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Pissaladière (French Pizza)

June 15, 2012 by 4 Comments

I spent my senior year of high school as an exchange student in the Alsasce region of France.  How my parents managed to pull that off in the middle of a divorce on a church salary and as a full time student I have no idea, but I am eternally grateful. I took full advantage of the opportunity they gave me and studied (the boys. Sorry, Dad.) at a French high school, traveled through France, Germany, Switzerland and even a wee bit of Italy, drank up the culture, admired the architecture, consumed my weight in pastry, read their literature, attended sporting events, hiked the countryside, walked the city streets (only the safe ones, ish. Sorry, Mom.), made lifelong friends, and -in retrospect- did everything I could have wanted to do.

Except for one thing.

You see, the year I spent in France was smack dab down the middle of my seven year stint as a vegetarian. Sigh. That’s right. I spent a school year in the sausage capital of the world. As in the region of France that is best known for its charcuterie and specialty hams and oh man. (That sound is me smacking my head on the desk repeatedly.) I want a do-over on the meat portion of the trip.

To be fair, I must assert I did not do without good food, lack of ham notwithstanding.  France is a food mecca no matter how you eat. I had cheese and pastry and vegetable tartines and more cheese and more cheese and yet more cheese. I put a great deal of French cheese under my belt. Given that I was not partaking in the local meats (weep, gnash, moan), the hospitable folks of the area pushed many cheeses my way. And if you think I ran out of cheeses to try whilst in La Belle France, you’re sorely mistaken.

With all the multitudinous fromages I munched, you might think think it’s a cinch that cheese was my favourite food in France. That distinction, however, belongs to a food that will always reign supreme in my heart as the ultimate in French food. It’s not a high-falutin’, fancy-pants, five-days-prep food either. It’s that good, solid, favourite-of-the-citizens selection: Pissaladière.

Pissaladière is not technically an Alsatian dish (Whimper, see lack of ham tirade above.) but it is at its heart a seminal French dish. It is, in a nutshell, French pizza. The crust is a little breadier than Italian pizza, it’s covered with a thick layer of caramelized onions, and topped with salty, oil cured olives and anchovy fillets. This is a dish that encapsulates why -among other reasons- I love France so much. They don’t shy away from stinky food when it tastes great.

Some day, I’ll get back to France. I’ll tour the places where I spent some of the most defining time of my youth. I’ll once again eat my weight in cheese and pastry, tour the countryside and admire the architecture. But this time, I’ll take my own cute guy with me, and I’ll try that ham and sausage, dangit.

…and I will most certainly have a pissaladière. Or three.

This post was sponsored by Frigidaire. When you share your own do-over moment at Facebook.com/Frigidaire, Frigidaire will donate $1 to Save the Children’s U.S. programs. Plus, Frigidaire will help cover the costs for one lucky visitor to win the ultimate do-over.

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Pissaladière (French Pizza)

Pissaladière (French Pizza)

Pissaladière is the ultimate in French street food; crispy crust, caramelized onions, anchovies and salty, oil-cured olives. Because it is wonderful served both warm and at room temperature, it makes perfect picnic fare. La bonne vie is sitting on a blanket with a slice of Pissaladière and a glass of chilled, crisp white wine.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound pizza dough preferably this
  • 3 medium onions, peeled, halved and cut into thin half-moon shapes then roughly chopped
  • 3-4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme or 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
  • 1/2 a bay leaf
  • 3 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • black pepper to taste
  • 8-10 oil packed flat anchovy fillets, patted dry
  • 16 oil cured olives, pitted and halved (You don't need to be fancy about it. Pop the pit out with your fingers and tear the olives in half.)

Instructions

Preheat your oven and a pizza stone to 500°F (or up to 550°F if your oven can go higher.)

While the oven preheats, gently heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet. Add the onions, thyme, bay leaf, garlic, salt and pepper, stirring to evenly coat with oil, and cook gently over medium low to low heat (lowering if necessary to prevent over-browning) for about 20 minutes, until the onions are softened and just lightly browning around the edges. Do not caramelize the onions completely or they will scorch in the oven giving a burned taste to the final product. Remove the bay leaf from the caramelized onions.

Dust your work surface with flour and gently stretch your pizza dough into a circle. Use a floured rolling pin to stretch the dough out until it is about 1/8-inch thick. Generously cover a pizza peel with semolina or cornmeal.

Spread the onion mixture (including the oil) to within 1/4-inch of the edges of the crust. Arrange the anchovies and olive halves over the top of the onions. Give the peel a gentle shake to be sure the dough isn't sticking. If it is, carefully lift that area and sprinkle more semolina or cornmeal underneath to fix it.

Slide the dressed dough onto the hot stone and bake for between 8 and 15 minutes, depending on the heat of your oven, or until it is evenly browned and crisp underneath. Use the peel to transfer the Pissaladière to a cutting board.

Cool for five minutes, cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2012/06/15/pissaladiere-french-pizza/

Filed Under: Accessible Ethnic, Appetizers & Snacks, Bread, Comfort Food, Party Food, Pizza, Rebecca, Recipes

Barbecue Pulled Pork Pizza

May 11, 2012 by 8 Comments

Today I have the second of the three pizzas I planned to share with you for Pizza Week. You can see the dough recipe here and the Spinach and Garlic Alfredo Pizza here. Hooray for pizza! Now, I can’t speak for your own mother, but I -for one- would be thrilled with a homemade pizza for Mother’s Day.

By now you all know how I feel about pizza, but there’s one very big reason to love it that I haven’t mentioned yet. It’s frugal. Oh, baby, it is the frugal hausfrau’s best friend. You can put nearly anything on a pizza, so it’s great for using up odds and ends in from the refrigerator and the pantry. Granted, not every combination will be a winner. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind when figuring out what to load onto your crust is “Would this taste great together on a sandwich?” If you answer yourself with a yes, chances are good that it will make a wonderful pizza.

With my own rule in mind, I raided my chill chest and put together today’s pizza. Using a little leftover pulled pork (I used this from one of my most popular posts ever here on Foodie With Family but this one would be great, too!)  barbecue sauce, enchilada sauce, pepper jack cheese and onions from hamburgers, I put together this beautiful Barbecue Pulled Pork Pizza.  It was a handful of this and a fistful of that and a pinch of another thing. We’re talking about little ingredients that so easily could’ve been lost in some forgotten corner of the refrigerator, but they became dinner. In fact, they became a glorious barbecue pulled pork crossed with pizza. How could that be anything less than wonderful?

Another great advantage of making pizza at home is the infinite ability to adjust it to your own preferences. You’re not an onion lover? Leave them off! You dislike barbecue sauce? Replace it with pizza sauce or hot sauce. The world is your oyster, or rather, your pizza!

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Barbecue Pulled Pork Pizza

Barbecue Pulled Pork Pizza

This pizza is a delicious multi-tasker. Yes, it tastes amazing- pizza meets pulled barbecue pork on a crackly crisp crust- but it's also a great user-upper of leftovers from the refrigerator.

Ingredients

  • 1 piece, about 5 ounces or the size of a large plum, of No-Knead Whole-Wheat Semolina Pizza Dough
  • 1 to 1 1/2 cups leftover pulled pork (like this or this.) | http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2009/03/24/cuban-pork-part-i-slow-cookin-good-lookin/]
  • 1/4 cup barbecue sauce (I use this but you can use whichever is your favourite.)
  • 1 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
  • 1/2 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
  • 2 tablespoons hot sauce or enchilada sauce
  • Optional, but tasty:
  • 2-3 quarter-inch thick, half moon slices of onions
  • mixed salad greens
  • additional hot sauce

Instructions

With a pizza stone situated in the bottom third, preheat the oven as high as you can get it. We use a 500°F setting on our oven.

Lightly flour your work surface. Form your pizza dough into a ball by gently stretching the top of the dough underneath itself. Place the dough on the floured work surface and pat it out gently with your hands into a disc shape until you cannot make it any wider. Flour a rolling pin and gently roll the pizza dough out. This works best if you look at the pizza dough as a clock. Start rolling from the center of the circle toward 12 o'clock, rotate your pin and roll from the center to 3 o'clock, then from the center to 6 o'clock, and so forth, ending back at 12 o'clock. Do this until you have a circle that is about 10-inches in diameter.

Sprinkle a pizza peel generously with semolina flour or cornmeal. Carefully transfer the dough to the peel. Shake gently to be sure no part of the dough sticks. This is crucial. You will be shaking the peel gently after each addition of toppings to make sure the dough can still move freely. If at any point the dough sticks, gently lift the offending area and throw a bunch of semolina or cornmeal under it.

Dot the barbecue sauce over the dough to within a 1/2-inch of the edges. Shake the dough to make sure it's not stuck.

Pull the pork apart with your hands and arrange it over the barbecue sauce to within a 1/2-inch of the edges. Again, shake to be sure it isn't stuck

Sprinkle the pepper jack and mozzarella cheese over the pork and then drizzle with the 2 tablespoons of hot sauce or enchilada sauce. If you're using the onion, separate the slices into individual pieces and arrange over the top. Shake! Shake! Shake! To be sure it isn't sticking.

Open your oven, position your peel over the back edge of the pizza stone. Flick your wrist to get the dough moving, pulling the peel back as you transfer the dough to the stone. Shut the oven and let the pizza bake on the stone for 8-10 minutes, or until the crust is the desired colour and the cheese is melted and bubbly with golden brown or charred areas. Slip the peel back under the pizza and give a little jerk to move it safely onto the peel. Transfer the cooked pizza onto a cutting board. Let it rest 3-5 minutes before slicing.

If you'd like to, and I almost always do, serve the slices with a handful of fresh salad greens and another drizzle of hot sauce over the top.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2012/05/11/barbecue-pulled-pork-pizza/

Filed Under: Comfort Food, kid food, Meat, Party Food, Pizza, Recipes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Spinach and Garlic Alfredo Pizza (With or Without Onions and Anchovies)

May 9, 2012 by 7 Comments

Monday, I declared this week to be Pizza Week. Today is the first pizza in the series. All of these pizzas will use the No-Knead Whole-Wheat Semolina Pizza Dough recipe I posted Monday.

As much as I love a good, plain old pepperoni and cheese pizza, there is something about pizza that makes me wildly experimental.  The pizza shell is my canvas and I go all Jackson Pollack on it. Today, I will go all Jackson Pollack on this post. Disjointed. Scattershot. Yeah. Um, stick with me. The pizza is totally worth it.

I’ve played around with white pizzas over the years but until recently was never blown away by the results. The solution was two-fold.

  1. I found the perfect crust. (See yesterday’s post!)
  2. I started using garlic Alfredo sauce instead of olive oil and garlic.

I have to tell you that Alfredo sauce is my six-year old’s specialty in the kitchen. Granted, I measure the ingredients into a bowl for him, but he does all the grunt work. He whisks the ingredients together while I work on pizza crusts. We’re a well-oiled team. Actually, we’re a well-buttered team. The Alfredo sauce is pretty buttery. And creamy. And cheesy. This is mainly due to the fact that Alfredo sauce is made almost entirely of butter, cheese, and eggs with heavy cream thrown in for good measure.  Because really, butter, eggs, and cheese aren’t rich enough on their own. Oy.

To that rich, velvety, hubba hubba base, we add a touch of garlic, parsley and black pepper. Voila! You have a sauce that makes pizzas sing and pasta weep with joy. It also makes a pretty darned irresistible perfume if you’re married to someone like the guy I married!

Speaking of things that my husband can’t resist, I must broach the subject of anchovies. Full disclosure: I am an unapologetic anchovy cheerleader. I love them. I adore them. I pink puffy hearts love everything about them. I do know, however, that not everybody is in my camp. If the thought of the hairy, spooky little fish fillets on your pizza skeeves you out, might I suggest that you chop at least one and add it to your Alfredo sauce? You will be shocked -SHOCKED, I say- at the subtle boost the presence of the little fishy adds. If you just can’t leap that hurdle, mentally, it’s alright. I’m still here for you. I am still going to dangle anchovies proverbially in front of you from time to time until you feel brave enough to try them. That’s right. I am big sister to the world.

In short, if you don’t like anchovies and onions, don’t put them on the pizza.

…And since we’re on the subject of dangling things in front of people until they try them, let’s talk spinach. My kids -thanks to a friend who fed them spinach in my absence- are pretty keen on spinach. Even two of the founding members of my anti-veg contingent like spinach. Proving the aforementioned friend’s theory right again, combining spinach and Alfredo sauce on this pizza is -at least in my imagination- probably what it was like when someone first stuck a chocolate bar in a jar of peanut butter.  Heavenly angels singing comes to mind…

We can’t forget to talk about the crust! I made many promises about this crust in the post with the dough recipe. I cut the pizza and The Evil Genius swooped in (sans cape) to snatch the first piece after I photographed it.

He declared, “You must show them a picture of the bottom of the crust. That’s the key! That’s how they’ll know this is one crust to rule them all.” And to further drive his point home, this man -the one who I am convinced wears a hat in order to have something to pull over his face when I aim the camera at him- offered to hold the pizza up (after taking a bite, of course) and let his hand be in the picture.  It’s a banner day people. I present to you “Perfect Crust in a Manly Hand”.

Now let’s make a pizza -an AWESOME pizza- together, shall we?

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Spinach and Garlic Alfredo Pizza (With or Without Onions and Anchovies)

Spinach and Garlic Alfredo Pizza (With or Without Onions and Anchovies)

The perfect pizza dough is topped with a creamy, rich Garlic Alfredo, spinach, and mozzarella (and anchovies and onions in our house!) and baked to crackly crisp perfection with little charred bits on the crust and golden brown cheese. This is one white pizza to rule them all!

Ingredients

    For the Garlic Alfredo Sauce:
  • 1 cup (8 ounces by weight) butter
  • 2 to 2-1/2 cups grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (or a blend)
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
  • 1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes (or 1 tablespoon fresh, minced parsley)
  • freshly ground black pepper, to taste
    • For the Pizza:
  • 1 piece, about 5 ounces or the size of a large plum, of No-Knead Whole-Wheat Semolina Pizza Dough
  • 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup of Garlic Alfredo Sauce
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
  • 2 cups of frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed to remove most of the moisture
  • cornmeal or semolina for the peel
  • Optional but ever so tasty:
  • 2 (1/8 to 1/4-inch thick) slices of a peeled onion, cut into half moons.
  • 6 whole anchovy fillets (the packed in olive oil variety), blotted gently

Instructions

To Make the Garlic Alfredo Sauce:

Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl. Whisk in all additional ingredients and refrigerate -tightly covered- until ready to use. Leftovers should be used within 3 days.

To Make the Pizza:

With a pizza stone situated in the bottom third, preheat the oven as high as you can get it. We use a 500°F setting on our oven.

Lightly flour your work surface. Form your pizza dough into a ball by gently stretching the top of the dough underneath itself. Place the dough on the floured work surface and pat it out gently with your hands into a disc shape until you cannot make it any wider. Flour a rolling pin and gently roll the pizza dough out. This works best if you look at the pizza dough as a clock. Start rolling from the center of the circle toward 12 o'clock, rotate your pin and roll from the center to 3 o'clock, then from the center to 6 o'clock, and so forth, ending back at 12 o'clock. Do this until you have a circle that is about 10-inches in diameter.

Sprinkle a pizza peel generously with semolina flour or cornmeal. Carefully transfer the dough to the peel. Shake gently to be sure no part of the dough sticks. This is crucial. You will be shaking the peel gently after each addition of toppings to make sure the dough can still move freely. If at any point the dough sticks, gently lift the offending area and throw a bunch of semolina or cornmeal under it.

Spread the Garlic Alfredo sauce over the dough to within a 1/2-inch of the edges. Shake the dough to make sure it's not stuck.

Sprinkle most of the grated cheese, reserving about 1/4 cup, over the Garlic Alfredo sauce. Pull off peanut-in-the-shell sized hunks of spinach and dot them over the cheese. If using the onions and anchovies, pull the onions into individual pieces and distribute them and the anchovies evenly over the top. Toss the reserved 1/4 cup of mozzarella cheese over the top. Gently shake the pizza to make sure it's not stuck.

Open your oven, position your peel over the back edge of the pizza stone. Flick your wrist to get the dough moving, pulling the peel back as you transfer the dough to the stone. Shut the oven and let the pizza bake on the stone for 8-10 minutes, or until the crust is the desired colour and the cheese is melted and bubbly with golden brown or charred areas. Slip the peel back under the pizza and give a little jerk to move it safely onto the peel. Transfer the cooked pizza onto a cutting board and let it rest 3-5 minutes before slicing.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2012/05/09/spinach-alfredo-pizza-with-or-without-onions-and-anchovies/

 

Filed Under: Comfort Food, Instructional, kid food, Main Dish, Party Food, Pizza, Rebecca, Recipes, Vegetarian Tagged With: , , , ,