Tomato-pesto pizza

Ever wrestle with that terrible feeling of trying to decide whether to make your pizza  base out of tomato sauce or pesto? Worry no more.

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The Dough:

We'll go with an easy, "no-knead" recipe for this one. Take 1.25 cups of water, and add 2.5 teaspoons of yeast, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and 3 cups of flour. Stir it all together, let it rise for 2 hours, and then put it in the fridge. This'll be enough for 1 pizza dinner and 1 calzone dinner. Awesome.
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The Tomato Sauce:

Finely chop 1 medium onion and 1 shallot, and saute in some olive oil until the onion/shallot is soft. Add a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes, turn the heat to medium-high, and simmer until the tomatoes start to break down. Add a bit of salt, rosemary, oregano, and ground pepper to taste. Reserve half of the sauce for some other cooking activity, keep the other half simmering.
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The Pesto:

In the world's smallest food processor, try to fit: 1 cup basil leaves, 1 teaspoon minced garlic, 1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts, a bit of salt, and 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Press the "blend" button.
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Pizza time:

Take the dough out of the fridge. Dust half of it with flour, throw that half on a wooden board, and roll it quite thin. Transfer to a pizza tin, and first lay down a layer of pesto, then a layer of tomato sauce. The focus of this is just the sauces, so top with just some grated parmesan, then bake at 400 degrees for about 11 minutes.
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I know, I know...I'm getting really good at drawing pizza.

Verdict: Delicious!! Also, I need a better pesto recipe.

Pasta a la fondue

"...and on a mountain, all of grated Parmesan cheese, dwell folk that do nought else but make macaroni and raviuoli, and boil them in capon's broth, and then throw them down to be scrambled for; and hard by flows a rivulet of Vernaccia..." -- The Decameron, describing a place I would like to go to.


Since man first crawled from out the primordial ooze (sorry, Dean Grudin), he has struggled with the most difficult of questions: "What to do with all of those random bits of left-over cheese from other meals?" Today's simple, only slightly absurd, empty-kitchen-inspired solution: modify a fondue recipe, and serve over pasta.


So: melt a tablespoon of butter and saute 1 shallot until nice and soft. Grate the following cheeses into the smallest size your grater will allow (for easiest melting): ~ 5 oz. gorgonzola, ~5 oz fontina, and ~2 oz asiago. Add the grated cheese along with half a cup of half-and-half to the shallots, and melt over low to medium-low heat. Thrown in a few pinches of ground pepper and salt, and finally add two tablespoons of whisky (you know, to thin the sauce a bit, give it a little backbone, and contribute to the Scottish-fondue authenticity). Serve over elbow macaroni, and enjoy.


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Verdict: Nice. Nothing to write home about, but a bit less heavy than my usual pasta gorgonzola, and with a nice mix of flavors. Next time, I'll skip the salt and add a bit more pepper, but otherwise if I ever happen to have that particular combination of cheeses again I know what I'll be making.


[Update -- Leftovers from this dish: substantially less tasty than the meal itself. I mean, there's almost always at least some drop-off in quality after a few days, but more flavor seemed to leave this pasta than usual.]

"Moroccan Almond" Chicken

This week I used something in the Times International as inspiration... of course, the actual recipe calls for making an entire stuffed chicken, but I scaled everything down and tried to re-create what struck me as the essential flavor combination the recipe was trying to get at.

So chop up 1 onion and 1 large shallot, mix together with 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, and make into a bed on the bottom of a glass baking dish. Prepare a mixture of 1 teaspoon each powdered ginger, coriander, cinnamon, and black pepper in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and coat ~1.5 pounds of chicken breast with it. Put on top of the onion/shallot/ginger bed. Finally, sprinkle a handful of sliced almonds on top, and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
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The conference in Cleveland was excellent, as it turns out. Let me summarize as follows: the science went well, and now somewhere on the internet there exists a picture of me hanging out with Slider at Jacobs Field. I'll try to dig it up sometime.
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Verdict: Nice. Not mind-blowing, certainly, but an excellent future option when I want to make a quick chicken dish but am tired of the usual herb-and-parmesan version that has been my go-to for the past x years.

Next week: I'm not sure, but don't be surprised if it's pasta-based.

Conference Cassoulet

So, p.s., no dinner posts this last week as I am in a conference in Cleveland. I've been here since Sunday, and surprisingly this is one of the rare times I've had internet access. There'll be a new dinner post next week; sorry if you've been holding your breath waiting for this post.

Bitter Garlic and Tomato Chicken

I recently was given a copy of the Times International Cookbook, and for those of you who don't know, it is kind of hilarious. Just leafing through it there are all sorts of writing quirks and various hints that it was, in fact, written in the '70s. Most of the recipes have specific serving sizes (you know, "Serves 4-6 people" and the like), but some of the ones in the "China" section just go with "Serves any number of people. Within reason." Also, based on a very unscientific counting, I'm guessing that at least half of all of the recipes call for 2 tablespoons of warm cognac.

Anyway, today's dinner isn't from that cookbook, but I'm sure some some of the upcoming ones will be. Today I went with a simple chicken dish. Start things off by cooking 7 teaspoons of garlic (a terrifying amount) over medium heat in 1/4 cup olive oil until it is brown (but not burned). Add 1.75 cups of diced tomatoes, turn heat up to medium-high, and cook for 15 minutes, until the tomatoes start breaking down. Stir in 1 teaspoon each salt, pepper, and cilantro (the recipe called for parsley...thank you, herb substitution guide).

Cut up 1.5 pounds of chicken breasts into thigh-sized pieces (speaking of being off-recipe, it called for thighs, and I went to the supermarket, bought chicken thighs, and put them in the fridge. Somehow, between then and now, the thighs mysteriously turned themselves into breasts. I'm almost positive that I didn't actually buy the wrong thing, so it's quite amazing that the chicken was able to do that). Add them to the sauce, and cook until down (~10 minutes). Serve over basmati, and enjoy.

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Well, my phone's camera is still broken, and while I'm sure my homages to Dads MSPaint skills will continue  some other week, this week I've just spent far  too much time creating and editing figures for papers and presentations to get really excited about drawing lots of little grains of rice mixed in among the chicken and tomato.

Still, at least that means that the Science is going well these days -- the Society of Rheology meeting is one week away; woo...Cleveland! But no, it should be fun.
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Verdict: Delicious. Actually, I think I made one mistake with this recipe... I didn't strain out the tomato seeds before adding the tomatoes to the garlic, and think the bitterness of the seeds muddied the supposed bitterness of the browned garlic. Still, this was a meal that combined three of my favorite food groups: carbs, garlic,  and tomato, so it couldn't really lose.