What will we do with the leftovers?
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011I’m likely not the first one to come up with this… but it seems novel at the moment, so I’ll share.
We all have leftovers in the refrigerator, and what do we do with them? What do you do with those extra slices of salami? Or left over chicken? Or those extra olives you have left over?
As it turns out, so many things I find are too little to serve as a meal, but you still hate to toss them. That’s why, at this busy time, I came up with an idea: let’s throw some stuff on a pizza.
It was Christmas Eve, and we’d been busy. We were hungry, but we were sick of recipes, sauces, and complicated cooking. Now, before I start, you might want to gather some key ingredients/tools to make pizza at home. I think these are important.
- Pizza stone. This is a great thing to use in your oven almost all the time. It helps regulate temperature and gives you really nice crusts. You put your pies right on this ceramic surface. I use a square one that takes up the entire bottom grate of my oven, and I leave it in there all the time. I simply pre-heat my oven longer with it in there so it comes up to temperature.
- Pizza Paddle. If you have a stone, spring for a wood or steel paddle. This is the device you use to slip your pie off and onto your stone.
- Pizza pan If you don’t want the stone, get a dedicated pizza pan, that’s metal. It’s nice for helping you form a round pie.
- Pizza dough. This is not hard to make, but when you’re in a hurry, I’ve found two local purveyors that do a good job. For just 99 cents, Trader Joe’s offers a bag of dough. It makes one medium pizza. For around $3 or so, Whole Foods market sells a heftier block of dough, and the one I used for the recipe I’m going to describe included 7 grains or something.
The important part about dough and making it yourself - find a recipe you like - and keep making it… commit it to memory. It just requires advanced thinking on your part.
So, since I had some dough from Whole Foods, I left it out of the icebox for about 2 hours… and then lightly floured a board, and formed it. Don’t over-mix these bought-doughs… they’re pretty much ready to go. You can use a rolling pin, but most are pliable enough you can just use your clean hands.
I added my own basic tomato sauce with lots of garlic to the bottom. I used pine nuts, 2-3 kinds of left over cheeses (among them tallegio - yum), pine nuts, and olives. I also used some slices of peppered salami.
This is the key - add what you want. Since pizza should be baked like this at 500+ degrees in your oven, nothing is in there for too long. Use pre-cooked meats (chicken, sausage), and if you’re using veggies, make sure they aren’t watery. And see what flavor combinations you can come up with. I might make this a regular thing for 2011… weekly leftover pizzas.






