UnRecipe: A Day Late, A Dollar Short, But Still Delicious

I get zero points for blogging about seasonal ingredients today. But at the time I made all this stuff, I was cooking with seasonal ingredients like a Mofo. Garden tomatoes and fresh oregano? Looking outside into most PacNW gardens, it's a whole lotta soggy earth, wilted plants and gray skies, but a month or so ago, we were all still enjoying fresh-picked goodness. So let's jump into the Way-Back Machine and pretend it's still summer, shall we?

Yes, more effing tomatoes! I love these little guys!! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Gardening isn't ridiculously hard to do, but it's still a bit of work, so when you do yield even a modest harvest of edible goods, you want to celebrate them. Short of putting them in a glittery dress and making them learn to twirl a baton for an upcoming parade, you want to prepare them in a way that shows off their flavor and doesn't just drown them out as some supporting ingredient role. I didn't have a ton of tomatoes this year, but for the ripe lil' gems I got, I was celebrating the eff out of them. I went on a Pizza Rampage for a few weeks this summer -- not a bad thing to do, I admit -- and I was enjoying this magical food at several favorite spots, including The Station Pizzeria, which I happily shared many photos of their pizza-deliciousness. Working with fresh ingredients is what transforms pizza from cheap college junk food into something really special. I was particularly inspired by their spicy Cipolla, which has a mix of sausage, pine nuts, onions and fresh ricotta, as well as their Not So Classico, which had a sweet tomato confit, chevre and mozzarella, and a mix of arugula pesto and fresh arugula on top.

Inspired pizzas from The Station, and our own garden goods - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I wanted to make an UnRecipe - MacGyver pizza mashup of these pizza inspirations, using items from our garden, fridge and pantry staples and some CSA greens. I wanted to make everything as from-scratch as possible, so I used my go-to flatbread dough recipe from Epicurious, and that great homemade ricotta method using the microwave from Serious Eats. Fresh ricotta on pizza? To. Die. For. And making your own dough and fresh cheese isn't as much work as you'd think. The microwave method for fresh ricotta from Serious Eats has a lot of passive time, with the microwave zapping the milk and vinegar mixture, which is just enough time to throw together a batch of dough. You can use the dough hook attachment on your mixer or use your hands -- it really only takes fifteen minutes or so to put together a quick dough. You're just getting it mixed until everything comes together, you don't want to overmix and create concrete. Once the combined dough is balled up in a neat, clean round and placed in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap to proof, say Peace Out, and let it sit until dinner time when you're baking this bad boy. Same with the ricotta -- I made a double batch, based off the Serious Eats instructions, so it took a little more than double the time in our microwave to curdle and get cheesy. I drained off as much of the whey as I could, stirring the mixture through paper towels and a metal sieve, but once it got to Greek yogurt consistency, I set the cheesy sieve atop a big, empty measuring glass and set the whole thing in the fridge to just let gravity finish the job. I checked on it periodically throughout the day, stirring to agitate more of the whey to drain. The resulting ricotta wasn't as thick or crumbly, more creamy, like a thickened pudding, but because I baked the ricotta with the pizza, the oven evaporated a lot of the excess liquid.

You got the White Stuff, baby. Making cheese and bread - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I wanted the finished pizza to have a spicy mixture of pickled and fresh vegetables. I skipped the meat just because I thought sausage flavoring might overpower the vegetables and I wanted to highlight the freshness of everything. But if I were to add a meat, prosciutto would be a good candidate. I pulled some fresh oregano leaves and chopped them up super-fine, mixing it with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar for a basic dressing. This was tossed with halved fresh cherry tomatoes and pickled goodies like chopped kalamata olives and pickled peppers. Once the dough was proofed and rolled out to make a rustic, aka, lopsided and butt-ugly, shaped pizza, it was covered with the vegetables and dollop-bombed with the fresh ricotta. Into a hot oven the whole thing went.

Garden-delicious with pickled olive and pepper goodness - photos by Wasabi Prime

It was a pretty heavily-laden pizza, but luckily this flatbread recipe yields a sturdy crust. The oven pulled a lot of the extra liquid from the ricotta and gave it a little color, but kept it creamy. If you had more crumbly ricotta, you could probably wait until adding it towards the tail-end of the baking, just so it wouldn't get rubbery. Once the pizza was finished, I sprinkled chopped fresh arugula on top to give it a peppery, green finish.

Pizza from scratch, from cheese, to bread, to tomatoes - so worth it! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

The result was, of course, fantastic. While not something I'd make every day, it's good to make a meal like this now and then to remind your palate of what homemade tastes like. You never realize how much pre-packaged food we eat, even the stuff you get from restaurants -- if it's a big chain, chances are, some of the ingredients they use are premade. Granted, no one's going to die if you have a $5 takeout pizza now and then, but consider the notion that if you're going to treat yourself with some comfort-junk food, make it slightly less junky by making it yourself.

More garden-delicious delights - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I got struck by the Homemade Bug again when I had more ripe cherry tomatoes and was getting tired of just having them in a salad. I had an image pop into my head of the whole tomatoes baked into an herbed cheesy bread. Sounded like a good idea as any. Short of The Voices in Your Head that ask you to do evil, bad things, the ones that suggest a cheesy tomato bread is a far more socially acceptable option.

Cheesy tomato bread rewarded by a spot on Sunset's website - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I used the same flatbread recipe, but mixed in finely chopped herbs and shreds of Parmesan cheese right before baking it. I formed it into more of a loaf than a flat pizza dough, so that it would yield thicker slices. I used a mix of herbs -- oregano and rosemary, as that's what was left in the garden, but a dry mix of thyme, oregano and red pepper flakes would work just as well. I made little divots in the dough and pushed the whole cherry tomatoes in. A quick drizzle of oil and more cheese over the top, and into a hot oven it went to bake. The tomatoes caramelized, shriveled and popped, which doesn't sound good but that's what I wanted. They stayed sunk into the bread, binding with the dough, and they were a nice fruity bite as you ate the herbed dough.

It was a complete UnRecipe tomato cheesy bread, because I didn't really have any set plan over how it would come out, just a vision in my head of what the finished result could be. And I was glad to see it pretty much matched the picture in my mind. I was so pleased, I entered it into Sunset Magazine's photo contest, where they would showcase harvest-worthy images. I was pleased to see the bread made it online, which of course is all that's left of this loaf, as it was gobbled up without a trace. Will definitely make this again, maybe using olives, since we're at a loss for truly garden-fresh tomatoes these days.

And there ends our trip in the Way-Back Machine of Summer. No lush gardens to pluck fresh produce from at the moment, but we can still dream of seasons to come and how to celebrate those harvests in the kitchen for future meals.

Mixed Plate: Food Mysteries and Homemade Ricotta

The world is full of wondrous things, my friends. The Aurora Borealis. The instinctive migratory patterns of birds. The ebb and flow of the ocean's tides. Neighbors refusing to put their garbage cans away days after trash day. Magnets. Yes, Horatio, there is plenty of totally wack stuff on earth, as it is in heaven, and making your own homemade fresh cheese is one of those wiggety-wack things.

Fresh ricotta and home-pickled beets with baby oregano - schmancy! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Cheese isn't all that mysterious, but it's no less amazing when you taste something freshly made, like ricotta. It's probably one of the easiest fresh cheese to make at home because you likely have all the ingredients just sitting around in your kitchen: whole milk, salt and vinegar. That's it. I'm serious. No complicated aging process, no obscure equipment beyond a good fine-mesh metal strainer, and joy of joys, it's fast. I was inspired by the fresh ricotta and melon salad from a One Night Only dinner event last month. It was a reminder that I really needed to make my own ricotta because I knew it was so simple. After finding this recipe for making microwave ricotta from Serious Eats, it went from beyond simple to a flat-out crime that I haven't done this sooner. Yes, for reals -- microwave ricotta. The article makes a good argument for why it's a more effective means of evenly heating the milk as it goes through its curdling process from the vinegar. And yes, holy crap, it's super fast. You could easily make a batch of this in an hour and change. The recommendation for using paper towels versus cheesecloth was perfect, as I was down to one scrawny scrap of the stuff. Once it was drained and to the consistency I liked, I had a little taste and put the rest away to sprinkle on other foods for the next couple of days. Since it's a fresh cheese and there's no weirdo chemicals and preservatives in it like the store-bought stuff, use it fast. Although it's so good, I doubt it will last long enough to go bad.

My only complaint, and it's not with the recipe, is about the overall cheese-making process. You go through a lot of milk to get a decent amount of finished cheese. I know that's the nature of cheese; it's an ancient method designed to concentrate and potentially preserve a supply of milk, which is all well and good. I was just like, dang, now I gotta buy another carton of milk for our coffee. The recipe is for about maybe a scant quarter to half cup's worth of ricotta, depending on how long you let it drain and concentrate its texture. It's not a bad finished amount of cheese, especially if you're crumbling it over a salad or in my case, I paired it with some pickled beets with a drizzle of olive oil, oregano sprigs and fresh cracked pepper. I love fresh ricotta, the wonderful creamy, milky-sweet flavor, and it's ideal in a salad to appreciate it fully. If I were to make this for say, lasagne, I'd probably have to triple the recipe if you wanted it to be a ricotta-heavy dish. Although even in that case, I'd almost rather make a manicotti-style dish and use lighter ingredients like butternut squash, just so you can celebrate the fact you made fresh cheese and probably went through a gallon or two of milk to do it.

Food mysteries, from our kitchen to yours - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The process of making cheese, while perfectly explainable in scientific terms, still feels satisfyingly magical. Amazing that something we all love so much can be so simple to make at home, and why more people don't do it more often. Sure, it's not as easy as picking it up from the store, but at least when you're making something from scratch you gain a new appreciation for it. There's really no cooking involved beyond a quick spin in the microwave. It would actually be a nice little project to do with kids since there's no hot stoves or sharp objects involved, and the finished product can be eaten almost immediately.

While unraveling the mysteries of fresh cheese, I decided, why not share additional Kitchen Mysteries that I've been collecting? On my large wood cutting board, I swear there's an outline of a figure boldly standing with the words "Goo" written backwards on his chest. Cutting Board Wicker Man! Or maybe the letters spell "God" and after this post, I'll be host to a flock of fundamental revivalist nutjobs insisting my cutting board will heal the sick and make the lame walk. No snake handlers! And I remain firm in my belief that the outline of the Loch Ness Monster was in my beer when I was at Adam's Northwest Bistro a while back. You don't see her prehistoric shape floating in the beer foam?? I'm perfectly sober now and I still see Nessie in that beer. And why aren't more people wearing bacon scarves? The shape and wave pattern seem ideal for crafty types who knit and crochet to their heart's content -- we can't be the only ones out there with a bacon-knitted scarf. Maybe I'm just asking the universe for more answers than it's willing to provide. Or we've just run out of interesting things on Netflix so I'm rewatching old X-Files episodes again while pondering that celebrity rumor that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson hooked up in real life. I heard it's bunk, but still. The world remains, as it should be, full of tantalizing mysteries. Tah-tah for now, I'm off to eat a bowl of fresh ricotta...