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.

It’s a bit easier if you cut up all the ingredients before hand for this recipe. Also if you own an immersion blender like my fabulous Cuisinart CSB-76 Smart Stick Hand Blender; otherwise you’ll need to use a food processor to puree 1/2 the ingredients.

Also, Hatch chiles are key. Go get some – in Texas, you’ll find tons of hatch chiles (literally!) at Central Market. (And more Hatch chile recipes too.)

Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced
2 tbsp butter
1 butternut squash – peeled, seeded & cut into 1″ cubes
4 ears worth of fresh corn kernels (remove from the cob with a knife)
4 fresh Hatch chiles, roasted and cut into 1/2″ squares (keep the seeds!)
~3 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch salt
pepper to taste
Method:

In a stock pot over medium heat, melt butter. Add onion and butternut squash; saute until onion is translucent adding a bit of salt and pepper along the way.

Meanwhile, roast your Hatch chiles. (If you didn’t buy them that way. Quick tip for those in Houston: Central Market sells fresh Hatch chiles already roasted. You’ll want 1 – 1.25 cups.)

Add enough vegetable broth to cover butternut squash mixture, then add corn. Cover pot and bring to a gentle boil until butternut squash is tender, about 20-25 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside half of mixture without liquid.

This is the fun part: Use your fabulous immersion blender and blend everything in the pot up real nicely, which will probably take about 5-7 minutes. More if it’s been one of those days.

Next, on low-medium heat, return the set aside portion to the pot. Stir in heavy cream. Stir in hatch chiles. While simmering for 10 minutes, tweak salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

I made pancakes! Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix

In response to Graham’s frequent request for pancakes, I recently picked up a can of Stonewall Kitchen’s Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix. With Graham as my guinea pig, I figured I could mangle of few batches of pancakes before Christmas when Santa will be kind enough to bestow upon me an ebelskiver. Filled pancake goodness will be mine! (Let’s be honest, if we’re lucky I’ll probably only use it twice.)

Williams-Sonoma Ebelskiver Pan: Rumor has it Santa's got one in his bag of treats for me.

I could have picked up plain ‘ole pancake mix for these pre-Christmas trials, but I figured what with it being the holidays and all, we could go ahead and splurge on the gingerbread stuff since we love gingerbread so very much. Not that this mix costs any more for the gingerbread variety versus the 10 other flavors it comes in including another love of mine – pumpkin. At the last moment, I debated placing the can back on it’s lovely end-cap home there with the good folks of Central Market, mindful of the dreary economy and ever vigilant about my budget. But I didn’t. At a price of only $6.00 at Central Market, we’ll only need to add one additional night of soup for dinner to afford it.

In general, I find these prepared mixes have the tendency to be a little bland and/or cook up to an odd consistency. There’s a particular brand of muffin/coffee cake mixes that invariably leaves a sugar water by-product that coats the bottom of my pans. It’s a sticky, icky mess and, after one too many of these culinary disasters, I stopped buying the manufacturer’s mixes altogether.

Other prepared mixes just leave you thinking, “is that all?!” because all the flavor is lost in the time that passes between the product’s original “born on” date and when it’s actually made it to your taste buds. Special added bonus: preservative after-taste.

Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix - The product description says: The aroma and flavor of this spiced pancake and waffle mix make it the ideal choice for holiday breakfasts. Topped with our Cinnamon Apple Syrup they are incredible.

Not so on either count for this Stonewall Kitchen mix. The instructions were clear and the added ingredients – milk, an egg, and a tablespoon of butter – are all readily available in most kitchens. The batter smelled nice, but belied the lovely flavor that awaited us.

But let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves.

Once I’d added my ingredients, I carefully stirred together the mixture, paying particular attention to the Achilles heal of pancake making: batter’s final consistency. Again, no troubles. In fact, the only thing that could have gone wrong was for me to massacre a perfectly good breakfast with poor pancake making technique. Et voila!

Lovely, mostly round!, very nicely constituted pancakes.

The best was yet to come: flavorful gingerbread goodness dominated neither by ginger nor molasses. The word gentle comes to mind, though it may mislead one to believe that the pancakes are weak, which they are decidedly are not.

Stonewall Kitchen Maine Maple Syrup

My only misstep, perhaps, was in not choosing Stonewall’s Holiday Syrup to go along with the gingerbread goodness. Stonewall Kitchen has this to say of it:

The delightful blend of cranberries, raspberries and pears makes our Holiday Jam a top selling preserve year after year. This luscious syrup was made to compliment this incredible flavor blend. The color, flavor and smooth rich texture of this syrup make it ideal for the holidays.

The Holiday Syrup would have paired quite nicely with the gingerbread flavor, though I’m not convinced it would have been as extensible as good ‘ole maple syrup is.

On Christmas morning, should Santa decided I was indeed a good girl as we expect (or a bit naughty, but still pretty nice), Graham shall once again enjoy gingerbread pancakes cooked anew in my prized ebelskiver.

Goods by Stonewall Kitchen also available at amazon.com:

• Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake &Waffle Mix 16 oz.
• Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake & Waffle Mix and Maine Maple Syrup Barn Gift Set
• Stonewall Kitchen Christmas Traditions Breakfast Sampler Collection: Holiday Jam, Pancake Mix, 2 Coffees & Maine Maple Syrup Jug

Let’s just exhaust this whole gingerbread subject by visiting these other fun! exciting! links:

• Gingerbread Barn (by me)
• Awesome Gingerbread Houses (but no barns) (Neatorama)
• Gingerbread Man Cookies (on sticks!) Recipe (101 Cookbooks)
• The Tradition of Gingerbread (my merry christmas)

As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge fan of soup for dinner. It’s easy to make, good for the waistline, and good for the body. And it’s just the thing for the cool fall/winter nights. (Yes, even though I’m in Houston, it gets a bit chilly here. To be sure, it’s no Iowa, but overnight temps now regularly visit the 30’s.)

A Texas favorite is tortilla soup. For years, I missed out on it in restaurants and “easy-make” versions, though, because my strict vegetarian food choices conflicted with the liberal use of chicken and chicken stock in most recipes. Even once I added fish and discovered a meat-free version at a local fine grocery store, I still felt the meal lacked “umph.” A couple of veggies, some veggie broth, and oodles of boiled tortilla shells isn’t exactly the bastion of nutrition.

Imagine my delight when, strolling the soup aisles during a recent visit to Central Market, I discovered South of the Border Tortilla Soup by Frontier Soups. No chicken broth listed in the ingredients, and a substantial base corn and black beans. Sweet.

South of the Border Tortilla Soup (Frontier Soups) - Our tortilla soup mix is a sure-fire winner! This chicken tortilla soup is so good it may call for a party. Add chicken, salsa and chips for this Mexican specialty. ($6)

I modified the directions on back, and boiled the ingredients in vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I made Graham a separate pot of boiled, shredded chicken to include in his bowl, but I wondered if there was something more I could add to give it a bit of umph for me. Since I added fish into my diet a year ago, I wondered if a bit of shrimp would work. (Until now, I’d never heard of shrimp tortilla soup. This version sure looks good too, doesn’t it? )

The choice of salsa the recipe calls for is huge. I used a roasted habanero salsa that was HOT, but added a nice roasted flavor to the meal. This particular salsa was completely pureed, so we did not have small bits of tomato floating about in the soup. The 8 oz of salsa the recipe calls for (about 1/2 a jar) is really a matter entirely of personal choice, and I could envision a scenario where I made each batch of this soup differently.

The soup itself cooks up nicely. In previous soups I’ve used with dehydrated black beans, despite cooking for the prescribed time period, the black beans remain grainy and dehydrated. Not so with the Frontier Soups version, which cook up quite nicely and provide an extra bit of fiber to the meal.

As for the addition of shrimp, that stroke of genius worked out marvelously.

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!