Pizza is (never) Perfect

I'm not going to post a recipe for pizza, there are millions out there, each of them have their merits...

But a few words on pizza, if I may.

All food flavour, texture, etc are subjective to the eater, no question.  But most foods generally need a certain calibre and method of preparation if you will in order for anyone to consider them decent.  Pizza is one of those foods where I've seen what I consider total crap with prep and ingredients be completely revered and loved by other eaters, and vice versa as well "why would you want a thin crust in a super hot oven?" my answer is BECAUSE IT'S PERFECT, DUH!


Pizza 1 - Bruschetta style!

On the crust alone people have their opinions!  How sweet should it be, how doughy? how crunchy? Thin or bready edges? Dense or light? Whole wheat? Maybe naan bread even? or pita?

Oh, and the sauce? Lots of it, little, sweet, tomatoey, no sauce? white sauce? pesto? cheese sauce? Dip it in sauce?



The toppings are endless.  Traditional? Meat lovers? Veggie? just cheese? No cheese? Broccoli (by god!) what kind of cheese? Do you chop or slice the veg? under or over the cheese (I'll save it for you, OVER THE CHEESE PEOPLE!).

The oven? BBQ? Pizza stone?

I can cannelloni, can you?

Out and about grocery shopping the other day I saw for a decent price fresh lasagne sheets, whole

grain ones from Olivieri - I thought 'why not?' I'll make lasagna, I am not a lasagna dynamo by any stretch, I'm actually really hit and miss with the lasagna craft (and most Italian style cooking to be honest), but whenever I use fresh sheets it's always tastier.

The finished product!

But then I had a brainwave.  What about using the sheets to make ravioli?  I did some research and it seems that most commercial fresh lasagne sheets are too thick for this application and rolling them

out evenly and thinly enough, well, I almost may as well make my own dough but then something else came to me.

A light bulb - cannelloni - of course! I've read it in a chatelaine or canadianliving or something like that some time in the last 3 months to 3 years so I went researching and yes, infact, it's common practice to make cannelloni using lasagne sheets and it is FAN freaking tastic.

If you've made cannelloni or manicotti before you've tried to stuff those tube shells.  Now, you could just pipe into the shells  which is often good esp for cheese mixes, but if you have no suitable piping bags (ziploc will do in a pinch), or even warm filling the piping idea might not work out so well, which makes rolling your cannelloni a desirable option - and one I'll do over again for certain.

I sort of based it on this recipe, many of my methods/ingredients are the same: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/veal_and_spinach_cannelloni.php



VEAL RICOTTA CANNELLONI

serves 8 (or if you're hungry, a bit less :))

Potatoes and cheese, with some Ham please!

I had a great weekend in food! and some great leftovers I've been enjoying.  I'm going to share 2 recipes and the first one is the feature of this post!

I also ate out a couple of times, but it was at chain restaurants, so I've decided to write more about smaller, local or just plain unique eating experiences (although I'll never EVER have anything to say negative about the RIBS at BATON ROUGE - oh baby!)

Recipe 1 - Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes with Asparagus

I made this recipe based on cheesy sauce and from googling Aparagus potatoes gratin (which I found here,    http://bellavita-bellasblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/italian-asparagus-and-potato-gratin-in.html  you will see my recipe is almost nothing like that one)  I just like looking to see if, you know, my idea exists??  It did :)  But I did it differently.  This recipe is inspired by any cheesy casserole or scalloped potatoes I have ever done (any rip offs, not intended).  Read the recipe for the ingredients before you start - I made this kind of on the fly so I'm writing it like I made it.

Just delicious, can you go wrong with cheese?



Preheat your oven to 400F

Combine in a large bowl:

1.5 lbs peeled yukon gold or other all purpose potato sliced thinly (use a mandolin if you have it)



.5 lb of asparagus tips, chopped into 2 inch pieces (if the asparagus is thick stemmed, cut it in half or quarters so they are nice and small)

Season with about 1/4 t salt and a few grinds of fresh pepper

Risott-oh-so-good

Yesterday evening I felt compelled to make a risotto - but what kind?   Squash? Beet? Sausage? Mushroom? Although my fridge was stocked enough, I found myself at the grocery store on my walk home and found some mushrooms on sale (score) and some sausage on sale (double score) and thought, well why not sausage AND mushroom risotto?  It was a good weeknight meal, A thought it was great.   Risotto has a bad rap for being difficult, and I'm not sure why....(look at it simmering away there, doesn't it look nice???)