13 Days of Feastmas – Leftover Pizza
I love that the Holidays afford me extra time at home, surrounded by friends and family who are willing to eat with a fridge filled with more options than normal. All of this adds up to inspiration and imagination to build on traditional favourites by cooking leftovers in ways I haven`t before.
Saturday night was an intimate gathering of friends at our house – moose meatballs were part of the fare. They were paired with a slow cooked tomato sauce that exploded with summer flavor. Crudite was in the house and we have a drawer of fresh herbs.
Last night was time to take advantage of all these leftovers. It was time to try my first pizza from scratch (I had never made the crust before).
Combine 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of instant yeast and 3 cups of flour. Slowly add a cup of warm water and 2 tablespoons of oil into the flour in a food processor. If the mixture is too dry (ours was), ass up to 2 more tablespoons of water.
Lightly flour a cutting board and make a dough ball. Place that in a bowl wrapped with plastic wrap and let it rise for 1-2 hours (you can freeze it for a number of weeks at this point as well).
We cut the dough in half and sprinkled as little flour as possible on the board to roll it out. We drizzled it with oil and warmed a pizza stone in a 500 degree oven as we prepped the pizza. The use of flour on the cutting board allowed us to slide the pizza off with the help of a spatula.
The pizza cooks for 6-12 minutes – pull it out when brown. It was fantastic!
We will be making Turkey soup (check on boxing day for hints on how to make better stock and have some soup ingredients on hand such as onion, garlic, celery and carrot), chicken pot pie and other traditional fare in coming days. We will also be experimenting and learning how to cook new things that we haven`t thought of or, perhaps, even heard of. It`s a great time of year to experiment while still respecting past tradition.