pizza for dessert

This evening a bunch of us went over to Carissa and Julian's house for dinner tonight. Our local supermarket chain makes some surprisingly decent pizza dough, and they had a ton. One of the tentative ideas was to make chocolate pizzas.

I'm not a big chocolate qua chocolate fan, so my first thoughts were to add peanut butter, and since there was one right in front of me, bananas. We rolled out a small test pizza and just spread a bit of peanut butter and sprinkled it with chocolate shavings. It was too thick, but still tasty. I am doomed to never be a chocolatier or pastry chef, as my hands are far too warm. It melts. A lot. Which makes it very hard to work with.

We made a larger version, layered peanut butter, bananas, and milk chocolate shavings. It was pretty amazing. We're now trying a goat cheese, strawberry slices, topped with dark chocolate. It was good, but the chocolate was much darker than I anticipated, so we're trying a refinement. I'm thinking about pears now, mostly 'cause they're sitting on the counter, and they'd be delicious.

Bacon

When I went to find bacon to go with the lovely tomatoes to make BLTs, I ran into a problem. It was all too thin. I went to a butcher, several grocery stores, and even the bacon labeled as thick cut was still about half the thickness I was looking for. The thinner cut works for wrapping things like asparagus or pork loin, but for a sandwich or even with eggs, I prefer about 1/4" thickness. It seems my options are buying a whole slab and cutting it myself, which I'm not quite sure I want to do, as that seems a bit much just to get it cut to what I think is a normal thickness. I think this may just be one of the downsides of living in a rural area.

[TND] 8.28 Simple Red Sauce

This worked out really well again. I used a bit of slurry since I didn't have time to let it reduce, and I think it didn't have an effect on the taste. I used three different types of tomatoes, and it seemed to be a little more depth of flavor, but the "paste" varieties I think make for a more classic sauce. Nigel got to compare it directly to the previous sauce, and said that last week's sauce was a bit sweeter. May have been the different basil, too.

I also made the garlic bread I've been making for the last little while. Roast the garlic, mix with butter, fresh oregano and cracked pepper. Spread it on lengthwise halved bread and top with either shredded mozzarella or sliced fresh mozzarella. Bake it until the cheese is just browning. Let it cool so the cheese doesn't go everywhere when you slice it. It has been and was amazing this time.

I cannot recommend fresh heirloom tomatoes enough. Go buy some before summer is over and you have to wait until next year.

[TND] 8.28 Fettucine with Red Sauce

It is the end of summer and thus it is time for tomatoes. At the Tolland farmer's market, I have found a stand which sells several varieties of heirloom tomatoes, all grown organically. These are beautiful tomatoes. They are large, usually about 1/2-1 pound, and have beautiful red color. One of these days I'll actually remember to write down the varieties. The variety he has most consistently is a duller red, and has a very high ratio of flesh to seeds. I've used them for many things, including simply eating them with a bit of kosher salt.

The plan is to make them into a very simple red sauce. I tried this earlier in the week with the ones from last week, and it was amazing. We'll see if it scales up and works with multiple varieties of tomatoes. The recipe is simple, it's onions and garlic (also organic and from the farmer's market) sautéd in olive oil, chop and add tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and reduce as much as possible. Add chopped basil off the heat, just before serving. Parmesan is optional.

I think if I make the garlic butter tomorrow night, I should be able to make cheesy garlic bread too, I just need to get garlic sometime tomorrow, or have someone pick it up for me.