When we learned that it was just going to be me and Jeff (and Pele) here for pizza on Thursday, I let Jeff chose which one I was going to make. The next two pizza recipes in line were a Tex-Mex Pizza and Salmon Calzones. He requested the Tex-Mex, paired with perfect margaritas. It sounded like a fine idea to me.
Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner
3/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1-3/4 cup bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large jalapeno pepper (about 2 ounces)
5 ounces of seeded and diced fresh tomatoes
2 green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
4 ounces sharp cheddar
1 ounce Parmesan
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 ripe avocado
1/4 cup sour cream
Combine the water, yeast, and sugar in a small bowl. Let stand for at least five minutes. In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the flour and salt until well mixed. Add the yeast mixture and stir at medium speed until dough starts to come together. Turn off mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula to incorporate all of the ingredients. Continue to stir at medium speed until all ingredients have come together, dough starts to cling to the hook and appears smooth and elastic. Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel or drape loosely with a piece of plastic wrap. Set in a warm, dry place for an hour to rise.
Wash the jalapeno. Heat a small skillet up over high heat. Place whole jalapeno in the pan. Roll jalapeno in the pan as necessary and hold in place in order to get all sides of the pepper blackened. Remove jalapeno from pan and allow to cool. (Alternatively, roast the jalapeno under a broiler for a few minutes on each side). Once it is cool enough to handle, peel the skin off of the pepper and discard. Remove the stem and seeds and finely dice the pepper.
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 dough out to a 15 inch circle. Brush dough all over with olive oil. Scatter the diced tomatoes over the dough. Repeat with the jalapeno, onions, and garlic. Cover the vegetables with cheddar cheese. Sprinkle the Parmesan over the cheddar. Transfer pizza to the preheated pizza stone, if using, or to a greased pizza pan and place in the oven. Bake for 5-10 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and crust is golden. Sprinkle the pizza with the cilantro.
Cut the avacado in half around the pit. Squeeze the half with the pit to remove the pit. With a knife, cut slices into the inside of the avacado without cutting through the peel. Make slices perpendicular to the original slices, creating a cross-hatch pattern inside the peel. Scoop the flesh of the avacado out with a large spoon. Repeat with the other half of the avacado. Cut pizza into eight triangular pieces and sprinkle some diced avocado over each piece. Dollop each pizza slice with half a tablespoon of sour cream.
I started on Wednesday with the dough for the crust. Once the dough was made, I put it in a zipper bag and put it in the freezer overnight. I took it out again Thursday morning before work and placed it on my counter to thaw and rise while I was gone. Either my yeast is really strong, or my house is too warm, or something, but my dough rose so much it almost exploded the plastic bag it was in. It must have been too much pressure for the dough, because it appeared that it collapsed inside the bag, but the gas it had released was still in there.
My dough was particularly sticky this time around, so it took a couple of dustings of cornmeal to roll out my dough.
Once it was rolled out, I brushed it with olive oil. I am not sure what this does for the pizza (other than add calories). I have heard theories that it creates a barrier between the crust and the toppings (why do you need one?), that it helps cook the interior of the crust (the oil heats up faster than the other ingredients?), or that it just adds an extra dimension of flavor. One website I found said that it helps crisp up the edges of the crust and keeps it from cooking up dry and dusty (so why brush the entire thing with oil?). I don't know. I may have to experiment with this - make two pizzas with the same ingredients and brush one dough with the oil and not the other to see what the difference is.
I actually had found a pretty decent looking tomato at Cub, despite the fact that it is the middle (almost the end) of May, and we are still worried about snow. I am sure that they were flown here from Florida or something.
"Seeding" tomatoes is kind of a fun thing for me. I like getting my hands in there and feeling the squish of the goo between the membranes of the tomato. I like getting my thumb way down into the tomato and having the gelatenous material squirt out from beneath it.
I thought one whole tomato (about five ounces worth) was going to be a lot of tomatoes, but once I had them atop my dough, it looked somewhat sparse.
Had I completely read through the entire recipe on Wednesday night (or any time before this point), I would have known that the jalapenoes were supposed to be roasted, and I could have done that on Wednesday night to save time after work on Thursday. Ah, but I did not, so I started the roasting process. I thought perhaps the cookbook would have good tips on how to do this. They suggested putting a rack cover the electric burner and setting the jalapeno on it until the skin was blackened. I did not try this method, because I didn't believe it would work. I threw my jalapeno in a preheated skillet, which, on hindsight, doesn't seem like the best method either. The jalapeno is curved a little bit, so it is difficult to get all of the sides blackened. The inside of the curve didn't touch the heat of the pan unless I forced it to by smashing it onto the pan with the spatula at the backside of the curve. When I would roll it onto a new side that needed to be blackened, it wanted to roll over again. I think roasting it under a broiler would have been a better method.
Then, peeling it seemed to be a difficult task as well, and I blame the "roasting" method I had used. Since I had stripes of jalapeno that didn't feel the heat of the pan, the skins there were still firmly afixed to the flesh of the jalapeno. Still, I worked through it and did the best I could.
The rest of the assembly was a breeze, and it came together in almost no time at all.
2 measures Patron anejo tequila
1 measure Cointreau
1 measure freshly squeezed lime juice
Kosher salt
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Combine all ingredients (except salt) in an ice-filled shaker. Shake vigorously. Run the lime wedge around the rim of a cocktail or margarita glass. Fill a plate with Kosher salt and place glass rim side down into the salt to coat the rim of the glass with the salt. Strain liquids from cocktail shaker into the salt-rimmed glass. Garnish with a lime, if desired.
This was fantastic! It was just what we were looking for, and it worked very well with the pizza at hand. It was bracing and limey with a little bit of orangy sweetness on the finish.
Jen had texted me that her flight had come in early, and could she still come over? I wasn't sure when she had sent the text, because my phone had died, and my texts only tell me when my phone received it, not when it was sent. I dished up a couple of slices of pizza for me and Jeff, saw the text and called her. She said she would be right over. I mixed up another drink for her, and sliced another piece of pizza.
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Then, Pam called and said she was coming over. Oops! We had already eaten all of the pizza. Had I known I was goign to have so many people stop by, I would have made another pizza. The pizza had been deliciosu. It was spicy but not overly so, and the roasted jalapeno gave it a warm toasty flavor that gave it a little extra depth. The tomatoes were brightly flavored and a nice contrast to the richness of the cheese. The avocado was perfectly ripe and rich and lovely. The sour cream just added another creamy layer to the whole dish.
By the time Pam had gotten there, not only had we run out of pizza, but we ran out of fresh lime juice. We had some margarita mix stored in the basement, so we tried substituting that for the fresh lime juice, and it was a completely different drink. It wasn't even close to the freshness of the first one and the true lime flavor. It was lifeless and lost and overly sweet. It was actually an insult to the tequila.
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