This was part of another phenomenal “afternoon tea” sessions, which are quickly turning into “try every recipe we can in 5 hours” sessions. (Thanks to Ayesha, Sara, Amy, Maryam, and Samra for a great afternoon!) These chicken meatballs were accompanied by Ayesha’s butternut squash risotto and some homemade marinara sauce.

Baked Chicken Meatballs
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

I’m sure you can read SK’s instructions just as well as I can, so I’ll just tell you what I did differently. We made a double batch, so the measurements described should be halved if you’re only using one pound of chicken.

I used turkey bacon instead of pancetta, but the second time I made it, I did not use it at all. To the meatball mixture, I added 1 tablespoon chipotle and about 1 or 1 and 1/2 tsp each cumin and coriander. I forgot how much exactly, but the extra half tsp. will just add an extra kick if you’re in the mood. The smokiness of these spices is enough to make up for the lack of pancetta/turkey bacon.

I also complied with SK’s “accident” of adding tomato paste to the meat mixture itself. It added an extra punch and smooth texture to the meatballs, and I highly repeating following this mistake!

Notice that, for one batch, SK uses 3 slices of bread soaked in milk. I actually used the same amount for two batches. It was moist enough without having to add another 3 slices of bread. Also, I think I forgot to add the egg, but it still came out perfectly. It is a very forgiving recipe!

These really are delicious and easy meatballs – easy for a weeknight supper or a party. Try them!

Both of these were on my list. My “Cook This Successfully At Least Once But Hopefully Twice” list.

Other things on this list include:
- Butter chicken
- Beef korma
- Shakriya (first time was good, second time was horrid)
- Roast beef
- Tuille cookies

What’s on your list?

Baking bread is so easy. Really. Trust me. You don’t even need a bread machine – if you’ve got a stand mixer or pair of strong arms, you can have homemade sandwich bread in an afternoon.

The best part about this is not even the flavor and texture of the bread – just a little sweet, toasted to a light crunch. The best part is not even the smoothness of the butter as it spreads across hot bread, melting into the nooks and crannies.

The best part….is the smell.

The smell is so rich, that your whole house smells like a fancy French bakery.

The smell is so fulfilling, that I stood in the kitchen to do dishes *just* so I could be closer to the aroma.

The smell is so luscious, that on Natasha’s birthday, instead of bringing her a loaf already made, I brought the dough to her apartment and baked it in her apartment. The smell was part of the gift.

And it’s easy. You can do it, I promise.

I’ll tell you about the butter first. The butter was easier than I thought it would be. I took full fat cream and put it in my stand mixer on medium. When it started to thicken, I turned it up to high. The cream goes from soft peaks to hard peaks, breaks, and then starts splitting into butter and buttermilk. You can hear the change in texture when it’s getting close to being ready – bits of butter begin to thwap against the side of the mixer. When you see large chunks of yellow butter floating in a white milky liquid, pour the stuff through a fine mesh sieve. Run your hands under cold water until they’re chilled enough to not melt the butter, then press the butter gently against the sieve or between your hands to extract more buttermilk. At this stage, it’s relatively soft and spreadable. You can put it back in and extract more buttermilk if you want. From one pint of cream, I got almost 1 cup of buttermilk and probably almost 3/4 of a stick of butter.

Okay, the bread. This is from my Good Housekeeping cookbook that Rabea gave me.

White Bread (or wheat, if you want)
1/2 cup warm water
2 pkgs active dry yeast
1/4 cup + 1 teaspoon white sugar
2 1/4 cups warm milk
4 tablespoons softened butter
1 tablespoon salt
about 7 – 7 1/2 cups all purpose flour (or bread flour).

[this recipe is for two loaves, and it's super easy to half it]

A note about “warm” – warm is considered about 105F to 115F. This temperature is really important – too hot, and you’ll kill the yeast; too cold, and it won’t activate. Do yourself a favor – do not try to do this by touch. Everyone feels heat differently, and the container you warm in could be warmer than the actual liquid.

A note about flour - I’ve only ever made this with white all-purpose flour, or a mixture of wheat and white. I would not make this all wheat, because it gets a little too tough – maybe a 60% white, 40% wheat would be the maximum I’d use. If I’m using both, I mix the flours together in a bowl first so the dough is getting a mixture of flours all through the process.

1. In a bowl, put in the yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar. The sugar is the food for the yeast. Mix it together a little, the put in the 1/2 cup warm water. Mix it just a little and then let it stand for five minutes till it gets foamy. Do not be afraid of the yeast, as I once was.

2. Add the butter, the 1/4 cup sugar, 2 1/4 cup milk, salt, and 4 cups of flour. I usually start with the butter and sugar and salt, then kind of add the milk and flour in alternating bits.

3. When this is all incorporated, slowly add 3 more cups of flour. If you’re running a mixer, you may want to switch to a dough hook at this point. Just keep adding in 1/2 cup increments till it starts to pull away from the side of the bowl. You want to stop when it looks soft and cohesive.

4. Flour the surface of a very clean counter. There’s an art to this, which I learned from Food Network – you throw the flour onto the board horizontally, like you are skipping stones on a lake. Pull out the dough from the mixer/bowl and put it onto the floured surface. The dough will still be a little sticky.

5. Now comes the kneading – the best part.

This is not an exact science. You’re trying to get the dough from a blob that sticks to your fingers when you press into it, to a smooth ball that will keep an indentation for a little while. Just work the last 1/2 cup into the dough as you kneed. (or more, if necessary – if it’s humid or you’re using a different kind of flour).

Your dough will probably already have a shape when you pull it out of the bowl/mixer so it’s not going to be as crumbly as it is this, but the principles behind these instructions are good. Push the heel of your palm in, fold it over, turn it around, do it again. Here’s a video one.

There are a lot of purposes to kneading – it develops the gluten in the flour. It pushes the little bubbles out (yeast farts), so you get a tight loaf at the end. Also, it’s relaxing – get your frustration with school/family/life out on this dough – the more you punch it, pull it, squish it, the better the final product will be.

6. Okay, first kneading over – the dough is now no longer sticky and forms into a cute little round. It’s soft and smooth and beautiful. Put it into a bowl that you’ve greased with olive oil. Cover it with plastic wrap that you’ve coated with oil.

7. Time for the first rise – Put this dough in a warm place – “warm” for rising dough means 80F – 85F. In NC, this means my garage in the summer. I take my thermometer into the garage and let it taste the air to check if it’s 80 degrees. In the winter or fall, I put a heating pad on the counter on medium and put the bowl of dough on top (did this with pizza dough last night, worked just fine). Leave it there for one hour, until it’s almost twice its original size.

Be warned. Yeast smells kind of funny. Especially after you let the dough rise – you’re basically fermenting the bread. Guess what else results in fermentation of a yeasty substance? Beer. Muslims generally can’t stand the smell of beer, so this process can be a little unpleasantly odored – but I promise that it’s worth it in the end!

8. Pull out the dough and punch it down – it feels like a down pillow. Pull it onto your flowered surface. Kneed it a little to get the excess bubbles out, and then cut it in half using a knife or – even better – a pizza cutter.

9. Grease two metal loaf pans with olive oil or butter – 9×5 pans.

10. Okay, now roll the half of your dough into a rectangle shape about 12 x 7 (too fancy for me – just a little wider than your dough pan, b/c the ends will fold in). Start from the short side and roll it up, pinching the edges down as you go. At the end, you can put a little bit of water on the dough and kind of push it to seal closed, like a jelly roll. Do this with both halves of dough, and then plop them seam side down into your greased pans. Take them back to the warm place and let them rise for one our until they’re almost doubled in size.

Note - If you want to make cinnamon-raisin bread – add 2 cups of raisins (or cranberries or whatever) to the dough as you’re mixing it. Then, at this stage, mix butter and brown sugar and cinnamon together into a paste and spread it on the rectangle before baking. GH gives the proportions as 2 tbs soft butter to 1/3 cup brown sugar plus 1 tbs ground cinnamon for both loaves – but I use this much (or 3/4 of it) for one loaf.

11. Ready to bake! Brush the tops with olive oil, if you want, and sprinkle with oats or nigella seeds or anything that strikes your fancy. Bake at 400F until browned on top – you should also be able to pull the loaf out completely (esp. if non-stick pan) and tap it on the bottom. If it sounds hollow, it’s ready.

Yum!

If anyone knows me, Sara, or Ayesha, you know that we’re each obsessed with food. If you put any two of us together, the effect is compounded. If you put ALL THREE of us together – there is an exponential explosion of food.

That’s what happened when Ayesha came down to a Raleigh for a friend’s wedding. We had been planning what to make for weeks beforehand and finally settled on a high tea so we could make a lot of different little things. We spent all day cooking up a storm.

Also, our cameras got to visit each other. All pictures in this post are taken by me, Ayesha, or Sara, on one of our cameras. Whoever was the closest to a camera and had the least flour on their hands took the picture.

The menu was as follows:

Savories
Chipotle Grilled Shrimp and Mango Kabobs
Roasted Vegetable and Fontina Paninis with Chipotle Mayo
Mini quiches – bacon and cheese, spinach and cheese
Fruit and nut salad with homemade candied walnuts and raspberry-balsamic vinaigrette.

Sweets
Scones with lemon curd and cream
Mini tarts with vanilla custard and strawberries
Jam thumbprint cookies, assorted flavors
Chocolate truffles

Awwwww yeah baby. And the insanity behind making all this food….let’s get started.

Firstly, the salad. I saw the recipe for making homemade candied walnuts on the Tiny Kitchen and we wanted to try them. The process seemed simple enough – melt sugar until it turns brown, add butter, mix in walnuts. Easy, right? Simple raspberry vinaigrette – easy peasy!

Deception. Lies and slander.

Thus also began the trek of Sara running back and forth from her house (across the street) because we kept forgetting ingredients. We almost wrote an epic poem. Thankfully, it all turned out well after multiple tries!

Well. Let’s let the pictures tell the story. Click the first on the left for the lightbox gallery. Make sure to read the captions.

Then, there were the phenomenal chipotle grilled shrimp and mango kabobs. Sara wanted to try a tropical fruit with the shrimp, and mango seemed perfect. I’ve also now gotten Sara and Ayesha hooked on the wonders of chipotle-in-adobo. We mirrored the chipotle in the kabobs with chipotle mayo in the roasted veggie sandwiches. We roasted eggplant, zuchinni, red bell pepper, and red onions (the latter with balsamic vinegar) and then made them into paninis with fontina cheese.

We made two types of quiche – one with a really delicious halal bacon that Ayesha brought from Maryland, and the other with spinach and cheese. Ayesha put little tart dough circles into my mini muffin pan, filled with the different flavors and egg (dough still raw), and baked.

These were relatively low stress after the spinach-caramel and exploding vinaigrette fiascos.

I had made Ina Garten’s Jam Thumbprint cookie dough the night before. It’s a cross between a sugar cookie and a shortbread – more like the latter….i.e. it’s phenomenal. Sara and I filled the cookies with strawberry jam, dulce de leche, and chocolate chips (because Musa wanted chocolate ones). The strawberry were the best. The dulce were good, but the dulce got a little too brown while they were in the oven.

The little vanilla custard tarts were just cute. Ayesha cut out the pie crust for the tarts and baked them in the mini muffin pan. We let them cool and filled them with the cream and topped with a slice of strawberry.

Ayesha made her phenomenal scones again (how does she do it? she just throws stuff in a bowl and scones emerge from the oven. BOOM. BOOM. FIYAPOWAAAA) (You have to be super cool to know where that comes from). I made lemon curd and Ayesha made clotted cream.

Ayesha also made really yummy chocolate truffles. We though they would be too soft, but after a trip to the fridge, they were fine.

Awesome, right? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

Of course, we only remembered to make the “tea” part of the high tea when we sat down to eat. We ate with Uncle Wahaj and Auntie Sarwat (Ayesha’s parents) and my parents. My dad summed it up nicely – “See, this is why we had daughters. If we had sons and we asked for some tea, they’d say….okay let’s go to Starbucks.”

yay!

Breakfast in Syria is an event in itself. There’s no concept of a “quick bite” – that is a horrid Western innovation. Blasphemy, really. Breakfast is meant to be enjoyed, eaten slowly, in the company of family and friends, and then extended for at least two hours with cup after cup of hot, sweet tea.

I had my first experience with a full Syrian breakfast when my family and I went to Syria in May 2006, when Ameir and I had our Nikah.

There’s an art to it. The whole family sits together, most often on the floor with a medda (spread) laid out before them. There are no plates. Breakfast is eaten communally – everyone has a piece of bread and dips it into the various items. Thus, each dish must be laid out in a pattern, such that each person can reach each plate with their little chunks of bread. If there are a lot of people, there are two or three or four iterations of each dish, and the pattern is spread symmetrically all the way down the medda.

The symmetry is not to be taken lightly, as I learned. As a new bride at my in-laws for the first time, I naturally tried to make myself useful around the house. So, as Fatimah plated all the dishes, I helped Ameir and Maryam’s cousins carry them to the medda. Once I got there, I just set them down sporadically. They’d smile and say “Shukran.” I’d say “Afwan” and walk away for another plate, happy that I helped. When I came back with another, I noticed that the plate I had put down earlier had been moved. I thought nothing of it, and put down the new plates. “Shukran!” “Afwan!” Third sets of plates in hand, I noticed that the second set had been rearranged. Finally, I got it. I just laughed, and then just started handing the plates to the cousins to let them arrange them symmetrically. They laughed too – because of the language barrier, they couldn’t really explain what I was doing wrong, but they politely let me keep doing it without making me feel bad.

Every morning, Fatimah would lead the production of a kingly spread of cooked and fresh plates. Served hot or warm were baid – scrambled eggs; fool – warm, cumin-spiced fava beans topped with fresh tomato, onions, and parsley; tis’iyyah – yesterday’s hummus and bread cooked together with a tangy tahini sauce; mana’eesh, flatbreads topped with zaatar, ground beef, or feta and cheese; and falafel, fresh from the shop on the street corner. Everything got a healthy drizzle of fruity extra virgin olive oil, maybe even from Jiddo’s (Ameir’s grandfather) farm.

The morning after Ameir and I got married, Ammo (my father in law) made fried liver as a special hot plate. I am not a big red meat eater, and I especially have trouble with organs. My father in law is extremely hospitable and generous, and he naturally offered me the plate. I declined, and he thought I was just being shy. “Ameir!” he said, “Give her a bite!” Ameir knew I didn’t like liver, but out of respect for his father, he couldn’t say no. I gave Ameir the “please, no” look, but he had to do it – he tore a piece of bread, picked up a piece of liver, and put it in my mouth. “How is it?” asked Ammo eagerly. Without chewing, I smiled and nodded. “Wonderful!” he said, and turned back to talk to my father.

Meanwhile, I jabbed Ameir in the leg, motioning him to give me a napkin. I carefully released the liver into said receptacle. A few minutes later, Ammo turned back to me and Ameir. “Ameir, give her another bite!” But instead of watching this time, he turned back to laugh with my dad. Spared! It really was a hilarious scene, even at that time. Now, don’t get me wrong – he’s an expert at fried liver. But I just couldn’t do it. Thanks anyway, Ammo!

Cold plates include all kinds of fresh vegetables, sliced and served separately – radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, whole green and black oil-cured olives, scallions, flai-flai (a peppery green similar to alfalfa), and an interesting little thing called ajoor. Ajoor are kind of dwarf watermelons; they’re light green with ridges. Inside, they’re about the color and taste of a cucumber, but are crispier than cucumbers.

Alongside all the vegetables are laban - thick yogurt sprinkled with dried mint and drizzled with olive oil; hummus drizzled with olive oil and topped with olives and chickpeas; slices of a mild-flavored Syrian cheese similar to mozarella, and a creamier cheese topped with tangy apricot or peach jam or sweet honey.

Next to each person sits a small, never-empty glass of shai, hot sweet tea. It’s a lighter brew, a golden amber color, so that the flavor of any fresh herbs – usually miramiyya (sage), na’na (mint) – comes through (and so you can drink as many cups as desired). The host will keep fill your cup the second it’s empty, needlessly asking “Soobik shai kaman?” – Should I pour you more tea? – as the cup is automatically refilled.

Also ever-flowing are the praises to the cook. Yaslamo eidaiki! May your hands be blessed! call out the breakfasters. Sahtain! Allah yasalmik! replies the chef – May you have two healths, and may God bless you.

An hour later, the plates are mostly empty. Leaning back against the sofa, you spend another hour nipping at the edges of the laban to pair with the four more cups of hot tea, reminiscing with your family about happy memories.

Every once in a while, a family should have a good Syrian breakfast. Leave the bowls of cereal or the pop tart. Forget the plates, spoons and forks. Spread a medda, sit on the floor and enjoy the food and family.

I love roasted corn. The savory sweetness of each kernel, the way the grill-marked pieces pop softly in your mouth, the charred aroma. Yum. The best way to eat it is straight from the grill, rubbed with lime or lemon and coated in salt, black pepper, and paprika. You can also shave off the kernels and make a roasted corn salad.

Unfortunately, the latter is kind of impractical to make for a big crowd. Not everyone wants to gnaw corn off the cob and get those little pieces stuck in their teeth. Then again, corn is an essential part of a summer barbeque, and I was unwilling to give up the flavor experience that is grilled corn.

Also, I had better things to do than shave off corn kernels from a million cobs. Like decorate mini cupcakes with my sweet little sisters-in-law.

See – isn’t this much better than shucking corn? I divided up in an exact number how many each pair of hands was allowed to frost with the piping bag and decorate with the rainbow candy sprinkles. We have to make it even to prevent the “Why did she get more than me” discussion.

So I had to recreate the flavor of roasted corn the cheating way, grilling a five pound can of the sweet stuff.

This was surprisingly easy, so much so that I do not have a real recipe. Basically, I drained 5lbs of corn over the sink. Then, in batches, I laid the corn over paper towels, patted it dry, and threw it into a hot grill pan in a single layer. I let it sear on one side till it was brown, then turned it over. At the end, I kind of tossed the kernels around the pan till they were to my desired level of brown-ness. Each pan-amount of roasting takes about 4 or 5 min.

All of these went into a bowl with diced tomatoes and cucumbers, chopped cilantro, and very finely sliced red onion. Some cubed avocado would be phenomenal in this.

I dressed the salad thusly – lemon juice and olive oil, (more of the former than the latter), cumin, black pepper, salt – and, of course, pureed chipotle-in-adobo to taste. (I really am obsessed with this stuff, aren’t I?)

Voila! Roasted corn salad, for a crowd, made on an inside grill pan. Not saying it’s just as good as the charcoal-grilled kind, but it was pretty darn delicious (and I didn’t have to shave all those kernels off)

Okay, so you have leftovers? Make barbeque leftovers soup with this instead of the guacamole. It’s wonderfully smoky and rich.

How many of you are confused right now? Good, you were paying attention.

How many of you don’t know what I’m talking about? Don’t be shy, I can’t see you through my computer screen (or can I?).

Cooked cucumber in a soup? What?

I’m not majnoona. I was hesitant at first, too. But honestly, it kind of just tastes/looks/feels like zucchini in the final stew. No one will notice.

I’ve always wanted to master the simple chicken-and-rice dish that almost every food culture has. Murgh pilau, Dajjaj wa ruz, Arroz con Pollo, etc. So, after years of watching my mom do it, plus a lot of self-reassuring and instructional phone calls from my mom, i finally decided to attempt it.

Success! This was the most yummy one pot meal I’ve ever made. For the chicken, I used skinless chicken drumstick pieces. For the vegetables, I used eggplant, peas, and carrots. I guess this one was more Arab style then desi style because I put vegetables in it and toasted nuts on top. With some raisins and shredded carrots, it could be an Afghani murgh pilau. The possiblities are endless!

Ingredients: these are all variables. You just need one of each thing. it’s about proportions. the directions will tell you how.

Bone-in chicken breast or chicken pieces
Basmati Rice
Vegetables: Eggplant (fried), Carrots, frozen peas
Base flavoring: Onions and garlic
Spice mixture: cumin, turmeric, garlic powder, paprika/cayenne, black pepper
Cooking Liquid: Water (or stock, or water + Chicken bullion cubes)
Garnish: Cucumber-Mint yogurt and nuts toasted in oil

Directions
1. Chop and pan fry the eggplant until golden brown on the edges. Lightly sautee chopped carrots, if desired.

2. Chop and sautee onions and garlic in some olive oil; add some tomato paste if desired.

3. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Sprinkle very strongly with spice mixture and put, seasoned side down, into the hot onion/garlic pan to sear. No matter how many chicken pieces are being used, only sear the chicken in one layer.

4. While the chicken is searing, season the other side. Turn to brown both sides.

5. Add in the amount of chicken stock (water + bullion) needed to cook the rice (1:2 ratio rice to liquid) plus 1/2 cup extra stock per cup of rice to compensate for the chicken. (e.g. for two cups of rice, use 4 + 1 cup stock)

6. Add all the chicken to the liquid. Taste the stock and adjust spices and salt as needed. Bring the liquid to a boil, then let it simmer rapidly for 30 minutes.

7. Add washed rice, eggplant, diced carrots, and frozen peas to the pot. Stir well to distribute everything evenly.

8. Bring the pot to a boil. Let it boil until the liquid is almost dried out. Cover and lower the heat almost all the way down. Let it “steep” until the liquid is all dry.

Serve with yogurt with mint and cucumbers.

To serve Arab style: Lightly sautee/toast almonds and/or pine nuts in a pan with olive oil. Spread the rice in a large dish and top with chicken. When the nuts are golden brown and crunchy, pour the nuts and oil all over the top of the rice.

For Kebsa, an Arab chicken with tomatoey-rice dish: No eggplants, but shredded carrots and/or chickpeas if desired. For the cooking liquid, mix one part tomato sauce with one part stock. Add chopped tomatoes before cooking the rice. Serve with a tomato-jalapeno-onion relish.

Afghani Palau: brown the onions very well before adding the chicken. No eggplant, but shred the carrots and add raisins before boiling and steeping the rice.

Arroz con Pollo: use sofrito (onions, garlic, green peppers) as a base for searing the chicken instead of just onions and garlic. Carrots and peas are the usual vegetables for this dish.

For an Asian variation: Use white and green onions, garlic, and ginger as base to sear chicken. Season the chicken with soy sauce, allspice, garlic, ginger, black pepper. Add mushrooms, shredded cabbage, and shredded carrots before cooking the rice.

This works well with any pizza dough you freeze. The process is simple – roll it out, fill it, fold it, crimp it, and bake it!

Chipotle Chicken and (Turkey) Bacon Calzones

I don’t remember the exact recipe, so we’re just gonna go with some approximation.

1. Marinate chicken in chipotle-in-adobo. Grill. Cube.
2. Mix ricotta with mozzarella and dried herbs.
3. Crisp (turkey) bacon in a pan and chop.
4. Roll out pizza dough till it’s pretty thin. Put down the ricotta, then (turkey) bacon, then chicken. Put some more mozzarella on top.
5. Wet the edges of the dough. Fold over the dough and crimp the edges. Brush the top with egg wash and sprinkle some Parmesan on top.
6. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, until golden brown on top.
7. Serve with tomato sauce.

So Angela and I spent a whole afternoon emailing back and forth about these toppings. We may or may not have been at work at the time.

We had four types of pizzas.

1. Plain tomato sauce and mixed cheese
2. Roasted vegetable and mozzarella
3. Chipotle chicken and pineapple with colby jack and cheddar
4. White pizza with onions, tomatoes, olives, topped with arugula and drizzled with balsamic vinegar (o.m.g.)

Firstly, you roll the dough out or spread it with your hands. If you overwork it at this point, the dough might start getting an attitude, like 3-year olds who just won’t move, no matter how much you try to drag them out of their chair. If this starts to happen, just leave it alone and let it sit for a few minutes to let it relax (this usually works with 3 year olds too), and then it’ll roll out nicely again.

Angela says: Heat oven to 415°F and grease a pizza pan. Stretch the pizza out by hand, fitting it to the pan. [me: for some extra oomph, we sprinkled the dough with garlic powder and herbs before baking.] Bake the dough for 7 or 8 minutes or until it turns a little brown. Add toppings and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes.

All the toppings are pretty self explanatory. The roasted veggie pizza had balsamic-roasted red onions, eggplant, bell pepper, tomatoes, and mushrooms. I’ll elaborate on my two favorite pizzas in detail.

Chipotle chicken and pineapple pizza with colby jack and cheddar

1. Chicken: Overnight, marinate chicken in a mixture of pureed chipotle-in-adobo, cajun seasoning, and ranch dressing. Grill and cut into chunks.
2. Sauce: Into normal marinara sauce, mix in a bit of pureed chipotle-in-adobo, as much spice as you enjoy
3. Top pre-baked pizza dough with chipotle sauce, chicken, little bits of pineapple, and cheese. Something tangy would work best here – the bag I had was a mixture of colby jack and cheddar. Pepper jack would work great too.

White pizza with onions, tomatoes, olives, topped with arugula and drizzled with balsamic vinegar
Pictures are in Lightbox – click the first on the left to start the slideshow.

1. Prebake a pizza crust.
2. Spread on top of the pizza dough: very thinly sliced red or white onion, thinly sliced tomatoes, chopped olives, cheese (parmesan or some Italian blend), and parsley. Bake till cheese is melty and delicious.
3. When it comes out of the oven, top the pizza with fresh arugula. Put pizza back in the oven to wilt the arugula a little.
4. Before serving, drizzle with balsamic vinegar.

I’ve wanted to know how to make homemade pizza for a very, very long time. I was too chicken to try it myself though because frankly, yeast scares me a little. I scoped out my target carefully. I narrowed it down to Mario Batali, because he just cracks me up, and Angela, because she used to bring delicious looking homemade pizza for lunches. Mario was busy when I called, so I asked Angela for help.

Now, to give you a little background, Angela and I both love to cook. In fact, we spent much of our 8:45 am Professional Responsibility class talking about food over G-chat (while sitting next to each other). But, the first time we actually got together to cook something……the Infamous Brownies happened. They were…..well, quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever baked. We won’t talk about it any more than that. It’s quite traumatic.

BUT since then, the score is in our favor. Food – 1. Angela and Taiyyaba – 3 (one for the pizza, one for the focaccia, and one for the calzones with the leftover dough – coming later!)

I told Taiyyaba that making pizza is unpredictable and all improvisation. This is especially true when you forget to bring the trusted recipe with you for Girls Only Pizza Night. I decided to wing it.

Also, I always have trouble making a really great batch of dough when it is humid outside – it gets icky and sticky. Naturally, I was worried when I noticed the weather that day.

In short, we had all the odds stacked against us as we made the dough.

Step 1: Mix together 1 c. of flour, 1 tbs. sugar, 1 tsp. salt and 1 package of dry yeast (equiv. to 2 ¼ tsp.). We used Taiyyaba’s sweet KitchenAid mixer right off the bat because when you get to the next steps, you really need the mixer. I use my slightly lower-grade Sunbeam mixer – more on the differences we found later.

While mixing, heat up some water. Taiyyaba and I used her electric kettle and I do the same thing at home. Just be sure not to heat it all the way to boiling. You can do the same thing in a microwave or on the stove.

Step 2: Add 1 c. of the (very) warm water to the flour mixture. Beat with the mixer on medium for three minutes, scraping the bowl.

Step 3: This is the important part, so don’t rush it – Add the flour, about ½ c. to 1 c. at a time, slowly. The total (including the 1 c. in step 1) will be between 2 ½ to 3 c. Just look to see what it looks like. If it’s pulling away from the bowl and soft, that means it’s time to take it out.

Step 4: Cover a board with flour and reserve some flour to add to the dough. Knead for 5 to 8 minutes, adding flour as necessary. It is useful for this part to have someone else to knead the dough for you – a friend (Taiyyaba) or a little brother (I usually make him do this step when he is around).

Step 5: Cover it with plastic wrap (literally, just lay the wrap over top of it) and let it rise for 30 minutes. You can leave it on the board for longer, if you are waiting for people to come or preparing lots of toppings.

Step 6 (making thin-crust pizza): Heat oven to 415°F and grease two pizza pans or just regular baking sheets (we used mostly baking sheets). Stretch the pizza out by hand, fitting it to the pan. [me: for some extra oomph, we sprinkled the dough with garlic powder and herbs before baking.] Bake the dough for 7 or 8 minutes or until it turns a little brown. Add toppings and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes.

This dough can be used for two regular-sized pizzas or (as Taiyyaba and I did the following week) can make four calzones (we froze the dough in the meantime).

Note on mixers: we used Taiyyaba’s big KitchenAid mixer to create the first batch of dough. Any number of things could have gone wrong: (1) the water was too hot; (2) the air was too humid or (3) the mixer was too big for a small batch (the same size batch turns out much better on my smaller mixer). We made a double-batch the second time and it turned out much better. Best way to describe really wonderful dough: smooth and slightly powdery with flour. [TQ addendum - come on, Angela. We both know perfectly well you described it as "baby butt soft" dough.]

Well, that was the awesome pizza dough! Toppings post coming soon!