Pizza

Okay, so maybe it's not so healthy. But it is homemade, yummy, and the whole wheat crust and veggies have gotta count for something, right? I love pizza. It's pretty much the perfect food as far as I'm concerned. And I don't mean delicate thin-crust with a sparse paucity of fromage. I mean chewy gooey cheesy substantial pizza. Here's how to make it:

Margaret's Pizza
Time: 1 1/2 hours from start to finish. A lot of that is idle time, though, while the dough is rising. It actually only takes about 10 minutes to make the dough.
I do this with a cuisinart (with dough setting). You could use the same recipe with a variety of machines, I imagine, but I think it would be difficult to make by hand because the dough you want is so sticky, it would be difficult to work with. You could try, though, and let me know how it turns out!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups hot water
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp honey
• 2 1/4 tsp baking yeast
• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 tsp flaked kosher salt (less if you're using regular salt)
• 1 tsp or so of olive oil
• Toppings (see below)

Method

1. Dissolve sugar and honey in hot tap water (not super-hot, just hotter than warm), and stir in yeast. Set aside to proof for a few minutes while you prepare other things.
2. Put the dough blade in the cuisinart, and add the flours, salt, and half of the olive oil. Pulse process to mix and distribute.
3. Your yeast water should be frothy on top by now. If not, leave it a minute or two more. If it doesn't wake up either (a) your yeast is dead, (b) your water isn't hot enough, or (c) your water is too hot. Either way, go back to step one and do it again until you have some frothy happy yeast water.
4. With the machine running (on dough speed), pour the yeast mixture into the flour mixture in a continuous stream, as fast as it will absorb it until it forms into a ball and cleans the sides. If you hear sloshing around the bottom, stop pouring and let it absorb, and if that doesn't work, stop the whole machine and mix it in by hand. Depending on the humidity and how dry your flour is, you might need more or less water, but I usually use it all. You want to make a very sticky dough, ultimately.
5. Once the dough has balled up and cleans the sides, continue processing for 45 seconds to knead.
6. Get a large bowl out, and pour the remaining olive oil in the bottom. Turn out the dough, shape into a ball, and place in the bowl turning to coat the dough ball with oil. Cover with a damp warm dish towel and leave in a warm place to rise. Alternatively, you could put it in a sealed plastic bag (with plenty of room for it to expand of course). 
7. Let rise for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the temperature of your kitchen, etc., until it has doubled in bulk. Meanwhile, prepare your toppings.
8. Preheat your oven to 500 F (seriously). Oh, and turn on your fan - your smoke alarm is probably going to go off at some point, especially if, like me, you never clean your oven. You want to allow a good 10-15 minutes for your oven to preheat before the pizzas actually go in.
9. Punch down the dough, and cut in half (for two medium thick crust pizzas). Let rest for a few minutes for the glutens to relax.
10. Shape the dough by patting, pulling, stretching, beating, and occasionally resting into pizza bases. Bear in mind that when you work the dough, it gets tougher, when you let it rest, it relaxes - you need to work with it like a personal trainer to get it to that perfect elasticity that will mean perfect chewiness later.
11. Lay out on baking sheets, and pierce with a fork all over
12. Top however you like (see below for suggestions)
13. Bake until done (cheese bubbly and browning, crust browned), watching closely and rotating when needed, particularly if you have more than one in there, about 10 minutes. Watch your face when opening the oven!
14. Let cool for 3-4 minutes or so before you cut it - this will prevent the toppings from sticking to the knife and sliding off.
15. Enjoy!

My Topping Suggestions

• Sauces
• Tomato Sauce (from a jar) - spread over prepared dough
• Pesto - splattered around here and there on top of tomato sauce, or thinned out with olive oil on its own
• Tomato Paste Mixed with Pesto - this is my Mom's idea, and it is really good. It's thick and a bit sweet, which works really well with the large amounts of spinach she throws on - yummy stuff.
• Aromatics
• Garlic - minced finely and spread through the sauce (sometimes I just stir it into the sauce before I start)
• Herbs - dried or fresh
• Caramelized Onions - or raw, if you like them that way. 
• Veggies
• Bell Pepper - red, yellow, whatever, diced - if I have no fresh peppers, I sometimes use roasted, but there's usually a pepper of some sort involved.
• Broccoli Florettes - my favourite pizza topping, chop up and blanch beforehand, rinse in cold water to keep the colour.
• Mushrooms
• Artichoke Hearts - canned, rinsed, chopped up a bit.
• Spicy Eggplant - the pickled stuff, chopped up a bit - yummy
• Spinach - fresh baby spinach can be heaped up on top, and then weighed down with cheese - it'll collapse as it wilts and the cheese melts. 
• Meat
• You know what to do here.
• Ian puts Italian sausage on his along with all the veggies, pre-cooked (otherwise it gets too greasy).
• Cheese
• Mozzarella, grated. Lots.
• You could mix in other cheeses, they're all good, but mozza really is king where pizza is concerned. Monterey Jack can sub in for mozzarella effectively, and blends well. Cheddar can bring some tang to a blend, but gets too greasy and not soft enough on its own. Parmesan, romano, asiago, any hard cheese, really, will up the flavour ante, but you're still going to want a good melting base.
• Seriously, you need more cheese on there.

Broc-o-mac

Another weeknight standby at our house is the beloved broc-o-mac. This is your basic mac and cheese, but I'm always trying to healthy things up with extra vegetables. So, we generally make it like half vegetable, half macaroni. You can add cauliflower instead of or as well as broccoli, or you can do spinach instead. For some reason mixing spinach and broccoli together doesn't taste good. In any case, this is the ultimate comfort food as far as I'm concerned.

For 2 casseroles

• macaroni - I don't know how much, just make too much
• broccoli - one large bunch
• milk - just less than 3 cups
• margarine - 2 Tbsp
• all-purpose flour - 2 Tbsp
• cheese - 1-2 cups? (cheddar, swiss, monterey jack, whatever - I usually a blend of all of the above + maybe some parm)
• a slice of bread or two (plain old sandwhich bread)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350
   
2. Cook pasta and drain
3. Chop broccoli into florets, chop up some of the stems into smallish pieces too.
   
4. Blanch the broccoli, either in the microwave (with a bit of water to make steam - a minute and a half should do it), or in some boiling water for a minute only (Ian sometimes does it in the pasta water on top of the pasta - I usually do it in the microwave). Rinse well with cold water to prevent loss of colour (if you care).
5. Make a white sauce with marg, flour, and milk. We do this in the microwave: 1. Melt margarine in the bottom of a 4-c measuring cup or bowl. 2. Stir in flour and cook for a minute or two, stopping to stir occasionally, until it doesn't smell like flour anymore. 3. Slowly, a bit at a time, stir in the milk. It should make a thick doughy stuff at first, and then you gradually thin that out until you can just dump in the rest of the milk (up to the 3C mark or thereabouts). 4. Microwave on medium until it thickens, stopping to stir every thirty seconds. At first you won't need to stir too much while it heats up, but once it gets hot you really have to watch it because it can easily bubble up and make a huge mess (and wreck your sauce). Seriously, don't get distracted - watch it. You don't want it to boil - you want to heat it slowly until it thickens. This whole process takes like 15 mins or so.
6. Cut the cheese into tiny little cubes - I do this in front of the microwave while the sauce is going. You could grate it if you want, but I find the cubes make nice little centres of cheesiness within the sauce. Ian scatters the cheese in the veggies and pasta and pours sauce over it - but this is my blog and we're doing things my way!
7. Add most of the cheese to the sauce, once it has thickened. Microwave a bit more (slowly!) to melt the cheese in. If the sauce is too thick, add more milk.
   
8. Divide half the macaroni into the bottoms of 2 large casserole dishes, top with half the broccoli, scatter the remaining cheese cubes around, top with a third of the sauce. Repeat pasta, veg, cheese, and then the rest of the sauce, making there's nothing sticking out unsauced.
9. Pick out and scatter crumbs from the bread over the top. Avoid the crusts, but if a bit gets in - no biggee.
10. Bake one casserole until bubbly and yummy - about half an hour
11. Freeze the other casserole, unbaked, tightly sealed
    

Casserole Derby

Okay, so Jess asked me for some casserole and slow-cooker recipes, and I thought this would be a good place to collect them.

Mostly I don't use a recipe for casseroles, but I do make them a lot, and I always make two at a time (one for dinner, one for the freezer).

One thing to note is that these casseroles take a loooooong time to thaw, like an hour on defrost in the microwave before they're ready for the oven. I've often taken them out and put them in the fridge the night before and found them still frozen by dinnertime. It's still convenient to have work-free dinners around, but they do take time.

Let's start with Baked Ziti
I came up with this after watching the movie In Good Company, and after the scene where Marg Hellgenberger drops the baked ziti and then pukes because she's pregnant, Ian said "aw that looked good. I want baked ziti." So, I came up with this dish which has now become one of our standards because it meets the golden triangle of criteria: easy, nutritious, cheap. The fat is a lot lower than your average lasagna because of the cottage cheese, and the italian-style vegetables include lima beans, which add protein. You can pack a lot of vegetables in here. This has displaced lasagna at our house, something I never thought possible.

Ingredients

• ziti noodles
• 1.5 jars tomato sauce
• 3 cups or more frozen italian-style vegetables
• a clove or two of garlic
  
• 1 egg
  
• 500 mL low-fat cottage cheese
• pinch nutmeg
• basil, oregano (fresh or dried) to taste, salt and pepper to taste (depends on the sauce you use)
  
• one ball part-skim mozarella cheese, grated (you probably won't use it all)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350, 375 if you want to hurry it up
2. Cook pasta (don't overcook as it will get baked later), drain, set aside
3. Combine frozen vegetables with some tomato sauce (I do this in a 4-C measuring cup), and microwave to thaw
4. mince garlic finely, or crush, and add to veggies, along with basil and oregano.
   
5. In the largest bowl you have, beat the egg and mix in the cottage cheese. Add nutmeg and about a third of the mozarella.
6. Add the cooked pasta to the cottage cheese mixture and toss to coat. This step gets all the cheesy creamy goodness inside those ziti tubes and ups the yummy quotient considerably.
7. Put a bit of sauce in the bottom of 2 casserole dishes, spread a quarter of the the pasta in each dish, then a quarter of the veggies, maybe a bit of extra mozza, then repeat the layers.
8. Top with mozzarella
9. Bake one casserole in your prepared oven until bubbly and melty and good. At 350 this will take around 40 mins, maybe 25 mins at 375.
10. Freeze the other casserole, unbaked, tightly covered with plastic wrap or foil.