Pizza and a Candle

 

  Pesto, Goat Cheese and Italian Sausage Pizza by Jay Scott on 500px

Take out pizza I will always be what it is. Adequate, cheesy, fast, effortless and free of dishes. That doesn't mean it's great. Every time Angie and I make pizza we always praise ourselves about how much better it is than what you order in. No, it's not health food, but we do our best to minimize the sodium, nitrates, and preservatives. The flavor is always better with our freshly prepared ingredients and, as for dishes, since we wash them while the pizza is baking, it feels like there are none because when we are done eating, we are done eating.

Like I said, it's not health food. We splurged on a package of Italian sausage at Costco last time and have been enjoying it very much in different recipes, despite the fat content. That kick of spice and the texture of the meat is something unique that we both really enjoy. We decided to go all out, inspired by the red sun-dried tomato pesto we bought a while back, and combined those ingredients with red onion, mushrooms, Italian sausage, goat cheese and a generous sprinkling of marble cheese.

The pesto made a wonderful pizza sauce substitute, not that different from the lovely prawn and pesto pizza you may have had at Earl's before. In fact, that was what I had at my first meal out I had after my injury in 1997. Still on the menu so it must be good. But, I digress. I could see us using traditional marinara pizza sauce less and less in the future as combinations like this, and our Thai pizza, always satisfy us more than traditional pizzas. It's good to be able to cook well, at home, and in control of exactly what we are eating.

Last week I decided to make my move when a piece of glass came on sale at Don's Photo. I had been keeping my eye on this tele-converter for some time, had saved almost enough money, and then the sale price showed up making that last little bit of savings unnecessary. I have been more than happy with the image quality which can often be degraded when you add a stopgap solution such as a tele-converter as opposed to buying a dedicated lens. However, to get the additional telephoto length I wanted it would have been much, much more money as well as a lot more weight which may or may not have been something I could handle. I am very happy with the compromise as the image quality is absolutely satisfactory and the price was very manageable compared to the alternative. Now I'm looking forward to the birds returning to the Forestry Farm because I will be much more ready for them this year.

In addition to more telephoto, it also doubled my macro capabilities as you see above. That is a typical slender dinner candle, less than 1 cm from the wick to the edge of the candle. I think there may be a few more water drop photos in the near future. For now, I have some excellent projects on the go, hindered by a rigmarole with home care to finish dealing with, and then I hope to get back to fully enjoying our daughter and to the other activities that fulfill me, including work on Challenging Reality.

Gluten Free Thai Chicken Pizza

It is possible! It is possible to have a delicious gluten free pizza. We had pizza from Pizza Pirates here in Saskatoon a few weeks ago. The toppings were great, the crust was passable at best. It was simply a bit too gritty and even a bit soggy or undercooked in the middle.  I know that you cannot always have an optimal product when you're trying to balance standard pizza with gluten-free, and I do think they did a pretty good job, but it was not up to the standards I was used to so we kept looking and found this excellent, crispy flat crest pizza dough recipe. However, it was not a creation of our own and involved a very significant shortcut that was almost as easy as picking up the phone to order.

That shortcut was this: It was the premixed pizza crust blend #219 from Bulk Barn. The mixture contained, in unknown proportions, rice flour, whole grain rice flour, corn flour, tapioca starch, corn starch, methylcellulose, guar gum, and xanthan gum.

The directions for the pizza crust:
1.25 cups of the gluten-free pizza crust blend
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
2 tablespoons of ground flax seed (Angie has informed me that ground flax can go rancid and is best kept refrigerated so you need to add it yourself, as it does not come already mixed into the pizza crust blend)
two large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup of milk

Preheat your oven to 400°F
Line a non-perforated pizza tray or baking tray with parchment paper or grease a tray with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Combine blend, salt, pepper and ground flaxseed. Add eggs, milk and mix well to form a smooth batter. Spread batter on tray into desired shape, approximately 12 inches in diameter, making edges slightly thicker than the center.
Place tray in middle rack of oven, and bake for 15 min.
Remove tray and prick with a fork several times, it will puff up in spots while baking.
Spread tomato or pesto sauce and top with your favorite toppings and cheese. Bake for another 15 min. for a thin crust and 20 min. for a medium thick crust or until crisp and golden on the edges and the cheese bubbles.

We followed those directions for the initial pre-baking of the crust. After that we used the Thai sauce recipe you will see below and topped that with precooked chicken, caramelized red onion, mushrooms, red pepper and mozzarella cheese, garnishing with green onion and cilantro.

The toppings we used could have been on any pizza but what we have always felt really makes a unique pizza unique is the unique sauce. Certainly, we still have a place in our stomachs for standard pizza sauce but this is by far one of our favorites and as simple as it gets.


The sauce came together easily without any heating or other steps. Simply combine:

2 tbsp. sesame oil
1 tbsp. peanut butter (heaping)
1/4 tsp. soy sauce (gluten-free, of course)
2 garlic cloves, minced
2-4 drops chili oil (we omitted this but made sure we had enough red pepper flakes and the above heaping tablespoon of peanut butter to compensate)
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 green onions, chopped

Stir everything together and top your prebaked crust with the sauce and your toppings then finish baking it.

I will always enjoy good pizza that has been ordered, even though it is always saltier and less healthy than homemade, but if our pizzas from this day forward are made of this crust I won't complain. To be perfectly honest, I think I like it better than our former home made pizza crust.