Thai Chicken Pizza.

It seems like any dinner-type recipe I post is of the pasta/pizza variety.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but since I've found my go-to recipe for tomato sauce and pesto, I'm looking beyond classic Italian flavours to incorporate into my pasta/pizza. Variety being the spice of Life and all.

Think Taco-style Mac-and-Cheese, Thai Chicken Pizza, Nutella Pizza and their tasty kind.

Making pizza dough seems like a daunting, Herculean task as a newbie but I humbly ask you to try it. Homemade pizza crust CANNOT be beat, not even by the likes of French Loaf. With some yeast and flour, you'll create something that belongs in the hallowed wood-fired ovens of gourmet pizzerias.

You can get Dry Yeast at any semi-decent supermarket. When you do, check the previous chatty post I've done on the perfect pizza crust. One recipe makes four LARGE thin crust pizzas, so I make pizzas out of half the dough and freeze the other bit for a rainy (really, any) day.

 Thai food was an obsession of sort with me four to five years back. This petered out due to frequent unavailability of kaffir lime/lemon grass/curry pastes... and the prohibitive prices of Benjarong/Lotus/HipAsia. I still love my Satays with peanut sauce, phad thai and this amazing Tom Yum soup that Masterchef Machi makes.

However, my parents took us to Bangkok at an age when we were too young to appreciate local food/culture (wasn't precocious like Today's ten-year-olds). At Pattaya, I was allowed precious little. No Parasailing for Rabia! I could draw on the sands, roasting away in thick jeans (no butterfly applique on my jeans! Mum shopped at the same Ruff'N'Tuff counter for the brother and I... girls' wear largely consisted of butt-ugly frothy frocks back in the nineties).

As for the food, I could slurp down oysters, wasn't-that-fun?! There was also the added pressure of not looking at the other beach-revellers strip down to their bikinis and sip on their Heinekins (my mum warned us that our eyes would rot like oozing spoilt grapes if we looked at Alcohol or scantily dressed women. I believed her for the longest time).

So I survived the trip on Kinder Eggs (nothing like the piece of plastic crap that's sold for 30 bucks at India), prawn crackers and coconut cake.

The coconut cake and the floating markets of Bangkok are what I still vividly remember. Both were insane and incredible. A dense-moist-yet-spongy cake sold by a lovely Thai lady on the Bangkok version of a "platform" (Challenge to self: replicate cake or better yet, go back and try it again before I hit *gasp* thirty).

The floating markets were loud, bustling, chaotic and beautiful rolled into one.

Which brings me to the Dish of the Day (That meant something else before the blog was born!)

Thai Chicken Pizza. A copycat version of California Pizza Kitchen's Thai pizza with a little help from Ms Rachel Ray. A mish-mash of flavours and textures, all loud-bustling-chaotic and most importantly, beautiful.

(Note: You can use any Asian Sweet Chilli sauce, including Maggi's Hot'N'Sweet sauce, but if you can't track some down, make your own. Have added the recipe for a not terribly authentic, but a easy and tasty Sweet Chili sauce!)

Thai Chicken Pizza:
(Makes two large pizzas)

1 batch pizza dough
or 6-8 small premade pizza bases

For the chicken:

For the marinade:

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 rounded tablespoonful peanut butter

2 teaspoons red chilli sauce

2 teaspoons grill seasoning (which has salt)

300 grams boneless chicken, cut into 2" cubes 

For the sweet chilli sauce

1/4 cup tomato ketchup

2 tbsps honey or brown sugar

2 tbsp vinegar

2 tbsp red chilli sauce

2 tbsp water

1 or 2 dried bird's-eye chilli, whole

Toppings

1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1/2 orange or yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced

a bunch of coriander/cilantro leaves, chopped

a few Thai basil leaves, chopped

3/4 cup roasted peanuts, chopped.

1 cup bean sprouts

1/2 cup of scallions/green onion, chopped (can use sliced red onion)

2/3 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

dried chilli flakes

Method:

Preheat the oven to 250 C or 500 F for not less than 30 minutes. Make sure you preheat the baking tray in which you plan to bake the pizza, as well.

For the chicken:

If you have only crunchy peanut butter, you might have to pick out the big bits and throw them on along with the roasted peanuts at the end.

Marinate the chicken in the all of the ingredients mentioned for about 15 minutes. Grill the chicken until done, and slice it after it's been rested. You can also cook in a saucepan with all of the juices on medium heat. Do not overcook. Break up the chicken as it cooks.

For the sauce:



Use deep dark sugar or honey for a more caramel-ly taste.



Combine all over the ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat.

De-seed the chilli if you don't like very spicy food. Stir, as the sauce thickens, for about 7 minutes. Taste to see if it needs more chilli sauce or sugar, as per your liking. Add more water if you're using very pungent vinegar.

For the pizza:

Roll out the thawed pizza dough on a well-floured surface. Transfer it to a baking sheet/aluminium foil sheet that has been greased with oiled and sprinkled on with cornmeal or semolina/rawa/sooji. This prevents the pizza from sticking.

Kindly excuse my ugly-ass baking sheet. I tell myself that it's the mark of a true baker to have a burnt, overused sheet.

Keep all your toppings in one place so you won't forget to add one or the other.

On top of the rolled out dough, spread some of that sweet chilli sauce. Strew on the onions, peppers, bean sprouts and mozzarella cheese. I tend to not add the chicken, as it dries out and becomes stringy/rubbery in the oven.

Brush the edges with some Olive oil, some extra sauce on top and pop it in.

Bake for 10 minutes, until the edges are golden and the cheese has melted/is bubbly.

Take it out. Strew on cooked, shredded chicken, crushed dried chilli flakes, coriander, basil and peanuts. Add a few random drizzles of the sweet chilli sauce and you're done!

Absolutely delicious, was the unanimous verdict. Each bite was a revelation: you get the cheese, then the hit of the chilli flakes, the nuttiness of the roasted peanuts, the herbiness of the cilantro, the crunch of the onion. Even the pickiest of eaters wolfed it down with no complaint.

My brother did not notice that I had thrown regular sprouts instead of their traditional, infinitely tastier, crunchier white bean sprout counterparts. That, in my book, is a flaunt-worthy success.

Minced Meat Pizza/Breakfast-AND-Dinner of Champions.

I love pizza. I love breakfast.

Scratch that. I love good pizza and great breakfast.

Idli and filter coffee, frittatta and fruit, pancakes and espresso. Great breakfast.

Homemade pizza dough, bursting with three types of cheese, a rich tomato sauce and chunks of meat. Goooood pizza.

So, today, after all the dessert, Vegan and miscellaneous girlie food, I thought I'd post a recipe for minced-meat (kheema) pizza. You can use any ground meat, but the cooking time will vary depending on whether it's chicken, lamb or beef.

This recipe also does not require you to make a separate sauce or break the bank (non-existent in my case) on an expensive bottle of Ragu/pizza sauce. It's a stew on its own, which can be eaten with naan or Pav bread or over some Penne tossed with olive oil. It's versatile, one pot and man-approved. Win-win-win situation for us all.

And whether you want to top it with an egg is completely up to you. Some would love the yolk oozing over the beef and creating a hearty breakfast pizza (does the intro make sense now?) But make sure the people you're cooking for can take eggs, meat, cheese and bread in one go.

For a flavour boost, I'd suggest you used either stock cubes or packaged stock or if you can lay your hands on some, rehydrate porcini mushrooms in the hot stock. Yum.


Minced Meat "Breakfast" Pizza:

Ingredients:

Ground/minced meat - 400 grams (I used beef)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
400 grams tomatoes, pureed*
4 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 teaspoon red chilli powder
1 tbsp red chilli sauce
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 vegetable/beef bouillon cube
1/4 cup water
Dried oregano and basil-1 tbsp each.
Salt-to taste

To assemble:

1 onion, cut into thin slices
1 orange/red pepper, cut into thin slices
Tomato ketchup, mustard- to spread
Olive oil, for greasing
Egg-1 per pizza

*Tomato puree to be made in the mixie after boiling the tomatoes for around a minute, skinning them, deseeding them and removing excess water.

Method:

In a big pan, heat the olive oil on medium-high
.

Add in the minced meat after the pan has completely heated up. The meat should sizzle when it hits the pan.

Saute the meat for around 2 minutes, after which you can drain the excess fat.

Add in the onion and garlic. Saute over medium heat until the meat has browned and the onions have lightly browned.

Reconstitute the stock cube in 1/4 cup boiling water. Add it into the meat mix and cook until the water evaporates.

Add in the tomato puree, salt, ketchup, red chilli powder, pepper and sauce. Give it a good mix. Let it cook down on low heat. At this point, you can taste and see if your meat needs any extra seasoning.

Sprinkle in the dried herbs after the mixture has cooked downed.

To assemble:


I do not approve and wouldn't ever use this type of a pastry-ish white pizza base if I had my way.


Spread the pizza base with olive oil.

Coat it with 1 tsp tomato ketchup + 1/2 tsp mustard.

Add a portion of the meat.

Strew on the onion, bell pepper and cheese.

Bake in a preheated oven at 225 C for around 8 minutes.

Take it out, break an egg over the pizza (if desired) and bake for another 5 minutes. If you're not adding the egg, just bake until your cheese is gooey and the edges are browned.

Sprinkle on extra chilli flakes, hot sauce and oregano.

Dig in! And I mean it literally.

P.S. To the good people of Blogger. It's chiLLi, not chili, where I live. Annoyance.

Pasta with Rainbow Veggies/United Colours of Pasta-ton!

The easiest way to keep yourself away from pastries would be to bake them yourself. By the time you're done taste-testing and batter-tasting and baking yet another batch of cookies, you don't want to see another one. Only for the next few hours, though. You'll be putting your hand into the cookie jar the most, if you're, well, me.

I do make things without vanilla and chocolate; here's one of them. Pasta with Rainbow Veggies. A great way to deal with those boring weekday dinners. You've had a sandwich or less for lunch, and you want a proper dinner, to combat the weekday blues.

You know what my medical advice to you is? A pot of pasta, bursting to the seams with vegetables, with a hint of comforting cheese; it fills your whole house with the smells of tomato, garlic, onion and oregano. Don't go around getting pizza cravings now.

And it's healthy enough for you to have an excuse to indulge over the weekend (get yourself a steak au poivre with a side of potatoes!).You meet atleast two days' worth of your vegetable requirement. And veggies are so forgiving; besides cleaning up your cells, they don't give you food poisoning if undercooked or go all eraser-textured if overcooked. I also used a bechamel, so I can get creaminess in the dish with less than a tablespoon of butter.

It isn't restaurant-style Italian, so don't expect pancetta to be fried or carbonaras being cooked. It's fancy enough to be eaten with a fork, and not so fancy that it tastes weird.

Pasta with Rainbow Veggies:

Ingredients:

1 bag of baby corn (up to 2 cups when chopped)
200g mushrooms, quartered.
3 bell peppers/capsicum (I use red, orange and green), cut into slices.
3 tomatoes, pureed.
1 onion, chopped.
5 cloves garlic, quartered.
1 tbsp butter.
1 tbsp all-purpose flour (maida)
1 cup milk.
1/2 cup ready-made pasta sauce (can be substituted with 2 tbsp if ketchup).
250 g pasta (penne, fettucini, spiral, bowtie/even macaroni).
Olive oil-2 tbsp.
Dried herbs-2 tbsp, and some more to sprinkle.
A handful of cheese-either parmesan/feta/mozzarella.
Dried red chillies-3 or 4.
Salt and pepper-to taste.

Method:

1) Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Drop in your pasta; when al dente (meaning they still have  a bite to them, not too soggy), take it out and wash with cold water to stop the cooking process.

2)Make your bechamel-the white sauce that goes on an Au Gratin.

Heat a tablespoon of butter over low heat. Stir in the maida and make a roux.

                                

When golden, pour in the milk while whisking actively. Let the bechamel concentrate over low heat, until you have a creamy consistency. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg (optional). Keep aside.

Don't let any floury lumps remain-it is not appetizing.

3)Prep your veggies. Make sure they're all equally sized pieces so they finish cooking at the same time.

Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick vessel over med-high. Add in the baby corn (it takes the longest to cook). After a minute of tossing, drop in the chopped onion and garlic. Toss until the onion turns transclucent.

4)Add in the mushroom. Cook for 2 minutes. Add in the bell-peppers. Cook for another 2 minutes. Add the pepper and salt.

Less is more. You can always add extra salt later. And I strongly recommend you pound some vathal (dried red chillies) or add chilli flakes to the vegetables. It cuts through the homogenous bechamel.

5)Add the tomato puree (it'll taste better if you've boiled it before blitzing). Cook until the raw smell of it goes away. Approximately 5-7 minutes.

Add the readymade pasta sauce. If you don't have any, increase the tomato puree mix and add tomato paste/ketchup. I only had it because I got it on an offer (free bag of Fusilli with the Pasta Sauce). I am not a fan of readymade pasta sauce, but it's handy on a weekday, I won't lie.

6)Cook down for 10 minutes. Add the herbs. Taste the mix, and adjust the seasoning according. Toss in the cooked pasta until well coated.

7)Add in the white sauce you've made. Toss some more.

Don't keep mixing the pasta with a spoon; you'll make it all gloopy by overworking the gluten.

8)Spread the pasta out on a baking tray. Sprinkle a handful of cheese. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees celcius (maximum, you don't want to dry it out).

9)Serve with a slice of garlic bread. This is simply to mop up all the juices and sauce from your plate. Yum.

Recipe Source: Me! Don't be too scared.

And I know I've been doing too many "Loaded with Vegetables", "Super Healthy, Super Tasty!" type of recipes lately. So next time, it's going to be a meat and cheese affair. At least, that's what I told my family, and that's what I'm telling you.

From Odds-and-Ends to Mock-Fancy in Twenty minutes.

How do I know it's 6: 30 in the evening? Because that's when I experience actual hunger. Not the false pains (OBG talk) that are very specific for mint chocolate-chip ice-cream or shawarma-pickles.
Solid hunger pangs, which I try to tide over with a slice of wholewheat toast+peanut butter(Crunchy, of course) or a bowl of cereal because dinner-is-served! happens only after nine at my household.

At six last evening, I went foraging into the store cupboard (I won't call it pantry because it isn't fancy enough, currently) and dug out a nice big bag of arborio rice that had been sitting pretty for quite a while. Not if I had a say.
Arborio rice is a short-grained, glutinous rice that goes into risottos, paella and rice puddings.
It's quite hard to get access to, but the recipe I'm posting below will accept regular white rice leftover from the afternoon quite well.

Arroz=Rice. And I thought it was the brand name!

Next, I opened the refrigerator; half-used bell peppers, half a packet of Cream of Chicken soup and Feta cheese left over from the pasta I made the other day, all crying to be used.

Ooh. I have to use up the Feta by next month. Burgers, maybe?

I went straight to Allrecipes, and did an Ingredient Search. After reading approximately 15 recipes, I made stuffed peppers

This one got mixed reviews from the people who tried it: needs spice; excellent; needs cheese; why didn't you make more?; yummy-licious! Easy to guess who said what if you know my family.
If you want something healthy, easy to make, can sub-in for dinner, I suggest you give it a try!

Stuffed Tricoloured Peppers.

Ingredients:

3 whole bell-peppers (I used red, yellow, green)
1 cup uncooked Arborio rice
3 cups soup or stock (I used chicken)
1 cup sliced onion
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tomatoes, diced
3 tbsps olive oil
3 tsps mixed dried herbs (I used basil, parsley and oregano)
1 tsp salt, more as needed
Pepper, as needed
1 cup Feta cheese (or a mix of Feta-Parmesan or Feta-Mozzarella)

Method:

1)Preheat the oven to 240 degrees Celcius. Line a baking tray with foil; grease it with olive oil, lightly.

2)Prep the peppers. Cut them into two, vertically. Deseed, destalk, and place cut side down on the baking tray. Drizzle over with 1 tbsp olive oil.

I didn't grease the peppers/tray to save a few paltry calories. Yeah.
Mistake no: 1. Please use atleast a little.

3) Place the tray into the oven, and let it stay there for 25 minutes, until the peppers get slightly blistered.

Pick off the burnt bits, but they HAVE to be blistered to this point!

4)While that happens, bring the soup or stock to a furious boil. Pour in the rice, set the flame on Sim, and let it simmer away, covered, for 20 minutes.

Do not keep mixing your rice around, because that will break down the rice to puddingy consistency. At the end of 20 minutes, try a few grains and see if it's done. It shouldn't be al dente, but still have its shape.
Keep checking to see if the rice at the bottom isn't burnt or sticking too much to it. If you feel it needs more water, because it's still undercooked, confidently add.

If you're using left over rice, just simmer it for two minutes with very little water and a stock cube. It gets gloopy really fast, so, careful there!

3)In a big pan, heat the olive oil. Toss in the onion and garlic and let them turn golden. Next, add the diced tomato and give it a good toss around.

4)Add the salt, pepper (even, jalapenos/chilli to tide over the lack of spice that was the main complaint) and the dried herbs. Spoon in the rice, mix it through. Take it off the heat, and add in the feta cheese.

                                    

5)Spoon the mix into the pepper halves. Sprinkle with some more cheese (mozzerella or a plain old Amul slice) if necessary. I skipped this step for everyone except my sister(she loves her Amul cheese); because it defeats the purpose of a healthy dish. And cheese can be like ketchup. It masks the taste of the peppers and the rice.

6)Return to the oven for another 5 minutes at 220 degrees celcius. Take it out, make it pretty, and serve!

You can make it your own by adding in sauteed mushrooms, carrots, zucchini, whatever and adjusting the seasoning/oil accordingly. Eat this, and feel the rush of Vitamin C and other antioxidants clearing up your skin and unclogging your arteries (as long as you tone down the cheese).

Mmm. Only this time, for a much-needed change, you can have a self-satisfied, smug smirk on your face.

Pizza en su Casa.

Have any of you had great pizza at Madras? Yes, Tuscana is pretty good, but too pricey and thin crust does nothing for me. I'm a thick crust/deep dish girl all the way; I actually enjoy the ends people discard more than the pizza itself.

The places we've thronged for our pizza fix! Those multi-national chains (you know the ones) that churn out pizzas made from stale crusts, dabbed with insipid sauce and flecked with week-old (hopefully, just one week) bits of toppings? Yes, flecked is the verb of choice; you need a good pair of hand-lens to find the toppings.
Breaking News. I realized a few years back that, that isn't pizza. Not one worth drawing money out of the ATM for. An epiphany of sorts.

Casa Piccola makes pizza between the ranges of Rs. 120 to 180. They've got enough toppings, plenty of cheese and will fill up all the crevices of your stomach. And it's open all day long. I find it to be greasy though... it's the kind of pizza that has to be eaten with a fork and a knife because it's an amorphous mass of dough/cheese/chicken. Some people like it. Some don't. Latter category, I'm in.

So if I'm going to be picky, I'm left with no choice but to make the pizza at home.

The crust, I pick up at French Loaf. It's dense, brown, has loads of whole grains embedded in the dough, and is the right thickness. The rest of the family prefer the white, fluffy bun-like pizza base, which works out way cheaper. *Cough* Country frutes *Cough*

The sauce, I learnt to make in the eleventh standard, the Year of The Sleepovers. Nachos with cheese sauce, Mint-Chocolate Chip Ice-cream with Chocolate Cake chunks, movies with Meg Ryan in them, Makeovers, Prank Calls (before the advent of widespread caller ID). Sigh.

Reminiscing aside, take a look at the things you'd need for the pizza. Told you I make it at home because I'm picky and not because I'm cheap! And this is only for the toppings.



Mushrooms, olives, paneer, onions, poached chicken, mozzarella, peppers,
sweet corn, pineapple, so on and so forth.

I'll post the recipe for the treasured pizza sauce alone, for now. Maybe I'll be inspired enough to make the crust someday. You can also achieve a great pizza and the flattery that comes with it if you buy the crust and a bottle of Pizza Sauce. They might even taste better than your misshapen pizzas, but they won't have soul, though. American Garden and Prego are acceptable. Fun Foods is cheaper, but if you're into cost-cutting, skip this recipe.

Pizza Sauce:

Ingredients:

Tomatoes: 8 ripe, large tomatoes.
Garlic: 1 whole head, chopped.
Onion: 2 large onions, diced (1x1 cm).
Capsicum: 1, diced (2x2 cm).
Olive oil: 3 tablespoons.
Tomato ketchup: 3 tablespoons.
Fresh basil, if available: a handful.
Cumin: 1 tsp.
Dried herbs: 2 tsps (I use Oregano/Basil).
Salt and pepper, to taste.
Sugar: 1/2 tsp.
Chilli flakes-to taste (toss in a couple of dried red chill-vaathal-into the mixie and voila).
Method:

1)Wash the tomatoes. Make an X-shaped cut on each tomato and drop into a pan of boiling water. After a couple of minutes, take them out and shock them (by transferring them to a pan of iced water).

A cheat's way out would be to poke the tomatoes all over with a fork and microwave them for a couple of minutes. No need for ice water here.



Don't use aluminium pans for cooking with tomatoes. Don't even ask why
I have.

2) Let the tomatoes cool. Chop them into rough chunks. Put them, in batches, seeds and all, into a food processor/mixie. The end product will multiply in volume and if you put too much into a small jar, the froth will hit your face. You can also use a hand blender if you're a patient soul. A few chunks of tomatoes in the puree is actually a good thing.

3) In a large non-stick saucepan, heat the olive oil. When it gets warm (not smoking hot), throw in the chopped onions. When the onions turn pinkish, add the garlic and the cumin.

I know, wrong order. I'm incompetent when it comes to not burning things/myself, so this works.

4) When the garlic gets golden, onions get translucent, cumin starts popping: add the capsicum. Give it all a good mix with a spatula. Inhale. Gor-ge-ous.

5)Add salt and pepper. Start with a teaspoon confidently. You can add the rest after the sauce is done.

6)Pour in the tomato puree and set the stove to Sim. Here comes the boring part. It needs to go from the consistency of soup to thick sauce. It takes at least an hour to simmer down. I use this hour to work on my toppings. Keep an eye on sauce, and keep stirring from time to time.

7) After 1/2 an hour, add in the tomato ketchup, sugar, dried chilli flakes and herbs. Taste it. I never get it right at this stage, so don't worry. The wonderful garlicky-tomato-ey smell of the kitchen won't allow too much worry, at any rate.

8)In about an hour, when it's of spreadable consistency, switch off the stove. Taste, season accordingly. Taste. Season. Sprinkle some salt, throw in some more herbs, be careful with the chilli flakes. Make it work.

Those are the toppings I used.

Sweet corn: Sauteed with butter and salt.
Paneer: cut into chunks.
Green olives: De seeded and chopped.
Chicken: the boneless meat chopped into chunks and poached with salt and pepper.
Mushrooms: Chopped, sauteed in olive oil, with salt and pepper.
Bell-peppers: Cut into rings, uncooked, so they taste crunchy.

To Assemble the pizza:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Spread foil on the baking tray. Grease the pizza with either olive oil or butter (I do neither, but it's recommended).
Spread a couple of tablespoons of the prepared pizza sauce on each base.
Call in the troops and ask them to put whichever topping they like on their pizza!
Bake for 15 minutes, just as the mozzarella gets all gooey, and the base turns golden brown.
Sprinkle some more herbs and chilli flakes before serving.



Whilst the pizza bakes, I treat myself to toothpick skewers of my favourite
toppings. Perks of being the cook.



I'm sorry I don't have decent pictures of the final pizza. I got caught up in the feeding frenzy and ate half my share before I realized I haven't clicked any picture!

That photo doesn't do it justice. But that's all I could salvage within 15 minutes of baking and setting it out on the table. Go figure.