Friday, August 12, 2011

BBQ pizza, salads, and other BBQs

The triumph of this week was tonight's pizzas. We often make pizzas on a Friday - you can throw almost anything on them, everybody likes them, and they're reasonably healthy - but tonight I tried making them on the BBQ. I made our usual dough (see below), then split it into two large and one small personal-sized pizzas, grilled them a couple of minutes until toasty, flipped them over, let everyone pick their own toppings, then grilled them again on a lower heat until the toppings were cooked. Positively gourmet! Ria had cherry tomatoes, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and motz cheese; I had pesto, cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, olives, pine nuts, mozzarella and goat's cheese; Kenneth had pesto, zucchini, mushrooms, olives, and mozzarella. Everyone was happy except apparently I didn't make the 'toddler-sized' pizza big enough because she ate some of ours too!

My dough recipe is pretty easy:
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp fast-rising yeast
1 c very hot water.
Mix 1 c. flour, sugar, salt and yeast; add water; knead while mixing in enough of the other 1/4 cup of flour until the dough is soft and stretchy (3-5 minutes). Cover with a bowl and let it sit 15 minutes. Knead a bit more and roll into pizzas. You can also make this with 3/4 c. whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup of white flour, and 2 T honey if you want an even healthier option - this crust tends to be a little thinner and crispier.

For lunches we've been eating cold bok choi and soba noodle salad, Hungarian cucumber salad (cucumbers sliced as thinly as possible and soaked in a vinegar-sugar solution, tossed with fresh mint), and romaine lettuce & veggies salad.

Last night Kenneth made a fantastic BBQ - nothing we haven't made before, but it tasted really good. He basically baked four potatoes on the BBQ until they were lovely and soft on the inside and crispy on the outside, then cooked salmon topped with BBQ'd roasted cherry tomatoes, zucchini strips with pesto, and steamed beans & peas. Other than the salmon, an entirely Taproot meal. The night before I made scallops with bacon, mushrooms and the green tops of the onions; rice; and lemon broccoli (steam broccoli until tender-crisp; toss with olive oil, lots of lemon juice, salt, and pine nuts. Add more lemon, oil and salt!).

So a simple-meal week, but all very tasty.

I think we might be pickling this weekend - we brought in our first big bunch of beans from the garden, and it was way more than either Kenneth or I expected! The chard is sad, the spinach is almost non-existent, but the peas and beans are so expansive they're planning winter campaigns in Russia.

Enjoy the weekend!

-Kathy

1 comment:

  1. Salads are not only healthy, but with the right mix of various ingredients can create interesting recipes. One interesting recipe for the BBQ salad is potato salad.

    bbq salads

    ReplyDelete