Pizza

My mom makes great homemade pizza, so a couple of weeks ago, I decided to get the dough recipe from her and try my hand at it.  The recipe is crazy simple (providing you have a stand mixer) and the result is very tasty.

Pizza Dough Ingredients:

• 3 cups unbleached flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 packet of active dry yeast

Directions:

1. Mix the 3 cups unbleached flour and 1 tsp salt in mixer
2. Microwave 1 cup of water for 30 seconds
3. Add 1 tsp sugar and 1 package of active dry yeast to the water
4. Let the water sit for several minutes.  You’ll know it’s ready because a slew of bubbles will form on the surface of the water.
5. Add the water to the flour mixture and blend (using a dough hook if at all possible) on low for 5 minutes.  At this point, you can also add any herbs or other spices that you want in the dough.  When doing a traditional tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese pizza, putting some oregano and garlic powder in the dough is good.  After 5 minutes, if the dough still looks like a bunch of smaller separate pieces, add a Tbsp of water and blend for another minute or two.  If it’s sticky to the touch, add another Tbsp of flour and blend another minute or two.
6. Spray the inside of a bowl with cooking spray and put the dough in the bowl.  Cover with saran wrap so that it’s air tight.  Make sure to use a bowl that’s at least twice as big as the dough. 
7. Wait about 45 minutes and the dough should have almost doubled in size.  This amount of dough will make 2 medium sized pizzas, so if you only need one, you can wrap the other half in plastic wrap and freeze it until you’re ready to use it.  Roll the dough out fairly thin (it should rise in the oven), cover with sauce and toppings, then bake at 400 degrees until the crust is golden brown.

Pizza toppings:

You can always make a traditional pizza using mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and your favorite toppings.  You can also use olive oil or even ranch dressing as a base.  My mom makes a delicious olive oil based pizza with slices of tomato, slices of mozzarella cheese, and basil leaves as toppings.

I’ve made pizza with this recipe three times so far and the best by far was tonight’s incarnation.  I used ranch dressing as the base and on one pizza I put slices of potato (pre-cooked for a couple of minutes earlier in the day) along with crumbled bacon and cheddar cheese.  On the other pizza was also ranch dressing, but topped with chicken, crumbled bacon and mozzarella cheese.  It was so good I would have paid money for it.

Here is my potato pizza prior to baking:

I wish I had a picture of it after baking, but it looked so good, we ate it before I thought to snap a picture.

Chocolate Chess Pie with Pecans

I found this recipe while searching AllRecipes.com for a good pie recipe.  Since finding this recipe, I’ve made it three times. 

Ingredients:

• 1 (9 inch) pie shell
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Mix together sugar, cocoa, and melted butter.
3. Stir in evaporated milk, beaten eggs, vanilla, and chopped pecans.
4. Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell.
5. Bake for 10 minutes.
6. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake for 30 minutes.

Outcome:

The first time I made this, it was a complete disaster.  The nuts had formed a perfect shell across the top, but the filling was runny:

At first, I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.  Two days later, it dawned on me…when I was supposed to change the temperature from 400 to 325, I accidentally turned the oven off.  Turns out, pies don’t cook very well when you just leave them sitting in a slowly cooling oven for a half hour.

The second (and third) attempts were much better:

I left the pie in the oven past the 30 minutes stated in the recipe (about 10 minutes extra in my case), so don’t be afraid to do the same.  It’s a little hard to tell when the pie is firm enough since the nuts form a hard shell pretty early on.  I was erring on the side of caution and I waited until the filling had actually risen up a little and caused separation in the nutty shell.  This might have been overkill, but I had no complaints about the final result.  

This pie was good when it was still warm, but it was even better after it’d had a chance to cool completely in the fridge.  It’s fairly rich, but not sickenly sweet.  With such a quick prep time and delicious result, I won’t be waiting for a special occasion to make this pie again.

Hummus and Pita Chips

When I bought some cumin, there was a recipe for hummus on the side, so I couldn’t resist.  I’d already gotten the idea to make homemade pita chips the week before, so that sealed the deal.  This recipe is courtesy of McCormick.

Hummus

Ingredients:

• 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Drain chickpeas, reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid.
2. Place chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, red pepper and salt in food processor; cover. Process until smooth, scraping down sides as necessary.
3. Add reserved liquid; process until smooth.

Substitutions:

The recipe on the side of the bottle was a little different than the one listed on the McCormick website, probably just amended for the amount of space available.  The website says you can use crushed red pepper instead of ground.  The website also says to drizzle with a Tbsp of olive oil once it’s all blended, which wasn’t in the short version.

Outcome:

Quite tasty.  The short version of the recipe said to add the reserved liquid until you’d reached the desired consistency, but I used every drop and wished I’d reserved a little more.  Overall, this is a very simple recipe for a very tasty dip.

Pita Chips

This is so simple that it’s more of an idea than a recipe.  All you really do is get some pita bread, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle it with a little garlic powder and some grated parmesan cheese (the kind in the green can), cut it up with a pizza cutter and stick the pieces in the oven until they’re crispy, about 10 minutes at 350 degrees.  Keep an eye on them so they don’t get overdone, but there’s not a lot you can do wrong here. 

I read one “recipe” for these that said you could use butter flavored cooking spray instead of olive oil, which would have been even easier.  I might try that next time.

Overall outcome:

Pita chips and the hummus go great together.  I only made a half a package of the pita bread (3 big pieces) and that was about right for one batch of the hummus.  This combination is a great snack either for just having on reserve in the fridge or for a get together.  It’s easy to make and is a delicious, healthy alternative to a lot of other dips.

Mexican Cheese Soup

This recipe is one I found in my Rival Slow Cooker cook book.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. Velveeta
• 1 lb. ground beef, cooked and drained
• 1 can of whole kernel corn
• 1 can of kidney beans
• 1 can of Rotel
• I can of tomatoes
• 1 envelope of taco seasoning

Directions:

As with many great crock pot recipes, the directions are as follows: dump everything in the crock pot, then put it on low for a long time (in this case, 4-5 hours)

Verdict:

This is one of my new favorite chili/soups.  I didn’t even need a spoon, I ate my whole bowl with tortilla chips.  The Velveeta didn’t disperse evenly on it’s own, so you’re going to have to stir it a couple of times along the way, and maybe even cut it into little chunks instead of throwing it in there as a huge block like I did.  In any case, this tasted a little bit like a soup version of tex/mex cheese dip, the kind that you stand by the bowl continually thinking…just one more chip.  I will definitely be making this again.