Late Night Series: Pizza!

A few years back, my dad got really, really into bread making. Ironically, it all started when our bread machine broke and he began to make the bread dough by hand. The surprising result was that the bread turned out much, much tastier and he's been rolling out dough ever since. However, there are some concoctions better left to the automated cook and one of those things is pizza dough.

I think the first time I made pizza was after watching the Food Network's The Best Thing I Ever Ate and there was a feature on a breakfast pizza. My mom doesn't even like pizza and instantly wanted to try that pizza so off I went scouring for good prosciutto, herbs, and cheese.

Now, every so often, I get the desire to make a home-made pizza and with the massive amounts of tomatoes just sitting in our kitchen, I thought it was fitting to make the most classic pizza of them all: the Margherita. A quick history lesson for you, the Margherita pizza came about in 1889 when Queen Margherita of Savoy was served a pizza with the colors of the Italian flag: red, green and white.

So what's in this pizza? Fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. I was surprised to find that this recipe calls for only fresh tomatoes and no tomato sauce but the result is absolutely divine.

Rolling out the pizza dough can be tricky since it is very resilient and doesn't like to be stretched out. What I've discovered is that its best to roll it out as best as you can and then let the dough rest for 10 minutes. It becomes much softer and easier to handle after that. After the ten minutes, I usually just use my fingers to stretch the dough out some more (tried throwing the pizza up in the air once but that didn't end too well :p). It also helps to leave some pocket marks on the dough with your fingers.

I like to drizzle olive oil and herbs on the dough before adding sauce or in this case, the tomatoes. 

Fresh, juicy tomatoes!!

I topped the tomatoes with freshly shredded Mozzarella as well as cubes of Mozzarella and some basil from our garden.

Feeling adventurous, and also because there was SO much dough left over, I made another pizza of my own creation. This one had caramelized onions, pears, Fontina cheese and hard sausage.

Here are the two finished products :D

Margherita - this benefited from a another sprinkle of fresh Basil

I don't know what to call this one! haha. suggestions?

The Margherita tasted the best fresh out of the oven. I wasn't too pleased with my other creation at first because the pears made the pizza really sweet but on the second day, all of the flavors had melded together and it made for an amazing leftover meal :)

As if that wasn't enough! There was STILL dough left over. Soooo, I made some yummy cheesy bread. This was a snap to make. I rolled out the dough to about an inch thickness, drizzled it was olive oil, oregano and leftover mozzarella cheese and voila! This was actually the first to disappear from our fridge the next day.

Whew! We still have a good pound of mozzarella left so maybe I'll make a breakfast pizza on my last day at home. Stay tuned! 

Coming soon: Dessert Galore! A lovely and entertaining visit to Penn's dessert truck, Sugar Philly

Recently joined Foodista!

Pizza

Summer Scenes

As promised, here are some snapshots of our vegetable garden, herb garden, and fruit orchard. I wish I could take credit for the bountiful plants and trees but unfortunately, I just snapped the pictures. Props to my dad for his diligent gardening efforts :)

I also ordered my first dslr camer, a Canon Rebel XSI and I can't wait for it to come in! After reading some really great articles on food photography, I decided to fiddle around with my Point and Shoot as I anxiously anticipate my belated Birthday present to myself (..along with the help of my dad).

These are the shots I liked the most (after a little fiddling on Photoshop):

Pear Tree

Peach Tree

Basil aka Best Herb Ever

The Lonely Lime

Over-Ripe Cherry Tomato

The rest of the pictures are a lot softer but I like the semi-muted shades. They are also kind blurry because I still had the camera on a really low ISO from my Macro shots, but I really liked the way they turned out :)

This one's probably my favorite, I tried to recreate the same color temperature for the other pictures but no to avail.

Yellow Crocs :)

Another basket of tomatoes..what to do with them all??

I was so excited by all these pears because it meant making another crisp for dessert (which is already half devoured my our family)

One last Macro shot!

I really had no idea what I was doing when taking the pictures. I just kept adjusting different features on Manual and kept snapping pictures. I actually wore the battery out! (oops). I mostly used the Auto Functions and Curves adjustment on Photoshop. Hopefully my graphic design class this semester will make me a little more proficient. :)

Late Night Series: Pasta Carbonara

Do you ever think about food late at night?

I do.
All the time.
In the 11pm-12am time range.

To satisfy this craving, I usually peruse my favorite food blogs/food websites until I find something very, very appetizing. Something that I want to eat at that very moment and promise to make for dinner the following day. Then I'll watch a lot of youtube videos or videos by Ina/Giada until the only thing on my mind is to make that dish.

Two nights ago, I stumbled upon Pasta Carbonara. After feasting on a decadently creamy PC at Pietro's two weeks agao, I was shocked to discover that Carbonara sauce is not a cream-based sauce but in fact an egg-based sauce. Determined to try the real thing this time around, I set out to make this classic Italian dish.

Browsing through several recipes, I discovered that the recipe is actually very simple and decided to just wing it. With the help of a mystery Italian man on YouTube who's video played in the background as I cooked; I diced, mixed and crackled my way to dinner.

For sides, I made Crushed Peas with Smoky Sesame Dressing from Smitten Kitchen and whipped up a quick Bruschetta using the grape tomatoes and basil from our garden as well as some salt, pepper and balsalmic vinegrette. Finally, I grilled some french bread topped with Pecorino Romano to finish everything off.

Traditional Carbonara asks for Pancetta (or bacon) but since I had neither, I went with a cooked sausage which wound up fooling my parents because they thought it was bacon (ha!).

Here is the recipe (give or take):

1/4 cup cooked sausage diced into small cubes

1 cup grated pecorino romano

1/2 box spaghetti (about 6.5oz, I used Nature's Promise Whole Wheat)

2 eggs

black pepper
salt
red pepper flakes (my addition)

Basically you cook the "bacon" until it gets nice and crispy, whisk up the Carbonara sauce which includes the eggs, cheese and black pepper and cook the pasta till al dente.

Now here's the weird part. Mr. Italian Man on YouTube (who appeared very legit because he was speaking in Italian) said you needed to retain some pasta water in the drained pasta to help "amalgamate" all the ingredients. Then he proceeded to combine the pasta with the bacon and carbonara sauce over a low flame.

This is the route I took but my sauce wound up getting a little to "eggy" as opposed to "saucy".

The other videos/recipes I saw directed you to mix all of the ingredients in a bowl off of the stove and did not mention anything about pasta water.

So much for Mr. Italian Man on YouTube.

Overall,  it was a pleasantly satisfying meal which produced no leftovers. I think I'm going to trying the Carbonara recipe again next week but using the alternative method.

Anyone have tips or suggesetions on how to make my sauce more saucey?