In November, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, we flew into Chicago to visit friends and family up north for a week.  It had been an early day for us – I think we got up that morning at 4:30 am – and so by the time our flight arrived at ORD late morning I was starving. Airports being what they are, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of semi-healthy food I could eat at 10:45 in the morning as a snack between breakfast and lunch.

As it so happens, we found a wonderful little Mediterranean place just a few gates down from our arrival with an array of healthy options. Among them was a scrumptious Tuscan White Bean Salad with Rosemary and Garlic. The dish was served cold, and the rosemary and garlic formed the main flavors.

Ya’ll it was SO GOOD. I resolved to make my own version of the dish at home.

And so I did.  And my version sucked. BIG TIME.  (I followed Julia’s suggestion to “never apologize” and we ate it anyway.)

At least the pictures turned out well.

I’ll let you know how future iterations progress.  I’m determined to add this one to the repertoire. Perhaps one of the following will be more successful.

• Tuscan white bean salad (cuisine.com)
• Tuscan White Bean Salad (Elana’s Pantry)
• Rosemary Tuscan White Bean Dip (Wellsphere) – I wonder if I can make a version of this without beef stock and un-pureed.

I got a new flash for my camera for my birthday. Tonight I experimented with it while making homemade pizzas at night in the kitchen. I was pleased with the results; even more importantly, so was Graham.

For the pizza crust, I used Mark Bittman’s Pizza Dough recipe, making modifications so it was a whole wheat crust (per Bittman) and because I can’t seem to follow directions (which turned out nicely anyway).

Bittman recommends using your food processor for making the dough. Turns out, the food processor makes making dough about a billion times easier than it would be otherwise. Such a wise man that Mark Bittman.

The dough had to spend 1-2 hours rising for the first time. What was I to do?  I made homemade pizza sauce.

At the last minute, I added in some chipotle peppers thinking that the smoky flavor would bring out the nuttiness of the whole crust. Turned out I was right.

Pizza sauce simmering, I prepared the other toppings.  We used fresh mozzarella, but the pictures didn’t turn out so great.

I’m such a good pescatarian wife – look what I bought for my carnivore husband.

Humanely raised sopressata, untreated by antibiotics. (A trade off he doesn’t care much about, even if I do.) (By the way, don’t click that link unless you want to see salami being made.)

We live in Texas, where jalapenos are almost state law. We had to include them on the pizza.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Meanwhile, after the dough spent all that time rising, I divided it up and threw half in the freezer for future pizza nights.  Graham missed a large part of kindergarten, so he says he doesn’t know how to share. I made him his own little pizza so he didn’t have to learn.

Graham’s is on the left, mine is on the right.  What you can’t see here is that his is twice as big as mine.

We put ‘em in the oven, where they baked for ~11 minutes.  By this point, it was after 8 pm – we were starving, so we didn’t wait for the pizzas to cool.

When we were in Wisconsin in November, Graham’s Grandma Sis gave us a new pizza cutter. I think it looks a bit like PacMan, but damn it works well.

Even better? You can pull the white disc out of the blue case for super easy cleaning. Brilliant! Such good usability!

The verdict?

G: “It’s not a bad wheat crust. It’s not cardboard like most of them are.”

A: “Holy my god it takes a long time to make these.  But the results… They’re probably worth it. Thank goodness I froze more than half the dough so we don’t have to wait this long again.”

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s “Whole Wheat Pizza Dough” in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups bread flour
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour, plus more for work surfaces
• 2 tsp. active yeast
• 2 tsp coarse sea salt
• 1.5 cups filtered water, at room temp.
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for oiling the rising bowl

Method:

1. In a food processor fitted with the dough attachment, combine dry ingredients.  Add water and olive oil through the tube feeder.  Process until combined and slightly sticky. If the dough is too sticky, add a teaspoon of whole wheat flour until desired consistency.  If the dough is too dry, add a teaspoon of water until it reaches desired consistency.
2. Move dough to a floured work surface, knead by hand and form a ball.
3. Coat the inside of a metal bowl with olive oil. Place dough ball in bowl and cover with a towel or plastic wrap.  Let dough rise in dark location (I used a turned off, empty oven) for 1-2 hours. (I did 1.25 hrs. Ideally the dough should double in size.)
4. When the dough is ready, divide on a floured work surface.  Form balls, then gently flatten into desired shape by pressing from the center out.  The desired thickness is between .25″-.34″.
5. Again cover dough and let rise for ~20 minutes.  (There’s no need to move to another location.)
6. When the dough is ready, move to a pizza stone and add ingredients.  Bake in oven preheated to 500 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Chipotle Pizza Sauce

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s “Fast Tomato Sauce” in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  The pizza sauce can be juicy; I recommend using a slotted spoon to drain juices before adding pizza sauce to crust.

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 med yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 2 chipotle peppers, sliced in half with loose seeds removed
• large pinch sea salt
• freshly ground pepper to taste

?Method:

1. In a medium sauce plan, heat olive oil.  Add onion and saute until soft.
2. Add diced tomatoes and chipotle pepper.
3. Bring mixture to a simmer for 25 minutes, then remove chipotle pieces.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup

Shortly after we married, Graham found an article in the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of soup. High in volume, but low in calories. From my perspective, soup’s also a huge time saver. I can easily make a couple of different pots over the weekend, and because the flavors have time to meld, they taste even better on Tuesday than on Sunday. Plus I always know what we can have for dinner on weeknights, and reheating is fast and easy. If I want, I can also easily freeze individual servings, though I always wait until after the flavors meld.

This is particularly true of one of my very favorites – Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup. It’ll warm you to your bones in the winter months, but its hearty enough that I feel like I got some good protein and fiber for dinner.

I have my aunt to thank for the recipe. Years ago, she sent me a recipe from the the November 1998 Cooking Light magazine. I modified the recipe, adding in jalapeno and chili powder for a bit of extra kick, and using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock to make it vegetarian friendly. My Texas sensibilities cannot fathom the canned chopped green chilies in the original version, so I opt for 1-2 fresh jalapenos instead. The final version is a vegan, and packed with fiber and flavor.

Ingredients:

Ingredients: black beans, kidney beans, no-salt diced tomatoes, fire roasted tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, garlic (not pictured), olive oil, vegetable broth, salt, pepper, chili powder. OPTIONAL: fresh crinkle cut carrots, frozen whole kernel corn.

You’ll need 1 can each:

• Organic Black Beans
• Organic Kidney Beans
• Muir Glen Organic No-Salt Added Diced Tomatoes
• Muir Glen Organic Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilies

The most important ingredient: Muir Glen Organic Fire Roast Tomatoes with Green Chilies

I’ve tried other Fire Roasted Tomatoes on the market, and every one seems to fall short of Muir Glen’s flavor. The only problem is that they can be a little hard to find. Locally, they’re available at Central Market. If you love the recipe as much as I do, buy in bulk on amazon, where a pack of 12 cans will cost you $24.80 – a great deal. In a pinch, you can also use a can of Rotel Tomatoes with Green Chilies, but the result won’t have the fire roasted taste that really kicks the recipe up a notch. You’ll still have lots of good flavor though.

You’ll also need these fresh, whole ingredients:

• 1/2 yellow onion, diced
• 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how much heat you like)
• 2 tsp minced garlic (not pictured)
• 2 TBSP olive oil
• 3 cups vegetarian vegetable broth
• dash salt
• pepper to taste
• 2 TBSP Penzey’s medium chili powder

You can also use any of these optional ingredients

• 1 cup fresh crinkle cut carrots
• 1/2 cup frozen whole kernel corn

Enjoy!