For the Love of Food

Back when I lived in France….way back when…I “discovered” chili oil.

This is not the typical oil you are thinking of – it’s not chili sesame seed oil. It’s olive oil infused with chilies, and you’ll never guess what’s it used for!

Pizza!

Yes, you read correctly – pizza. I’ll never forget the first time I had the opportunity to eat this. I was so confused! Why on earth did the cafeteria lady just give me a packet of ketchup to go with my pizza???? Umm…this is France, right?? They do think it’s a sin to put ketchup on good food, and pizza??? Really??

Then, the girl sitting next to me explained that it was chili oil and I was supposed to put it on my pizza and eat it. Um, ok.

I’m all for trying new things, but this one really took me by surprise – I was in love! Pizzerias all over France have chili-infused oil on the tables – it’s everywhere.

When I got married I finally had my own kitchen to work and experiment in. So, I made some chili oil…and waited, and waited, and waited…and waited some more. Three months later I finally had some! And, the longer you let it sit, the spicier it gets. We tried to speed the process up once by heating the oil with the chilies together in a pan. This worked, but made it have a smoky flavor since olive oil burns at a lower temperature than other oil.

I like the long-wait version best. Continue Reading »

So, if it was up to my husband, we’d have pizza everyday of the week for dinner. So I try to make it often enough to keep him happy and seldom enough that I don’t have to turn this into a pizza blog.

This is a new take on our favorite pizza dough – encrusted with polenta to make it nice and crunchy!

I have to say it did make the edge of the dough not puff up as much, but the bottom was just as thick – I don’t know why. Personally, I like the original recipe best (my son too – we had to scrape the polenta off for him). My husband thought it was the greatest thing ever.

You decide. Continue Reading »

There’s not much better than some good old homemade macaroni. But, how can we make it better?? Top it with Italian Pizza toppings.

I mixed this recipe and this recipe and came out with this delicious recipe! Continue Reading »

I love pizza.

And, I have such a delicious crust recipe that I love my pizza the most over all other ones I’s had to date.

This is an extra meaty version with some homemade Italian sausage that my husband quickly whipped up. Continue Reading »

While I was rummaging through my Taste&Create partner’s blog …And A Cookie For Dessert, I was absolutely giddy to come across her Buffalo Chicken Pizza. I believe my exact expression was “buaaahhh!”. Why didn’t I think of this?????!!! Needless to say, I was elated!

So, I decided to make it when we had guests over for game night – the best night for pizza!

Now, I’m not a big fan of blue cheese, so I made 2 pizzas: one with feta cheese and the other with blue cheese. My guests were besides themselves – my husband too – they loved it! I, on the other hand, liked it a lot, but I was disappointed that it wasn’t spicy. I figured for the amount of Crystal Hot Sauce that I added, it was sure to be spicy…I guess I forgot that dairy (cheese & butter) neutralizes spiciness…next time I will double the hot sauce! But, it was good, and I will definitely make it again!

Here is the recipe I made for 2 medium-large pizzas – I kind of had a “crisis”: I realized in the middle of putting things together that I had run out of Worcestershire sauce AND only had enough flour for 1 pizza dough….so I made 2 thin pizzas instead of 2 thick pizzas, and my husband threw together some ingredients to make a Worcestershire sauce.

Ingredients:
2 x Homemade Pizza dough Recipe
375 grams of Chicken breast
Olive oil, for drizzling
2 teaspoons grill seasoning (I used Tone’s Garlic & Herb)
Salt
Pepper
2 Tablespoon Butter
1 Tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce OR
[1 teaspoon Soy Sauce
1 teaspoon of Apple Cider Vinegar
1 teaspoon Oyster sauce]
3 Tablespoons hot sauce (I used Crystal Hot sauce – next time I will use 6 Tablespoons)
1/2 Cup Tomato sauce
1 Cup of shredded Cheddar
1 Cup of shredded Gouda
1/2 Cup Blue cheese crumbles
1/2 Cup of Feta cheese crumbles

Directions:
Preheat oven to broil/grill.
Place chicken in a glass casserole dish and sprinkle with salt, pepper, grill seasoning, and olive oil. Broil for 10 minutes on eat side, or until fully cooked through.

I like to use big glass pie dishes for my pizza.
Oil the dishes with olive oil, roll out your dough to the size of the dish, and place it inside. Then top it:

In a medium skillet over medium heat, melt butter and stir in Worcestershire, hot sauce, and tomato sauce.

Remove the chicken from oven and thinly slice it. Add chicken to sauce and coat. Evenly distribute the chicken/sauce mixture and cheeses over the dough (Feta on one pizza and blue cheese for the other). Bake 20 minutes or until golden.

Thanks Brooke!

By the time Friday got here and I was getting ready to cook my homemade tomato soup, I realized that I had lost my friends garlic roll recipe. I emailed her, but since she’s in NZ (10 hours ahead) she didn’t get my email until the next day. Turns out, anyways, that she left it in the US.

What to do??

Use Pizza Dough and improvise!

I’m really glad I did b/c these are the best most garlicky rolls I’ve ever had/made! Continue Reading »

This is a really great pizza for those hot days because you can eat it cold.

Ingredients:
1 Recipe of Pizza Dough
1 Recipe of Refried Beans (use a vegeterian version for a vegetarian meal)
100 grams of Sour Cream
a dash each of: Garli powder, Onion power, Chili powder, Paprika, and Cumin
about 1/2 a Cup of Salsa
1 Cup of shreded Gouda
2 Cups of shreded Iceberg Lettuce
1/2 Cup of sliced Black Olives

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Oil a large casserole dish with olive oil. Lay out the pizza dough in the dish. Poke the dough with a fork multiple times to keep it from bubbling up in the middle. Bake for 20 minutes (oil the dish with olive oil). Remove the dough from the oven and let cool.
Layer in from bottom up: refried beans, spices, sour cream, salsa, cheese. lettuce, and olives as depicted bellow:

Serves 3.

On a side note: the first time I served the pizza, it was mildly warm and my husband said he would have liked it hot, while I had wanted it to be cold. For dinner we had the left-overs and they were cold/room temperature, and my husband thought they tasted much better that way than partially warm.

For those of you who don’t know what Obatzter is,it’s a delicious southern German concoction of camembert, butter, cream cheese, onion, and paprika Edit: I asked the butcher’s wife today how they made their Obatzter, and she said their ingredients are: Limburger cheese, Butter, Onion, and Paprika – everyone has their own recipe – and this is my favorit!. It’s found in every grocery store, corner store, and butcher shop in Bavaria (if not, it at least seems that way!). 99% of the time I have wittnessed people spreding it cold or room temperature on bread or crackers, but, personally, it just doesn’t taste good to me that way. The other day I accidentally used the meat we were going to make into hamburgers in another dish and was left with 4 Kaiser rolls and no planned dinner one night. I realized we still had some Obatzter from our local butcher’s Metzgerei Willomitzer, so I got creative. My husband actually did all the work…so he gets at least half of the credit! Oh, let me tell you, it was so delicious! I remember smelling them baking in the oven and thinking, what the heck did he do?? Did he just whip up a gourmet pizza behind my back?? It smelled heavenly! Then, he pulled out our dinner..mmmm!

Ingredients:
4 Kaiser rolls, halved
16 Tablspoons of Obatzter
1/8th of a large Onion, diced

Directions:
Preheat the oven to broil (top heat only) at 200°C (400°F). Spread 2 Tablespoons of Obatzter on each roll half; sprinkle on some onion, and pop them in the oven for 3-6 minutes or until the cheese has melted and your bread is lightly toasted.

Serves 2

This is my favorite summer time pizza. It’s so light and refreshing, but filling at the same time. It’s a take on Betty Crocker’s Pesto-Chicken Sandwiches. This recipe also has a Unexpectedly Caesar taste (tastes like Caesar salad, but does not have a traditional Caesar salad dressing)!

Ingredients:
1 Pizza Dough recipe
500 grams of chicken breast
salt
pepper
the hearts of 2 Boston Bibb Lettuce
1/3 Cup of Basil Pesto
2 Tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
12 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

Directions:
the pizza dough recipe makes 2 pizza pies, but in this case instead of separating the dough into 2 balls, keep it as one large ball and roll it out to fit a large casserole dish. Oil the casserole dish with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil, then lay in the dough. With a fork, prick many little holes on the dough bottom so that it does not bubble while baking. Bake the dough for about 20 minutes at 200°C (400°F). Remove from the oven and let sit while the chicken cooks.
In another casserole dish, lay in the chicken breasts and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven at the same temperature as the pizza dough for about 15 minutes or until cooked through. Remove from the oven and once it has cooled enough to handle, cut into small cubes.
In a small pan heat up 1 tablespoon of olive oil and cook the chicken breast cubes in it with the pesto until the chicken is well coasted int he pesto. Remove from heat and set aside. Meanwhile, wash, shred, and dry the lettuce. Place the lettuce in the pizza dough and sprinkle on all the Parmesan cheese and toss to evenly spread the cheese. Top with the pesto chicken and it’s ready to serve!

Makes 6 servings for a light or small mean or 3 servings as an entire meal all rolled in one!

I came across this delicious little dish on the Cooking For Engineer’s Blog…it’s one of his Test Recipes, but in my eyes, it’s perfect! I love making my own pizza dough, and I’ve been using the same recipe for a while now, but it just never satisfied me. It wasn’t fluffy enough, or thick enough, or crispy enough, and the crust was a joke. All it did was allow me to make pizza so I wouldn’t just have to eat the pizza ingredients out of a bowl with a spoon! To top it off, my old recipe took much more planning since the dough needs to rise for 2 hours.

Cooking For Engineers, thank you, you’ve made my day!
So far, I’ve made this pizza twice and both times it came out perfect. I did do some tweaking since I don’t have a microwave and I wanted a quick tomato sauce…all the information is in the recipe bellow, but you can find the original here.

Pizza Dough
Ingredients:
2 2/3 Cups of Flour
7 grams of dry Yeast (1 packet)
½ teaspoon of Salt
8 ounces of Milk
2 + 1 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
2 teaspoons of Sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 95°C (200°F) and then turn off. In a mixer bowl (I used the one that attaches into my KitchenAid mixer…see my Culinary Store for more information), combine flour, yeast, and salt. In a small sauce pan, heat-up to about 43°C (110°F), but do not bring to a boil, the milk, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and sugar. Set your mixer bowl into your mixer with the dough hook in place, and turn it on to kneed. Slowly pour in the milk mixture, and then turn the speed up to 6 and let it kneed for 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl and shape it into a ball. Lightly grease a bowl with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Place the ball of dough in the greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough stand in the pre-warmed oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and divide the dough in half.

Pizza Sauce
Ingredients:
¼ Cup of Tomato Paste
2 Tablespoons of Water
dash of Salt, Pepper, Garlic powder, and Onion Powder

Directions:
Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix until combined. Add more tomato paste for a thicker consistency, or more water for a thinner consistency.

Pizza
Ingredients:
2 9″ Pie dishes
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
Pizza Dough
Pizza Sauce
1 Cup of grated Gouda cheese (or Mozzarella)
8 slices of Pepperoni or Salami
4 fresh mushrooms
other ingredients that I’ve tried are green bell pepper and bacon (just top it with what you love!)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F). Place the pepperoni on 1 or 2 paper towels and place in the oven while it’s preheating. Let it heat up for about 5minutes. This should help remove any excess oil that would otherwise sit on top of your pizza. Remove from oven and continue with recipe.
Coat each pie dish with 1 Tablespoon of olive oil. On a floured surface, roll pizza dough out into a circle that is just slightly larger than the pie dish (the dough should slightly come up the edges of the pie dish, but not go over the edge when placed in). Lay the dough into the oiled pie dish. Coat the dough with pizza sauce, but don’t coat the edges so that you still have crust. Sprinkle the cheese over the sauce. Layer on your toppings, and then bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 2 pizzas: 1 serving per adult or 2 servings per child per pizza.