The weather gods had replaced April Fool's Day with April Fool's Month (at least for us Minnesotans), and made it snow all week. Just lovely. It really is lovely, but at this point, there has been so much snow this winter, that just the thought of it makes me nauscious. I mean - I heard on the radio that summer vacation for schools is only 6 weeks away - and we're having a three-day blizzard?????? If my poor parents could hear my thoughts, they would know that I am silently cursing them for bringing me up in this "God-Forsaken" place (their words, not mine), and tying me to this location by some sense of familial duty. Oh yeah, and becoming partners with my husband in his Minnesota business venture, so I cannot leave. Yes, they have brought this additional snow to me, and they will pay. Not to mention that they e-mailed me in March to ask me if it was snowing and were disappointed when it wasn't because they wanted it to get it out of it's system before they came back from MEXICO! They deserve this snow, and I think it should only be over their house in Nisswa - far, far away from me!
Okay, enough ranting. My point about the weather was that Jeff had been planning on going to Iowa to sell the rest of his grain and prepare the fields for planting. This little trip was called off because of the snow, and now he was going to have to eat the eggplant pizza and like it.
I thought that the eggplant pizza was going to be very similar to the Eggplant Parmasan Pizza we had a few weeks ago. I was looking forward to comparing them and seeing what elements I liked better and how I could combine the two recipes to make the most delicious eggplant pizza my husband has ever eaten. However, I found that this pizza was a totally different animal. Yes, some of the elements were the same - there was a tomato based sauce, there were slices of eggplant, there was lots of cheese, there was garlic. But, each of those elements came out so differently, that I don't think a comparison is workable.
The eggplant pizza of yore was rich and tomato-y and chunky and flavorful and heavy. This pizza had huge chunks of simmered garlic,
All right - I know - I said I couldn't compare them, and that is just what I did. Well, you will have to decide for yourself. Make both of them together and see if they can be compared. I recommend doing it in the same evening, because one can forget, over time, the interesting bits of flavor that they experienced previously.
which I thought would be a little weird but they were rich and nutty and sweet, but nothing else in the pizza was "rich". The eggplant was light and almost crispy, where the eggplant on the previous pizza was thin, but burried and therefore almost undetectable.
The chunky sauce on the previous pizza had a venue all its own and was almost the star of the show, where this sauce was uniform in texture and barely perceptible, but packed a powerful punch on the finish. The cheeses on the first eggplant pizza were fantastic in their own right and contributed to the party going on there. The cheese on this pizza was fresh mozzarella, which is a lovely cheese, but it only enhanced the flavors of the eggplant and garlic rather than competing for the headline. Okay, so I compared them, but I think there is a little bit of a tie here. Pam gave overwhelming points to this week's pizza over the previous, but I wonder how much of that is about what is in front of you versus what is in the past. Jennifer made no comment either way. Jeff said he "even liked the eggplant pizza" this week. Whereas, he said "the eggplant pizza was actually good" on the previous occasion (guyspeak translation: "I could tolerate this week's pizza" (about this one) versus "I can't believe I really liked that eggplant pizza" (about the previous one)).
Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner
Crust:
½ cup warm water
dash of sugar
½ teaspoon active dry yeast
½ cup bread flour
¼ teaspoon salt
Sauce:
1 garlic clove
10 ounces Roma tomatoes
1½ tablespoons tomato paste
dash of sugar
dash of salt
½ teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
The rest of the story:
12 ounces sliced eggplant (¼" slice, unpeeled)
5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
18 large cloves of garlic, peeled
8½ ounces fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced
½ teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon shredded fresh basil
For the crust: Mix the water, sugar, and yeast in a small bowl. Set aside for at least five minutes. Stir the flour and salt together in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the yeast mixture and stir until well-combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl and continue to stir on a medium-low speed until dough starts to form and clings to the dough hook. Keep running the mixture at a medium-low speed until the dough looks smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Place a damp towel or piece of plastic wrap over the dough and set it in a warm, dry place for at least an hour.
Make the sauce: Place the garlic in a Vita Mix, blender, or food processor. If using a blender or food processor, process until finely chopped. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and remove the seeds and surrounding gelatinous material. Place tomatoes in blender. Add sugar, salt, oregano, basil, and cayenne and process until smooth. Set aside.
Prepare the eggplant: Brush the eggplant slices with olive oil on both sides (about 3 tablespoons). Place eggplant slices on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Broil the first side for approximately seven minutes or until starting to brown. Turn slices over and broil for about five minutes or until starting to brown. Remove from the oven and set aside.
Prepare the garlic: Heat two tablespoons of olive oil up in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add the cloves of garlic and cook on a more low heat than a medium heat until they are soft all the way through and slightly brown in some areas, about fifteen minutes. Do not overcook them, or they will be bitter. Remove the cloves from the pan and drain on paper towels. Reserve the oil in the pan.
The rest of the story: Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using. On a corn-meal dusted pizza peel or board, roll or stretch the dough into a thirteen inch circle. Spread the sauce over the crust evenly. Place the mozzarella slices over the sauce, leaving as little sauce open as possible without overlapping the slices. Arrange the eggplant over the cheese. Skatter the garlic clovers over the eggplant. Drizzle with the reserved garlic-olive oil. Slide pizza off of the peel or board and onto the prepared pizza stone, if using. Otherwise, place pizza in a greased pizza pan, and put it in the oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until crust is golden and the cheese is melted. Remove pizza from the oven and sprinkle with the fresh basil. Cut and serve.
I had been looking forward to the mushroom and pepper pizza. It was familiar, comforting, "normal" - a pizza menu item we haven't really had for a while. It was everything I had hoped it would be. The sauce added a lovely little kick. The baby bellas gave it a little more depth than the regular old button mushrooms, and the peppers added beauty and sweetness to it all. It may have been improved by the Parmesan cheese I was supposed to put on it (but forgot), but it was still lovely. We didn't miss it at all.
Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner
Crust:
½ cup warm water
dash of sugar
½ teaspoon active dry yeast
½ cup bread flour
¼ teaspoon salt
Sauce:
1 garlic clove
10 ounces Roma tomatoes
1½ tablespoons tomato paste
dash of sugar
dash of salt
½ teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
The rest of the story:
8 ounces sliced provolone
5 ounces fresh baby portabella mushrooms, thinly sliced
5 thin rings sweet red pepper
5 thin rings sweet green pepper
For the crust: Mix the water, sugar, and yeast in a small bowl. Set aside for at least five minutes. Stir the flour and salt together in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the yeast mixture and stir until well-combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl and continue to stir on a medium-low speed until dough starts to form and clings to the dough hook. Keep running the mixture at a medium-low speed until the dough looks smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Place a damp towel or piece of plastic wrap over the dough and set it in a warm, dry place for at least an hour.
Make the sauce: Place the garlic in a Vita Mix, blender, or food processor. If using a blender or food processor, process until finely chopped. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and remove the seeds and surrounding gelatinous material. Place tomatoes in blender. Add sugar, salt, oregano, basil, and cayenne and process until smooth. Set aside.
Assemble the pizza: Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using. On a cornmeal or flour dusted pizza peel or board, roll or stretch the dough out to a thirteen inch circle. Spread the sauce over the dough, leaving the edges of the dough bare. Arrange the cheese slices over the sauce, leaving as little sauce showing as possible. Scatter the mushrooms over the cheese. Arrange the pepper slices decoratively over the mushrooms. Slide the pizza onto the prepared pizza stone, if using. If not, slide pizza onto a greased pizza pan and put it in the oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until crust is starting to brown and the cheese has melted.
The dessert turnovers were good, but they were a hot mess. I am going to put the recipe here (as I made them), but I am just leaving a warning that it was not pretty, and there has to be a better method to make these.
Now, I hadn't read the recipe completely through before I started making them. I had gotten as far as reading the dough recipe and the ingredient list before Thursday. I assumed that since this was a pie-crust-like dough, this would be baked - like a pie would be baked. Actually, I never even gave it that much thought - I just simply assumed they were going to be baked. Jennifer and I had gotten as far as assembling the first one, before I read ahead to see that they were supposed to be deep fat fried. I decided that I was not going to drag out my fryer or start in on heating up a big pan full of oil while our entree pizzas were getting cold. I decided baking at 425º F was going to work. I was betting that it was hot enough to brown the outside of the dough without bubbling the inside right out of the air vents.
My first problem, though, was actually the dough. Jennifer and I had decided that it would be best to roll the circles out between to sheets of waxed paper. It was essentially pie crust dough, and that is what we would do with pie crust dough. I think that there either should have been more flour in the recipe, we should have floured both pieces of wax paper, or the dough should have been much colder. When we tried to pull off the wax paper, the dough would stick to it, rip, melt away, all kinds of horrible things were happening.
We may have needed to put the rolled out, wax paper covered dough in the fridge or freezer for several minutes before trying to peel off the paper, but we didn't have time. Or maybe we just needed to roll it out thicker - make smaller dough circles. I wanted to get those babies in the oven while we were eating the other pizzas, so they would be ready before anyone had a chance to realize they were already full.
Pam came in to help and actually (thankfully) took over with the peeling of waz paper and the filling and sealing of the little pockets. She did a great job, but got one sealed up before she put the chocolate in. She then painstakingly unsealed it and was still able to add the chocolate and close it back up again with minimal damage.
I arranged for a slightly different version for Jeff. The original recipe called for strawberry jam as the base, which I didn't have and didn't plan on using. I had blackberry jam, and I was planning on using that, but when I found out Jeff was going to be here, I had to make different arrangements. He is allergic to berries with tiny seeds - strawberries, raspberries, blackberries. I found a small amount of blueberry jam in the back of my refrigerator, and I had found my solution. One of the pockets was going to have blueberry instead of blackberry.
Well, after a few minutes in the 425º oven, the filling had oozed out all over the pan (and some on the oven floor). It looked terrible, and the crust still wasn't browning. I put it in for a few minutes more, and the crust still wasn't browning, and we were losing more filling to the oven floor. The crust had ceased to be gooey, though, so I pulled them out.
When serving them, we cut the crust shell in half, placed it on the plate, then scooped some filling off the baking sheet and plopped it on top of the crust. Like I have already mentioned, it really was not pretty, but the flavor was fantastic. It was rich and creamy and sweet. The vanilla and marscapone made a comforting warm concoction that melted on my tongue. The hint of blackberry under the burst of chocolate just seemed to intensify the chocolate flavor and push over the edge into dessert euphoria.
Adapted from The Everything Pizza Cookbook by Belinda Hulin
1¼ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup (4 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter
4-6 tablespoons ice cold water
3 tablespoons fruit preserves (I used blackberry for two turnovers, and blueberry for the third)
1 cup marscarpone cheese
2 tablespoons superfine sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 ounces semi sweet chocolate chunks
In a medium-sized bowl, stir the flour and salt together to mix well. Chop the butter into pieces and cut it into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture resembles small peas. Add cold water, a tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is barely able to be pressed together to form a ball. Cover dough ball in pastic wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 425º F. Divide dough into three pieces. Roll each piece out into a six inch circle between two pieces of wax paper or parchment. Peel the wax paper off both sides of each circle and place on a greased baking sheet. Spread one tablespoon of fruit preserve over each circle. Mix the marscarpone, the sugar, and the vanilla extract together in a small bowl. Spread one third of this mixture over half of each circle. Place an ounce of chocolate over the marscarpone on each circle. Fold the other half of each circle over the filled half and press the edges together to seal. With a sharp knife, cut three slashes into the top of the dough for ventilation. Bake at for about 10 minutes.
As if the dessert calzones weren't going to be enough fruity goodness for one day, we preceeded them with our drink of the week - cobbled raspberry martinis. They were wonderful! The wine seemed to deepen the raspberry flavor that was muddled into the vodka, and the addition of simple syrup ensured that there was just a touch of sweetness to pull everything together in one delicious martini.
12 fresh raspberries
2 measures vodka
1 measure merlot
½ measure simple syrup
raspberries for garnish
Muddle 12 raspberries in the bottom of a shaker. Add ice, vodka, merlot, and simple syrup. Shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with fresh raspberries.
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