You can add The Hollywood Bowl to my list of reasons why I love this city.
I spent Saturday night finding ways to not pass out from heat exhaustion with my pals John Williams and James Taylor at the Bowl (and with actual pals Sam and Chad). I took this Bowl opportunity (bowl-opp? bowl-portunity?) to plan and concoct a grown up picnic (“grown up” in both senses–with lots of booze and more than just some bread and cheese).
The two greatest ways to describe food: fried and cheesy. Why do you think mozzarella sticks are so amazing? Fried three cheese tortellini=fried and cheesy goodness you can pass off as an actual meal.
The dish is super easy to make, thanks to this package of pre-made three cheese tortellini I picked up at the grocery store. I added some fresh rosemary and diced tomatoes to add a little flavor and color.
Dinner was done in a few quick steps…
A mouthful of a name for such a simple pizza. Since it’s already a given I’m obsessed with the pre-made dough at Trader Joe’s and Fresh & Easy, my next pizza concoction was just around the corner. My inspiration this time around…a jar of black olive tapenade…mmm…
I stripped off a few sprigs of rosemary and mixed it into 8oz of goat cheese I had on hand:
After rolling out the dough and spreading the tapenade, I proceeded to add the goat cheese. One problem–the goat cheese I had wasn’t nearly enough to cover the pizza:
Not to worry though. I had some ricotta left over from my stuffed portobello mushrooms, so I mixed in some rosemary and covered the rest of the pizza and topped it off with pine nuts:
I have yet to find a better way of transferring the pizza onto the heated pizza stone. Any suggestions welcome. I was so close:
15 minutes at 450-475ish degrees, and I had myself a fancy (although a little too olive-y) pizza:
The verdict: a little on the dry side (the goat cheese doesn’t have enough moisture to withstand the high baking temperature pizza requires). I made this on a weeknight, so I didn’t have enough time to carefully chop up the rosemary. I’ll be trying that next time. As with every pizza, the most time consuming part of the process is waiting for the dough to settle and rolling it out.
Next time? I’ll be trying a more moisture-y cheese (using all ricotta, or maybe some mozzarella) and less tapenade (will mix it with some other topping yet to be determined). And I seriously need to figure out a safer transfer to the pizza stone:)
I can’t say it enough. I’m obsessed with the farmer’s market, and every Sunday, I usually end up picking up things that looked pretty, but I had no idea what I was going to do with them.
Enter my latest find: heirloom potatoes. Schlepping my big canvas bag packed full of goodies around the market, a few colorful potatoes caught the corner of my eye. I grabbed some purple and yellow potatoes simply because they looked cool. But I really had no meal in mind.
Then something clicked. I also had a handful of sprigs of rosemary. Bingo. Rosemary potatoes. But hey, let’s make it a meal and throw in some chicken too.
I started out by adding a few sprigs of rosemary, a few cloves of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, chopped onions and the beautiful heirloom potatoes to a large mixing bowl, drizzled with a generous amount of olive oil:
I learned this time saving, non-crying-inducing method of chopping onions, which is absolutely brilliant. Start out by cutting the onion in half from top to bottom (i.e. not horizontally):
Lay the flat end on the cutting board and slice off the top. Next is where the tricks begin. Make thin slices through the onion, but leaving about an inch or so uncut towards the bottom part of the onion:
Once you’ve made enough slices through the onion from one side to the other, carefully make similar sized slices horizontally through the onion, again stopping about an inch from the bottom:
And finally, just start chopping straight down into the onion, and voila, perfectly chopped onions with very little effort and zero tears:
I added the chicken drumsticks into the mixing bowl, added even more olive oil, and tossed well. Next, I dumped everything into a baking dish, covered with foil, and baked at 400° (I have absolutely no idea how long I cooked it for, since I forgot to set a timer. I just kept an eye on the chicken until it was thoroughly cooked).
It wasn’t particularly flavorful right out of the oven. But I still had a ton of leftovers, so I saved it and put it in the fridge. After a day of sitting in all of the rosemary, garlic and olive oil, the chicken was significantly more tasty the second day. Next time, I’m throwing everything into a large freezer bag and letting it sit overnight before cooking. Hopefully that will make it taste just as good the day I cook it:)
I stopped by Fresh & Easy with the sole intent of picking up plain pizza dough to make a standard cheese pizza. But what I found next to the plain dough changed my entire dinner plans. Enter the pre-made rosemary focaccia dough.
Rosemary. It was love at first smell. So it’sonly fitting that I picked up the rosemary dough over the plain dough. I decided to go with goat cheese, but wasn’t quite sure what else to add. While standing wide-eyed in front of the cheese section, I caught a glimpse of something bright red in the corner of my eye. They had a small tub of roasted tomatoes, soaking in oil and spices. Genius.
My previous attempt at pizza left me with a soggier-than-I-would-have-liked pizza. An obvious change this time around was not to over soak the dough with sauce. I also love a thin and crispy crust, so I ventured to Target and picked up a basic pizza stone. Greatest 10 bucks I’ve ever spent.
I kneaded and stretched the dough out into a decent sized attempt at a circle over a cookie sheet while the pizza stone was heating up in the oven. I then drizzled olive oil over the dough, and spread a small stick of goat cheese over the dough. Finally, I topped it all off with the tomato slices.
I was too hungry and excited to eat this, I didn’t quite think it all the way through. Transferring the very thin pizza from the cookie sheet to the hot pizza stone proved a little difficult. Note to self: put the tomatoes on after the dough has made it to the stone. Notice the extra ball of dough on the cookie sheet. I threw this onto the pizza stone after making the pizza and out came a delicious piece of focaccia. It went great with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar:)
Without too many tomatoes falling off the pizza, I successfully made the transfer. I let it bake in the oven at 475° for about 12 minutes. I had picked up some fresh basil at the farmer’s market this Sunday, and threw on a few leaves after the pizza was done. What we have here is essentially a slight twist on a margherita pizza (sans tomato sauce):
The verdict? The dough is to die for. The tomatoes are bursting with flavor. Fresh basil is always refreshing. But going completely sauce free makes for a slightly dry pizza. Drizzling more olive oil onto the cooked slices helped this ever so slightly, but next time I’m definitely adding just a little bit of sauce.
And an added bonus to tonight’s dinner – mint lemonade! Along with the fresh basil, I also picked up a bunch of incredibly fragrant mint at the farmer’s market. I muddled a few leaves in the bottom of a glass and poured in some lemonade. Refreshing and delicious. Perfection.
