Pizza Secrets

Pizza
Simple? Yes. Boring? Hardly.





My ultimate pizza dough recipe. Dead simple. Dead quick. Dead delicious.

Whole Wheat and Honey Pizza Dough recipe from Allrecipes.com
(If we don't happen to have honey or I just don't feel like dirtying a spoon to scoop some out of the jar (ie, most of the time), we omit the honey, and honestly, I can't taste the difference.)
The Mustards split this recipe in to two pizza pies.

Mr. Mustard is real particular about the order of his pizza toppings.
This is how he does:

In order!

Pizza/tomato sauce
Cheese
Onions
Vegetables etc
Spices

The tastier of the two pizzas pictured featured diced potatoes & pesto!

And now for the real secret to gooood pizza:
HOT OVEN!
Forget 350F or whatever the recipe says.

- Turn your oven to broil with the rack near the top.
- Sprinkle a cookie sheet with cornmeal and place the bedazzled pizza in the centre.
- Now let that baby buuuuurn (not literally) for 7-10 minutes, or until everything is nice and bubbly and lightly browning.

Cheese Fondue

Cheese Fondue From a Box

Maybe you can sneak one of these in before it gets well too balmy out to even think of sitting round a hot pot of melted cheese. Sounds good, doesn't it?



I don't have a recipe for this (though I have made it from scratch before) because it's from a box!
We Mustards buy the Safeway brand from, uh, Safeway but add a pinch of paprika and pepper and an even smaller pinch of nutmeg. And about 1/4 C white wine. Which you are required to purchase anyway should you make fondue, so you will inevitably have it on hand.
We sometimes dip drained, canned pineapple in the cheese in addition to bread. But I know Swiss people who would object to this.



I know all this because Mister M is Swiss. A real, live Swiss man.

Cheedar Broccoli Soup

Cheddar Broccoli Soup Dreams



Recipe from thewiveswithknives.blogspot.com
It is cooold and rainy today. I would have felt like eating this for dinner. But. Lazy.

At 9:45pm I think it's about time to snuggle under the covers with My Booky Wook...

Capers loot & Asian market fun.

The spoils of a recent Capers raid.

I love cheese.
I love cheese so much it hurts because of how much it hurts my wallet.



Dutch 3 year aged Gouda cheese.


But it tastes like caramel!


Naam Miso Gravy.
The Naam is one of the Mustard's favorite restaurants in Vancouver. I guess it's been kickin' it for 40 years now? Impressive.
Also impressive, I used to hate this gravy and now, here I am, buying it by the bottle!

Let's go the the Asian market, shall we?


Burger candies. We did not buy them.


A GIANT sack of peeled garlic for less than $4.






We bought this baby bok choy for $1.64. Bargain!


Our super-fun enoki mushrooms.
I also hate mushrooms, but I am trying to work on this. Just ask Mister Mustard. I eat them now and they're not all bad.
Plus, if you're going to eat mushrooms, you might as well eat mushrooms that look like alien fingers.


*cue creepy music*
OooOooooOOooo...

Stay tuned to find out what we did with half of the alien fingers.

Pizza Pinwheels

Pizza Pinwheels REMIX







Chocolate for the Missus, cheese for the Mister.

I got this recipe in Grade 10 Foods class (6 years ago!).
Sorry, Mrs. Bygness, I'm giving your recipe away.

This recipe is amazing. It is so versatile; you can make anything out of it.
When I want baking powder biscuits, I just use the dough without the toppings.
When I want cinnamon buns, I spread butter (or margarine) on the dough, add cinnamon, sugar and raisins.
When I want nommy cheese biscuits, I add grated cheese and spices.
When I want chocolatey biscuits, I spread coconut butter (though regular butter would be fine), add cocoa powder, a touch of sugar and chocolate chips.

Seriously, do what you like with this and it will turn out delicious.

I haven't tried the original intention for this since I made it in Grade 10, but I bet it was good too.

Pizza Pinwheels

375 ml flour
15 ml baking powder
1 1/2 ml salt
60 ml chilled margarine
150 ml milk (In the original it adds: 50ml milk powder. We made our own milk!)

40 ml pizza sauce
grated cheese
vegetables chopped very small
(sliced meat cut into strips, if you wish. I was a vegetarian by then)
spices (I don't know exactly what this was supposed to mean, but I guess pepper, oregano, basil... improvise!)

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. (We used metric for the measurements, but not the temperature...)
2. Mix flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
3. Cut in margarine into flour mixture using a pastry blender until mixture is mealy.
4. Gradually add milk to dry ingredients, stirring with a fork until dough forms a soft ball. Knead 6-8 times, on a lightly floured counter.
(If making plain biscuits, at this point, make into small balls, or cut out circles, and bake)
5. Form dough into a circle shape. Using a rolling pin, roll dough out into a rectangle (to about 1/2 cm thick)
6. Spread with pizza sauce (or butter or margarine or coconut butter or whatever!)
7. Sprinkle with cheese, vegetables, (meat) and spices.
8. Roll up like a jelly roll.
9. Using a piece of string or fishing line (I use dental floss), cut into as big of biscuits you want.
10. Place in slightly greased muffin tin.
11. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

(You can tell this recipe was intended for beginners)

They just WORK. Every. Time.
It's also nice for The Mustards, because we only cook for 2 and the recipe does not make that many.

I found this recipe over at edible-moments.blogspot.com which is very very similar to this one here, but her's look more like "real" cinnamon buns. I'll give that one an audition tonight or tomorrow. The icing looks like a very welcome addition as well!

Mister Mustard is getting very hungry; he's burried in an English essay and I'm making mexican.