Posts Tagged ‘buffallo mozzerella’

I LOVE MY PIZZA STONE!

March 28th, 2011


My wonderful husband, Jesse, bought me a fabulous Emile Henry pizza stone for Christmas and I love it. It may indeed be my new favorite kitchen toy. I like to make pizza but I have never been able to get a crispy, darkened crust with my oven, voila use a pizza stone, it really works! Pizza is fun!You can put anything on it and for us it often becomes a base for salad. I love to top it with arugula or caesar salad.  It’s a great Friday night meal.

To make a fast pizza you can use Pillsbury pizza dough or Central Market in Austin has a very good frozen dough that rivals home-made. Last night our pizza was very simple and oh so delicuous with fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzerlla.

PIZZA

  • 1 pint of cherry tomatoes, I used yellow ones, nice & sweet
  • 1/2  pound of fresh mozzerlla
  • 1 regular round pizza dough

To start I carmelized the tomatoes in a saucepan with a little olive oil, pinch of salt & pepper and about a 1/2 teaspoon of oregano and a few fennel seeds. Just let the tomatoes melt on low heat while you get the oven heated and the cheese sliced.

I heated my oven at 500 degrees for about 30 minutes with the stone in it.

Roll the dough out on a pizza peel that you have sprinkled with flour. Add some olive oil to the dough and smooth it around and then add the tomates and mozzerlla. Bake for about 12 minutes and enjoy home-made delicious pizza!

Antipasto A-Go-Go

October 4th, 2010

Antipasto literally means “before the meal” in Italian. Starters, hors d’oeurves, appetizers may signify the same thing in other languages but in our case this was the meal. On the eve of Labor Day, hot and humid as usual in Austin, Texas, I decided we should indulge in a few of my favorites things. A little store bought Calabrase salame, delicious fresh mozzerella, and home baked eggplant and tomotoes. We ended up with platter full of color, texture and flavor.

Start with the tomatoes as they take the longest. The recipe for the tomatoes is on this blog under “oven roasted tomatoes”.

After the tomatoes come out of the oven and they are cooling, start the eggplant. This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman at the NY Times.

  • Heat the oven to broil. Cut an eggplant in 1/2, chop an onion ad 2 cloves of garlic and put the mixture into the eggplant. Place in the lowest rack from the broil and check on it in 15 minutes or until the eggplant has collapsed. Let it cool, scoop out the eggplant, onion and garlic and add about 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt. Mix it up and add some garlic powder, salt, pepper and lemon. Season to taste! Delicious, simple and rustic!

Pizza Again!

October 24th, 2009

Salami, mozzarella & fresh peppers & onion...

Well, why not pizza again? It is one of the easiest, quickest and most creative dishes I can think of. Christina and Jasmine came over after work and I have to tell you I was really excited to cook with them. We spend a lot of time at work talking about food and both gals have great food blogs (Fattened Calf & Glitter Shrimp) and food pedigree. Yaz went to culinary school and Christina’s fiance is a chef at Uchi, and they cook together all the time, so it’s food, food, food! They brought cheeses (goat and mozzerella), olives, arugula, salami, pesto, proscuitto and we doused one of the pizzas with truffle oil. I sauteed some onion with a fresh jalapeno and green pepper from Jaz’s mom’s garden until soft and fragrant and then threw in some fennel seed, salt & pepper and that is a pretty darn good pizza topping. We then assembled two store bought pizza doughs and had a feast. Don’t forgot the wine!

Book Club & Oven Roasted Tomatoes

September 6th, 2009

Oven dried tomatoesOnce a month I get together with 10 or so brilliant, witty and beautiful womem to discuss a book that we’ve read. We all bring wine and or an appetizer and some of the most delicious desserts I’ve ever tasted. This month it’s at my house so I’m serving an olive plate and roma tomatoes. I baked the tomatoes slowly for hours and then added some buffalo mozzerella and fresh basil. This is a good recipe for store bought tomatoes that don’t always have a lot of flavor. It’s kind of like making them into sun dried tomatoes but in the oven.

Tomatoes

  • 10 roma tomatoes, cut in half
  • Olive oil, about 2 tablespoons
  • 1/4 pound of fresh buffallo mozzerella

Bake for 3 hours at 325 degrees or a little longer depending on your oven. You want the tomatoes to collapse and be all gushy. Let them cool and sprinkle with salt and pepper. You could then use oregano, or fresh basil or thyme. I like dried oregano because that is the way my mom and Aunt Angie would eat garden tomatoes in New York and the taste has stayed with me.  FYI–I tried to lessen the three hour cooking process by turning on the confection oven and it dried the tomatoes out and made them like sun-dried. So if you want them to be like that; then go for the confection oven.