes, and I like chunky marinara sauces, so I was going to leave it as is. And, I did.
After baking, most of the circles ended up looking like they were afflicted with a boil outbreak.
Speaking of piles of cheese, the mini-cheese pizzas were certainly going to live up to their title. The cheese literally had to be mounded in the middle of each crust, just to stay on it. I wondered how it would fare in the oven.
Apparently, not very well. There was cheese oozing all over my baking sheet. I think each of the mini pizzas was trying to become one with the one next to it. Wait - trying? No, they were succeeding!
While we were waiting for the eggplant pizza to finish baking and for the cheese pizzas to become less molten, we started building our drinks.
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup olive oil
½ cup canola oil
1lb globe eggplant, peeled and sliced crosswaise about ½ inch thick
The rest of the story:
2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese
3 ounces grated aged Gouda
2 tablespoons shredded basil
Make the crust: Combine the yeast, sugar, and water in a bowl and 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 yeast mixture and the ¼ cup 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 bowl in a warm, dry place.
Make the red sauce: In a saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery and cook, stirring frequently until the vegetables are soft, but not brown - about five minutes. Add the tomatoes, garlic, and vinegar. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook until thickened and most of the liquid evaporates. Stir in the shredded basil.
Make the white sauce: In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Whisk in the Wondra, blending until smooth. Cook for a couple of minutes, but do not brown the flour. Whisk in the milk. Continue whisking until mixture is smooth. Simmer, stirring frequently, until thickened to the consistency of a rich cheese sauce - about 30 minutes.
Fry the eggplant: Sprinkle both sides of the eggplant with salt and place in a strainer for about a half hour. Press on the eggplant to extract a little more liquid. Rinse eggplant slices of the salt and pat dry with paper towels. Pour both oils in a deep pan and heat over medium-high heat. Place the flour in a shallow dish. Dredge the eggplant slices in the flour, lightly coating them. Once oil is heated, place two or three slices of eggplant in the pan (however many will fit in the pan without overcrowding). Brown the eggplant on both sides. Transfer the eggplant to a paper-towel-lined plate. Repeat dredging, frying, and draining until all of the eggplant slices have been cooked.
Assemble the pizza: Preheat the oven to 500º F with pizza stone inside, if using. On a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or board, roll or stretch dough to a 15 inch circle. Distribute the fried eggplant slices over the dough. Spoon the white sauce over the eggplant and top with the tomato sauce. Combine the Parmesan and Gouda together in a bowl. Sprinkle about 3/4 of the cheese over the red sauce. Transfer the pizza to the preheated stone or place on a greased pizza pan and put in the oven. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the edges of the dough start to brown. Remove from the oven and top with the remaining cheeses. Sprinkle with the remaining shredded basil.
Adapted from The Everything Pizza Cookbook
½ cup warm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
¼ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1½ cups bread flour
1½ tablespoons olive oil
1 cup prepared pasta sauce
8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
4 ounces shredded Asiago cheese
2 ounces shredded aged Gouda cheese
2 ounces shredded Gruyere cheese
Combine the yeast, sugar, and water in a bowl and 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 yeast mixture and ½ tablespoon of olive oil and stir on a low speed until the mixture forms a ball around the hook. If dough is too dry, add a little more water - no more than a tablespoon at a time - until dough comes together. Continue mixing a little longer until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Let rest for an hour in a bowl in a warm, dry place.
Preheat the oven to 500º F. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Roll each piece out into a 3 inch circle. Brush the tops of the circles with a little olive oil (about a tablespoon total). Bake in the preheated oven for about 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes. Spread a little more than a tablespoon of sauce over each of the circles. Mix the cheeses together and distribute evenly over the mini circles. Bake for about 6 minutes or until cheese is melted and starting to brown.
I was glad my husband was working late on Wednesday, because there were a lot of things I wanted to get ready Wednesday night to make it easier on Thursday, when everybody showed up. I started with the dough. I had one dough in the freezer for the mini cheese pizzas, so I only had to make the dough for the eggplant pizza.
I found that my regular bowls were just wide enough to fit one slice of eggplant in it. I thought that they were perfect for flouring the eggplant.
I started out with three slices of eggplant. I dredged them in my little cereal bowl and placed them on a plate. Then I walked them over to my pan of hot olive oil. The recipe called for equal portions of olive oil and vegetable oil. In my mind, olive is a vegetable, so I just used all olive oil. I realized later that was a mistake.
The first few slices turned out okay. They browned nicely, smelled great, and were tempting me to eat them as they were. However, after a couple of batches, things started to go horribly wrong. My pan started smoking, and I thought that the eggplant slices were burning, but it was really the olive oil and the little leftover bits from the previous eggplants that were smoking and blackening and clinging to my fresh slices. I stopped frying after the first pound, because I didn't want to continue to fill my kitchen with the acrid smoke that was pouring off the pan, and I wasn't in the mood to fry any more after I'd emptied my pan of the blackened oil. Apparently, the "vegetable" oil, which I imagine to be canola or something, has a lower smoking point than olive oil, so together they can withstand a lot more heat than olive oil can alone.
Overall, the eggplant slices I did fry didn't look too bad. There were some that were a little darker than I had anticipated, but I tried some of the dark ones on their own, and they didn't have an adverse taste. I saved the remaining eggplant in the event that I would want to make new fried eggplant on Thursday.
I had left the eggplant slices resting on the their paper-towel-lined plate after I had fried them. They had soaked up a lot of oil in the frying (was my oil not hot enough?). I thought if I left them out to "air-dry", they would dry up a little and stay or get crisper. A scary thing happened, though. There was so much oil in those little eggplant slices, that it had oozed into the paper towels that they were laying on and continued to do so until the paper towels started oozing onto my counter. It was a little scary and a little unappetizing. And, the eggplants themselves? Well, they had lost any crispness that they had had, and were a soggy gooey mess. When Pam and Gracie came over, I asked Pam if she thought I should fry some new eggplant. she brought up a good point. I could fry new eggplant to a crispy glory, but then I was going to put it on top of a moist crust, top it with two different, very wet sauces, and cook it again. It didn't matter if they were crisp. I went with the original pound fried.
The white sauce had thickened quite a bit overnight in the refrigerator. I had to microwave it for a bit just to get it pliable again. I handed it to Pam to spread over the eggplant slices I had arranged on the crust. She eneded up microwaving it again to get it a little more spreadable.
This was going to be a thick pizza!
Then, we turned our concentration to the mini pizzas. Grace and Pam had made nice work of the mini dough circles. I think I was probably supposed to have twice the amount of crust, but they had rolled them out as I instructed - to the diameter I had asked for and everything. They weren't perfect, but they were rustic and beautiful.
Then, we burried that beautiful, chunky marinara sauce for the eggplant pizza in a flurry of grated cheeses. If we hadn't seen the pizza come together, we never would have been able to guess that there was eggplant and white sauce underneath that pile of cheese.
Speaking of piles of cheese, the mini-cheese pizzas were certainly going to live up to their title. The cheese literally had to be mounded in the middle of each crust, just to stay on it. I wondered how it would fare in the oven.
While we were waiting for the eggplant pizza to finish baking and for the cheese pizzas to become less molten, we started building our drinks.
1-3/4 measures cognac
1/4 measure green chartreuse
juice from 1/4 of a lemon
1/2 measure honey
3 dashes orange bitters
Combine all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
I like finding drinks that make use of the odds and ends in my liquor cupboard. Green chartreuse is one of those. This is an odd liqueur that can make your nostril hairs curl just by sniffing it. My dad and his buddies have unsuspecting newbies to their fishing opener parties drink a shot of it as some sort of sadistic initiation, so to turn it into something pleasant gives me great satisfaction. The lemon and honey mellowed its pungency quite a bit, leaving us with a black-licorice sensation underneath the belly-warming, smoky cognac.
The eggplant pizza was done cooking, and we actually remembered the "post-oven" directions to top it with the remaining cheese and the shredded basil. Of course, it helped that we had those items ready before the pizza came out of the oven, and it helped that we hadn't finished our drinks yet.
Despite the fact that Jeff claims that eggplant is poison and that he hates it, he actually liked the eggplant pizza. He even helped himself to more than one piece. It was a good pizza. It was thick and rich. The sauces were creamy and chunky all at once, and there were so many flavors going on there was no differentiating were the eggplant began and the sauce and cheese ended. It felt like Italy on a crust.
The mini cheese pizzas were a hit, too, even in their disheveled appearance. Fights almost broke out about what spilled-over cheese belonged to which mini pizza. All four of us girls fought over the most leaked pieces, because the cheese surrounding it formed a crunchy, chewy bit of heaven. I briefly considered that maybe there had been too much cheese, but we really enjoyed it all - none went to waste.
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