Boring Dinnernoms an Thoughts

Saving the leftover Easter dinner for lunch tomorrow, so made a pizza tonight. No picture; sorry. Two thoughts on the pizza, though, involving the crust, which is ok but not stellar.

1. Why do "Gluten-free" recipes and cookbooks tout special wheat flour substitute mixes? I've made lots of gluten-free breads using recipes that, in essence, call for a non-gluten flour plus some xanthan gum and/or other common ingredients. But these are in the minority. For the most part, gluten-free cookbooks ask you to make up some convoluted flour substitute and use that. You almost would have to have a separate pantry to store all the things they want you to put into that wheat flour substitute. Why? The three or four types of non-gluten flour plus gum or similar plus what is contained in a normal pantry should be sufficient to make things on the fly.

2. I am really disappointed that focus groups, marketing, or whatever make companies feel the need to tout gluten-free alternatives as "low fat." Fat and gluten are different. People who are cutting gluten out generally are doing it for very different reasons than people who want to starve themselves by reducing fat intake (ok, bias showing.)

So. Goal for next time is to not make pizza until I find an acceptable non-wheat (because of me), non-corn (because of Phil) homemade pizza crust recipe. And yeah, I'll buy another rice crust as a back-up.

Chicken-Basil Pizza

Felt like something good and easy, so a nice gluten-free basil-chicken pizza. As an aside, the basil was frozen from last year's harvest. As Basil Fawlty would say to Mr. Hutchinson in The Hotel Inspectors, "it was fresh when it was frozen!"

Instructions for this one: Make or use a crust. I was lazy and used a gluten-free brown rice crust. Dice and combine 4 mushrooms, 3 large garlic cloves, 2 oz basil leaves, 1/2 onion, 1/2 md tomato. Spread tomato sauce on the readied crust. Shake over dill, oregano, thyme, parsley or other dried herbs to taste. Generously coat with crushed red pepper. Distribute the mixed veggies over. Grate 2-3 oz cheddar over. Grate 2 oz Locatelli over that. Dice chicken and press into the cheese. Bake at 450F for 12 min or until everything is cooked and bubbly but not burned. Serve hot.

Eating notes: Again, arigatou Mechazawa-san. This is the first chicken pizza I've ever had that I liked. The strong basil and garlic flavors also helped. A nice use for leftover chicken.

Ketchup Pizza

Circumstances conspire. 1: Pizza fail from the other night. 2: Wanted to get some chicken from the Fresh Fields but realized I had no money so went home empty-handed. 3: Had one more leftover pizza shell. 4: Thought I had some tomato sauce but it turned out to be chili paste.

The result: Ketchup Pizza. Used Lane's Super-Sweet Ketchup (see Eating Notes below) mixed with Thai chili sauce as the base. Instructions: Prepare the pizza crust or be lazy like I was and use a gluten-free (or regular if you're not bothered by gluten) ready-made as directed. Preheat oven to 450F. Mix 1/4 c ketchup, 2T chili sauce, 1T mixed dried herbs, and 4 sliced garlic cloves. Spread over the sauce. Layer over sliced veggies to suit (I used 4 mushrooms and half a red onion; again, what I had on hand). Grate 2 oz or to taste hard cheese over all. If desired, top with sliced meat or sausage (I used spicy Italian sausage). Cook 13 - 18 min or until done to taste.

Eating Notes: Lane's ketchup now tastes really sweet. I'm not sure if it's really all that much sweet-tasting or if because I'm eating far fewer sweets than I used to it's my palate that has changed. But it's a surprise and kind of nice when you think about what to mix it with. I think the ketchup/chili sauce was too obvious/harsh, but I will now start planning for more subtle future uses.

Pizza fail

Went to make pizza on the egg tonight and it was a fail - 25 minutes on the grill and still it wasn't cooked and parts were cold. Because the ingredients were veggies, cheese, and pre-cooked sausage on a pre-cooked crust, it was edible, and we were hungry enough by then to eat it, but it wasn't very good.

Diagnosis:
Egg wasn't fully preheated when I put the skillet on. I think the thermometer also needs recalibration. After 18 minutes the cheese hadn't melted and I decided to give it another 7 minutes. I should have realized this was a major problem and just kept on cooking. I forgot that it takes a long time to heat the iron pan and that when the pan and stuff near it is hot, stuff far away may not be.

Irony:
I still managed to burn my mouth on a bit of tomato paste that had gotten very hot indeed.

Mechazawa-san Pizza

A staple of my "pre-gluten" days was Mechazawa-san pizza done in the iron fry pan on the Egg. Who knows why, but we were craving pizza so revived the practice with excellent results. Instructions: Heat the Egg; make the pizza; cook at about 375F or so for about 15-18 minutes if you're using a relatively thin crust.

This serves 2. The pizza was made with a ready-made rice flour (gluten-free) pizza crust I had on hand, plus tomato paste, sliced garlic, sliced chili peppers, cooked spinach, cheese, fresh tomatoes, and spicy Italian pork sausage.

Eating notes: I like the rice flour crust - it is very thin and crispy and holds up well. People who like a chewy crust will not like it, though. Even though this is a small pizza, I use a whole can of tomato paste (not sauce) on it. It's a bit low fat and all, but I compensate with a lot of cheese and fatty sausage. We may be reviving weekly pizza night...