Pizza and Apple Crisp

Make Your Own Pizza

Followed the recipe from Mark Bittman’s Bitten Blog for the half whole wheat pizza dough. I let the madre sit out for over 24 hours. Interestingly, it rose a lot in the first hour, even overflowing the bowl, but when I transferred it to another bowl and checked back the next day, it had died down a lot. Separated the madre into two bowls (since I didn’t have any 1 bowl that was big enough). Initially, both bowls turned out much more pizza-doughy when I added the remaining flower, oil, salt and water as opposed to the dough last time which was much more watery. To one of the bowl I added an additional ¼ cup of water or so, and I think that more watery dough ended up producing the crispier crust.

In the end, the full recipe was enough dough for 8 small individual pizzas which me and my friends topped with jarred sauce, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil, sautéed onion, sautéed garlic, fresh garlic, green peppers and hot pepper flakes. The garlic chunks sautéed until crispy were among my favorite toppings.

The pizza doughs were originally cooked for around 4-5min at 515 degrees F, after which everyone decorated their pizzas, and put them back in the oven for 10-15min.

For dessert, we had an apple crumble. The apples were plain granny smith apples, covered in a little brown sugar, white sugar and cinnamon. The topping was:

½ stick of unsalted butter

½ cup instant oats

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup all purpose

Pinch of salt

The whole dish cooked for around 15-20min at 375 degrees. The result was pretty good, though not as rich as most apple crumbles due to its relative leanness. The topping turned out very well, but I want to find a way to make the apples less dry and more gooey, without adding too much extra sugar or butter.

After reading the entry from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian on Apple Cobbler, I might try the following next time:

1) Cutting the apples in bigger chunks and cooking for longer

2) Using half as much flour for the topping

3) The recipe on Pg. 870

Amazingly, the pizza toppings, the sauce, the cheese, the salad fixings (lettuce, pepper, tomato), apples for the dessert and ice cream, all of which fed 8 people cost only $21 and left everyone very full and content.

Recipes to try soon:

Bean Griddle Cakes w/black beans, garlic, onion and basil (630), w/tomato sauce and cheese.

Sweet Potato Fries

This was my second attempt at sweet potato fries. About a week ago, I went to the store and, bought two sweet potatoes and cooked one of them. Although I didn't coat the roughly french fry shaped sweet potato chunks with anything more than a sprinkle of brown sugar, they came out sweet as candy.

This time I decided to branch out a little bit and try two variations in addition to the brown sugar recipe. First, I cut the unpeeled leftover sweet potato into thin rounds, cut two onions into small chunks and split the chopped veggies into three different pans.

In pan one, I covered the sweet potatoes and onions with sherry vinegar, Emeril's Dijon mustard, cumin, salt, pepper and one other ingredient (was it oregano?). On top of this mixture, I sprinkled a few bread crumbs.

In the second pan, I covered the sweet potato and onion slices with a light sprinkling of white and brown sugar and a few drops of fresh squeezed lemon.

In the final pan, I covered the veggies in a thin layer of some sweet BBQ sauce that I found lying around.

I put all three pans in the oven at around 325 for around 10-15min and then upped the temperature to 375 for the last 5 or so minutes.

I would say all of the sweet potato fries turned out pretty well, though not amazingly. The first pan with the vinegar and mustard had some really nice flavor and a little bite. The sugar covered sweet potatoes came out ok, but not nearly as sweet as the first time I made them (I don't know if this is because the sweet potato was less fresh and lost some of its potency or because I cooked if for longer so it was less juicy). The final pan with the BBQ sauce was ok, though the extra BBQ sauce baked onto the pan so hard that it may take days to get off.

Notes for next time: Try cooking at higher temps for shorter time so the fries don't dry out as much. Use fresher sweet potatoes. Experiment with other seasoning choices.