Happy new pizza

While my pizza prowess is nowhere near that of sp (whose pizza dinner parties are legendary, at least in my mind), I must say that I was proud of this one.

The dough is based on the recipe for olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This time, I made it mostly with whole wheat flour (say 1 part AP to 3 parts whole wheat), plus a little bit of vital wheat gluten. (I also use a bit less yeast than that recipe calls for.) This dough is amazing, given how little effort it requires: you mix the ingredients together (no kneading) and then let it proof for 2 hours. Then it goes in the fridge, ready to be used any time in the next 12 days. When it's time to bake, you take the dough out of the fridge and it's ready to go -- it doesn't even need to warm up.

It bakes at 550F for about 8 minutes -- the crust ends up with nice puffy edges and a chewy and crisp base. (It rises quite a lot, so you need to roll it out really thin. Yes, I said roll -- I admit it, I use a rolling pin.)

This pizza was topped with kalamatas, caramelized onions, baby spinach, garlic and Follow Your Heart mozzarella.

I am hoping the new year is like this pizza -- delicious, and with kalamatas as far as the eye can see.

Pumpkin loves vanilla

This was my first ever savoury vanilla experience, and it was good. It's butternut pumpkin (squash) and vanilla risotto, inspired by this one at Veganize It... Don't Criticize It.

My risotto was half Arborio, half barley, due entirely to me not realizing that we'd run out of Arborio. The mixture worked out fine, but I wouldn't really recommend it -- I think the rice cooked a bit faster than the barley. But the barley half was nice and chewy, so things ended up okay.

The vanilla flavour was subtle, but definitely there. It brought out the sweetness in the butternut.

That's what I'm craving?

I woke up yesterday morning craving pomegranate molasses. (I wish I was joking.)

The day before I had done a fast run (13 miles, each mile faster than the last) and a hard swim after, and what seemed silly to me was my craving. Right-o. (Feeling like I might get sick in the pool seemed, and you will agree, appropriate.) But it seemed ridiculous to not satisfy the yummy sweet craving.

I went online - to foodblogsearch.com - and found a lentil soup with roasted pumpkin. I had no roasted pumpkin and couldn't imagine where I'd buy such a thing when there are strawberry plants bursting from the ground. So I looked to my fridge and found a few sweet potatoes, a lone turnip, carrots, and a little bitty yukon gold. That's a pumpkin.

I'd just read an article on roasting sweet potatoes in Cooks Illustrated, so I gave it a whirl -- with all the veg, including two peppers. But first, the big heavy pot: I started by browning half a LA onion, then added 3 cloves minced garlic (one minute). Added 1t cumin, 1t coriander (ground, both) and 1/4t cayenne. One liter broth, 2 bouillon cubes, 1/2 cup (plus what was left in the bag) red lentils, and simmered it for 30 minutes.

The fancy magazine trick to roasting sweet potatoes is to place peeled 3/4 inch rounds (first toss with oil and salt) on a rimmed baking tray on tin foil (spray it) and cover tightly with another piece of foil. Place in cold oven, crank temp to 425, and keep them there 25 minutes. Uncover, jostle them, and cook another 15-20 minutes. Cut into smaller pieces (if you're me, with a chef knife on that baking tray) and add to lentils.

The recipe called for 1t molasses to top each serving of soup. It was divine. Far more than the sum of its parts, and did a bang-up job of emptying my veg drawer before I leave town.

Urban Compost

This is my trash last week after making dinner.  It should have been soup stock, it should have been layered with dirt, I should be too ashamed to post it...

But there you go.  Waste.

I need to make some phone calls and figure something out.

Time machine dinner

This is a summer meal - soba noodles and peanut sauce - but it has been in the seventies here, and with all that bayou in the air, it felt hot, baby.

After the photo, I added some pan-fried tofu, a head of chopped romaine, and toasted peanuts.  I topped it with a peanut dressing that has become a real pal over the years... I love Didi Emmons, and her pizza restaurant in Cambridge, MA (Veggie Planet, just near the Harvard Coop).  The peanut sauce is from her book, Entertaining for a Veggie Planet.  

From memory (I think accurate):

1c coconut milk (I always use low-fat)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2T ginger

2t chili sauce

handful of chopped cilantro (I added mint too, because I had it)

tamari to taste

1/2c peanut butter

juice of 1/2 lime (about 1T)   

Cookies. (Of course.)

If we can overlook several things: 

Washing my car on Saturday,

Excitement over running "hills" in a parking garage,

The thrill of swimming outside (yes!) under the dark morning sky...

I had a small this-girl-ain't-midwestern breakthrough while making cookies.  I made SMALL cookies.  Seriously.  And they were better for it.   (Plates in photo are actually 3.5" coasters.)

I made some gingerbread cookies from Cooks Illustrated, and two recipes from Clotilde over at C&Z.  Her chocolate cookies - half whole wheat flour to support all that chocolate - are amazing.  (I followed recipes here and used butter.)

My second pomegranate

A pomegranate was the star of tonight's quick dinner.

We had black beans (Goya's black bean soup -- MSG-haters beware, but for everyone else, this stuff is great: deliciously seasoned black beans straight out of the can. I would never have known, were it not for smitten kitchen.) and rice (a mix of wild rice and brown rice, out of the freezer), Tofutti sour cream (only in the house because of latke festivities last night), blue corn chips, and what R called a 'pomegranate avocado salad'. It's this recipe for guacamole with pear and pomegranate, but with the proportions radically changed (we only had one avocado) and no grapes (too out of season for me -- yes avocados are not exactly in season here either, oh well).