Not your Grandma's baked apples

When I was a kid, I was frequently on diets. My mother would have me on diets, and then I'd go to my grandmother for the summer, where I spent weeks following whatever the latest low-calorie miracle plan happened to be. None of them were very long-lived but while they were going on, they were followed with a fervor some people reserve for religion or military service.

No matter what they were called, they all had the same basic tenets: eat less fatty stuff, eat more vegetables, and dessert is the devil.

This translated to a lot of very boring baked apples that were only minimally sweetened or flavored before being cooked to mush and pretending to be dessert when they had much more in common with baby food. I'm here to tell you, pouring a Fresca on an apple and sticking it in the microwave does not make it taste like apple pie, no matter what the little handbook says.

But now, my husband has some heart issues and diabetes. We have some directives. Eat less fatty stuff. Eat more fiber. Dessert is the devil. Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

What I also have is this kid.

Clearly, he's pretty fond of his apples. Which means we have a lot of them around our house. And despite the fact that he eats them two at a time, it's still a challenge for him to get to every apple in a bushel (yes, a bushel) before they start to see better days.

And that means...baked apples.

I approached the idea with some horror. Obviously, I have issues. Plus, I like food, and I like it to taste good, but I am also pretty fond of my husband and I'd like to keep him around for a while. My objectives, obviously, were at war.


Sweet Heat Apples

4 large apples, halved and cored
4 T. softened butter (I used a butter-canola oil blend)
1/4 c. coconut sugar (maple, demerara or brown sugar would work well, too)
3/4 c. oatmeal
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 aji panca chile, finely chopped (Any mild, fruity dried chile would work. If that's not available, use a little cayenne to taste.)
1 c. apple cider

Place apple halves in a large baking dish. Cut butter with sugar, oatmeal, vanilla caviar (bury your scraped bean in some sugar for a great treat, or save and refrigerate to steep in some hot milk for a fantastic alternative to hot chocolate), cinnamon and chile. Divide between apple halves, mounding on top. Pour cider into baking pan (not over apples). Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Serve drizzled with the baking liquid.

Say CHEESE!

The difference between a bad pizza, a good pizza and a really fantastic pizza can be summed up in one simple word.

Cheese.

If you go out and have a really good pizza, and can't really pinpoint what this one has that another one doesn't, chances are, it's the cheese. Good pizzarias guard three things jealously: their crust recipe, their sauce recipe, and their cheese blends.

Most people assume that "pizza cheese" is mozzarella, but mozz is only a part of the story.

See that? That's the good stuff. Fresh mozzarella. But I've got a secret. Not that great for pizza. Oh, it's got a place in the pizza pantheon, namely on the Margherita pizza, with sliced uber-fresh tomatoes and basil leaves. That's divine, but it's also high art, not really the kind of thing that goes with movie night or tailgating.

The more familiar mozzarella is what we know from the inside of a million pizza boxes and tubes of string cheese and molten hot crunch coated sticks of deep-fried goodness. It's drier than fresh mozz, and melts into delicious webs of stringiness.

And then, there's provolone. Shredded and mixed with the mozzarella, it's a fantastic way to add more flavor to the mild taste of the other cheese. Provolone has a slight nuttiness, and is sometimes smoked. As it ages, it becomes more sharp. Sliced provolone is great for creating layers of flavor in your pizza. Place a blanket of slices over your crust, then top with sauce and shredded cheese to keep crust from getting gummy.

Shredded parmesan is very different from powdery grated parmesan. It melts like mozzarella, but has a real flavor punch. A little goes a long, long way. I buy a quarter pound chunk of fresh parm every month. I use it in a lot of stuff, but those four ounces last and last.

A simple cheese pizza is one of my favorite things. Nothing extra. Nothing fancy. Just a couple kinds of cheese, tossed together on some bread with a little sauce. I can give you this easy formula for pizza success:

1 crust + 5 slices provolone + sauce + 1 c. shredded mozzarella + 1/2 c. shredded parmesan.

Easy to add any topping you want, but trust me. Just once, keep it simple. Stop and savor the cheese.

Vampire B-Gone

For some people, the best part of an Italian meal is the pasta. Or the sauce. Or the antipasto. Or the salad.

For me, it is garlic bread. The kind that is absolutely saturated with butter and smells like a can of vampire repellent. Covered with a melted blanket of gooey cheese? Even better.

My husband is unnatural and wrong. He doesn't like garlic bread. He's a very bad Italian, in my opinion, but I'm willing to go with it because he is content, even happy, to eat naked slices of plain bread while I retain possession of all the butter-soaked goodness.

In my opinion, there is no better example of garlic bread the way God intended it than Schwan's Five Cheese Garlic French Bread.

Isn't it lovely? Sigh. The crust is basically just a vessel to contain the butter, and a platform for the cheese. It should come with a vial of nitroglycerin, and I just can't bring myself to care.

It's hard to get exactly the right effect at home. Too much butter and it gets soggy. Too little and it's light on flavor. Not the perfect bread and it falls apart. I've tried it a dozen different ways, and it's always paled beside my ideal. Until now.

My recent forays into the doctoring of store-bought pizza have had an unforeseen benefit. I may have made the best garlic bread ever.

I started with a plain cheese pizza. I used a store-brand rising crust. A DiGiorno knock-off. I followed the package directions for oven temperature.

And then I got out the butter. I melted 2 ounces in a small saucepan, and added the same amount of olive oil. Before it was too hot, I threw in two cloves of chopped garlic, and cooked over low heat. I threw in a tablespoon of fresh parsley from my garden, and a half-teaspoon each of dried basil and oregano. I added a dash of pepper. (I might throw in some crushed red pepper next time, just for kicks.) And most important, I watched it carefully and pulled it off the flame before the garlic turned brown. Burned garlic makes for nasty garlic bread.

When I heard Dracula pass out cold on the porch, I drizzled the fragrant mix all over the frozen pizza. Then I popped it in and...

Yeah, don't be ridiculous. Like I'd stop there. That's when I broke out more cheese. A cup of mozzarella, and a few tablespoons of parmesan. The shredded kind, not the grated stuff in a can. I'm not usually a big ingredient snob, but everybody has the hill they choose to die on, and decent parmesan is mine. At least in this instance.

Then in the oven it goes. No pizza pan. Just straight on the rack, or if you are lucky enough, on a blistering hot pizza stone, like this one.
                                                                














I've actually got a professional restaurant kitchen pizza oven, a souvenir from the days when my husband actually offered some of the finest pizzas in the greater Pittsburgh area. I love it. But I find it easier to just use my regular oven with a pizza stone most of the time, and a good stone gives you almost exactly the same quality. If you can get the effect of a $1000 oven with a $36 stone, go for it.

When you're done, you get something that looks like this:

It's got everything my favorite garlic bread does, with the added punch of extra herbs and pepper, and the slight background tang of the smattering of pizza sauce, which is reduced to a condiment instead of a starring player by the garlicky butter.

There's also another perk. Eating garlic bread for dinner can get you some side-eyeing. But pizza is clearly a meal, even if it's one that will keep the Twilight crew at bay.

On a roll

Have you ever been struck by the simplicity of something? I mean, just bowled over by how easy and obvious an idea is, and how, despite that, you knew nothing about it?

This is how I feel about pepperoni rolls.

Right hand to God, I never heard of a pepperoni roll until I was dating my husband. Pepperoni pizza? Sure. Bread sticks? Uh huh. Cheesy sticks? Absolutely. But the idea of simply combining pizza dough with spicy slices of pepperoni? Never thought of it.

For the uninitiated who are as clueless as I was, they are just as good as they sound. In the classic, it's nothing but bread and meat, but in baking, the pepperoni releases its savory oils and bathes the dough in flavor. I like to add a sprinkling of parmesan cheese for a salty counterpoint.

You also often see them fashioned in a kind of knot shape that traps all that goodness inside, but I think this has a downside. You end up with pockets of spice in the midst of crusty bread. I like to make mine in a jelly roll configuration that insures regular intervals of flavor and structure.

1 ball pizza dough (or one recipe of homemade, or one tube of the popping fresh variety)
3 oz. pepperoni
1/4 c. shredded or grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a baking sheet or a pizza stone.

Roll out dough into a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Scatter pepperoni evenly across the dough. Top with parmesan. Roll up in cinnamon roll fashion, pinching closed. Slice into inch-thick slices. Place cut side down on baking sheet or stone. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through. (Yeah, you'll probably have to throw yourself on some fresh baked bread to see if it's done. The ultimate sacrifice.)

Pickin' on shrimp

For our Dinnertime Tuesday, I'm taking you all to my house on Christmas Eve.

Our dinner is a quilt of my husband's traditional Italian fish extravaganza, and the ironically Italian food my German family has made for Christams Eve for years and years.

For my husband, Christmas isn't Christmas without a table groaning under the weight of an ocean of fish. From fried chunks of succulent baccala to curly magenta tentacles of calamari, from salty anchovies to silvery smelt, there isn't a water-breathing beast safe while my husband is around. Especially juicy pink shrimp, which he pines to slather in a cocktail sauce so laden with horseradish it burns behind your eyes and makes you breathe so deeply you can feel the oxygen molecules in your blood.

At my house, Christmas Eve was usually lasagna or stuffed shells. Something more special than spaghetti, but easy to throw together hours beforehand and toss in the oven, forgetting about it until starving people gathered around the table. Then with a couple of quick steps, bubbling cheesy noodles are there like magic to satisfy the masses.

On Thursday, people will be gathered around my dining room table shoveling both traditions into their mouths as fast as they can. But in this post, you get the best of both in one lovely quick-to-make, easy-to-please pie.

Shrimp Scampi and pizza. Italian as the Mona Lisa, and great complements to each other. Shrimp, butter, garlic. What’s not to like? How about the expense? Instead of serving lots of pricey jumbo shrimp as a main dish, or using tiny, water-logged salad shrimp, stretch your shellfish budget by using good quality, middle-sized shrimp. Serving them on a crispy but filling crust means you can get away with fewer shrimp per serving, but everyone can have a real treat.

Buono Natale!

Shrimp Scampi Pizza

1 pizza crust

1 T. butter

1 T. olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 small sweet onion, chopped fine

1 lemon (zest and juice)

1 pound shrimp, peeled and de-veined (I use the 31-40 shrimp, meaning there are that many to a pound. If I can find bigger shrimp for a good price, I use that, but this isn't a place where you need the biggest you can find. It's also an easy recipe to cut down if you find good quality frozen shrimp in a 10-ounce bag. No one will really notice a few missing shrimp.)

½ c. white wine (No wine? Cheat. Use apple juice. It won’t be as dry, but it will still be darn good.)

Salt and pepper to taste

½ c. parmesan cheese

Fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

In a large skillet, melt butter in olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and onion. Add lemon zest, juice, shrimp, wine, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, until shrimp is pink and firm, about 3-5 minutes. Spread on pizza crust. Top with parmesan cheese and parsley. Bake 8-10 minutes, just until cheese is melted. Overcooking will make shrimp tough.


Extra! Extra!!!

Statistical Slices – Americans are eating twice as much shrimp today as they did in the 1980s, more than a billion pounds a year. The only seafood more popular is tuna. (Source: Earth Summit Watch)

Eggstravaganza

There just isn’t anything as decadent as eggs Benedict.

It’s the dish you get when you are being treated like a queen. It’s breakfast in bed, late-morning brunch on Mother’s Day. It is the epitome of a celebration breakfast for my husband. We don't go out for breakfast often, but I know that if we do, he's probably going to have the classic leaning-tower-of-Pisa stack of english muffin, ham, egg and sauce. It’s not something you ever make at home, which is a shame, because it’s delicious.

But I think what scares many people away from making it, and some from even ordering it, is the hollandaise sauce. What is hollandaise after all? It isn’t something most of us encounter on a daily basis. A sublime French creation of egg yolks and butter, it’s daunting because a slowed whisk or an aggressive burner can turn it into a puddle of grease or a bowl of scrambled eggs without half trying.

And I am a giant wuss. I fear having a culinary meltdown. Because of this, I avoid it in favor of something everyone loves, an easy, cheesy sauce that looks every bit as impressive without the work.

Cheese is also a great way to sell a kid on, well, anything. A picky eater will grimace at the idea of a fancy French dish and a hoity-toity sauce. But cheese? Everyone loves cheese! And every pizza needs cheese. It's a perfect compromise.

1 pizza crust
1 T. butter
1 T. flour
1 c. milk
2 oz. cream cheese
½ c. shredded cheddar cheese or 2 oz. Velveeta
Dash of cayenne
Salt and pepper
½ pound Canadian bacon
8 poached eggs or 6-8 hard-boiled eggs
Parsley or tarragon for garnish

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes. Set aside.

In a small saucepot, melt butter. Stir in flour. Add milk, whisking until combined. Add cream cheese, stirring until melted. Add cheddar or Velveeta, stirring until melted. Season with cayenne, salt and pepper. Spread over pizza crust.

In a skillet, fry bacon just until beginning to brown. Arrange over cheese sauce.

Now, for the eggs. For the most attractive presentation, slice the pizza, top each slice with a poached egg and garnish with herbs. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do this one egg at a time, just use hard-boiled eggs. Slice and arrange over ham. Garnish the whole pie with herbs. This will be easiest if you arrange the egg slices in spokes, putting one spoke on each prospective slice.

Variation: Eggs Florentine – Omit Canadian bacon, replacing it with a layer of fresh baby spinach leaves.

EXTRA EXTRA!!!

Bacon, eh? – Don’t ask for Canadian bacon north of the border. In the provinces, what we call “Canadian” is simply known as back bacon. The most common kind of back up yonder is almost unknown in the U.S. Called “peameal,” it is cured in a sweet pickling brine before being rolled in cornmeal.

Something's fishy...and cheesy!

I love tuna.

I love it in sandwiches. In macaroni and cheese. In pot pies. In dip. I think there is very little you can't do with a can of tuna.

Even pizza.

"Tonnato" is a classic Italian sauce, usually surved on veal, sometimes turkey. A tomato-y sauce filled with Italian, oil-packed tuna. (Nothing better than Italian, oil-packed tuna if you can find it.) And that would make a damn fine pizza. But that's not what I'm talking about.

When I think tuna and cheese, I think tuna melt. But I've seen more than one kid look at my lovely tuna goodness and default to "ewwwww!"

Now, it's not that my tuna is full of weird and inexplicable ingredients. My tuna is a simple thing. I don’t chop lots of veggies. I don’t carefully slice a dozen imported black olives. (Although my son would be in seventh heaven if I did, the little weirdo.)

If you want to throw in capers, or start with a sushi-grade loin of albacore, that’s between you and your God. For me, a tuna melt is the height of ease and comfort, the kind of thing made best
by a diner because it is so very simple. Like grilled cheese or a perfect pancake, there’s no sense in making something convoluted just because you can.

Turning a one-person tuna melt into a pizza that can serve four or more? That’s in perfect keeping with what makes a diner classic a dinner staple.

1 pre-baked pizza crust (I use pre-baked here so the crust gets crispier, just like with a classic tuna melt. But that doesn't mean you can't start with dough. It still tastes delicious with a doughy crust. If you do that, skip the oil, and bake for about 10-15 minutes, until the crust just starts to get golden brown.)
Olive oil
2 small cans (or 1 large can) tuna
¼ c. dill pickle relish (optional)
¼ c. Miracle Whip (or mayo, if, like my husband, you insist)
Salt and pepper
1 c. shredded colby jack cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 5-7 minutes, just until warmed through and beginning to turn golden. Remove and cool. Don’t turn that oven off yet.

Mix tuna with pickle relish, Miracle Whip and salt and pepper to taste. (Like your tuna runnier? Me too. You can add more Miracle Whip if you want, but trust me, too much makes a drippy pie.) Spread tuna salad over crust. Top with cheese, scattering evenly, but making sure as much of the tuna is covered as possible. If this requires more cheese, go for it.

Bake 5-10 minutes, just until cheese is melted but not browned.

Extra Extra!

Diner Table – When is a diner a diner, and when is it just another place to get breakfast? It’s a question akin to creationism versus the Big Bang Theory, and one just as likely to provoke vehement responses. While some people say that a diner is defined by the food it serves, others go with the strict Webster’s Dictionary version, “a restaurant in the shape of a railroad dining car.” (Source: www.dinercity.com)

Carnegie Deli? They don't have pizza!

But...they do have Reubens.

My husband loves a Reuben. There is a better than average chance that if there is a Reuben on the menu, he'll be hip-deep in corned beef or pastrami in the very near future. He would sell his soul for good sauerkraut, so it's really his sandwich Nirvana.

Therefore, a Reuben pizza had to be pretty damn good. It had to hit all the highpoints, and not leave him wishing he had his toasty deli masterpiece.

That just begs one question. How can you make a Reuben on a pizza crust? What about the rye bread? Is this even allowed?

While there are probably deli men in every corner of New York who will say “no way,” I’m here to tell you differently. A Reuben is about so much more than the bread. It’s the subtle blending of very different flavors in one delicious overstuffed sandwich. If you’ve got the pastrami, the sauerkraut, the cheese, the dressing, you’ve got a Reuben, whether you’re eating it on a nice piece of marble rye, or a flour tortilla. (But if you want a pizza that’s truly out of this world, grab a box of bread-machine rye mix and whip up a caraway-laden crust that’s to die for.)

1 pizza crust (pre-baked works best here, or else add a 10-minute baking at the beginning)
½ pound Swiss cheese, sliced
1 ½ pound corned beef or pastrami, sliced thin
1 c. sauerkraut (or cole slaw)
2 large kosher dill pickles, sliced thick
½ c. Russian or Thousand Island dressing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. (This is where you are adding your first baking if you are starting with dough instead of crust.) Top with cheese. Bake just until cheese is melted but not brown, about 5-7 minutes.

Top crust with corned beef. Spread with sauerkraut. (For some people, a Reuben’s not a Reuben unless it has cole slaw. If that’s you, go for it.) Scatter top with pickle slices. Drizzle with dressing. Slice and serve. (Want your Reuben cheesier? A second layer of cheese on top at the end and a quick trip back to the oven make for a great pie, and I think it even slices better.)

Variation: Rachel Clare – Substitute Monterey jack or pepper jack for the Swiss cheese. Substitute smoked turkey for corned beef. Add roasted red peppers with pickles.

Extra Extra!!!

The seedy side of rye bread – It’s a long-time deli favorite, but rye bread has a dark side…and I’m not talking pumpernickel. Rye grain is susceptible to a fungal growth called ergot. When heated, it changes chemically to the compound “ergotamine,” a powerful toxin related to LSD. But is this really dangerous? Ask the experts. Some modern scientists have blamed ergot blights on rye crops for everything from a medieval convulsion disorder called St. Anthony’s Fire to the Salem witch trials. Today the grain is carefully screened to prevent it from ending up on your turkey sandwich, but it isn’t gone. Doctors use derivatives to treat patients for bleeding and migraines.

Who needs chips?

Not me. Okay, often I do need chips. Ridgy potato ones I can dip in ketchup. Don't judge me!

But not for my nachos.

How does one have nachos without chips? (Hint: look at the title of the blog.)

The thing about nachos is this. I love them. I think they are a great way of trying new things because you can be kind of selective about it. I really don't like black olives, for example. But my husband does. So when we get nachos, he eats the olives and jalapenos. I eat the...well, there's really nothing he won't eat on there, but you get the point. And if I accidentally end up with some black olive? There's probably enough salsa and sour cream to mask it.

But that brings us to my LEAST favorite part of the nacho experience. If you don't want your chips to turn to moosh, you have to eat them pretty quick. I can't do this. I eat really slow. I've gotten very used to being able to use a spoon for my nachos by the time I get to the bottom.

Another problem, particularly with kids, is the idea of equity. My husband tries to "save" me by helping me eat my nachos. Usually after he's eaten whatever he got for his own meal or snack. And somehow, he misses the stink-eye he's getting as he innocently scoops up my cheesy goodness.

Kids want fairness. They want to know that Alex didn't get three more chips than Logan, and that Rachel didn't get all the cheese while the boys get naked chips.

Nothing solves these problems like a pizza.

A sturdy crust can hold up to the drippier ingredients of a good nacho. The sour cream, guacamole, salsa, even chili. (We've already proven that with our chili dog pizza.) None of them will leave a pizza crust weak and limp the way they will a thin, crispy chip.

Pizza is easily divided with mathematical precision. No counting out exactly how many chips each kid gets or "MOM! He got more than me!!!" And the cheese is spread in an even blanket over the whole pie, not just on the top layer of chips. Is there anything more disappointing than having half a dozen ooey-gooey delicious nachos, and then a plate of over-salted, usually half-stale chips?

Also, this lets you use real cheese more effectively. I love real cheese on my nachos. Downside? It doesn't stick well and pulls off like the celophane wrapper on a slice of process-cheese food. Melted cheese sauce sticks well, but it doesn't have the same flavor for me.

This is also a flexible recipe. You can make the simple cheese and chile pie, cut it up and let eveyrone add his favorite toppings. This can make it even easier to encourage a picky eater to try something new because there's no commitment. You don't have to try a whole piece of black olive pizza, only to have to pull off the black olives you don't like after the first bite. You can put just one black olive on the tip, and if you don't like it, you're done with it.

Nacho Pizza

1 pizza crust
1 c. shredded mild cheddar
1 c. shredded mozzarella
1 small can mild green chiles
Salsa, sliced black olives, jalapeno peppers, guacamole, chili, onions, shredded lettuce, refried beans, sour cream, cilantro, chopped tomato

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes.

Combine cheeses and sprinkle over pizza crust. Scatter chiles evenly. Bake 10-15 minutes until cheese is melted and faintly golden brown. Let stand 5 minutes before slicing, or cheese will be too gooey. Serve with remaining ingredients, and let everyone top their own nacho with exactly what they want.

Extra Extra!

Tasty Tidbit – In 1943, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya first covered chips with cheese and chiles for a group of Air Force officers’ wives lunching in Mexico, just across the border from Texas’ Fort Duncan Air Base. The maitre’ d, Anaya couldn’t find the cook to make something for the ladies, and so he whipped up the dish and named it Nacho’s Especiales. (Source: San Antonio Express-News)

A chili is in the air

My mother isn't allowed to have chili dogs anymore.

Once, when she was pregnant with my brother, she needed a chili dog so bad, she made my stepfather get a ticket for making an illegal left turn. That was the end of chili dogs for her.

But I can understand. Okay, my pregnancy cravings never ran toward Coney dogs, but hey, what's not to like. Zesty, meaty chili. Zippy, stringy cheese. The ever popular hot dog. It's a classic combination.

Actually, on a pizza, chili dogs have all the fun of the original, but none of the drippy mess.

Chili Dog Pizza

1 pizza crust
1 cup chili (homemade, take-out, canned, whatever)
½ c. light red kidney beans
8 hot dogs, sliced into coins
1 c. shredded sharp cheddar
1 c. shredded mozzarella
Onions, relish, ketchup, mustard, etc. (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

Mash kidney beans with a fork. Stir into chili until combined. Spread over pizza crust. Scatter hot dog slices over chili. Top with cheeses. Bake for 20 minutes. Serve favorite frankfurter condiments for topping individual slices.

Pizza...on the Cobb

My husband loves Cobb salad. He orders it everywhere we ever go. Does he do this so he can experience the joy of eating something he loves?

No.

He does it so he can complain about it. If I have heard "This isn't a real Cobb salad" once, I have heard it ten million times. I cringe when I see Cobb on a menu. I know exactly where my day is headed from there.

He has issues with the ingredients. People like to change things up, after all, and if you change something that SHOULD be on a Cobb, he feels you are honor-bound to call it something else. No avocado? Pack it up and go home. No blue cheese? How can you even serve that to people?

And making huge changes? Illegal. Possibly a federal thing. There was an instance with a Mexican Cobb once... I felt really bad for the waiter.

And so, I was naturally reluctant to subject myself, and my Cobb pizza, to this kind of scrutiny. It required planning and research. Did I hit all the high points? Were all the components present?

The great thing is, pizza is a perfect canvas for a Cobb. As a composed salad, one that depends as much on arrangement as it does on ingredients, a pizza crust offers possibly the only way to easily and neatly serve a Cobb salad to a group. And the chewy bread is a great foil for the mix of creamy and crisp textures in the mix of traditional toppings.

Are there things that some people won't want? I admit, I'm not a fan of blue cheese. Or avocado. But there's just something about the artistic presentation of a Cobb that makes it seem wrong to pull out the stuff you don't like. So you give it a try. And everything harmonizes so well, you go for another bite. And another. And before you know it, you've eaten the whole thing.

"But that's not really a Cobb."

Sigh.

Cobb Salad Pizza

1 pre-baked pizza crust
Olive oil
1 avocado, sliced thin
1 large tomato, sliced thin
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1 c. shredded lettuce
½ pound cooked chicken, diced
½ c. crumbled bacon
½ c. shredded cheddar
½ c. blue cheese or ranch dressing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place crust on baking sheet. Brush or spray with olive oil. (A little garlic at this point isn't bad either.) Bake 15-20 minutes. Cool.

Alternating avocado and tomato, layer the two in a circular pattern over crust. Top with a layer of sliced egg, then lettuce. Scatter with chicken, bacon and cheese. Drizzle with dressing. Slice and serve.

Sidebar box: Recipe roulette – You never know what you might find in your kitchen in the dark of night. Famed Hollywood restaurant owner Bob Cobb found gold in his refrigerator in 1937, when a late-night scavenger hunt yielded a bowl of vegetables, eggs, cheese and cold chicken that quickly became known as the Cobb salad. According to the Brown Derby Restaurant Group, the offspring of Cobb’s eatery, since that time, more than four million of the salads have been made at Brown Derby restaurants alone.

Hitting the sauce

Okay, I admit right up front that this sauce is nothing like my husband’s grandmother’s sauce.

Hers cooked all day, sometimes overnight, and tasted like, well, an elderly little Italian woman had been working on it all day and overnight. When Matthew wants sauce like that, he makes it himself and doesn’t let me touch it. When he’s in a less snobby frame of mind, he lets me make sauce myself.

I aspire to Nana’s sauce, but I know I’ll never really get there. In the meantime, this one makes a good pizza, a great dip for breadsticks and a nice complement to heavy pastas like rigatoni and rotini. It is worth the effort if you have the time. It’s also chunkier and a little more sophisticated than a plain smooth tomato sauce or a commercial pizza sauce. Give it a go after your kids have gotten accustomed to something a little higher in tone.

Nana's Sauce

2 T. olive oil
¼ c. chopped onion
¼ c. chopped celery
¼ c. chopped carrot
1 clove garlic, minced
1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
½ c. beef broth
½ c. red wine
1 T. sugar
1/2 t. dried oregano
1 t. dried basil
Salt and pepper
1 T. grated parmesan

In a heavy, non-aluminum saucepan, heat oil. Add onion, celery, carrots and garlic. Cook until softened and onions are translucent. Add tomatoes with liquid. Cook until liquid is reduced by half. Add tomato paste and stir to combine thoroughly. Add broth, wine and one tomato-paste can of warm water. Stir in sugar, seasonings and cheese. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until sauce is thick and almost ketchup-like in consistency. For pizza sauce, it has to be thick. To use for pasta, add more water, broth or wine, whichever appeals to you most.

Variations:

Bolognese - Add 1 lb. ground sirloin or Italian sausage after cooking vegetables and before adding tomatoes. Brown thoroughly and drain excess grease before proceeding. Lace with a drizzle of cream before serving.

Puttanesca - Add ½ c. sliced black olives and 1 T. anchovy paste with tomatoes.

Arrabbiata - Add 1 hot banana pepper, sliced in rings, with tomatoes. Add 1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes with seasonings. Increase sugar to 2 tablespoons.

Extra Extra!

Looking for a Few Good Women? – Many people know that pasta puttanesca is named for the puttas, or prostitutes, who first assembled it from the odds and ends in their cupboards when they had time between customers. Most people don’t know that it has a second name, Pasta a la Buono Donna, or Good Woman’s Pasta, so as not to impugn the honor of the average Italian housewife who whipped it up, too.

A German-Italian alliance is forged!

Okay, that might sound a little scary to some. But this isn't about keeping the trains running on time or going after the rest of Europe with a whip and a chair. It's about introducing delicious German food through a classic Italian staple.

You see, my husband is Italian. Both sides, all the way back to the Naples and Calabria. Me? I'm a Germanic mutt. My family tree has a German trunk, with major branches from Switzerland, Austria, and Prussia. Our kitchen is a metaphor for our marriage, alternately producing veal Milanese and wiener schnitzel.

My husband loves German food. My father-in-law doesn't particularly trust anything that isn't a steak or a bowl of pasta. This pizza was a way to produce the ethnic flavors I love in a comforting, familiar form for him.

Oktoberfest!

You don’t have to wait until fall to appreciate juicy German sausages cooked in beer, or mustard with a spicy kick different from Dijon or hot English varieties. A pizza crust topped with Deutschland delicacies is a welcome slice of October any time of year.

1 pizza crust
1 pound bratwurst or kielbasa (Yes, I know, kielbasa’s Polish.)
1 beer
1 sliced red onion
¼ c. spicy German mustard
1 c. sauerkraut
1 c. shredded Swiss cheese
1 c. mozzarella cheese

In a large skillet, combine sausages, beer and onions. Simmer, covered, until sausages are plump and cooked through. Remove lid and continue cooking until beer is just evaporated. Remove from heat. Let cool about 5-10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pizza crust on baking sheet. Spread crust with mustard. Slice sausages into bite-sized pieces. Scatter onions and sausages over crust. Top with sauerkraut. Combine cheeses and sprinkle on pizza. Bake 15 minutes or so, until cheese is melted and starting to brown.

EXTRA EXTRA!!!

The gang’s all beer – When most people ask for a beer, they don’t think about what kind of drink they really want. For most people in the U.S., a beer is really a pilsner, a clear gold drink with bohemian roots. But that isn’t the only lager on the loose. A beer by any other name might be an ale, a stout, a wheat, a porter or a lambic. Each has characteristics as different as varieties of cheese or wine.

You can't have a pizza without a crust

Making fresh dough isn’t as easy as opening a wrapper or cracking into a cardboard tube, but it does have its rewards. Mixing flour and water is ancient custom, one of the earliest ways human beings fed themselves. The heady scent of developing yeast and burgeoning dough is an almost primal connection to the past.

It’s also a great way to introduce kids to the kitchen while throwing in a little science and math for good measure. What makes powdery flour and warm water turn into a satiny elastic? How does dough rise? How do you double a recipe to make two pizzas instead of just one?

But dough isn’t all there is to a good pizza. To cover the basics in full, you’ve got to have the sauces, the spices, and some of the other things that any good pizza chef knows inside and out.

Simply Splendid Pizza Dough

I would like to pretend that this is my recipe. I can’t. It’s my husband’s. It really had to be. Matthew is so Italian he bleeds olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and if a crust isn’t up to snuff, he has no problem picking off the cheese and pepperoni and leaving the bread lonely on the plate. Let that be a lesson to you. While good toppings can cover a mediocre crust and give you a great meal, a great crust is the first step in something that’s truly wonderful.

1 envelope active dry yeast
½ c. hot water
½ c. milk
2 t. sugar
1 T. butter, melted
3 c. bread flour
1 ½ t. salt
Oil

Place yeast in bowl. In a glass measuring cup, combine hot water, milk, sugar and butter. Pour over yeast and mix gently. Allow to sit about five minutes or until yeast is developed and creamy. Add half of the flour and all of the salt, stirring until thoroughly combined. Add remaining flour a spoonful at a time, kneading by hand until dough is thick and tacky. Continue kneading for at least two minutes. Dough should be smooth and stretchy when ready.

Drizzle dough with oil. For truly Italian flavor, use extra-virgin olive oil, but any vegetable oil will do. Use a couple tablespoons, enough to lubricate the dough and the bowl. Set aside for about an hour, or until dough has doubled in size.

If you are not ready to bake, the dough can be wrapped and refrigerated for up to two days.

When you are ready to get baking, let your dough come back to room temperature. By hand, pinch and pull your dough into the same basic size and shape as your pan with a heavy lip around the edge. A round metal or stone pizza pan is your best choice, but the final decision will have an impact on how your crust turns out, and how long it takes to cook.

On a metal pan, crusts will cook to a chewy, doughy turn in about 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. For a firmer or crisper crust, push that a little further. The best way to judge whether a fresh dough crust is done is to check the lip for desired doneness, then use a spatula to lift the pie off the pan and check the color and doneness of the bottom. As a rule, if the bottom of the crust is golden brown, the inside will be perfectly cooked.

On a stone pan, cooking time will actually be lower, if you place your pan in a cold oven and bring up to temperature as the oven preheats. This means you have to form your crust on another surface and slide it onto the hot pan. My favorite way of doing this is to use a cookie sheet (a pan without sides, not to be confused with a sheet pan that has shallow sides like a cake pan) dusted with corn meal to allow the crust to slide easily. This can take a little practice and may result in some abstract, free-form pizza shapes. Don’t worry about it. They still taste good.