Mock Pizza

Adapted from Nigella Kitchen

Almost Pizza

Well, calling this a pizza is a bit of a stretch – think of it more as a pizza flavored Yorkshire Pudding. Nigella calls it Crustless Pizza, but this could possibly be misleading to pizza purists.

But the point is that it’s really yummy and it WILL make you happy.  It’s great as a snack, or with a salad for lunch. It’s a bit naughty and makes you feel like a kid, or I suppose if you’re not in the refuse-to-be-a-grown-up camp, this would be a great meal FOR the kids…

It’s easy and quick and cheaper than ordering real pizza, and you can change up the flavorings any way you please.

Make. Happy.

Eat!

Ingredients

1 egg

2/3 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

pinch of dried oregano

1 cup whole milk

1 cup grated cheese

2 oz pepperoni or turkey pepperoni slices

Method

Preheat oven to 400. Grease a pie dish with butter, oil or cooking spray.

Whisk together the egg, flour, salt, spices, milk and half of the grated cheese. Pour into the pie dish and bake for 25 minutes.

Remove the pie dish from the oven and arrange the pepperoni slices over the crust. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese.

Place the dish back in the oven and bake for 5 more minutes.

Allow the pizza to cool slightly before removing from dish and slicing.

Serves 1 or 2 very happy kids or kids-at-heart.

Overlooking The Ordinary

As John Lennon so rightly said – life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Usually, those other plans are the big things – some day I’ll be famous, rich, married, published and generally so fabulous that people will be falling at my feet and showering me with rose petals every hour on the hour.

Mm hmm. Right.

In the meantime, there is life. The quiet overlooked moments. The dishes in the sink, the trillionth re-run of America’s Top Model, the tattered t-shirt you refuse to throw away, the yet un-read pile of books on the nightstand, and recipes like this one for Chicken Noodle Salad.

So ordinary that you overlook it. Not special, not trendy. No one’s tweeting about it and it’s not going to win any awards. People might even wonder what kind of an imbecile would post such a recipe (because clearly, people have nothing better to do).

But the fact is, these recipes are what happen while you’re busy making plans for bigger, more spectacular, award-winning, attention-grabbing, book-proposal-launching recipes.

Like when you’re too tired to think and you just want a bowl of starchy rice with some soy sauce and hot sauce splashed on top for dinner.

Or butter. And pasta. Sprinkle of parmesan.

Leftover chicken stir-fried with rice, chilis, peas and crushed bouillon. Yes, I said bouillon. Get over it. It’s not the enemy and works in a pinch. Because I walk to and from the grocery and those freakin’ cartons of chicken stock are heavy.

Ramen. Endless ramen. Veggies, scrambled eggs, soy. Will remain your friend long after your twenties have come and gone.

Fried egg and bacon sandwich with mayo and hot sauce. And chips. And Diet Coke. (Excuse me, you DO save calories from Diet Coke, okay?)

I love those non-recipe recipes. The ordinary “recipes” of daily life. What we eat while we’re watching stuff on Top Chef that most of us, probably, will never eat or attempt to make.

To me, those overlooked eating moments are not throwaway. They are more deeply revealing of who you are than the fanciest recipe you make from following someone else’s instructions. That food speaks more truly to the soul of your kitchen than anything else.

Not many food writers go into that kind of thing – Nigella refers to it a lot which is why I love her. You only have to see one of the midnight fridge raid portions that close her TV shows to relate immediately.

These aren’t the kind of recipes you’ll ever be known for, perhaps it’s not even the kind of recipe you want to write about, but it is still a recipe with a story and a more intimate, revealing story than all the buttercream recipes ever compiled in the world.

Because it’s just what you do in your kitchen, by yourself, that neither you nor anyone else would even notice.

And that’s where life happens.

Chicken Noodle Salad

I think what I had in mind while I was half-consciously tossing this together were the cold noodle salads I used to get at my school cafeteria. Now I know cafeteria food is normally the kind of thing you want to forget, not re-create but just call it one of the perks of going to school in Bangkok. There was a noodle stand where we would buy hot bowls of “sen-mee lukchin” or white rice noodles with meatballs (what the meatballs were actually made of were a source of great debate amongst  7^th graders).

By the noodle stand were several bowls of condiments – 9 or 10 of them. The condiments are key to creating noodle soup and my friends and I would spice up our bowls like they were works of art and then have a taste of each others creations to see who had done the best that day.

Quite a world away from a cold turkey sandwich and an apple.

Some drowned their soup in soy, others liked the tang of a particular condiment made from vinegar and red chilis, I was always partial to the fish sauce with thai bird chilis (nam pla prikinoo). You had to sprinkle with crushed red pepper and of course you got extra points for having the spiciest noodle bowl at the table.

You could also opt for noodles without broth, and you had a choice of egg noodles instead of the thin rice noodles. When I was in an egg noodle sort of mood, I would skip the broth, the noodle lady would put on lots of cilantro and bean sprouts and I would douse the whole thing in soy, nam pla and crushed red pepper.

The noodle salad I created here is a much tamer, sub-conscious version of that memory.

Ingredients

4 oz angel hair pasta

¼ cup sliced red onions

1 cup cooked chicken, shredded

2-3 tablespoons soy sauce

3-4 Thai bird chiles, chopped

Big handful cilantro, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts

Method

Soak the red onion in some cold water for 10-15 minutes, then drain and squeeze out the excess water. This takes some of the acrid bite out of the onion.

Cook the pasta then drain and rinse under cold water until the noodles are cold.

In a large bowl, toss the chicken, onions, pasta and soy sauce together. Add the remaining ingredients and toss well.

What can I say, it’s that simple.

Serves 2 extraordinarily ordinary people.

Intrigue

Sometimes you read a recipe and it beckons to you to live it, breathe it – make it. There’s something to that – recipes are like blueprints waiting to be given form, a set of instructions – almost like a poem, waiting to be lived. It’s when you cook that it comes to life.

Until you cook it, you imagine what it will be. Maybe I obsess a bit too much about the trajectory from recipe to cooking to finished dish to eating – but a recipe, in that way, is a particular kind of intrigue, an adventure.

Especially when that recipe is from a culinary sphere very unknown to you. A country you’ve never been to – a culture you don’t know very much about. And yet here I am, looking at the ingredients list for this East African stew, and I know these ingredients – I understand them. I can understand how they would be put together.

It’s just like curry – that ultimate of all ultimate comfort dishes.  These ingredients represent “home” to me more than any other – turmeric, coconut milk, green chiles, lime.

Except the dish is not from “home” at all, it’s from Kenya.

Is it really so unknown then, so unfamiliar? Perhaps not. The truth is, we are all far more alike than we are different. To find the familiar and the comforting in a dish that hails from a faraway culture is what I imagine  delights world travelers – finding the threads that weave humanity together no matter how foreign the land.

I’m much more an armchair traveler – books, reading, recipes is how I do the bulk of my traveling. I know myself too well. A jungle safari or a trek up the Himalayas looks good on paper – so rugged, adventurous and seize-the-day – but my disposition is far too sensitive to handle the reality.

I’m a spoiled brat that way, a total loner. I can barely handle a night at the club. I usually want to be home and in bed with a book just when the party is getting started.

Well, seasons change and so do people. Maybe some day I’ll be up for a bout of globetrotting and a trip to magical Kenya. For now though, Kenya comes to me via this dish because the good people of Saveur were rugged enough and inquisitive enough to do the actual traveling for me.

Kuku Wa Nazi (East African Chicken Stew)

Adapted from Saveur

Though this curry looks fiery and spicy, in reality it’s not. Rather it has a strangely cooling effect – between the creamy calming qualities of the coconut milk and refreshing tanginess from the lime. It’s rich, no doubt – but it’s not a harrowing curry. The only word I have for it is soothing. It’s like the lullaby of curries.

Saveur’s recipe calls for fresh plum tomatoes which I would definitely go for especially since summer is nigh (nigh = favorite word for pretending I’m Shakespeare). I had the equivalent of a small can of canned, chopped tomatoes in my freezer so I used that. It enhances the tanginess of the curry even more deeply but I would think that if you prefer the stronger coconut-turmeric hit to come through, the fresh tomatoes would be a better option.

Obviously you can go with skinless boneless whatever and I know chicken drumsticks don’t make a pretty picture, but sometimes you just have to cook with bones. Okay? They’ve got flavor. If you’re barbarically inclined, you can chew the bones. If you’ve never chewed chicken bones (real, organic ones otherwise don’t bother), you’re missing out on one of life’s great pleasures.

It’s not always about what’s pretty. In fact, with food, it should always be about what’s tasty. And this is definitely tasty.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil

1 medium-large yellow onion, minced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 packaged chicken drumsticks (about 1.5 pounds)

1 small (8 oz) can chopped tomatoes, or 3 fresh plum tomatoes

4 green Thai bird chiles, minced (seeded, if you absolutely have to)

Juice of 1 juicy lime (use a bit more, about 1/4 cup total, if lime isn’t juicy)

1 (12 oz) can coconut milk

Method

In a medium-sized pot that comes with a lid, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute until translucent. Add the turmeric and stir – you want the turmeric to lose some of it’s jarred quality. Be sure not to burn the turmeric  – or it will lose its gorgeous golden color and turn brown. If necessary, reduce the heat, or add a splash of water to keep it from burning.

Add the chiles and tomatoes, then carefully drop in the chicken. Squeeze in the lime, pour in the coconut milk (careful not to splash yourself) and give everything a good, big stir. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low, cover the pot and simmer for 45 minutes. The longer you simmer, the jauntier everything gets in the pot, so don’t skimp on the simmer.

Serve with steamed rice.

Serves 4 inquisitive souls.