Eatza Pizza: It’s Neatza!

With or without Meatza!

Well, it’s been almost a year now since Chez Venza acquired two very powerful allies: a pizza stone and a cheap, ready supply of quality frozen pizza dough.
Couple of pointers on our pizza technique:  We heat the stone at 545° (the hottest our oven gets) for at least an hour.  Gets the stone (and the kitchen) screaming hot.  We defrost the dough for 48 hours, then stretch it out on a piece of parchment paper, load it up, and slide it onto the stone for about 7 minutes.
Here are some of our recent Pizza adventures!



Blue cheese and Roma Tomato Pizza
This is definitely one of our more unique pizzas.  We got the idea from our most recent Food TV fascination, Pizza Cuz.  Two New York Pizza guys travel the country visiting pizza places.  This one is from the Cheeseboard Collective Co-Op in Berkley, CA.  It has no sauce…  just sliced fresh Roma tomatoes that slightly liquefy under the intense heat of the oven. 



The crumbled blue cheese and the sliced mozzarella melt together to form a sharp tasting and rich sauce.  Awesome!



New York-Style Pizza with Bacon-Cherry Pepper Relish and Coppa
Another stroke of inspiration.  Making Pizza as often as we do, we have really begun to enjoy the Mezzetta products at the store.  Jars of kalamata olives, pepperoncini peppers, capers… all stand at the ready for quick pizza toppings.  Our newest favorite: Hot Cherry peppers.  (Note: These can be hard to find… sweet cherry peppers are not the same thing.)



For this pizza, we pureed some cherry peppers and sugar, crisped up some bacon, and mixed the two together for a sweet hot relish.  We put little dollops of it around the pizza.  Then we covered the pizza in razor thin slices of  hot “Coppa” or capicola, a spicy Italian salami.



We got it from the deli counter at our grocery.  It was so thin that it more or less melted into the top of the pizza.  Really good flavor.



Homemade Ricotta with Garlic, Artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives, and Homemade Pesto on Whole Wheat Crust
My sister and her husband gave us some great homemade basil-pesto.  So…yeah, we made pizza.  We used our favorite recipe of homemade ricotta (super easy) and a cool tool: our garlic slicer.  You pop in a clove or two and twist.  It basically puts the garlic through a pencil sharpener… you get a million thin slices in no time.



The result was rich and delicious.   (Note the fork marks in the crust  - they indicate the half of the pizza with hidden anchovies.  It took pizza for me to love the little salt bombs…. but the wife, not so much.)



Pizza Pugliese
This was an attempt to replicate a pizza from Italy described by our brother in law.  He described it as topped with onions.  Much internet research yielded no clear answer on what Pizza Pugliese is exactly.  Puglia is a region of Italy, and apparently they have a special kind of onion.  Some of the recipes I found were actually for a type of onion pie tart.  For our version, we caramelized a red onion until it had cooked down to a delicious, sweet onion jam. 



We dolloped it on the pizza and added olives. 
The brother-in-law told us as he was eating it that the onions should have been uncooked.  Ours was still tasty, dammit!



Pepperoncinis, Kalamatas, Onions, Capers, and thinly sliced Pepperoni
This is a prime example of a straight-out-of-the-pantry pizza for us.  The one special thing we do is to slice the pepperonis into thin strips.  It helps them crisp up and render.



Mushroom and Leek Galette with Gorgonzola
Ok… so this isn’t really a pizza, but maybe it is?  It’s more of a free form tart with shitake mushrooms, leeks, gorgonzola, Dijon mustard, parsley, and thyme on a whole wheat crust.  Unlike the above-listed pizzas, we made this dough from scratch.  It has no yeast…. but lots of butter.  The mushrooms give it a great meatiness and the gorgonzola and mustard give it great, great flavor.  Vegetarian = healthy, right?



Pizza has become a big part of our weeknight dinner routine.  It is an easy, tasty, blank canvas into which you can easily pour a lot of creativity and freshness.  And it’s so much cheaper (and usually tastier) than 98% of the pizza available for delivery.

Start making pizza you fools!

Falafel: Not Full Awful!

That title undersells it. It was the best pun I could come up with.  Falafel is excellent and, more or less, easy to make! 

Falafel, for the uninitiated, are fried balls of chickpea paste.  Sometimes you will see them referred to as “Chickpea fritters” in an effort to mollify the Toby Keith-types.
This renaming effort reminds me of a Simpson’s clip, which of course is not available as video online. 

Helen: Hmm, Pita.  Well, I don't know about food from the Middle East.
         Isn't that whole area a little iffy?
Hostess: [laughs]  Hey, I'm no geographer.  You and I -- why don't we
         call it pocket bread, huh?
  Maude: [reading the ingredients list]  Umm, what's tahini?
Hostess: Flavor sauce.
   Edna: And falafel?
Hostess: Crunch patties.
  Helen: So, we'd be selling foreign...
Hostess: Specialty foods.  Here, try a Ben Franklin.

So falafel has been on our culinary bucket list for a little while.  We ended up trying this recipe from Emeril Lagasse. 

 Why wouldn’t you go with a Cajun dude’s falafel recipe?  But seriously, most of the recipes online are 

pretty similar.  One difference you’ll see (and is present in the above-linked recipe) is that some falafel 

recipes call for a mix of chickpeas and fava beans and some recipes are pure chickpea.  It turns out

 that falafel is very popular in Israel, but many Israelis suffer from “Favism” or an inability on a genetic 

level to process fava bean protein.  So they go 100% chickpea.  So did we!

One of the only hurdles of making falafel is that you should NOT use canned chickpeas.  You need to buy dried (we found them at Whole Foods)  and then soak them for about a day.  The rehydrated beans have a much better (i.e. firmer) texture.


After soaking the beans should triple in size.





Get the beans good and dry.  Seems redundant, right?

Apres le soaking, le chopping.




Onion and garlic, natch.  Chez Venza style: always double the garlic and/or hot pepper called for in a recipe.



Lot of fresh parsley and cilantro.  I’ve also seen mint in recipes.






All of the spices and ingredients go into “that wonderful machine,” as Jacques Pepin calls it.



Process, my pretties.  Process!



Emeril calls for 1.5-2 tablespoon patties.  Luckily, we have a 1/8th cup measuring scoop, which equals 2 tablespoons.  I used that to scoop the mixture, and tried not to manhandle it too much.  You don’t want them to be too dense.  At this point, I refrigerated them a while to help them firm up.



350° oil.  You need a fry thermometer and a vessel to fry in.  Don’t be afraid.



The recipes says 2.5 minutes, which is about right. But you can also eyeball it some.  Remember, there is no meat in this so you don’t need to be scared about doneness.  Only texture.



Beautiful, light, and tasty.  Emeril’s recipe, strangely enough, needs more salt.  BAM! Also, maybe some pepper flake.



Nummy num num.  We served them on pita with cucumber, tomato, arugula, hot sauce, and, instead of tahini, we used tzatziki.  We did this because tahini can be hard to find and tzatziki is delicious.  Next time, however, we’re getting the tahini! 

Observe the Herb

 

Check out my basil plant.  Isn’t she pretty??

   

I’ve never had much luck growing basil, but this year we we seem to be doing pretty good.  I started with seeds this time (instead of seedlings), and I planted them pretty early (end of March, I think).  Hopefully we can survive the hot summer and get some good use out of this plant!

So when you have a gazillion basil leaves, the first thought that comes to mind is to make pesto.  Well, someone recently gave us some home-made pesto, so we didn’t really need more of it.  Time to break out of the mold and make something wacky with basil! 

Naturally, we decided to go with basil ice cream.  Funky, yet cool and sophisticated!

 

After a couple spins through the salad spinner, my poor basil gets chopped up into bits.  Hmm, it seems to have lost some of its luster on the chopping block.

Then it goes into a pot of milk and sugar with a pinch of salt.  After it boils, it seeps for 30 minutes.  Essentially….basil tea.  This is the strangest tea you’ve never had. 

Blend my pretties!! 

 

Now for the ice cream.  We whipped 4 egg yolks with a little sugar until they were nice and fluffy.  This recipe calls for much more egg than our usual recipe.  It really showed in the texture of the final product.  Very creamy and scoopable.

We then added the pureed basil tea.

Then it goes back into the pot to slowly bring it up to just under a boil in order to thicken it.  This is what we call crème anglaise (French for “English cream).  It’s a custard typically used as a base for ice cream.  The mixture was then poured through a fine metal strainer to give it a smooth consistency.

We let it cool down for about 30 minutes, and then we stirred in some whipping cream. 

And then it goes into our trusty ice cream maker.  We love this thing!  Twenty-five minutes later, you have ice cream, but it’s not really cold enough to eat.  Unfortunately you have to whisk it away into the freezer and wait a good 6-8 hours before you can eat it.  S-I-G-H.

But when you finally get to eat it, you find that it was totally worth the wait.  The basil flavor is quite pronounced, but not overly powerful.  It has a good, subtle sweetness to it, and it pairs well with berries and a wee bit of cookie.  Scrumptious!