Archive for May, 2010

I recently read that Hurley, the character from Lost, ate at the Flatbread Pizza Company in Maui just days after I ate there, in Pa’ia. I was inclined to try another pizza at home, this time, something with a thicker crust and a bit more traditional.

This is the pizza (half-sized) before topping it with cheese.

The result was delicious, with a deep, satisfying flavor.

The toppings include: chicken sausage, Niçoise olives, parmesan cheese, basic tomato sauce, salt, pepper, EVOO, and a topping of romano and mozzarella cheeses. I feel ashamed to say the sauce and dough came from Whole Foods. But pizza, especially when you have some of the basics already to go, is a simple, easy dinner to put together in no time. Just let your oven get hot, and use a pizza stone.

Since getting my new tart pan and making a raspberry brown butter tart, I thought… I should really pay off the $25 debt of getting the fancier, non-stick pan by making a tart each week. I even considered it as a blogging project… “A tart a week, my cavalcade of 50 tarts in one year,” or some such theme.

Well, let’s start more modestly.

Tart #2 is centered around tomatoes.

You oven-roast the tomatoes, and in this case, I used romas, scented with garlic, salt, and pepper with EVOO in a 200-degree oven for about 3 hours. The tart crust, following a recipe I found via my iPad’s Epicurious app, suggested an “easy” crust using puff pastry. That was easy… blind-baked the pastry in the tart shell, then it called for a unique mixture of cheeses with egg for the base.

• mozzarella (cubed) (2 parts)
• heavy cream (enough to moisten it) (.25 part)
• goat cheese (1 part)
• salt, pepper
• 2 eggs
• fresh thyme

You spread out that mixture, add the tomatoes and olives, and then bake it after topping it off with grated parmesan. It turned out well!

It was yet another opportunity to try the Keller technique with chicken: 500 degrees, 1 hour; no special butter or herb massage. Instead, just salt/pepper the chicken and get a nice brown skin. After carving your chicken, make a sauce from melted butter, lemon juice, Dijon-style mustard, fresh Thyme, and if you like, a little garlic or shallot.

As a side dish, I made asparagus with Taleggio cheese; used white balsamic and EVOO to dress the asparagus with garlic, then roasted the spears after a 1-minute blanche in water with the stinky Italian cheese.

For dessert, we made a raspberry, brown-butter tart.

This appeared on the cover of Gourmet some many months back now, but has turned out to be a favorite recipe.