Artichoke, roasted bell peppers, and goat cheese pizza

It's so nice that I can call home from work and ask Mark to make pizza! By the time I get home, the dough is rising. But we don't have tomato sauce, so he can't make his regular tomatoey-cheesy pizza, so I have to come up with one of my gross pizza toppings. We had goat cheese, so I image-googled "goat cheese pizza", and one of the more appealing pizza was topped with artichokes (we just got a couple!) and roasted bell pepper (we just had one in the garden that was of a reasonable size [=not ridiculously small])! The only problem was, these veggies were completely raw, and I had no idea how to prepare them. Thank god to web instructions! I successfully roasted the red bell pepper on our gas stove, and learned how to prepare the artichoke hearts following these useful videos.
Next I sliced the roasted pepper to strips, and cooked the artichoke hearts in water. I drizzled some olive and balsamic vinegar on the cooked artichoke hearts after thinly slicing them, spread some salt, and let them sit for a while and absorb the flavors.
I also also reduced some balsamic vinegar and drizzled it on top of the topped pizza, just to make it perfect. And perfect it was!

Xmas Pizza

It is our tradition (2 years old, but tradition nonetheless) to have a green and red pizza for Christmas. It didn't happen this year, because we were invited to over to Mark's brother's. But we did have it the day after:


Thick honey crust, red tomato sauce and green bell peppers, and very thinly-sliced onion (no color, but lots of flavor) - what a nice tradition :)

Onion Garlic Sicilian Pizza

Thick honey crust, roasted garlic, and onion. A nice accompaniment to this citrus salad.

Greek Pizza

This is SO good. Next time you're making pizza, try these toppings:
Fresh spinach
sun dried tomatoes
olives
garlic
goat cheese

De-Li-Cious!

Wholey Pizza!

Yay, I finally convinced Mark to make a whole wheat pizza crust! Of course, it was very good, and you get the added healthy feeling which makes you think it's even better!

Summer Pizza

There's a holiday in Israel that's dedicated to love. On that day, it is said, young ladies in biblical times used to dress in white dresses and go to the meadows, so that young men can chase them in some sort of a courtship game. This holiday is not supposed to happen yet (I think in around 3 weeks) but it is a symbol of summer. The white pizza we had last night reminded me of it.



It filled the house with wonderful scents of oregano and thyme...

Green Pasta, Herbed Pizza and a Pizza Pretzel

Mark finally got his pasta machine. It was a long and frustrating story, which I will make short here, in favor of pictures. He got one at a World Market store back in NC, which was a cheap piece of crap that broke even before you we used it. Then we ordered one online as a wedding gift to ourselves, thinking it was the good kind. But when we opened the box, we found it was the same cheap piece of crap and had to return it. Apparently the vendor didn't know that the wrong one was shipped. Anyway, Mark finally ordered another one online, this time making sure that what we get is the one that's made in Italy and not in China (even though the Chinese were the ones to invent pasta!). And when it got here he anxiously opened the box, afraid of being disappointed again. The machine was lighter than it should be (indicating possible cheaper materials), but it was still made in Italy. He tried it on, and it seems to be working well!

So we had homemade pasta for dinner!

We had some leftover spinach, but no ricotta, so instead of spinach ravioli, we had some green fettuccine.



One is supposed to chop the pasta in a food processor, which we don't have, so the consistency of the pasta is a bit chunky. Mark thought it tasted too eggy, so next time he will try to make it with less eggs.

The day after he made pretzels - his specialty! I decided that I wanted to have a pizza-style pretzel, so I topped it with tomato sauce, basil and cheese:



They're very good as-is, of course!

And last night we had to use some leftover yogurt pizza dough, but we didn't have any spinach, and we didn't have fresh mozzarella cheese, so I suggested a herb pizza with goat cheese:



Mmmm... the thyme and oregano scents that filled the house!

Basil

Last week we got a new basil plant, of a fairly large size. Being realistic, I know it won't last very long with my methods of cultivation, so we decided to eat as much of it while it's still alive. The first thing we used it for was this yummy fresh mozzarella pizza on yogurt crust.



I didn't care much for the tomatoes - they weren't as sweet as they're supposed to be, will probably be better to use those little sweet cherry tomatoes. But it still was very good - the crust crusty as ever, and the fresh mozzarella, with its pleasant texture but bland flavor, allows for the basil to shine.

Another One of Them Yummy Pizzas...

Need I say anything?

Philly Cheesesteak and Other Cheesy Things

Last Friday Mark made pizza. We like to have pizza whenever he has time to bake one, the question is: which kind? There's Sicilian, pan, thin crust, Mexican, Swiss... I like having the thick crust and Sicilian, because they're really big and we always have leftovers. The thin crust are so thin we always finish them the same day. So Mark came up with a way to eat the eggs without breaking them: he made a double batch of thin crust pizza and refrigerated half of it for later use. It worked wonderfully!
So Friday we had this pizza:



And last night, all he had to do was to get the dough out of the fridge, shape it, wait a little, top it, et voila!

On Saturday Mark wanted to make loaves of bread for lunch sandwiches, and to my request he made it whole wheat. They turned out very nice:



But he didn't want to have them the same way he always does - so we decided on trying the philly-cheesesteak style. Neither of us had ever had that famous sandwich, not even the vegetarian version (which we did plan to have while in Philly, but because of a certain David Letterman we ended up not going there at all). So we had to look it up online and make the required modifications, all the time thinking that we have veggie steak strips. But then when we looked in the freezer, we were very disappointed.
However, resourceful Mark came up with another idea: using the veggie-roasted-without-the-beef slices, which should work fine since the steak needs to be sliced thin anyway, according to the original recipe.



Mmmm... caramelized onions...

AND - for dessert - we had some cream cheese pie: graham cracker crust, topped with chocolate, strawberries, all buried under cream cheese-sweetened condensed milk goodness.

Mexican Pizza

With cornmeal crust, salsa, jalapenos, tomato, olives and corn, this pizza couldn't get more "south of the border".



My favorite topping is the corn kernels - they're so sweet and provide such a complimentary contrast to the spiciness of the salsa and jalapenos.

Imagine We Are Greek

This pizza is mostly Mark's invention. It all started when he made something out of the internet - we both completely forgot what it was - that had yogurt in the dough. He later experimented using the dough (or some modified version of it) as a base for spinach and feta, added some Kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, and yasu - a great Greek-inspired pizza!



I really liked how the olive oil brushed new pizza pan made the crust really crispy!