I talk about food, you read it.
Pizza
Italian sausage, caramelized onions and wild mushroom pizza
0Pizza in our house usually consists of ham and pineapple. Occasionally I like to add mushrooms and green peppers but for the most part, even though they taste amazing, they’re nothing to write about. I have made, in the past, this yummy prosciutto pizza but since my New Year’s resolution was to be more creative I decided to try a caramelized sausage, onion, mushroom pizza which turned out fabulous.
To some of you this might not be all too original or special, but if you’re in a pizza rut, like J and I were in, try this!
Ingredients
- pizza crust (homemade or store bought)
- Pizza sauce (homemade or store bought)
- ½ – 1 lb ground sausage
- 1 small onion sliced and caramelized
- Wild mushrooms, if you chose to use regular mushrooms at least get crimini, sliced
- 1 lb mozzarella
- Fresh basil and shaved parm for garnish (and extra flavour)
In a medium pan, cook sausage until cooked and browned. If it’s unseasoned you can always add you own mix. I threw in fennel, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt and pepper in mine. When meat is done, set aside. Don’t drain fat. In same skillet, cook mushrooms until just starting to cook down. About 10 min. Set aside. Cook Onion in same pan, heat oil on med and cook onions until soft and starting to caramelize, about 30 min.  At this point I added some balsamic to my onions and cooked that down. I didn’t notice a huge different in flavour but it did add some sweetness.
Pre-heat oven to 450. If you’re pizza dough recipe calls for a different temperature, then use that one.  Once oven is hot, roll out pizza dough, throw on hot pizza stone if using, or pizza pan. Top with sauce, sausage, onion, mushrooms and mozza. Cook until crust browns and cheese is bubbly.
Once you take the pizza out of the oven, top with fresh herbs and parmesan. The parm will melt into the pizza as it cools.
J and I both really loved this pizza. It was rather time consuming due to having to cook most of the ingredients first. If you’re good at mutli tasking you can cook more than one item at a time. It was also more filling then our usual pizza which was nice because it meant leftovers. I will definitely make this again and also give other pizzas a chance!
Stromboli
0Do you want to know a secret? I used to be a server at Boston Pizza. Okay, not a very good secret, but a tid bit of information that only a few people know. It was fun, I ate lots of pizza and made a few friends. Since leaving I don’t often find myself going there, not because of the food but because I prefer pubs or places where I don’t have to worry about stepping on crayons. When I have kids I am sure I will be back. The one item I couldn’t get enough of was the Stromboli. Basically it’s an individual pizza folded over, baked and served piping hot. I loved cutting into the crunchy exterior and seeing the steam rise out and the cheese ooze over the plate.
I was having a cooking block (I made that up), consider it writers block but for cooking. I had made some ordinary meatballs but I wasn’t really in the mood for meatballs or spaghetti or anything really. Here I was, trying to think of what I could do with these things other then just put them on a plate and eat them plain. I was thinking about how all I wanted was a pizza and then started craving a Stromboli. It then struck me that I have never actually made a Stromboli before. Problem solved, I will make meatball Stromboli’s. Next time I will add some mushrooms and green peppers but for my first Stromboli I was pretty happy. J also loved them.
Ingredients
Pizza dough (premade or homemade)
Pizza sauce
Mozza cheese
Whatever filling your little heart desires.
You know you want it!!
National Pizza Month
0Its national pizza month and I have really wanted to make some homemade pizza. I decided on Saturday that it was going to be a relaxing night with yummy food and wine. It wasn’t really relaxing in the end but I did get good food though. I used my easy pizza dough recipe because it is soooo easy and tastes so much better then store bought.
I added chopped ham, mushrooms, green pepper and pineapple. I also used mozza, cheddar and parmesan cheese. I put into the oven on 450 for about 10 min and then on broil just to brown the cheese. Remember to let it sit for at least 10 min because I totally burned the roof of my mouth!!
Easy Pizza
0When J has plans I usually try and make myself something that he dislikes or does prefer so that I can indulge without feeling guilty. Tonight I wasn’t really in the mood to make something out of the ordinary. I just wanted chicken and nothing special. I had purchased basil today to make pesto but forgot it in the fridge so I had to come up with another plan.
I decide to use up the pita shells in my freezer and make myself a mini pizza with grilled chicken. While the chicken was grilling, I threw on a chunk of yellow pepper, green pepper and a foil packet of garlic to roast. I didn’t have any pasta sauce and this would have been perfect if only I had made pesto. I went to my garden and chopped away another handful of leaves. My basil plant is still alive and is getting so small from all my cooking, that’s why I bought some today.
When everything on the bbq was done I brought it inside to assemble. I took the roasted garlic and mashed it up with my chopped basil and olive oil. This was my going to be my sauce. I piled on chopped chicken, chopped roasted peppers, tomato, a bit of mozza, feta, and grana padano cheese. The finished product was amazing! The only thing to make this pizza better is more roasted garlic sauce and homemade crust, but in a pinch this was the perfect meal!
Buffalo Chicken Pizza
0After playing ball all weekend and not having any time to go to the grocery store I was left to try and put together dinner with odds and ends in the fridge/freezer. I could have easily just ordered food but since I haven’t cooked in a while and had limited food in the house it was almost like dinner impossible and I was up to the challenge. I was also totally exhausted so this was going to have to be easy too.
I was slightly in shock with the lack of food I had in my fridge. Basically it was just a bit of cheese and some different coloured peppers. In the freezer was mainly meat, some hot wings, egg rolls but waaaay in the back I found a small ball of frozen pizza dough and then a light went off. I will make a buffalo chicken pizza!! I had mozza, blue cheese, hot wings, peppers and dough!
I thawed the dough for about an hour and then I started with cooking the chicken wings in the oven. Once they were done I let them cool while I rolled out the dough, cut up the green and orange peppers and grated the cheese. I then broke apart the chicken off the bones with a fork and assembled my pizza. I only crumbled the blue cheese around the chicken pieces and I think that was a good choice. It was subtle enough to taste but didn’t over power the pizza either.  I was very happy with this pizza and I will probably try and make is again. Next time I will just use chicken breast and coast with buffalo sauce just so that I can skip the step of taking bits of meat of little chicken wings but for a dinner impossible, I had to use what was on hand and it was still a success. I have to admit, the pizza looks a little sloppy but remember I played ball all weekend so I really wasn’t trying to impress, I was hungry!!
Pizza Dough
0I meant to post this the same night that I made the sweet, tangy and delicious BBQ chicken pizza but I forgot. Here it finally is, sorry its late but just in time for the weekend!
Ingredients:
Combine 2 cups of the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the warm water and olive oil. Add the additional flour as needed until you have soft dough (don’t think you need to use the entire amount of flour, just until its the right consistency).
Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until it is smooth and elastic usually about 5 minutes, adding more flour as necessary. Cover the dough with a cloth on the floured surface and let rest for 10 minutes.
Your dough is now ready to use in your favorite pizza recipe.
The oven should be pre-heated at 450 degrees and the pizza should only take 8-12 minutes depending on the amount of topping you use. Wait until the cheese is bubbly and the edges are lightly browned.
If you’re adding a lot of vegetables there is a chance that your pizza will be soggy or moist because the water from the veggies will start to expel during the cooking. Try to keep the veggies out of the centre of the pizza and that should help.
Pizza Night!
0Usually people like to have pizza on the weekend after a long week of working, but not me. What is wrong with a little mid-week pizza fun? Why save it for the weekend when it’s so easy to make? The 30 minutes or less delivery days are long gone and I find it more annoying to wait for a minimum wage pizza guy to bring me a lukewarm pizza then to just wait for my own to cook in the oven.
Tonight I made a BBQ chicken pizza which is a little more time consuming than the average pizza but it was definitely worth it and saved me more money then ordered it from Panago or Boston Pizza. I also know where my veggies came from, that they’re fresh, and that they weren’t sneezed on during assembly.
The first thing I did when I got home was slice some red onion and slowly fried them to bring out their natural sweetness. Once the onions were tender I lowered the heat down really low so I could go ahead and make the rest of the pizza. I season one chicken breast with salt and pepper and had my guy BBQ it, while I sliced some green pepper and customized some BBQ sauce. I got a little lazy at this point and used some bottled BBQ sauce, but I added some Whiskey to it to give it something extra. If Jack Daniels can have his own sauce then I can add Whisky to my sauce! I also have to admit…I used canned pizza sauce *sigh*. I am still going to call this “from scratch” though.
When the chicken was cooked I let it rest and cool while I rolled out the dough. Remember to add a favourable amount of flour to your counter top and rolling pin so the dough doesn’t stick. Then I added the pizza sauce, I didn’t add too much since the chicken was going to have a lot of sauce on it. Too much liquid can make the pizza soggy. When the chicken was cooled, I shredded it with a fork and added it to my onions. I also added the green peppers and bbq sauce. Once completely covered in sauce I slopped it onto the pizza dough and topped it with Mozza and Cheddar cheese.
The pizza only takes about 10 minutes to cook in the oven depending how brown you like the edges of your crust.
I would also like to mention my new pizza stone. I was very excited to try this out especially since the last pizza I made wasn’t as crisp as I like. A pizza stone goes in the oven before you even heat it up and gets super hot, so when you throw the pizza down on it the dough cooks from both the bottom and top. I really like how the crust turned out and would recommend investing in a pizza stone. The only trouble I had was trying to figure out how to get the pizza from a pan to the stone once it was super hot. I tried a flipper, I tried pushing it but it turned out just tilting the pan and shaking it off was the best way. Good old gravity! Next purchase is a pizza peal!!
