Easy Pizza on the Grill

I have made some recipes that I've found online, in magazines, on Pinterest that flopped. I don't like to tell you about them because it's usually not as if they exploded, which would be funny; they were just ho-hum, or a crazy amount of work for something that wasn't that special. So, I admit, I had very low expections when I decided to try a recipe for pizza dough made with Greek yogurt and flour. I'm SO glad I tired it! It came out great, especially if you are a fan of a little thicker, chewier crust. I decided to be brave and tackle not only a new recipe, but a new cooking technique: pizza on the grill. This could have been like that time I decided to try and jump over all the steps to the diving board (and still have the scars on my shins 22 years later to show for it) but it was not a disaster at all! In fact, it was awesome! Oh, and did I mention I had homemade pizza in less than 25 minutes start to finish?

So here's what I did:

Pizza Dough:
Makes one pizza crust about 12 inches in diameter. I wasn't sure it looked like enough, so I doubled it and made a second pizza-we were so full we didn't even finish the first one. The dough is very hearty!
1 cup Greek yogurt (Plain, and I used non-fat) I think you could also use plain traditional yogurt
1 cup flour, plus extra for kneading
1 Tbs. baking powder
1 Tbs. baking soda
Pinch salt

Stir together all ingredients until dough starts to come together and is slightly sticky. Turn out on a floured surface, and have lots of extra flour handy to add in. I added about an extra 1/2 cup altogether. Knead the dough until no longer sticky (tacky is ok). This took maybe 3 minutes, and again, adding extra flour a tablespoon at a time. That's it. No rising, no waiting!

Form pizza dough to desired thickness. I did this by hand, starting by patting it out into a 9 inch disk, then pulling it to get it to about 12 inches. Mine was really oblong and rustic; if you wanted a round pizza, you could probably employ a rolling pin, or pat it into a pizza pan. You can now top the pizza and bake it, or go to Grilling instructions. The recipe I used didn't include baking instructions, but I would go with 400 for 10-15 minutes and see if it looks like pizza yet. Also, the dough is quite moist, so I'd add sauce with caution so you don't get soggy pizza. Maybe a good thick marina, but not a straight up can of tomatoes, which I may have learned the hard way.

To Grill Pizza:
Preheat grill to medium high. Prep your toppings. I did sliced grilled chicken, sliced roma tomatoes (one per pizza), and about 4 oz. of sliced fresh mozzarella, but feel free to go wild! I think Canadian bacon and pinapple would be awesome! Spray one side of the patted out crust with cooking oil spray. Using your hands, place the dough on the grill, oiled side down (over lit burners), being careful to keep it flat-it's hard to adjust once it's on the grill since the dough is soft at first. Close the lid, and grill about 3-5 minutes. The top will begin to puff, and the bottom will get grill marks and brown,and crisp up. Using tongs, check for golden brown bottom. If not yet crisp and golden on the bottom, grill a few minutes more. Once crisp and golden on the bottom, use the tongs (or a large flat metal spatula might work better) to carefully flip the crust. Now you can add toppings, and potentially sauce, and cheese. Once your toppings are in place, close the lid and grill about 7-10 minutes until bottom is crisp and golden and cheese is melted. Remove to a cookie sheet or large platter, and top with fresh torn basil. Enjoy!

The crust is nice and crisp on the outside, and delightfully chewy once you bite in. I think this dough would work great to make naan or flatbread to go along with Indian food too! It has a nice little tang to it, almost like sourdough, but it doesn't overwhelm the pizza. I will definitely be making this my go-to pizza dough.

In other news, my triathlon training is going great! Today I ran 19 total minutes! This is a huge leap for me, especially since one month ago I could only run for 3.5 minutes at a time! I'm amazed that July is almost over, but I'm also not sad that the hot weather is almost over, too, so I can potentially run or bike at some time other than at dawn. It was a little creepy running this morning with no one around. It was one of those moments when you wonder if you missed the rapture :)

Asian BBQ Chicken and Snap Pea and Red Cabbage Slaw

 

As soon as we got back from our vacation, I was ready to cook! A solid week of eating out most meals left me restless, so I plowed into the July issue of Bon Appetit for some fresh ideas to get us out of our burger rut. Andy actually said, "I only want to eat fish and chicken" after our week choc full of red meat.

To my delight, the feature of the July issue is "Grilling Chicken!" I adapted this recipe for the kabobs on the cover, mostly because I was too lazy to cut up the chicken into hunks and too hungry to wait for the bamboo skewers to soak for an hour. The result was fantastic-I can't imagine it being better on the kabobs, and this was way less work.

 

Sambal Chicken Skewers

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup hot chili paste or hot sauce
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1/4 cup Sriracha
• 2 teaspoon finely grated peeled ginger (or dried grated ginger)
• 1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1 1/2-inch–2-inch pieces (or not, in my case)

Special equipment

• 8 bamboo skewers soaked in water at least 1 hour (again, I skipped this and grilled them whole)

• Ingredient info

  Hot chili paste and fish sauce is available at Asian markets, and in many supermarkets near other Asian foods, usually next to soy sauce on a top shelf. Fish sauce is potent, so buy a small bottle at first as you use very little.

Preparation

• Prepare grill for medium-high heat. Whisk brown sugar, vinegar, chili paste, fish sauce, Sriracha, and ginger in a large bowl. NOTE: it stinks, but trust me it turns out fine. Add chicken and toss to coat. Let marinate 5-10 minutes.  Thread 4 or 5 chicken pieces onto each skewer, and move chicken to a plate until you are ready to grill, and reserve marinade.
• Transfer marinade to a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until reduced by half (about 1 cup), 7–10 minutes. NOTE: this also stinks, so crack a window.
• Grill chicken, turning and basting often with reduced marinade, until cooked through, 8–10 minutes.

Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2013/07/sambal-chicken-skewers#ixzz2YUi47hva

 

I served this sticky, sweet & spicy chicken with a fresh and easy slaw of sliced sugar snap peas and red cabbage:

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon honey
• Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
• 1/4 small red cabbage, thinly sliced
• 8 ounces sugar snap peas, thinly sliced crosswise
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1/4cup chopped fresh mint or basil (I did mint and it was sublime!)

Preparation

• Whisk oil, lemon juice, and honey in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper. Add cabbage, snap peas, parsley, and mint and toss to combine.
• DO AHEAD: Vegetables can be cut and dressing can be made 8 hours ahead. Cover and chill separately. Toss vegetables and dressing together just before serving.

Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/quick-recipes/2013/07/snap-pea-and-cabbage-slaw#ixzz2YUjQLXkt

 

 

This blog post was brought to you in part my cat Marcelle, who helped me by sitting on my keyboard. She says, "You're welcome." Actually, she said, "r:eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee........................"

An easy DIY Wedding Gift

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently attended my cousin's wedding. It was so beautifully decorated and every detail was thoughtfully planned. I suspect this is what weddings in the "Pinterest era" will be like for a while. My friend got married last November, and it was equally elaborate, with fun details, great ways to make and preserve memories, and details that really spoke to the bride and groom.
As a Pinterest osbsessionista, I was bound to make at least part of my cousin's wedding gift by hand. A few weeks before her wedding, I stumbled onto this idea: http://www.shanty-2-chic.com/2013/05/free-printable.html
That's a free printable that says: "In our Home let love abide, and Bless all those who step inside"
I just thought that was the perfect phrase to have up in your new home as husband and wife, so I got to work. The idea on the website was to frame it in a handmade frame. When I saw the power tools involved, I decided to take an alternate route.
So, here's what I did:
Went to Hobby Lobby and got an unfinished wooden plaque, upolstry tacks, a set of sawtooth picture hangers, and one sheet of white cardstock. Total cost: $7.47 (though I have 44 tacks left, and 2 extra hangers)
Here's what I started with:

Sorry-forgot to take a photo with the hanger that goes on the back, but I'll show you that below.

Let me share my first lesson learned with this project: don't start the day before you need it. I used a special process for staining the unfinished wood where you use vinegar and steel wool. It's easy, and the result was beautiful, but you have to let the vinegar and steel wool soak in a glass jar for 24 hours, which I discovered exactly 24 hours before I needed this project to be done. I had looked at lots of tutorials online to use this steel wool and vinegar technique (too late of course) and theirs all looked pretty brown and muddy after the 24 hours. Mine looked like white vinegar with a glob of steel wool floating in it after 23 hours, so I started to panic. I read one idea where the person had used tea to also stain before using the steel wool, so I made a batch of tea. And prayed. The praying must have worked, as you'll see below.

After I rounded everything else up, I got to work on printing the printable (see website above for your very own). My printer has been misbehaving lately, so printing ONE sheet took about 20 minutes, but it came out perfect! The printed image looks like a chalkboard, which is a sweet effect. So while that was working (or hardly working), I made the tea and started frantically staining the wood with tea. This is what it looked like after 2 coats. So, basically, like I had done nothing.

 

I decided to take my chances with the steel wool even though it looked pretty useless. You can kind of see it in the background below here floating in the mason jar. Lesson number 2: To my total shock, as I rubbed the steel wool directly onto the wood, it stained it! It is a lovely grayish brown that looks aged, rather than simply finished. So, even if the vinegar doesn't turn dark, the steel wool will still stain. This was the first coat:

Lesson number 3: As you can see, I stained the concrete below. Oops! I suppose mostly because I didn't think it was going to work, I neither put down newspaper nor put on gloves:

I would highly recommend both. Fortunately, I was able to cover my nasty stained fingernails with a nice coat of coral nail polish. This was after a second and final coat:

Of note, the stain stinks like vinegar, but I didn't find it unbearable. I worked outside, and since this was a small project (my little plaque was 8 x 10) it only took moments to put on each coat, and each coat dried almost instantly. Next, I attached the picture hanger to the back (sorry for the blurry picture):

Then, I cut down the printed image. Lesson number 4: I did what you should never do: I didn't measure the plaque before I printed the phrase, so I had to mash it down and make it work. If I'd measured, I would have realized the surface was actually 7.5 x 9.5 and I'd have to trim a bit. To attach the photo, I measured a half inch in from the top and side of each corner, then placed an upolstry tack and pressed it as far as I could by hand. I placed all the tacks, checked to see that it looked right, then hammered them gently the rest of the way in.





Here's the finished product:

And, next to the front door (i.e., out of the blaring midday sun)

 

And Lesson number 5: Wait a few days and let the vinegar air out before gifting. You could smell the vinegar through the wrapping paper! Oh, well.

 

Altogether, not including the wait time to "cure" the steel wool in the vinegar, this project took less than an hour, including waiting between coats. I would highly recommend you also check out this post from the same blogger which has additional similar ideas: http://www.shanty-2-chic.com/2013/04/mothers-day-gift-free-printable.html

 





In the swing of summer

It’s summer! I’ve been keeping busy with the usual summer activities: June weddings, summer travel, Independence Day BBQs, and the like. I also decided to devote my summer to training for a triathlon! It sounded crazy when my dear friend suggested we do it together a few weeks ago, but I’ve come to really enjoy the process. That doesn’t quite describe it: I loathe the actual running, I ache all the time, and in places I didn’t know existed, but what is so enjoyable is that despite that, I don’t want to quit.  Even though I feel like garbage while running, I have run more in the last 3 weeks than I’ve ever run in my life. I got on a bicycle for the first time in 9 years, overcoming my near-catatonic fear of crashing again. The other rewarding part is that the swimming part of my training program is so easy for me that I double it. I LOVE the days where I get to swim. Today, I started ramping up to doing two parts in one day, which I’ll do a few times a week at this point. I ran for 25 minutes this morning, then swam for 20 minutes. I was so bushed after doing both that while I was blow-drying my hair, I had to take breaks because my arms were so tired! I’d take a nap, but I finally got my hair all pretty after all that J I view this level of exhaustion, too, as a sign I should keep going and get in shape! Some other benefits of this training regimen are the stellar tan I’m acquiring being outside, and the fact that I ate like every day last week was the 4^th of July, and didn’t gain any weight! The triathlon is September 22, so please keep me in your thoughts as I train.

Andy and I also got to enjoy a little R & R last week on our Great American Midwest Vacation. We went to Nebraska City for my cousin’s wedding, then trekked up to the land of 10,000 lakes to visit family, celebrate Andy’s dad’s “50^th” Birthday, and catch up with some of our old Minnesota friends. On the way back, we got to swing by the lake to spend Independence Day with my Bricker clan for a bit before finally getting home. We were so tired when we got back on July 4th, we decided to just watch the fireworks on PBS!

I have so much more to tell you about, but I’m going to do several posts on the projects and plates I’ve been cooking up, so plan to see more from me this week.