Grilled Pizza

whOa.M.G. Best pizza ever. No seriously, I know I always say whatever pizza I just made is the best pizza I ever made, but seriously. Best ever. Why didn't I try this sooner?

Alright, here's how I made the dough:
1 1/8 - 1 1/4 cups warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil (plus more)

Mix the yeast and water. Set aside. Put the flour, sugar, and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. With the processor running, add the olive oil, then the water-yeast solution (once the yeast is dissolved, obv). Continue with the machine running until a ball begins to form. Remove the dough and form it into a ball, then dump it into a large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, non-drafty place for an hour or so. Makes two pizzas.

For the sauce:
1, 28 ounce can diced tomatoes, strained
1 clove garlic
salt to taste

Combine the ingredients in a blender. Pour them onto the pizza dough, when ready.

To cook the pizza on the grill, you have to be fast, so have all your ingredients ready and have the grill preheated. I'm not sure how high the flames should be. I burned the first one, so I turned down the heat for the second, but then I kind of missed that burnt flavor. There's something special (cancer-y) about it!

Anyway, toss the rolled-out dough onto the grill, cook for a couple minutes, then flip. Add your toppings right away and cover the grill for a couple more minutes. I found that the bottoms were getting darker faster than the tops were getting cooked, so I transferred the pizzas to the broiler as soon as the bottoms were done. But I imagine there's some kind of heat balance that could be struck (though, apparently not by me) that would have the grill do all the work.

Guest Post: Lentil Salad with Green Onion and Capers

You dearies know how much I love this book. I gave it to Emily last Christmas and I think she just might love it too! Here's the last (for now!) of Emily's inspiring guest posts.


From Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.*


*I think this is the recipe Emily used.

Guest Post: Beet Salad

Last Summer I visited Emily's lovely family on Lake Michigan and we had what can only be deemed a "gush-fest" about beets. Beets this way are great! Beets that way are great! Beets! We loved them. That night we ate them simply on the deck, and when I showed up in Madison the other weekend, Emily had prepared them, deliciously, as below. She handed me a spoon and the sour cream and asked me to stir in as much as I wanted. Now, that's friendship!


This recipe is from my mom, who discovered it at a church potluck.

Ingredients:

beets
sour cream
parsley
green onion
salt

Boil 5-10 beets whole, until no longer raw (~20 minutes rolling boil). Drain boiling water and refill with cold water several times. Peel beets- this is easy after they've been boiled- the skin falls right off of the beet. Cube beets, chop 2-3 green onions and ~2-3 cups parsley finely, and mix it all together with ~ 1/2 to 1 cup sour cream. Salt to taste.

Guest Post: Open-Faced Breakfast Sandwich

I'm thrilled that my friend Emily is guest blogging for Meals! We've known each other since we were kids at camp, a place we also worked as teenagers. If you've spent much time at summer camp, you've probably known a lot of vegetarians. My decision to become one at a fairly young age had a lot to do with those people, in those woods, eating those sloppy soy sandwiches (a favorite concoction of the kitchen staff -- cut up veggie burgers + Manwich, and also the inspiration for this).

I visited Emily in Madison recently. We had a great time riding bikes, attending a francophone world music festival, checking out comedy juggling, and eating some delicious things that Emily prepared for us and has generously agreed to share with you lucky moderns.


Have you ever created a meal based on leftover, limited ingredients in the fridge, hoping the random combination may turn out edible? This meal was inspired by similar events... and it turned out more wonderful than I could have ever imagined!

Ingredients:

toast or English muffins
butter (optional)
eggs
ricotta cheese
Parmesan cheese
Saute mix (bok choi, mustard greens, arugula, red mustard-- all young and tender)
salt and pepper

Fry eggs to your liking. Remove eggs from frying pan and saute the green mix until wilted. Grate Parmesan cheese onto sautéed green mix in pan, turn off heat, and cover for a minute or two, until the parm is melted. Toast bread product. Butter bread product (optional). Spread a thick layer of ricotta on bread. Fried egg goes on top of ricotta, and greens with parm on top of the egg. Salt and pepper to taste.

Whole Wheat Fettuccine with Heirloom Tomatoes

1/2 pound fettuccine
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 medium onion, sliced thinly
2 garlic scapes, chopped
1 teaspoon (or to taste) red pepper flakes (the kind I have right now are SO not spicy; I've tried to adjust the amount for you, but it's possible I have a distorted sense of how spicy these things can be)
4-5 medium heirloom tomatoes, roughly chopped
salt
1 tablespoon basil, chopped
1 tablespoon chives, chopped

Boil the fettuccine in salted water until al dente. Meanwhile, saute the onion, garlic scapes, and red pepper flakes in the olive oil, over medium heat, until the onions have softened. Add the tomatoes and cook for about 8 minutes, until they've broken down a bit. Salt to taste.

Put the pasta into serving bowls. Top with tomato mixture, basil, and chives.

Rhubarb Crumb Cake

I made this and brought it to my friends' housewarming. I'm pretty sure I ate about 80% of this cake, but I'm also pretty sure it was a hit with the housewarmers.

Heirloom Tomatoes, Basil, and Ricotta Sandwich

Um, yeah, so, I started eating and then took this photo. Hope you're not grossed out! I was really hungry. This is what I ate for lunch yesterday, in the courtyard outside my building. Read the following as a diagram, not a list:

bread
olive oil
tomatoes
salt + pepper
ricotta
bread

Meals; for Facebook

Meals; for Moderns is on Facebook now. It's about time! Blogging is so behind the times, I should change the name of this thing to Meals; for Modernism.

You can Facebook-fan Meals here.

Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Arugula, Garlic, and Brown Butter

A simple Summer dinner. I'm leaving the proportions off this one since it's really really flexible. If you like a lot of butter, add a lot of butter. If you want to skip the butter and use olive oil, do that. If you want some butter, but not that much, use more pasta water.

spaghetti
butter
garlic, finely chopped
arugula
salt + pepepr
parmesan, grated

Boil some spaghetti, reserving the cooking water. Meanwhile, brown some butter, and toss the garlic in for the last minute or so. Remove from heat and pour this into the bottom of your serving dish (I don't bother straining out the solids for a rustic dish like this). Throw in the arugula. Drop the pasta in. Toss. If dry, add some pasta water. Season to taste and garnish with cheese.

Peach Citrus Muffins

1 tablespoon melted butter
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 1/4 cups sour cream
1 tablespoon lime juice
zest of two oranges
2 peaches, peeled, pitted, chopped

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and grease or paper 12 muffin tins.

Mix dry ingredients together. Beat egg with the sour cream, melted butter, lime juice, and orange zest. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir/fold gently until just combined. Fold in the peaches.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

(Adapted from here, unsurprisingly)

Summer Squash Linguine

When I lived in Spain I hung around with a roving cast of young, wild, world-hoppers. Also known as freelance ESL teachers. One of these women returned to Seville from a days-long hippy festival in Portugal and recounted to my friends and I that, while there, she'd eaten her first flower. Given the context, I'd assumed the flower was either some unknown drug, or some unknown drug slang, and was too self-consciously un-world-hoppy to do anything but act as if flower eating were a completely familiar phenomenon. But as the conversation progressed, someone more self-assured than I dared to ask what kind of flower this was. And it was just a flower. Just a regular flower. Hallucinations not included.

I've learned since that eating flowers isn't so uncommon. And though I think my friend ate a more traditionally flowery flower, this dish uses two "flowers:" capers, which are pickled flower buds, and squash blossoms. So if you've not eaten your first flower, now's your chance.

(the recipe below was inspired by this)

2 1/2 pounds small yellow and green (zucchini) summer squash, washed and unpeeled
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon capers
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 pound whole wheat linguine
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup Ricotta cheese
salt + pepper
3/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil
1/2 cup freshly grated Romano cheese
4 squash blossoms, thinly sliced

Using a vegetable peeler, shave the squash into ribbons. Place these in a strainer over a bowl and toss with the salt. Set aside.

Meanwhile, place the garlic, capers, and red pepper in a mortar and use a pestle to crush them into a paste. Transfer this to the bottom of a large serving bowl.

Cook the pasta until al dente and, using tongs, transfer it to the serving bowl, reserving the pasta water. Return to the squash and, using your hands, squeeze as much water from it as possible. Once wrung, add the squash ribbons to the pasta. Add the olive oil and ricotta, and toss until well combined. If dry, add a 1/2 cup or so of the pasta water. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with basil, Romano, and squash blossoms.

Potato Salad

The farmer's market in the little town in Michigan had these tiny "red, white, and blue" potatoes for sale Friday morning. Obviously, I had to buy them. And eat them. Patriotism can be delicious.

Though the winding path of this recipe actually leads to Germany. Or at least to my German grandmother-in-law and mother-in-law who were in Wisconsin when we called for these instructions. Next time, I think I'll use more vinegar, and make sure to soak this overnight. I soaked this for about 6 hours, and it wasn't quite intense enough, though my wonderful family made sure every last bit got eaten. Anyway, here's what I did:

6 cups boiled "red, white, and blue" potatoes, with their skins on (the skins-on part is breaking with tradition, but I liked their color so much!)
1 onion, chopped
enough boiling water to cover the potatoes
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt (this could also be increased)
1 teaspoon black pepper (my mother-in-law had said more pepper than salt, but it seemed so unnatural that I just couldn't do it. Next time, I'll heed her advice and see what happens)
1 teaspoon sugar
about a quarter cup total of dill, parsley, and garlic chives
2 tablespoons mayonnaise

Cut the cooked potatoes into small chunks and mix them with the chopped onion. Pour the boiling water over the mixture, then stir in the vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar. Cover, and let soak overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, drain the water and stir in the herbs and mayonnaise.

Salted Fingerling Potatoes with Fava Bean and Garlic Scape Dip

Potatoes courtesy of Bitten, but skipping their dipping sauce, I made a dressed-up fava bean paste and also dipped the little potatoes in mustard. So good.

cooked, mashed fava beans (about a cup or cup and a half once mashed*)
1 garlic scape, chopped**
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon sour cream
2 tablespoons milk (or more, depending on desired thickness)
salt + pepper to taste (keep in mind the potatoes are quite salty)

Put these ingredients in the blender. Blend. Dip potatoes in, or spread the paste on toast. Best ever.

*I realize it's hard to tell how much fava bean you'll end up with when you're holding those giant pods in your hands at the grocery store. So, cook them up first, then adjust the other ingredients accordingly. The link above recommends buying one pound of beans-in-pods per person.

**Garlic scapes rule.

Seitan Enchiladas

2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 canned chipotle peppers, finely chopped (I used these)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1, 8 ounce package of seitan, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, finely chopped (or I actually used about a 1/4 each of yellow and orange peppers)
about six medium sized tortillas
grated chihuahua cheese
enchilada sauce
avocado, tomatoes, cilantro, radishes (omg, I love radishes a lot right now!), arugula, hot sauce, sour cream, etc for garnish

Over medium-low heat, saute the onion in two tablespoons of the olive oil until softened. Add the garlic, chipotle peppers, and dry spices and cook until fragrant, about one minute. Add the seitan and continue cooking, covered, until heated through. You may need to add another tablespoon or so of the olive oil with the seitan. Stir in the bell pepper at the end.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spoon the seitan filling into tortillas along with some grated cheese. Roll these filled tortillas and place them seam-side down in a baking dish. Cover with enchilada sauce and a bit more cheese, then bake for about 10 or 15 minutes, and garnish.