Bloody Mary Pizza; Goat Cheese and Banana Pepper Pizza; and the Last Word

     Jeff challenged me (once again) to make one pizza with leftovers instead of one of the next recipes in the book.  I chose to make the Bloody Mary Pizza that was scheduled and accept his challenge for the other pizza.  Originally, I thought I would do something with a half empty jar of sauerkraut that we had in the fridge.  It was some fabulous kraut that one of my co-workers had purchased for me in Forest Lake.  However, I felt that if I were to use the kraut, I would need some sort of meat to accompany it on the pizza.  Alas, we had actually done a very good job of clearing out all the left-over meat earlier in the week.
     So, the search continued.  Let's see... cranberry goat cheese log, jalapeno artichoke dip, sweetened condensed milk, pickles of all types, olives of all types, pickled peppers, quinoa, and more cheeses.  I zeroed in on the Cranberry log.  While it was delicious, we had been eating on it for a while.  We, of course, had gotten it at Costco, so it was a much larger quantity than two people could eat in a reasonable amount of time.  We had even served it a couple of times to guests, but it never seemed to end.  It was decided.  The log would be my starting point.
     Now, the log had a little bit of sweetness because of the cranberries, and it had a little bit of cinnamon mixed into the cranberry coating.  However, the log was so big, that the goat cheese to cranberry/cinnamon ratio was very high.  I was convinced it would just be an underlying accent on my pizza, but it needed another acid - something tangy and perhaps spicy.  I pulled out an almost empty jar of hot banana peppers.  Yeah, I could finish these off on the pizza.  I found a red onion, a half-used jar of pesto, and an open container of mozzarella pearls.  The dough recipe from the Bloody Mary Pizza made two crusts, so I had all my pieces of the puzzle.

CRANBERRY GOAT CHEESE AND BANANA PEPPER PIZZA

Dough:

1 cup cold water

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

3¼ cup bread flour

Toppings:

3 tablespoons prepared pesto

1½ ounces sliced red onion

2 ounces pickled hot banana peppers, sliced

4½ ounces cranberry goat cheese

3 ounces fresh mozzarella pearls

Dough: Whisk together the cold water, salt, sugar, and olive oil in the bowl of a large stand mixer.  Add the yeast and whisk again.  Dump the flour in and mix with the dough hook attachment at medium speed until the dough comes together and starts to cling to the hook.  Remove the dough from the bowl, divide in half,  and knead each half for about three minutes or until the dough becomes smooth.  Form each half into a ball.  Cover with a damp towel and let rest for two hours.  Only one ball is needed for the pizza.  At this point, you can wrap one in plastic wrap and store in the freezer for another use.  Place the other ball on a small baking sheet.  Wrap plastic wrap over the ball and baking sheet and store in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Assemble the pizza:  Take the dough out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature (remove at least a half an hour before you work with it).  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Roll or stretch the dough out to a 14 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or board.  Spread the pesto over the stretched dough.  Separate the rings of the onions and scatter over the pesto.  Distribute the banana peppers over the onions.  Break up the goat cheese into pea-sized pieces, making sure that the cranberries get evenly distributed throughout the crumbles.  Sprinkle the crumbles over the peppers.  Evenly place the mozzarella pearls over the pizza.  Slide onto pizza stone and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the goat cheese starts to brown slightly, and the pearls have melted.  Slice and serve.

     I had decided that the pesto was going to be my "sauce", so I slathered on a generous layer of it over my stretched dough.  The thinly sliced red onion rings were next, and I scattered those over the pesto.

     The banana peppers I had found looked like a cross between regular banana peppers and jalapenos.  They were pickled and whole.  I tried to slice them into pretty rings to compliment my onion ring slices, but because of the softness of the peppers, they mostly ended up in strips.  While not as pretty as I had hoped, I was sure that they would taste the same as if they were sliced.

     The cranberry goat cheese log was still a pretty formidable chunk.  The cranberry portion of it was just around the outside edges.  I wanted an even distribution of the cranberries throughout the cheese, so I took a fork to the log and pulverized it into pebble sized pieces.  I stirred the pebbles around a little bit to mix in the cranberries.

     The mozzarella pearls I had found were left over from last week's pizza adventure.  They were still very soft and fresh and delicious.  I figured they would be a nice addition to the rest of the ingredients - not an overpowering flavor, but a great binder.  Goat cheese doesn't really melt well, so this was a nice transition cheese.

     The pizza came out of the oven, and it was beautiful.   The pearls had melted into little pools and anchored the rest of the ingredients to the dough.  First bite brought the warm, garlicky flavor of the pesto, contrasted by the tang of goat cheese and the zip of the peppers.  Once that bite was swallowed, there was a hint of the sweetness of the cranberries and the cinnamon.  It was wonderful.

BLOODY MARY PIZZA

Adapted from Revolutionary Pizza by Dimitri Syrnkin-Nikolau

Dough:
1 cup cold water
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3¼ cup bread flour

Sauce:
11½ ounces tomato juice
2¼ ounces tomato paste
½ ounce worcestershire sauce
¼ ounce habanero sauce
1 teaspoon celery salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Toppings:
3 ounces sliced pepperoni
1½ ounces small green olives with pimentos, halved
1½ ounces celery, chopped finely
4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese

Dough: Whisk together the cold water, salt, sugar, and olive oil in the bowl of a large stand mixer.  Add the yeast and whisk again.  Dump the flour in and mix with the dough hook attachment at medium speed until the dough comes together and starts to cling to the hook.  Remove the dough from the bowl, divide in half,  and knead each half for about three minutes or until the dough becomes smooth.  Form each half into a ball.  Cover with a damp towel and let rest for two hours.  Only one ball is needed for the pizza.  At this point, you can wrap one in plastic wrap and store in the freezer for another use.  Place the other ball on a small baking sheet.  Wrap plastic wrap over the ball and baking sheet and store in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Make the sauce:  Put the tomato juice, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, and pepper into a blender and puree until smooth.  Pour half of the mixture into a glass filled with ice and add some vodka.  Drink.

Assemble the pizza:  Take the dough out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature (remove at least a half an hour before you work with it).  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Roll or stretch the dough out to a 14 inch circle on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or board. Spread half of the sauce mixture over the dough.  Arrange the pepperoni slices over the sauce.  Scatter the celery and green olives over the pepperoni.  Cover with the mozzarella.  Slide pizza onto preheated stone and bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown.  Slice and serve.

     Jennifer had arrived as I was finishing the assembly on the Goat Cheese Pizza, and I set her to the task of assembling the Bloody Mary Pizza.  I had already stretched out the dough, and I handed her the sauce I had made Wednesday night, the chopped celery, the pepperoni, the olives that I had already halved, and the mozzarella.  She was so quick at the assembly that I hardly had time to snap any pictures of the process!

     While she worked on that, I started mixing our drink of the day.  I had found this recipe surfing the internet while bored at work.  Any recipe that makes use of that lonely bottle of chartreuse in the back of my liquor cabinet was going to be a hit with me.

 THE LAST WORD

1 measure gin

1 measure maraschino liqueur

1 measure green chartreuse

1 measure fresh lime juice

Add all ingredients to an ice-filled shaker.  Shake.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Drink.

     If I hadn't known what was in the drink, I would not have been able to identify its components - except the lime.  It was slightly sweet and a little boozy with a hint of black licorice and a wash of citrus on the finish.  It was tasty and dangerous.  While it had a little zing, it wasn't overly strong-tasting.  A couple of sips in, and we started to feel a little giddy.

     The Bloody Mary Pizza came out of the oven, and it was lovely.  The cheese had browned a little in spots, and the tiny olives were poking through the curtain of mozzarella.  At first sight, it looked like a regular pepperoni olive pizza, but the taste was far from it.  The sauce had a nice zip to it from the habanero and an underlying earthiness from the Worcestershire.  The celery salt gave it a nice zing, and the chopped celery enhanced that and gave it a little crunch.  The cheese held everything together and was a nice, smooth contrast to the brininess of the olives.   I would definitely make this again!

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Lamb and No Eggplant Pizza; Upside Down Cheese Pizza; and Punt e Mes Negroni

  You wouldn't think that Japanese eggplant would be such a difficult thing to find.  I started at Cub (of course), but they only had globe.  I was going to take the lazy route and just buy it, but Jeff said "either you're going to follow the recipe or you're not.  We can find it somewhere else later."  Little did he know I hardly ever stick to a recipe completely any more.  He checked Festival for me to no avail.  Jennifer tried Target and Lund's and couldn't find it either.  So, we (Jennifer and I) decided to skip it.  There were enough things going on for this to still be a tasty pizza - although we may have to revisit it when the right eggplants are in.  

     One of the recipes (the cheese pizza) came from a new book that Jennifer and her family bought me for Christmas.   It was the first recipe I made in it, and I am thinking that the author may be a little anal.  All of the measurements are in grams, which is fine - whatever works.  But, they are so specific (2.2 grams of yeast) that I had to improvise in places.  My scale, while it will measure in grams, is very limited.  It only measures 2 grams at a time, and it doesn't do portions of grams.  And, it doesn't start measuring until you hit at least 4 grams.  I tried to trick it by putting what I thought was about 2.2 grams on the scale (it didn't register), then hitting the tare button to zero it back out.  Then, I took the item off the scale to see if it would register a negative number that might give me a clue as to how much the item weighed.  It didn't work.  It still registered zero, but it was negative zero.  Oh well.  Improvising is part of the fun, I guess.

     The author had many other specifics that I was unable to follow.  Not just because it was a lot of reading after a long day of work, but because I would have had to take the entire Thursday off just to get the pizza on the table before 10pm.  Also, I can't take a cheese pizza recipe that seriously. Note - if you're going to make this the way I did, you will need to start making the dough the night before, if not earlier.

Upside Down Cheese Pizza

Adapted from The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani with Susie Heller and Steve Siegelman

Dough:

pinch of active dry yeast

2 tablespoons cold water

1/4cup + 3 tablespoons (roughly 55-56 grams) bread flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

3½ cups bread flour

2 teaspoons salt (I used Kosher)

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons ice water (divided)

2 teaspoons (about 10 grams) olive oil

Sauce:  

8 ounces canned plum tomatoes (roughly half of a 15oz can, reserve the remainder for the topping)

4 tablespoons tomato paste 

pinch of dried oregano

1 teaspoon olive oil

Rest of the story:

Cornmeal for dusting

8 ounces sliced mozzarella

6 ounces canned plum tomatoes (or the remainder of the can), drained and crushed

2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese

pinch of oregano

1 tablespoon of garlic infused olive oil

Dough:  In a small bowl, combine the pinch of yeast with the 2 tablespoons of cold water and set aside for about five minutes.  Add the "55 grams" of bread flour and stir to combine.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 10-18 hours.  This is the "starter".  In a very small bowl, combine the 3/4 teaspoon yeast with the 1/4 cup of warm water, and set it aside for about five minutes.  Put the flour, salt, and olive oil into the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Stir at a low speed to thoroughly mix.  With the mixer running, add the 3/4 cup of ice water.  Then add the yeast mixture.  Use the remaining two tablespoons of ice water to swish out any remaining yeast mixture from the small bowl and add it to the flour mixture.  Run the mixer at medium speed until the ingredients start to combine.  Add the "starter" and mix at medium speed until the dough comes together in a ball and clings to the hook (stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl, if needed, to make sure all of the ingredients get incorporated).  Cut the dough in half.  Place one half in a freezer bag and refrigerate or freeze for another use.  Place the other half of the dough in a greased bowl.  Lightly oil the exposed portions of the dough and drape a damp towel (or loosely drape plastic wrap) over the bowl.  Set aside to rise for at least two hours (original recipe recommended rising it in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours; I set it on the counter in my 63º house for roughly 11 hours). 

Sauce:  Combine all sauce ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth.

The rest of the story (assembly):  Preheat oven to 500º F, with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Dust a pizza peel or board with cornmeal to cover.  Stretch and roll dough out to a 15 inch circle.  Shake the peel or board to ensure that the dough will still slip off its surface. Lift the edges of the dough and slide more cornmeal underneath, if necessary.  Arrange the mozzarella over the dough.  Spoon the tomato sauce over the cheese, spreading it almost to the edge of the dough.  Slide pizza into oven onto the preheated stone.  Bake for twelve minutes, rotating the pizza halfway though baking.  Remove the pizza from the oven.  Top with the crushed tomatoes and sprinkle the Romano over everything.  Drizzle the garlic olive oil over the top.  Slice and serve.

     As I mentioned, there were a lot of details that I glossed over.  I hadn't read the recipes completely before I started in.  I started measuring out the ingredients for the starter, then read that it called for something called diastic malt.  I had never heard of that before. I had to Google it (what did we ever do before Google?).  Apparently, it is a grain that has sprouted.  Then, it is dried and ground into a powder.  It is supposed to improve the texture, crumb, and browning of the crust.  I thought I might try and see if Byerly's carried it, but with the snow and below freezing temperatures, my laziness won out.  It was going to join the eggplant in the "items not used" category for this week.

      Wednesday night, I started with what the cookbook author called the "tiga", which is the starter for the dough.  Since I had no malt powder, it was simply water, yeast, and four.  It was really thick, as I had been warned in the book, but I assumed that meant it was going to be like a paste.  It was more like a mini pile of dough.  I was instructed to let it rest at room temperature for 18 hours, so I moved on to the next thing - the sauce.

     The original recipe called for "ground tomatoes" and "hand-crushed" tomatoes.  I'm not entirely sure what "ground tomatoes" are.  Did he mean tomatoes that were ground up?  Or, did he mean tomatoes that grow on the ground, like ground cherries??  I went with the assumption that he meant tomatoes that were ground up.  I'm not sure how that would be different than pureed tomatoes, so I threw whole (canned) plum tomatoes in my VitaMix along with the rest of the ingredients.  It called for 4.5 ounces of the ground and 2 ounces of hand-crushed, so I was planning on using in 6½ ounces of whole tomatoes, but I over-poured and ended up with about 8 ounces. I read later that I was supposed to add the "hand-crushed" after everything was pureed - Oops!

     After preparing the sauce for the cheese pizza, I started in on preparing the toppings for the lamb pizza.

Lamb and No Eggplant Pizza

Adapted from All the Best Pizzas by Joie Warner

Dough:

pinch of active dry yeast

2 tablespoons cold water

1/4cup + 3 tablespoons (roughly 55-56 grams) bread flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

3½ cups bread flour

2 teaspoons salt (I used Kosher)

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons ice water (divided)

2 teaspoons (about 10 grams) olive oil

Corn meal (for rolling out the dough)

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

Toppings:

14 ounces ground lamb

6 ounces thinly sliced red onion

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

28oz can plum tomatoes, drained and crushed

1 teaspoon dried oregano

2 teaspoons fresh thyme

8 ounces soft goat cheese, crumbled

2 teaspoons olive oil

Salt 

Freshly ground black pepper

Dough:  In a small bowl, combine the pinch of yeast with the 2 tablespoons of cold water and set aside for about five minutes.  Add the "55 grams" of bread flour and stir to combine.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 10-18 hours.  This is the "starter".  In a very small bowl, combine the 3/4 teaspoon yeast with the 1/4 cup of warm water, and set it aside for about five minutes.  Put the flour, salt, and olive oil into the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Stir at a low speed to thoroughly mix.  With the mixer running, add the 3/4 cup of ice water.  Then add the yeast mixture.  Use the remaining two tablespoons of ice water to swish out any remaining yeast mixture from the small bowl and add it to the flour mixture.  Run the mixer at medium speed until the ingredients start to combine.  Add the "starter" and mix at medium speed until the dough comes together in a ball and clings to the hook (stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl, if needed, to make sure all of the ingredients get incorporated).  Cut the dough in half.  Place one half in a freezer bag and refrigerate or freeze for another use.  Place the other half of the dough in a greased bowl.  Lightly oil the exposed portions of the dough and drape a damp towel (or loosely drape plastic wrap) over the bowl.  Set aside to rise for at least two hours (original recipe recommended rising it in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours; I set it on the counter in my 63º house for roughly 11 hours).  Preheat the oven to 450º F.  Lightly coat a 15-inch deep-dish pizza pan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil.  Roll or stretch out dough and press it into the deep-dish pan, creating a thicker rim around the edge, going up the sides of the pan.  Prick the dough with the times of a fork.  Bake for five minutes. Remove it from then oven and brush it lightly with another tablespoon of olive oil.

Assembly:  In a large, non-stick skillet, brown the lamb with the onion and garlic, cooking until no pink remains in the lamb.  Drain well.  Spread the lamb mixture over prepared crust.  Spread the tomatoes over the lamb.  Sprinkle with oregano and thyme.  Top with the goat cheese crumbles.  Drizzle with 2 teaspoons of olive oil and lightly salt and pepper.  Bake for 25 minutes or until cheese starts to brown and the crust is golden.

     Ok, the original recipe only called for 8 ounces of lamb, but the smallest package I could find was 14 ounces.  I put it all in, rationalizing that if there were no eggplant in the pizza, the extra lamb would fill in the gaps.  It may have been a little too much, but I didn't hear any complaints (or, at least, I chose not to).  

     The lamb and onions cooked up quickly and filled my house with homey, warm aromas - perfect on a night that was -10º F with a wind chill factor of -30º (why do I live here again?).  I drained it, let it cool, and packaged it up for the fridge.
     In the morning, before work, I mixed up the dough.  Since the dough recipe for the cheese pizza made twice as much as the pizza called for, I decided to use the other half for the lamb pizza.  I wasn't sure how that was going to work, since it was a deep dish, but I went for it anyway.
    The instructions were very specific about when to add each ingredient and what speed and how long to mix after each addition.  Being impatient and having a short attention span, I pretty much just put everything in at once and ran the mixer at medium speed until it became dough.  At this point, the instructions were to knead it by hand (skipped that), form it into a ball (skipped that), and let it rest at room temperature for an hour before covering it and putting it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  I just removed the dough from the mixer, sprayed the now empty bowl with cooking spray, replaced the dough, sprayed the dough with cooking spray, covered it and left for work.
     When I got home (an hour and 12 minute commute in the snow that day for a 13 mile journey), I started working on the dough.  Just as I started, Jennifer and Jonah showed up.  I put Jennifer to the task of completing the cheese pizza while I worked on the lamb pizza.
     There was a lot of lamb.  It practically filled the deep dish pan.  As I was putting the tomatoes over the lamb, I started to wonder if Jennifer would like it.  She is not a huge fan of tomatoes, and there were lot here. I know that almost half of the 28 ounces in the can is juice, but weight-wise, there was almost the same amount of tomatoes as lamb, even after draining.
     Jennifer was a little more diligent than I was.  She made sure to spoon the sauce into the center of the pizza as instructed by the recipe.  Then, she used the back of a spoon in a circular motion to spread the sauce to the rim.  I would have tried to pour the sauce to cover as much space as possible on the outset and zig zagged the spoon any which direction to get the sauce to go where I wanted it to.
     There were two pizza stones in the oven when I had turned it on, and she read that we were to bake the pizza for six minutes on a stone positioned in the top third of the oven.  After the six minutes, she rotated the pizza 180º and moved it to the second stone, as instructed.  I had planned on ignoring those instructions and just bake it on one stone for 12 minutes, rotating it only if one side looked more done than the other - that way, I could enjoy my drink for a little while without having to do anything else.

Punt E Mes Cocktail

1 ounce gin

¼ ounce Punt E Mes

¼ ounce sweet vermouth

juice of ¼ of a lemon

Place all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker.  Shake vigorously for a few seconds.  Pour into a chilled cocktail glass.  

     A couple of years back, I saw a lot of cocktails with the ingredient Punt E Mes.  I was never really sure what it was and couldn't seem to find it anywhere.  Recently, I started playing around with our computer software at work (I work at a liquor distributorship) and discovered that we carried this product.  I immediately got some and brought it home.  Then, of course, I couldn't seem to find any of those recipes I had seen earlier for it.  It is a vermouth, and there are apparently several different kinds of vermouth.  I imagine it is a bit like gin, where each brand has its own secret blend, resulting in a unique flavor profile.  This is a little bitter, with a sweet after taste.  It is very dark in color and a little bit thick.

     I stumbled across a recipe for a Punt E Mes Negroni.  It had equal parts gin, Punt E Mes, and sweet vermouth.  We tried that first.  While it was good, it was a little too bitter for our tastes, even with the sweet vermouth.  It needed to be mellowed out a little.  We reduced the amount of Punt E Mes and sweet vermouth and added lemon.  It was much better.  The first taste was crisp and citrusy, and as I swallowed, there was just a bite of bitter that gave it a nice little zing.  

     The cheese pizza was done first.  Even after Jennifer added the crushed tomatoes, Romano cheese, oregano and olive oil, the pizza wasn't much to look at.  It reminded me of the pizzas in the eighties that came in a box, and you assembled it yourself with their wimpy, thin, sugary sauce.  The taste was far from that.  I am usually not a fan of the cheese on the bottom, because it doesn't get the chance to brown and bubble and caramelize, but this was really good.  The crust (despite the lack of malt) was crisp on the bottom with a nice soft texture inside.  The sauce was bright and flavorful.  The smooth, silky texture of cheese against the chew of the crust and the wetness of the sauce was amazing.  We kept marveling that such few and simple ingredients could taste so good.  We all agreed that the crust was much better than the previous crusts I had been making.

     The lamb pizza took quite a bit longer to bake.  When the goat cheese started to brown, we took it out of the oven.  There was a lot of liquid in the bottom of the pan.  I am not sure if I didn't drain the meat well enough, or maybe the tomatoes should have been drained better, or both.  The crust, even though it had been pre-baked, was soggy in the middle and a little gooey.  The outside edges appeared to have been boiled, which makes me think it was more of a tomato issue than a lamb issue, because I think if it was mostly grease, the crust would have been crisper, essentially deep-fat fried.  The toppings, though, stole the show.  It was rich and meaty with the nice, creamy tang of the goat cheese.  I cannot imagine how eggplant would have improved it.

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Brat Bagel Pizzettes; Athenian Pizza

The bagel pizza called for mini-bagels, but I couldn't seem to find them at Cub.  I have said this before, but it bears repeating... Shopping is not my strong point.  I don't mind one trip to the grocery store, but I absolutely detest having to go to more than one place in the same day (as far as shopping and errands are concerned).  So, I was not about to go to another grocery store to find mini bagels.  I found bagel chips and deemed that a perfect substitute.  Also, it called for Canadian bacon and at one point, I had purchased a whole pile of Canadian bacon, because it was on close-out at Cub.  I bought a bunch and froze it all.  I was positive that I had several more hunks of it in my freezer.  But, when I came home from work on Thursday, I could not find any.  now, that doesn't necessarily mean I don't have any left, but I wasn't about to go digging this late in the game.  besides, I had leftover cooked brats in my refrigerator, and I thought those would work just fine.  And, slices of them were the perfect size for the bagel chips.  I also used red chili sauce I had made for a previous pizza and froze...  Simple, easy, and everybody loved them.  There were no leftovers.

BRAT BAGEL PIZZETTES

Adapted from The Everything Pizza Cookbook by Belinda Hulin

6oz bag bagel chips (such as New York Style Roasted Garlic Bagel Crisps)

3/4 cup red chile sauce

4 bratwurst links, cooked

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Red Chili Sauce:

10 nuevo mexican chiles (3 ounces)

2T olive oil

3 ½ oz yellow onion

3T chopped garlic

1 teaspoon dried oregano

14½ oz can petite cut tomatoes, drained

14½ oz can chicken broth

Sauce:  Roast chiles at 400º until slightly toasted on all sides.  Remove from oven and cool until they can be handled.  Discard stems.  Split the chiles open lengthwise and discard seeds and membranes.  Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.  Add the onion and saute until soft, about 5 minutes.  Stir in garlic and oregano and saute for a minute longer.  Add the roasted chilis, the tomatoes, and the broth.  Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the chiles are very tender, about 30 minutes.  Transfer the chile mixture to a food processor or blender.  Puree until smooth.

Assembly:  Spread the bagel chips on a greased cookie sheet.  Top each with a couple of teaspoons of sauce.  Top the sauce with a couple of slices of the cooked bratwurst.  Cover with mozzarella.  Bake at 350º F until the cheese has melted and starts to brown in spots.  Serve immediately.

The other pizza we made this week was Athenian.  It had all of the lovely flavors I associate with the Mediterranean area.  Salty feta cheese contrasted with the tangy, bright pickled peppers, red onions and oregano.  Kalamata olives reenforce the salty flavor of the feta, adding a little bit of fruitiness.  

ATHENIAN PIZZA

Adapted from James McNair's Vegetarian Pizza

Crust:

1 cup warm water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

3¼ cups bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

¼ cup olive oil

Toppings:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 red onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings

6 ounces baby Portabella mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 cup pitted Kalamata olives

1 cup sliced pickled cherry peppers

3 cups feta cheese

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Make the crust:  Combine the water, yeast, and sugar in a medium bowl.  Set aside for about five minutes to allow the yeast to form a thin layer of foam on the top of the water.  Meanwhile, combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the olive oil and yeast mixture and run at medium speed until the dough comes together and begins to cling to the hook.  Remove from the mixer and form into a ball.  Place the ball in a medium-sized, greased bowl.  Cover loosely with a towel or a piece of waxed paper and set aside to rise. It should double in size in about an hour.

Assemble and cook:  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside.  Once the dough has risen, roll it out to about a 16 inch circle on a pizza peel or wooden board dusted with cornmeal.  Shake the board or peel to ensure that the crust is not sticking to it.  If it is, add some more cornmeal underneath the dough.  Brush the dough all over with olive oil.  Top with onion, mushrooms, olives, and peppers.  Sprinkle with the feta crumbles and scatter the oregano over the feta.  Transfer pizza to the preheated stone and bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown or melt a little.  Let rest for five minutes. Slice and serve.

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