Sweet Potato Pizza with Caramelized Onions and Bacon

Sweet potatoes on pizza?  Yeah, I know -- it sounds weird.  And it looks weird putting it together.  But it tastes really good, adding an almost creamy feel to your pizza. Caramelized onions weren't in the original recipe, which is here, but I like them, and because I was making a vegetarian version of this, I wanted a little extra flavor with the sweet potatoes.  I used Canadian bacon instead of regular bacon -- it was already cooked, but crisping it up in a pan first adds flavor and texture.  For cheese I used a combination of mozzarella and Comte.  It's hard to see the sweet potatoes under all the other toppings, but they're there (see below).

Acorns and Candy Corn

Happy Halloween! These little acorns are super easy to make--which is good, because they disappear very quickly. A Hershey's kiss is topped with a mini peanut butter sandwich cookie, which is then topped with a mini chocolate chip. Done. The pizza below is meant to resemble candy corn, at least in appearance. I made wide stripes of Alfredo and tomato sauce, and then a combination of the two. Once the pizza baked and the cheese melted, the candy corn resemblance kinda faded. But having three sauces on one pizza was pretty tasty nonetheless.




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Drunken Pizza

This pizza is neither intoxicated nor intoxicating, but it is full of beer. The dough is made with beer instead of water, and the added flavor really comes through. It's not that the pizza tastes strongly of beer, but the hops add a bit more something to what's usually a pretty good, though bland, crust. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Non-Traditional Easter

We don't have any hard and fast Easter meal traditions, and this year we went even further from any kind of norm--in a very tasty way. For brunch, I made my version of a Spanish piperrada and patatas bravas with a smoked paprika aioli. For dinner, we had pizza three ways: BBQ chicken Cobb salad, basil-Alfredo, and cheese with peppers and fresh tomatoes and lots of basil. Dessert was a creamy key lime pie.


Piperrada: Grilled bread topped with crisped jambon, soft scrambled eggs, and sautéed onions, roasted peppers and garlic with a dash of sherry vinegar.



Patatas bravas: Crispy potatoes topped with a garlicky smoked paprika aioli.



Above - Alfredo sauce, fresh basil, and parmesan. Below: BBQ sauce topped with chicken, bacon, Cambazola, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and avocado (added after baking).



Just a slice of key lime pie: Creamy and tart with lots of fresh lime juice and zest.



And Forgotten Cookies, or meringues with lots of mini chocolate chips and pecans, because I had egg whites left over from the pie. They somehow came out perfectly despite the growing humidity of the day.

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Cloudy with a Chance of ...

Still in the cold-weather comfort food mode, I made meatballs the other day. First I mixed up some beef meatballs, and then I made a tofu version for the vegetarians. Both versions were cooked in a tomato-basil sauce and served over linguine. Leftovers were used on pizza last night, and there are still a few for sandwiches, too.

And now the tofu version


Mmm, pizza. There was also a margherita version and one with Alfredo sauce.


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Thai Chicken Pizza

I've been wanting to try King Arthur Flour's Thai chicken pizza for a while now, but the opportunity didn't present itself til today. I'd planned to follow the recipe--or at least try to--but then realized that the recipe needed two days to make. And really? Pizza shouldn't take that long to make. I'm all for well-developed flavors, but I like my regular pizza dough recipe just fine--and it only takes about 45 min.--so I used that instead. I did use the rest of the recipe, though I used one chicken breast half for one pizza, versus half of a half on one. The flavors, without a drop of tomato sauce and light on the cheese, were great. I'll definitely be making this again, and soon. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy Valentine's Day

Show your love with pizza? Why not? -- who doesn't like pizza, and homemade pizza is just that much better. Tonight we had shrimp scampi pizza and also plain, topped with a mixture of Parmesan and mozzerella cheeses. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Plethora of Pizza

We had customized pizzas for dinner tonight, using a variety of toppings on a honey wheat crust. Grilled chicken with zucchini, tomatoes, feta, and mozzarella on top of roasted red pepper-artichoke spread Grilled Italian sausage with tomatoes, parmesan, and mozzarella on top of a mixture of tomato sauce and red pepper-artichoke spread Light tomato sauce topped with half zucchini and lots of parmesan and mozzarella Red pepper-artichoke sauce topped with sliced tomatoes, feta, and mozzarella

Seafood Pizza

Pizza may never be the same. This first pizza is topped with shrimp and scallops, on top of creamy base, along with lots of basil and cilantro. For the sauce, I made a bechamel and then added some sherry, smoked hot paprika, tomato paste, and parmesan cheese. The whole thing was topped with mozzarella -- the regular kind, not the fresh kind, which can be watery.

The second pizza uses the same creamy base, but it is topped with an aged jambon, quartered grape tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. Both pizzas were very, very good.

Grilled pizza

Sometimes it's just too hot to turn on the oven, but you still need pizza. So here I present grilled bbq chicken pizza. The dough is from the Barefoot Contessa Parties cookbook, the chicken was grilled just before the pizza, the mozzarella was fresh from the farmer's market, the sauce is Trader Joe's bbq sauce, and the basil came straight out of the garden.

Pizza, three ways

To celebrate the long holiday weekend, I started making pizza last night. Only to discover the tomato sauce I'd thought was leftover in the fridge was no longer there. So I improvised and ended up with three very tasty, though not traditional, pizzas. Clockwise from the top left: roasted red pepper and artichoke pizza with caramelized onions, alfredo pizza, and chicken alfredo pizza with caramelized onions.

Pizza dough
(based on the Barefoot Contessa's recipe)

1 1/4 c warm water
2 packages (2 Tbs) yeast
1-2 Tbs honey
4 Tbs olive oil (plus more if needed)
4 c flour
1 tsp salt

Mix the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in bowl. Add about 3 c of flour and the salt and mix well. Then mix in the last cup of flour. In the bowl or on a floured counter, knead the dough til it is smooth -- it might seem a bit stiff, but that's ok. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap. Let it rest in a warm place (turned off low oven or on the radiator work well) for about 30 min., til the dough doubles in volume. Divide the dough into three pieces, for cookie sheet-sized pizzas, or six for individual pizzas, and let rest for a few minutes. Then roll out (or just pat into place) and place on a greased cookie sheet, top with sauce, cheese, and other fillings, and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 min., or til done.