Pizza

A decade ago, when I was first introduced to the pizza, my first impression was that its one complicated thing with so many ingredients and could never be made at home. Also, who wants to take the trouble making it, when its just a phone call away. With so many pizza stores mushrooming everywhere making fancy claims like: "Delivery in 30 min or money-back", flooding our mailboxes with all those coupons, etc etc, it never once occured to my mind to actually try to make a "home-made pizza" until I saw the nutrition guide on pizzahut.com. 800+ calories in one single meal???? Got the shock of my life and started trashing away all those coupons in the bin right next to the mailbox, even without bothering to look at what they've got to offer new.

The hunt for recipes started then. Realized it isn't as difficult as I once thought. The main ingredient is the pizza dough. You can either choose to make it at home, or buy a readymade dough. I baked like 3 pizzas till now, and never once kneaded the dough myself. Trader Joes carries a wonderful pizza dough in the cheese section. It comes in three flavours/types - plain dough, wheat dough, garlic & herbs. Having tried them all, plain dough has emerged a winner in my home. :)

If you use all store-bought ingredients like I did, pizza can be made in as less as 30min. For the sauce, I use Prego "traditional" sauce. If you like herbs, you could use Oregano, Basil, and other Italian seasonings.

I'll now descibe the pizza-making process picture-by-picture:

Let the dough sit for about 15 min on a slightly flour-ed surface. In the meantime, get ready with your toppings. For a veggie pizza, I use onion, green capsicum, tomato, jalepenos, black olives and pineapple chunks.




Slightly grease a baking pan/pizza stone and spread out the dough evenly. This is the hardest part of pizza-making. You could use a rolling pin, if it helps.



If you choose to add herbs, do it now. I dusted some garlic powder too.



Generously spread the pizza sauce leaving an outer border of about 1 cm on all four sides. Prior to adding the sauce, you could add some olive oil if you wish.



Now comes the fun-nest step. Decorate the pizza with your choice of toppings.



Cheese. IMO, Mozarella is the one for pizza. Don't be too stingy with the cheese, while at the same time, don't add too much either.



I usually sprinkle a spoonful of pizza/pasta sauce along with some more herbs on the cheese layer.

Bake at 450F for 10min. You'll know when its ready. The smell that gets filled up in the room.. Ahhh! If only smell could be digitized, I could have sent it to my mom back in India to tell her that the smell that emanates from the oven is more filling that the pizza itself. :)


Oh! So restaurant-y



I know its hard to resist temptation, but its important that you leave it to cool for 10min and then run a pizza cutter/knife through.



After looking at the nutrition labels of all the ingredients (using cheese made from 2% milk), I came up with the magic number 300. That's the maximum number of calories in a pizza made with half pound dough. Now, this is what I call guilt-free indulgence.

Pasta

Who doesn't like Italian food, even though its a little cheesy? Surprisingly, some of the Italian dishes are easy to cook. My first experiment with Italian cuisine was Pasta. Wanted to make it in an authentic way. I got the enthu on a Friday evening, and forced my poor husband to take me to the grocery store, after a tiring day at work. Got Penne pasta, shredded Parmesan cheese and Prego tomato-basil sauce. It was my first visit to the Pasta aisle at the grocery store, and my! I was amazed at the countless varieties of pasta sauce.

Here's the recipe, and this is how it looked in my kitchen!

Variations:

1. Added onions and broccoli to eggplant

2. Substituted tomato paste and fresh basil with store-bought Prego sauce

3. Added garlic powder

It hardly took me 15 minutes for pasta to be served on my plate. At restaurant speed huh. :)

Now a days, I stopped purchasing the pasta sauce. Buying plain tomato sauce (is usually kept in the same aisle as other pasta ingredients) instead. Below is another pasta recipe that I invented.

1. Slice an onion into inch long pieces and fry in olive oil
   
2. Chop spinach and fresh basil and add them to the fried onions. A little salt is added
   
3. Dust some dried garlic powder and any dry herbs you like. I use Oregano, Basil, and some Italian seasoning
4. Empty the tomato sauce can into the pan. Add some water so as to thin the sauce and let it cook on low flame for 5min
5. Add cheese and the boiled and drained pasta to the sauce
   
6. Done!
   

When I first made pasta, I boiled the entire contents of the packet as I'm always a bad judge of quantity. The left over pasta was refrigerated in a ziploc bag. I didn't really want to make the same recipe again. Then, came the day, when I wanted to eat Palak paneer. Have you seen its click? As usual, there was some left over PP too, and a new idea in my mind. How about having palak pasta? That's PP again :) Next day's lunch was cooked at rocket speed. 3-2-1, and its ready!

1. fry onions,
2. add prego sauce, palak paneer, salt and cheese.
3. microwave the left over pasta and add it to the sauce mixture.

Five minutes of preparation time, and it was the most delicious pasta I ever had.

Your turn to drool over it now...