smitten kitchen » Pizza

breakfast pizza

deb — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:15:18 +0000

My son’s favorite game in the whole world is Let’s Play With The Other Baby! You Know, The One We Keep In The Mirror. We bring him over to this giant mirror in the hallway and he goes berserk, he paws at the “other” baby, kicks his legs, squeals and laughs. It cracks us up too. Babies: they’re so cute when they’re kinda confused!

It took us a few weeks to realize how sad this game actually is. My little monkey is so outgoing and eager to make friends that he’ll play with an imaginary baby that lives in the mirror to get his fix. Perhaps, we realized, hanging our heads in the shame of being the worst parents, ever, it is time for him to meet some other babies his age that he can paw and squeal at in person and they can hopefully paw and squeal back. But, of course, this isn’t a story about Jacob’s first playdate, it’s about what I made for breakfast.

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grilled eggplant and olive pizza

deb — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:59:02 +0000

A few months ago, a friend called to say that she was telling her office mates about how I love to grill pizza and they set to searching for my recipe on this site and couldn’t find it. Gulp, I said, I’ve just never written it up! From that day forward, I made it my Summer Priority to walk you through pizza on the grill, but I have failed at each turn. Either we’ve made the pizza too late in the evening and the pictures came out anything but appetizing, or the day I decided to try again, it has rained. Seriously. If you want thunderstorms to suddenly threaten, let me promise to make you grilled pizza for dinner.

Last night was the final straw, or the day I finally threw my hands in the air and declared that a proper introduction to grilled pizza will probably have to wait until next summer. (Fortunately, Jen and Dietsch at Last Night’s Dinner won’t make you wait that long.) I have had this grilled eggplant and olive pizza on the agenda even since I spied it in this month’s Gourmet and knew that it immediately needed to get in my belly. Four days later (a typical time lag these days from “idea” to “execution”, sadly) I had the ingredients amassed, the energy to give it a try and even a friend’s yard to grill in, thus of course, the weather went downhill. But I persevered, climbing into the far reaches of our linen closet where we stash kitchen stuff that doesn’t get much use (whispering hello to my 12-inch wedding cake pans and canneler molds), unearthing my cast iron panini pan (hey, close enough, right?) and setting to grill to my heart’s content, weather be damned.

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lemony zucchini goat cheese pizza

deb — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:02:19 +0000

I’ve been at a bit of a standstill in the kitchen this month. It’s not really a lack of ideas vexing me, but a lack of desire to spend any time in front of a stove or oven now that the weather is so delicious, I believe I at least owe it the courtesy of spending time out in it. Sure, there are savory tarts and summery salads and even another burger bun recipe on my agenda; there’s a cake in my fridge that’s so pretty I will not be the least bit offended if you mount a protest that I am waiting until next time to tell you about it, but I need to level with you: I have not cooked a real dinner for us in over a month. A month! Perhaps longer.

None of this has stopped me from bringing home mounds of produce each week from the markets. My current (boring) preggo cravings are green beans and summer squash, and I’ve made countless batches of this salad and this sauté but a proper meal, they are not. Today I staged an intervention with myself once and for all. I figure it can’t just be me that is unmotivated to cook a decent, light summer meal and that the only solution would be to create something worth rallying myself — and others — over.

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pizza with broccoli rabe and roasted onions

deb — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:25:53 +0000

It’s not even January 1st yet and I’m already feeling the tug of healthier eating… or perhaps, more likely, a rejection of the butter and braise bender I’ve been on since Thanksgiving. Wait long enough to step up to the healthier plate and I think your body will do it for you; in my days off, I have only craved three things: greens, carrots and oranges. Okay, four if you count French toast from LeGrainne Cafe. But in my defense, they serve it with toasted almonds and a slice of orange and that’s healthy right? Right? [A pin drops.]

Well then. I think of homemade pizza as one of those perfect bridge foods, not excruciatingly unhealthy and yet it can be downright earnest if you do it right. We made Alice Waters’s Pizza with Broccoli Raab, Roasted Onion and Olives for dinner on Friday and it was delightful — chock full of greens with just enough indulgence (half a cup of cheese and a thin pizza crust) to have me vowing I would make it again, like this week, before we’d even finished our first slice.

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fresh ricotta and red onion pizza

deb — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:07:43 +0000

I know what you’re thinking: Sure, we said we wanted you to keep the pizza recipes coming, but we didn’t mean the very next day. Don’t you have any cakes or cookies or pie-of-the-non-pizza variety to break up the content with? And my answer is: This is not a pizza recipe. It’s a recipe for cheese. And it’s long overdue.

Yes, we here at the smittenkitchen had our very first cheese-making experience last weekend. Except, you know how I say “we”? Well, what I actually mean is that Alex was sitting on the sofa, thinking to himself and occasionally out loud “why can’t we just buy it”? And people, it’s like he doesn’t know me at all.

Remember the Cook This List? I’ve had ricotta, and specifically Michael Chiarello’s* recipe on it for ages, but it took a kick in the pants from The New York Times Dining Section three weeks ago to finally get me to check this item off. Luisa–organized, timely Luisa–got to it first which was great because I got a preview of what to expect: a super-cinch recipe that could use a little zing.

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pizza with red and yellow peppers

deb — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:51:39 +0000

I hope you’re not pizza-ed out yet–and if you are, can you tell me your secret?–because I’ve got two more coming this week. Wait, why is everyone leaving? Come back!

To the four of you left, if despite all of my pleading and listicled efforts to convince you that you don’t need a pizza stone, pizza paddle, bread machine, dough hook or hours of free time to make awesome pizza at home, I’ve got one more for you: I made one of these with a broken oven. Or a mostly-broken one. Well actually, it was totally broken, but only for a few hours. Nevertheless, it was dramatic, as you can imagine; we’re quite fond of our flimsy, tiny Apartment Standard oven in the smittenkitchen.

You see, I had bookmarked yet another lovely, simple recipe from what I think we all know by now is my current favorite cookbook, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables a couple weeks ago, the Pizza with Red and Yellow Peppers. Yet I was concerned that I wouldn’t get the caramelized top I wanted by baking it in my oven–every oven is different, but mine simply does not excel in top-browning. So, I decided it would be time to take my own advice and such, and cook the pizza under the broiler.

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10 paths to painless pizza-making

deb — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:52:20 +0000

As you may have noticed, we’re kind of into pizza in the smitten kitchen. I mean, just a little. I can’t help it–in my mind, it combines the best things on earth: homemade bread, charred-edged ingredients, pairing well with a green salad and wine, and–the way I make it, at least–it never feels like a heavy meal.

Every time I post about pizza, I answer at least five or seven of the same ten questions in the comments, so I thought that it was time to create a FAQ on the topic that will hopefully answer all of your questions (feel free to ask additional ones in the comments) in one tidy URL. Consider this a primer for the new pizza recipe I will tell you about next.

Like the bread-making tips I shared way back in the newborn days of this site, my point of these are not to fill your head with reminders and cautionary tales that will cause you more worry when you get into the kitchen–there are enough sites that do that, I know that for many people, anything yeast-based is scary enough. Instead, I want to impart to you how easy it can be, and how strongly I feel that anyone on earth can succeed in making impressive pizza at home. I hope this helps.

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jim lahey’s potato pizza

deb — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:21:42 +0000

Although I keep repeating to myself “I am not obsessed with Jim Lahey. I am not obsessed with Jim Lahey…” the fact is, most evidence these days points to the contrary.

First there was his no-knead bread, and it’s not just me, given the fact that nearly two years later, not a week goes by when I do see a food blog creatively hatching a new, delicious adaptation of it. It continued in the the back of the cab a few months ago, where he so deftly showed off his Pizza Bianca for the cameras, it took restraint not to ask the driver to turn around and take me to the Sullivan Street Bakery, stat.

Once my hunt for his written recipe began I unearthed all sorts of additional goodies, including the fact that he was opening a pizza place> in MY neighborhood (still plywooded after all of these months, I wait and sigh…) and that he wishes to throw down the tomato-and-mozzarella hegemony in U.S. pizza, as tomatoes are not even indigenous to Italy, replacing it with what NYMag described as a “frilly radicchio number with red onion, chiles, and three cheeses that looks like a nest built by a slightly deranged bird,” and a seasonal zucchini blossom one and I’m sorry, what was I talking about again? Can’t talk, drooling…

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jim lahey’s pizza bianca

deb — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:56:27 +0000

Much to most New Yorkers’ aggravation, television screens were added the backseat of most taxicabs last year, effectively poisoning the one place left in the city not already inundated with a constant media blitz. Whenever I get in one, and yes, the television is always on, I immediately hit mute, but then find that I’m watching the images broadcast on the back of the front seat and not this gorgeous city whizzing by and then usually force myself to turn it off completely and restore my view to the window, frustrated that the choice has to be so complicated. I don’t like them one bit.

But. There was this one time, I think I was zipping out to Jocelyn’s this past winter and I still remember exactly what street the cab was on–Houston–when I had to drop everything and turn the volume up because what I saw before me was too awesome to resist: Jim Lahey making Pizza Bianca for a Time Out New York segment. And hoo boy, did I ever fall hard for it.

A little background: Jim Lahey’s name may be familiar because he’s the guy who teamed up with Mark Bittman of the New York Times in November 2005 to show him the No Knead Bread-Making Technique Heard Around the Internet. In New York, he’s famous for his work at Sullivan Street Bakery and in my tiny corner of this city, he’s famous for teasing us for months about opening a pizza place so close to our apartment, I feel certain he’ll be cooking me dinner several nights a week, which is still plywooded despite a promised mid-December opening date not that I’m counting the days, minutes, seconds or anything.

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roasted acorn squash and gorgonzola pizza

deb — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:12:31 +0000

All right, this is just not pizza. I mean, maybe it is pizza-like or pizza-esque or even pizza-ish, but I have a terrifically hard time calling it pizza. In fact, when I saw Giada DeLaurentis make this on her Food Network show last weekend (I seem to have broken a seal with her, no?) all I could think was “that’s not pizza!” and then hmm, that would be a fun Sunday night dinner. So, I did the only rational thing: I decided to not call it pizza. In fact, as soon as I started to think of this as a flat bread, an open panini or an assembly of some of my favorite things, the deliciousness near-overwhelmed me.

So, let us take this apart, shall we? We start with a thin layer of pizza dough. You can use my easy-as-sin one, though I have myself moved onto the just as easy wine-and-honey version I updated a few months back. If you don’t feel like making your own, I’m really not doing my job here, but nevertheless, feel free to pick up one from your local pizza joint (what, you don’t have one on your block?) or grocery store. The recipe calls for a one-pound dough, though my homemade one clocked in at 13.5 ounces and, lo, the world did not end.

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