foodiefanatics

Dinner last night was an adventure.  The menu included tomato and basil bruschetta (from Cooking Light, 6/08), avocado, mango salad (from one of Rick Bayless's cookbooks, but I don't know which one) and pizza on the grill from Cook's Illustrated (7/05).  All the food was great. The bruschetta has a quickly cooked tomato topping with capers and balsamic vinegar, and I chopped up some fresh mozzarella as well. It was flavorful and the toasted bread rubbed with garlic was crunchy without being hard.  No problems making it either.  The salad was fantastic. I had some difficulty procuring the pepitas--strangely the only ones I could find were lime flavored which probably would have gone. I bought them but at the last minute decided to substitute some spicy pine nuts I had instead.  The dressing was great--flavorful but mayonnaise like even though there is no mayo in it. Must be the effect of the blender.  This course was also great. Light and flavorful for the hot weather. The final course, however, was where the fun began.  I made the dough, split it into fourths and rolled out the first of the four.  Looked good. I happened to glance back at the recipe and it said to roll the dough out in parchment paper. So I did. I had, neatly stacked, all three pizzas in parchment and then the one I'd rolled out on it's own on my pizza paddle. I put all the topping ingredients on a tray and headed outside to the BBQ.
The magazine says to cook with all burners on high.  Well, the pizza bottom was charred in about 22 seconds. we quickly flipped it, through on the toppings and had to take it off in a minute. Needless to say, the toppings were still raw and the crust was overcooked, but still tasty. Okay, turn down the grill. I go to get the second crust out of the parchment and it is stuck like glue. And I mean  that literally the mess was horrendous. No luck, throw that away.  Meanwhile, of course, everyone is waiting for dinner.  The third one I meticulously use my fingernails to scrape off the parchment and end up with ripped up, scraggly mess that we are still able to turn into a kind of sort of pizza. THis time, we cook on the lower temp and it works better.  For the fourth one, I get a brainstorm. Put it in the freezer.  Which works wonderfully. AFter about 20 minutes, I can easily remove the crust from the parchment. The final pizza we cooked at about 450 on the grill for 2 minutes, flipped over and cooked at 450 for about two minutes, then turned the grill off, put the lid down and let the pizza sit for another two minutes to melt the toppings. Finally, it worked. Of course, by now, dinner is long over and I ended up putting the pizza in the fridge. (by the way, the recipe did say to coat the parchment paper liberally with flour--a step that I overlooked!)

Does that food look gross? Maybe I need a food stylist?  Despite appearances, all the food turned out good with the rolls and the peas as better than good (the rice needs more umph!).

These are the peas cooking. My daughter says they seem like baby food.  She's not so fond of that!

Tonight I'm venturing kind of/sort of into the caribbean to do a beans and rice dish (made with pintos instead of the usual kidney beans) with lots of chile and coconut milk. I'm serving it with a sweet pea puree, a simple dish of peas, jalapeno and a little butter, and some yeast rolls (kind of strange accompaniment but wanted something to dip into the red beans and rice). I made the brownies from the Essence of Chocolate cookbook. See my review in the recipes section.