The love affair with pesto started with the discovery of that amazing dry fruit - the pine nut. Costing over $6 a pound at the time in the local grocery stores in Ames, these were looked upon as treats to be enjoyed over special occasions on a student budget. Healthy doses of Emeril & Mario Batali introduced us to the magic of pesto. I still remember one of those Emeril shows dedicated to pizza's. The magical journey with pesto had begun.
Back home in B'lore, locating the chilgoza turned out to be a nightmare. Luckily, with a globalized population and fair amount of relatives and friends buzzing beween here and the US meant a fairly steady supply of the revernial nut.
Once you've had fresh mozz, its tough to go back to the greasy breads the normal folks term pizza's, and so it is with me. How often can you say you make your pizza from scratch, I mean the real scratch, even your cheese.
I don't do the traditional overnight rise of the dough for the base coz pizza urges happen at the drop of a hat.
My basic recipe has been to use a 6yr old supply of Fleishman's active dry yeast, suitably stored in the freezer over the years, along with good old chakki-ground atta. Allow this to rest for about 30mts, and hand stretch my dough to fit the baking pan (the stone has arrived, need to season it before use).
The pesto is a simple basil, pine nut (or toasted walnut) with parsley or coriander, generous tablespoons of
parmigiano or plain powdered parmesan, garlic and salt to taste, with olive oil as binder. I'd love to be able to do this in my mortar and pestle, but used the blender(the photo is to show off)Raiding the refrigerator, I found just green - capsicum, greeen olives and canned jalapenos. With the oven at 225, laid out the base on a square sheet and slathered the pesto on with the toppings. Crumbled the mozz on top and baked for 20mts.
Result below, total bliss :-)))
Yummy! A good one this (The first time I'm seeing a rectangular pizza :-P)
ReplyDeletewere fed on the fact that pizza's have to be round and full of dripping cheese - quite the contrary to the original Italian design. Simple philosophy - less is more on a pizza.
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