Roasted Vegetable Pizza

On Wednesday I went to the Spruill Farmers Market in Sandy Springs (Georgia). It's a nice little market that sets up weekly and sells a variety of produce, dairy, meat, jams, and the like. For $37.50 I was able to get this:



I think that's a pretty nice catch for less than 40 bucks. In case some of it is difficult to see or identify, here's a list of the produce pictured above:
*3 sweet potatoes
*1 bunch rose turnips
*1 bunch carrots
*1 bunch kale
*1 bag braising greens (collards, mustard greens, and kale)
*1 bag chickweed
*1 bag totsoi (not sure I have the spelling correct on that one)
*2 winter squash
*7 1/2 oz fresh mozzarella

Charlie and I took some of the produce pictured above (along with a few other ingredients) and turned it into this:



Now, let me tell you something. I am a lucky woman for many, many reasons. I have a wonderful family, a husband who constantly wows me with his kindness and love, amazing friends, good health, a steady job, and such. All of that keeps me going, and I'm grateful for the good fortune I've had in my life. However, I think (and hope) most of those things are shared by a great many people. There is, however, one thing I have that most people don't, and that's a husband who makes awesome pizza. Isn't that lucky? Also, he has a knack for knowing when I'm exhausted and don't feel like cooking dinner. I love when Charlie calls and says he'd like to make a pizza for dinner. My reply is almost always an enthusiastic "Yes! Please!".
We decided to make a roasted vegetable pizza with some of our farmers market bounty. Charlie started by making dough. He's been working on the perfect pizza dough recipe for awhile, and after dozens of pizzas and constant tweaking I think he's finally achieved it.
While Charlie worked his magic on the dough I roasted vegetables. I decided to go with sunchokes (purchased at the Morningside Farmers Market last weekend), winter squash, and kale. I thought that combination would give the pizza a woodsy autumn flavor. I sliced the squash, tossed it with a little olive oil and kosher salt, then popped it in the oven (preheated to 375 degrees) for about 20 minutes.





I also thinly sliced the sunchokes (with the peel still on), treated them to a little oil and salt, and added them to the oven. They took a little longer to roast -- about 30 minutes total. (Sunchokes are also known as jerusalem artichokes, but they aren't from Jerusalem, and they aren't artichokes so I go with the farmsy (just made that word up!) term, sunchokes.)



Next up: kale! I gently sauteed a large handful in just a touch of olive oil, and then the veggies were ready! Charlie rolled out the dough, and we assembled our pizza.





Oooh...the fresh mozzarella is so tasty and melts into ooey gooey deliciousness. Bagged, shredded mozzarella just doesn't compare.
Charlie slid the pizza onto the preheated pizza stone, and 12 minutes later we had dinner!





Yum! Homemade pizza really is super easy to make and can be topped with anything you like. We've tried all sorts of toppings, from capers (nice and salty but you have to trap them with melted cheese or they just roll off) to anchovies (the fish flavor is intense...use sparingly!). It's a great weekday dinner as long as you remember to start the dough as soon as you get home from work.

Charlie's Pizza Dough

(adapted from Michael Ruhlman's Ratio suggestions)

ingredients:

2 cups semolina flour*

1/4 teaspoon yeast

6 oz water, lukewarm

1 Tablespoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon kosher salt

pinch of red pepper flakes (or more if you want a spicier crust)

1 Tablespoon olive oil (we just use a nice glug), plus additional for oiling the bowl

cornmeal

In a medium bowl combine flour and yeast. Create a well in the center, and add water. Allow to rest 2 - 3 minutes. Add oregano, salt, and red pepper flakes. Mix with a wooden spoon until dough begins to come together then add olive oil. Knead approximately 10 minutes or until dough is smooth, sticky, and bounces back when lightly touched. Lightly oil the inside of a medium bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and allow to rise 1 - 1 1/2 hours. The dough will not double in size but will swell a little.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. If you have a pizza stone, place it in the center of the oven to preheat along with the oven.

Turn the dough out onto a surface dusted with cornmeal. With floured hands, form the dough into a 8 - 10 inch circle with a flat center and slightly thicker edges (to form the crust), working some of the cornmeal into the dough as you shape it. (Use a gentle hand so you do not tear the dough as you work with it.) In order to prevent tearing, the final dough shaping should occur on whatever you will use to place the pizza in the oven. We use a pizza peel, but if you will be baking your pizza on a baking sheet you should use that at this point.

Top the pizza as you wish and place in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes. Let the cooked pizza rest for five minutes so the cheese and ingredients can settle, then dig in!

*For those of you in the Atlanta area, semolina flour can be purchased at the Dekalb Farmers Market. It can also be purchased in gourmet food shops, and I'm sure it's available for purchase online. Semolina is made of durham wheat and adds a unique texture to the pizza dough. If you are unable to find it, bread flour can be substituted.

Opa! Opa! Opa!

Hello to all! At the moment I am on board a Greek ferry between the island of Naxos and Piraeus (the port near Athens). Aaahhhh! The power of the Internet! I am tapping this post oit on my iPhone so it promises to be relatively short.
This has been a wonderful journey thus far, though not without it's complications. We've been forced to abandon our trip to the island of Milos due to ferry cancellations and have basically lost a day to travel. Just the same, the islands we have seen are gorgeous with their sugar cube houses and dramatic coastlines. We've spent time lounging on a black sand beach, riding donkeys up the side of a mountain, and exploring beautiful, winding towns carved into the sides of steep cliffs. And now, Athens awaits us! But enough about that! On to the food!
The best thing we've eaten so far, hands down, is stuffed grape leaves. Grape leaves are tightly wrapped around bundles of soft rice mixed with a little cheese and herbs. The neat little packages can be eaten in two tidy bites either on their own or dunked in tyziki sauce (my favorite!). We've eaten them twice -- once drenched in olive oil and served with kalamata olives and the other time served dry with fresh slices of tomato. When I return home I'm going to do everything in my power to recreate these tasty little bites. Yum! I could go for a plate of them right now!
We've also eaten some amazing cheeses -- soft, salty feta and Saganaki (a new one for me). The feta is unlike anything I've eaten in the USA. It's so fresh and soft. We cut it into pretty little pieces and popped them into our mouths using just our fingers. Wonderful! The Saganaki was a local cheese that was very lightly fried (almost like tempura) in a thin block. We cut it into pieces and were surprised by it's complex, buttery taste. It was rather hard and had a nice flavor from being fried. Also, it wasn't greasy at all. When I return home I'm going to look it up and find out for certain how it was prepared. It really was extraordinary.
We've eaten many other delicious foods and had wonderful local wines, but this will have to suffice for now. I have pictures galore (Paige has been very sweet to wait until I've photographed all the food before diving in) and will post a number of them upon my return. We have two and a half more days in Greece, during which I plan on stuffing myself silly, then we move on to Italy for a week. I'm sure well find a thing or two there that's worth writing home about! Cheers!

Cheese plates and compound butter

My wonderful husband, who is a very good cook, put together a beautiful cheese plate for dinner last night. It was so lovely that I thought I would share a few photos.




The cheese plate includes gorgonzola, goat's milk brie (a great find at Trader Joe's), grapes, carrot sticks, and rosemary bread. It was such a fresh, yummy dinner!

Charlie also made a delicious compound butter a couple of weeks ago. It's fabulous on bread or simply tossed with hot pasta. The photos below show a big chunk of the butter next to a bit of it smeared on rosemary bread.





Yum! Compound butters are flavored butters. They are fairly simple to make and the can add a lot of flavor to cooking. The butter above was seasoned primarily with fresh dill and shallots, but any combination of herbs and spices can be used. I'll post the recipe for the dill-shallot compound butter that Charlie made soon.

(Not so) Little Cheese Fillo Rolls

Last week, I picked up Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden from the library. Not only is it a beautiful cookbook, but it also provides a lot of information on the cooking styles of each country mentioned in the title and how outside influences have shaped the region's cooking. The cultural information presented is really interesting. Also, the photographs are gorgeous, and I immediately picked out a dozen recipes I want to try at home.

Last night I tried the Little Cheese Fillo Rolls found on page 176. Here is the recipe:

Little Cheese Fillo Rolls

Ingredients
7 oz feta cheese, mashed with a fork
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 Tbsp chopped mint or dill
8 large sheets of fillo
1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter, melted

For the filling, mix the mashed feta with the egg and chopped mint or dill. Take out the sheets of fillo only when you are ready to use them since they dry out quickly. Cut them into 4 rectangles measuring about 12 inches x 4 1/2 to 5 inches and put them in a pile on top of each other. Brush the top strip lightly with melted butter. Take a tablespoon of filling. Place it at one short end of the strip in a thin sausage shape along the edge, about 3/4 inch from it and 3/4 inch from the side edges. Roll up the fillo with the filling inside, like a cigar. Fold in the ends about one-third of the way along to trap the filling, and then continue to roll.
Do the same with the remaining strips of fillo and cheese filling. Place the cigars, seam side down, on a baking sheet and brush the tops with melted butter. Bake at 300 degrees F for 30 minutes, or until crisp and golden.

I had a large bunch of fresh dill in my refrigerator so I decided to use that instead of mint. The filling was very simple to make, and the fresh herbs smelled really good.



The recipe suggests that it makes 16 canape-sized rolls. I did not read very carefully and mis-cut the fillo. Instead of putting a tablespooon of filling in each roll, I put more like three.



So, I ended up with 5 very large cheese rolls.





I think the smaller rolls would be a little crunchier and would certainly be easier to eat, but I'm not sure that making a larger size is all bad. One of the larger rolls would be really nice with a salad as the start to a meal. Just the same, as an appetizer it would be necessary to make them much smaller.

My taste testers (Charlie and Mark) had mostly positive remarks. Mark commented on the nice texture, and I agree. The flaky fillo paired with the creamy filling is immediately satisfying. It's kind of a like a spring roll without the greasiness. The only real suggestion for improvement was the addition of another herb or spice to create a more complex flavor. There's definitely room for experimentation there. I also think trying out a number of soft cheeses is in order. Perhaps a peppery goat cheese, a creamy bleu, or even a brie or Camembert?

This recipe is definitely a keeper, and I believe it will make an appearance at a dinner party very soon. Does anyone have any suggestions for other fillings? I would love some fresh ideas!