Curried Eggplant Pizza

In Long Beach one of my favorite places to get pizza is Dean's. This is not your normal red sauce pizza, they use Thai curry sauce on a wonderful doughy crust, that combined with tofu, pineapple and cheese is a wonderful treat. I know Dean's in the true Italian style of pizza is blasphemous but that is the beauty of pizza, you can put just about anything on it.

Inspired by Dean's Thai curry pizza I was inspired to make an Indian style curry pizza. Using similar ingredients from the curried eggplant with a little variation, a pizza was made.

My friend Jillana, who has a fabulous blog called Ovenhappy, and I cooked and chatted away a Friday evening  hungrily awaiting the outcome. We sauteed the eggplant, and onion together adding curry powder and red pepper flakes. At the end we threw in some spinach and let it wilt.
On the pizza dough we spread a layer of labneh, and then spread the eggplant, onion, spinach mixture on top. We were in debate if cheese would be a good addition to Indian style eggplant, so we sprinkled some only on half.

I loved this pizza. Using the labneh as a sauce/base gave a nice tangy flavor to the eggplant. I really liked the addition of the cheese, but I think I favored the one with out cheese a little more. This delightful meal once again proves that just about anything can be put on a pizza and the outcome will be delicious.

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Start Of Salad Week - Beet And Orange Salad

A new box has come and the variety is starting to show. After a long cold, wet  winter that brought tons of leafy hearty green the appearance of color and variety is welcome. Hello carrots, favas, and spring onions. Oh and oranges, from Rainbow Valley Orchards. So excited that fruit is going to be appearing. Another surprise that appeared in my mail this week was a new South Central Farms tote bag. It is large and spacious and holds all sorts of fun things, like this weeks delivery of new produce. To see about getting a cool bag or a box of fun spring vegetables and fruit go here.
As the weather is warming up I've decided to make a themed week of salad, mostly because I have lots of lettuce.

The first salad I made is adapted from this recipe for Roasted Beets and Citrus with Feta.  For the salad I used spinach, red romaine, beets, and an orange. I didn't have any feta and used Parmesan, which was good but didn't give the good amount of salty bite that feta has. The dressing was sweeter than I would have liked, but I was still able to taste the Dijon mustard. This salad is also supposed to have grapefruit segments as well, which would have made it even sweeter, but I opted to omit them, replacing them with avocado. We ate this for lunch with a little frozen pizza on the side.

The players

We had a fair amount of leftovers, and ate them the next day. Normally leftover salad doesn't hold up very well but, this one actually tasted great. The dressing lost a little of the sweetness. The lettuce hadn't been totally immersed in dressing and still had a crunch. I also added little goat cheese crumbles which had a nice tang that worked with this beet hued salad of goodness. Make this and enjoy it even more the following day.

This is the salad from the first day, there are oranges in it they all just fell to the bottom. Why does the good stuff always end up under the lettuce?

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A Dandy Mustard Tart With A Sprinkling Of Spinach

The last couple of times I have attempted to make tarts, they were not a success, mainly having to do with the tart crust. I had sworn off baking for a while because of my tart debacles, and found myself looking longingly at fruit filled pastries, and envying the golden, buttery crust.  I then realized that tarts are not just exclusive to sweet but can be savory as well.

The mustard greens and red kale

 While flipping through the The  Joy of Cooking looking for ways to use some greens I found a Chard Tart. Replacing the chard with mustards, red kale, and a little spinach this tart turned out great.
One of the reasons why this tart appealed to me was that the crust was easy. No delicate cutting in of butter, no chilling of dough, there's not even a use of a rolling pin. I mixed the ingredients together and then pressed it into the tart pan. While the crust baked for fifteen minutes I browned a few shallots, because we were out of onions. and then put in the greens and let them cook a little bit, just until they lose their bitterness but still have a bright green color.
Mixing the greens with a few eggs, some heavy cream, and some Parmesan, I poured this mixture into my golden tart shell. Letting it bake for half an hour it came out like this.

This is something I would make again, experimenting with different combinations of vegetables. The tart wasn't quite as eggy as a quiche, allowing the greens to be more dominant in flavor. The other great thing about savory tarts is that they can be eaten for any meal. They are great for breakfast or for dinner with a salad on the side. I think now I will strictly be a savory tart maker and leave the sweet tarts to the pastry chefs.


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Everything But The Kitchen Sink Pizza With Spinach

Spinach that has been washed and dried

Pizza is such a great meal allowing for just about anything to be put on top and having a successful tasty outcome. This pizza we created used items that we had in the fridge and the pantry, the only item I knew I wanted to use was spinach.
 I had some cornmeal that I thought would make a really great crust. Using the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics  I used their recipe for dough, substituting 1/2 a cup of cornmeal for flour. I am a fan of making my own dough. I like the process of  kneading the dough, and letting it rise, it's something that I could see as being intimidating, but it's worth conquering the fear.

These are the pizzas, they both have the same ingredients except the squarish one has bacon on it. I've been a fan of bacon on pizza ever since my friend Megan made her amazing Meg-herita. It is a treat to look forward to in the summer when heirloom tomatoes and basil are a plenty.
As for  the Kitchen Sink Pizza we put;
Shredded Parmesan
Sliced onion
A sprinkling of canned sliced olives
A few cloves of  thinly sliced and browned garlic

Some grated Iberico cheese, left over from co-hosting a baby shower

On one pizza a couple slices of cooked bacon

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

And spinach

After putting everything on the dough, except the spinach, I let it bake for about 15 minute, just until the bottom of the crust had a light brown color. Then I put the spinach on, letting it cook for another 4- 5 minutes. I didn't want the spinach on for the whole baking period because it would have gotten brown and wilted. Just before cutting  I sprinkled a little olive oil on top.
This pizza was great. The crust came out nice and crispy, the onion and spinach gave a sweetness to the pizza that worked with the salt of the cheese, olives, and bacon. I have to say I think I liked the baconless pizza a little bit more. This morning I had the last two pieces warmed up with a fried egg on top, so good.

Here is the latest box. Look at those turnips and radishes, they are giant.

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Drinking My Greens

The Newest Box of Fun

A new box has arrived and while braising, sauteing, and blanching are all good ways of using the various types of greens, I've been thinking about them in smoothie form. Coming from a yoga class I felt inspired to experiment.

Bloomsdale Spinach

Using about 2-3 cups of loosely packed spinach
A cup of orange juice (from about 3 oranges)
A package of frozen mango puree, I bought at Trader Joe's, it has four individual packages of puree.
Half a banana, I don't like a lot of banana because I find it can overpower everything.
A little water, to cut the thickness.

It tuned out great. It was filling and refreshing. The mango, just tasted sweet but because it was frozen it made the drink cold and delicious. The spinach didn't really taste, I knew it was in there because it turned everything green, and there were little emerald specks of green. This is something I would make again and there are so many ways to modify it, that smoothies with greens could become a staple.

The spinach gave it a bright green color but that didn't translate into the photo.