Xan: Pan Pizza!

At last.  AT LAST.

This is the pizza I have been trying to make all this time.  Easy and delicious pizza with a thick, oily crust.  This is not deep dish; it's Pizza Hut pizza.

I like Pizza Hut crust a lot.  I have tried to replicate it by incorporating oil into the pizza dough, and by brushing oil onto the crust right before cooking.  But it never came close to working.  The crust needs to fry in oil.  Not that much oil -- a tablespoon will do -- but enough that a pan is required.

In addition to the crust, the toppings were excellent.  This is the first cheeseless pizza I have ever eaten that didn't seem to be missing something...and it didn't even have meat on it!  (Of course Catherine's side still had cheese).  And I didn't have to make pizza sauce!  The toppings in this case were: crushed tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, olives, caramelized onions, and panko bread crumbs.  These are all things I have lying around my kitchen, but if you don't have caramelized onions in your freezer, you'd have to add that to the process. Or just use more typical toppings.  I mean, if you aren't lactose intolerant, it's easy to make a pizza that doesn't seem to be missing something.


I am indebted yet again to Kenji.  Here is the basic pizza recipe:
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2013/01/the-pizza-lab-the-worlds-easiest-pizza-no-knead-no-stretch-pan-pizza.html

and here is the recipe with approximately the toppings I used:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/02/easy-party-pan-pizza-sun-dried-tomatoes-olives-caramelized-onions-sfinzione-sicilian-recipe.html

I would highly recommend this pizza to anyone, but especially to a home cook who is just starting out and aspires to make great pizzas from scratch.  There is no kneading of the pizza dough, and no nonsense with shaping the pizza or getting it into and out of the oven.  This is a pizza that's really easy and consistent as long as you have the right equipment, and all of the equipment is a good investment if you are looking to build up a versatile kitchen inventory.  You will find useful a digital kitchen scale (I can recommend this one) and a 10-inch cast iron skillet (e.g. this one), both of which are a lot more versatile than pizza peels and baking stones.

Did you know the amount of flour in a cup can vary by as much as 50% (!) depending on how packed it is?  (Weighing the flour eliminates the guesswork).

Xan: A very Colorado celebration!

I wanted to put together a themed feast in honor of my good friend Tony, who is moving to CU-Boulder.  So naturally I consulted my good friend Brendan, a Colorado native and creative.  Look what we came up with:

Tony will be leaving the geologically vacant Midwest for the Flatiron Mountains!  Behold, the Mountains of Celebration Ham:

This was supposed to be maple-glazed, but for some unknown reason I used honey instead.  It was not planned, my brain just checked out while I reached for the honey.  The honey was totally crystallized (tail end of a Costco bottle...) so it was a major production to get it out of the bottle.  At no point did I realize that maybe I don't even need the honey.

Not that honey-glazed ham isn't also awesome.  We managed to eat almost all of the 7-lb ham between the five of us!

Next up, Boulder Potatoes!

These sort of disintegrated into pebble potatoes, but they are fried and therefore delicious.  They did not last long.

Because CU-Boulder's rival is the Colorado State University Rams, whose mascot is a bighorn sheep ram, I also made this Decapitated Big Corn Sheep:

We consumed it in effigy, for good measure.

There was also bread and, for dessert, Mile High Partially Eaten Rum Cake of Destiny, and also Hot COCOa.  Brendan even suggested that I infuse the hot cocoa with coconut so it would be COCO COCOa.  I will have to try making hot cocoa with coconut milk instead of regular milk some time.

After dinner, we played Colorado-themed bananagrams in which everyone had to come up with a Colorado-related word.  I was victorious, if uncreative: