Summer pizza

I don't know what possessed me to make pizza on the hottest, muggiest day in recent memory, but I did, and it was good. Prepare yourself: this pizza had corn on it. (Weird for an American pizza, but apparently not so in Asia.)

The pizza was inspired by this one, which used a recipe originally from this book. The toppings were mozzarella, thinly sliced onion, zucchini, fresh corn, red pepper flakes, black pepper, almond feta, a little more mozzarella, and after it cooked: cilantro and some lemon juice. This combination tasted very fresh and light, perfect for the hot weather.
The crust was wonderful: a great combination of crispness and puffy chewiness. I used my old favourite olive oil dough, from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I used AP flour, and added some vital wheat gluten. It was baked at 500 for about 8 minutes. These are roughly the measurements I used to make two pizzas: 168 ml water, 3/4 t yeast, 1 t salt, less than 1 t sugar, 1 T olive oil, 1.6 c AP flour (170 - 200g? I eyeballed it. Bad baker!), 1 T vital wheat gluten.

Corn soup

Last summer we went to a dinner at a local restaurant that was offering a menu based on Charlie Trotter's book Raw. One of the highlights was a raw corn soup, garnished with hearts of palm and curry oil. (I don't own the book, but luckily this recipe is available in the Google books preview.)
My little stick blender wasn't quite up to the task of pulverizing the corn completely, so I strained the soup and used the leftover corn to make corn oysters. Yum!

Sauerkraut and cherries

For lunch today I made the Cherry Sauerkraut soup from Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. (I added a little bit of leftover rice, rather than the suggested millet/bulgar.) This was quite nice, and tasted much less weird than you might expect.

Public Service Announcement

Blueberries are fantastic with basil.

That is all.

Worth waiting for

Back in January, when I borrowed How to Eat Supper from the library, I had a list of recipes that I didn't get a chance to try. One of them was Thai Cantaloupe Salad with Chile, which we had last night along with fresh spring rolls and a pea and rocket [=arugula] salad. Yum! I didn't have any basil, so I used mint and cilantro, and I replaced the fish sauce with a little bit of soy sauce and some vegan nuoc cham. This was really good: I'm looking forward to trying it again with basil.

The pea salad was pretty good too. I made it up as I went along: peas, rocket, some almond feta (from the freezer), lime juice, salt and pepper. (Hey look, peas and rocket: great minds think alike. And yes, in Noho we are only just now eating like they do in NOLA in January.)

Corn oysters

Corn whats? Here you see Creole Corn Oysters -- they're kind of like little pancakes, but with a creamy centre that tastes intensely of corn. I found this recipe in Rebecca Wood's The Splendid Grain, but she mentions that she first learned of corn oysters from the 1885 book La Cuisine Creole by Lafcadio Hearn.
Wood suggests serving them with sour cream and caviar, or with a spicy sauce, or for breakfast with syrup, but I like eating them plain. (Actually, this time I added some minced chives, but I'm not sure I noticed them -- all I tasted was corny goodness.)

Creole Corn Oysters (adapted slightly from The Splendid Grain)
4 ears fresh corn
1/2 cup milk of your choice
1 t oil
1/2 c flour
1/4 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
1/8 t nutmeg

1. Grate the kernels off the cobs using the large holes of a box grater, and then with the back of a table knife, scrape the cobs to get the remaining corn. You'll end up with a sort of corn puree.
2. Combine the corn, milk and oil.
3. Combine the dry ingredients, and add to the wet to form a thick batter.
4. Heat a griddle over med-high heat, and grease it. Drop tablespoonsful of batter on the griddle, cook until the bottom is browned and the top starts to dry. Flip and brown the other side. Keep warm while cooking the remaining batter.

Tom yum tomatoes

Somehow the fridge was full of greens, and not much else. I'd already decided on bok choy to go with some tofu and rice, but I wanted another vegetable, and kale or napa cabbage was not going to cut it. And then I noticed three sad-looking roma tomatoes. At first I was puzzled as to how to incorporate tomatoes in this meal, but then I remembered tom yum soup.

I don't think tomatoes are standard in tom yum, but at some restaurants I used to go to they always threw in fresh chopped tomato and I remember liking it a lot. So, I mixed some tom yum paste with water, added the chopped tomatoes and heated the mixture. Then I added chopped spring onions and cilantro. Done!

Bun

Tonight we had this take on the Vietnamese noodle salad, bun. Rather than the traditional vermicelli-style rice noodles (from which the salad takes its name), I used whole wheat angel hair pasta instead, plus lettuce, fennel, cucumber, quick-pickled daikon and carrot, mint, cilantro and peanuts. The salad was dressed with a vegan nuoc cham -- recipe from Kittee.

Mint and lemon thyme

We scored some herbs from B + V's garden up in Maine over the weekend, and they starred in tonight's dinner. We had Nutty Rice with Cashews, Almonds and Fresh Mint (from 660 Curries), zucchini done under the grill [=broiler], and sauteed red capsicum [=bell pepper] and sugar snap peas with lemon thyme.
The rice was great! (I used long grain brown instead of white.) This was our first zucchini from the farmers' market this season, and we're looking forward to many more cooked just like this.