July 2008 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Top Five Pizzas in the KI Kitchen

I, like many others, am kind of obsessed with pizza. In fact, I’ve been debating since I was about twelve which is the more perfect food, pizza or burritos, and I’m honestly starting to lean toward pizza (please don’t let my brothers hear that). The thing is, while both offer all four food groups in one tasty and easy-to-eat package, pizza just leaves room for more creativity. Sure, you can get creative with “burritos” when you start to call them wraps, but that’s just not quite the same. And you know what? I can put all the things I love about burritos (mmm, carne asada) on a pizza, so…I think it really is the heavyweight champion of my personal square meal debate.

And I’ve made a lot of pizzas here, especially now that I’ve figured out the trick to dealing with sticky dough (I love you parchment paper). And especially since I’ve figured out that I can stop at Bertucci’s on my walk home from work and, for $2, buy uncooked pizza dough that is 50 times better than anything I’ve managed to turn out in my own kitchen so far. And, if you’ve been reading this here bloggity blog for awhile, you might have noticed that I rarely make a red-sauce-and-pepperoni style pizza. I’m all about experimentation, and putting all kinds of unexpected things on that lovely round of raw dough. And I’ve decided that it’s about time for a best-of-the-best list here at the Kitchen Illiterate. These are my favorite, top five things to do with pizza.

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Chicken Pasta Provencal, a new kitchen staple

At the beginning of the summer, I vowed to cook at least one meal a week from entirely local ingredients. I have completely failed in this endeavor. I’ve only even been to the farmer’s market once. Every year, when spring rolls around, I get so excited about fresh, local produce but then fail to take advantage. I am one of those people for whom convenience is everything, it’s true, and finding locally grown and produced food takes time and effort.

The closest I came to an entirely local meal was this pasta dish, and, well, the chicken and the pasta are not exactly from around here. The produce, though? The most brilliant yellow summer squash I’ve ever seen, a perfect heirloom tomato, fresh basil, a sprig of rosemary, all of it from Massachusetts farms and all of it kind of unbelievable. No, this dinner was not 100% local. I’m just not that disciplined. What it was, though, was delicious and possibly my new favorite summer meal.

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King Arthur’s Blitz Bread, or Ghetto Foccaccia

Most of the time, I enjoy cooking projects that are complicated, things that involve many steps and often bewildering instructions. I did recently try to make sourdough from my own starter, which, sadly, was an utter disaster. I’ve been dreaming of making croissants for awhile (I hear this is a three day process), and I have in the past tackled tortillas, chicken mole, homemade pasta, tortilla espagnola, paella: foodstuffs which have a (sometimes) deserved reputation for difficulty. But I have always stopped short of breads that involve making a biga or a poolish. I mean, just look what happened with my starter! Whenever I see a bread recipe that reads “add 1 cup biga” I tend to run the opposite direction, which is a shame, because that stuff is what makes bread really really good.

I am trying to get over this pre-ferment fear, but in the meantime, I’ve discovered a way to make foccaccia without a pre-ferment.
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Slow Cooked Al Pastor-style Pork

This summer is passing much too quickly for my taste. I can’t believe my birthday has come and gone, and even worse, that it’s taken me over a week to blog about this year’s pork spectacle. I’m not sure when or how I decided that my birthday was an ideal occasion for very large, fatty pieces of pork to be slow cooked in various ways, but that seems to be the new tradition, and I’m already plotting next year’s preparation of the other white meat.

But I am getting ahead of myself. This year I got it into my head that I wanted to make al pastor. I’m not quite sure why. In fact, I had never had al pastor. When I was a kid in San Diego, I was a pretty firm believer that carne asada burritos were the only respectable way to go. And al pastor is meant to be cooked on a vertical rotisserie. It’s not like I have one of those sitting around. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about al pastor for weeks, and it seemed as though I would really have no choice for the birthday feast: al pastor it would have to be.

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Tuna and White Bean Sandwiches

This past weekend was my birthday, and as usual, I spent a lot of time cooking. Slow-cooked pork seems to be something of a tradition, and this year, I made al pastor-style pork for a Mexican feast. It was crazy delicious, and I promise to tell you all about it once I’ve recovered a bit. But today, still reeling from a busy, adventurous birthday weekend, I wanted something easy, and I hit upon what might be my new favorite sandwich.

About a year ago I read about making tuna sandwiches with mashed cannellini beans instead of mayonnaise, and it sounded like an excellent alternative: a little lighter, maybe, and I can never say no to beans. But it took me awhile to get around to it, which is unfortunate, because it’s a perfect summer sandwich. I know, I know, tuna isn’t perhaps the safest thing to be eating, but I love it, mercury be damned. And on days like today, when my house is so hot and steamy I can barely move, it’s pretty nice not to have to get anywhere near the stove.

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Rosemary Risotto with Grilled Chicken and Green Beans

Risotto is pretty high up there on the all-time favorite things list. So much so that I will stand in front of a hot stove for 45 minutes one one of the HOTTEST DAYS EVER just to have it. Yes, my friends, I am clearly crazy. Yesterday was unbearably hot and muggy (what is with these weather patterns?), but even extreme discomfort could not stop me from a lengthy, stove-front cooking project last night. And after that I baked bread! Lunatic. However, it was totally worth it because this was some absolutely delicious risotto.

Everyone seemed to like the risotto so much when I put cumin in the stock, and I got to thinking of all the other numerous ways you could flavor risotto. One of the first things that occurred to me was rosemary. Rosemary can be awfully strong, and using it to flavor the stock, rather than cooking it directly into the risotto, gave the risotto a more subtle flavor. It might just be one of my best ideas yet (well, after the Mexican pizza, anyway).

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