Archive for October, 2010

October 29th, 2010 Uncategorized | 1 Comment

My friend Elena told me about these disgusting-looking Halloween cookies (Witch Fingers) and now I can’t wait to make them. (Click on the photo and jump to the original recipe at www.lepetitbrioche.com)

 
October 27th, 2010 Uncategorized | 1 Comment

An old cooking phobia is finally conquered. Homemade pizza dough. Thanks to this recipe from Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn, I have the power to make pizza from scratch any time I want. With no rising required, you can make the dough the same night. It’s thin and crispy and just the way I like it. Feeling ambitious (and with the help of my friend Peter ) I also tried Smitten Kitchen’s Simple Pizza Dough. It’s a little thicker, also crisp but with a pleasant “chew,” and requires just 2 hours rising time. Both are great. I combined SK’s shaved asparagus pizza recipe with Apartment Therapy’s dough and it was perfection.

Oh, one more thing. Buy a pizza stone. Trust me, you won’t regret it. You can use them for all kinds of baking; including bread, cookies and biscuits. I seriously cannot believe the quality pizza coming out of my humble oven with this stone. It wasn’t expensive either. At La Soupiere on Mont Royal, a large rectangular stone cost me $24, but I saw smaller round ones for only $12. I also read an article on how you can build your own pizza oven using unglazed ceramic tiles, which sounds cool too.

Even better, when you make your own pizza, you control the cheese. (Cheese equals fat, remember?) Speaking of which, the Provolone Fort from Hamel’s I added to my asparagus pizza was divine. I also recommend adding asiago or anything with a little kick to your basic mozarella base. You can be sparing too. With a thin crust, a little cheese goes a long way.

For the red sauce I followed the link on Apartment Therapy to a simple and delicious red sauce. It was yet another revelation. So easy and so yummy. One batch makes volumes, and I froze more than half. But please, add more than the 2 tablespoons indicated. With the oven at 500 degrees, the sauce evaporates quickly. Even on these small pizzas, you need more like 1/3 cup minimum, even a 1/2. This way you can really enjoy the flavour. For my red sauce combo, I used finely chopped onion or shallots, sliced mushroom, sliced tomatoe and Italian sausage. I also added a little red sauce to the SK asparagus pizza and it added a nice tang. Once you know how to make the dough, you can do pretty much anything you want with the toppings.

I’m so excited I want to open up my own pizza shop.

No need to fuss with the shape of the pizza crust. Leave the perfect circles to PizzaPizza.

A pizza stone gives the crust a crisp, evenly-baked texture all the way through.

Making my own red sauce was so satisfying (and so easy.) Canned tomatoes, olive oil, tomato paste, wine and 8 cloves garlic. That's it!