Tuesday 26 February 2013

Oscars Aftermath - Green Chilli and Chicken Pizza with Serrano Ham

Oh what a night!!!
Well, if I would know what happened, I could tell you ...
... right, I do know ... and ... it wasn't really that serious.
I'm going to tell you anyway. But where to start?!

Fine, my last post. Do you remember? I mentioned a few things about the 85th Academy Award in LA. No, I don't want to go over it all again. As the date for it was approaching, though and don't having anything to do at all the next day, I decided, I could have a try and watch it.
No big deal ... when you don't live too many time zones away from it. Therefore I had quite some time to kill before it would all start. Why not have some food? Still that would not suffice for all the time.
Nevertheless, I voted to go for homemade pizza ... again?! I had it already the week before.


Somehow, it seems to be a way to deal with leftovers ... just make some nice pizza dough and top it with whatever you have left from other meals. Really? No, not really, but kind of!

First of all to the pizza dough that I ended up with and keep on making again and again.


Ingredients (makes for more than one person can eat):
500 g flour (100-200 g semolina flour and 300-400 g strong baking flour)
Pinch of salt
300 ml warm water
7 g dried yeast
5 tbs olive oil
1 tbs honey

Method:
Put the flour and the salt into a large bowl, while you give all the other ingredients into a different bowl. Wait for about 10 minutes.
Then pour the yeast water bit by bit into the flour while you bring it all together with a fork. Once all the water is in, get yourself some flour on your hands and go and knead the dough.
Wash your hands with warm water and while you are at it soak a clean kitchen towel with water as well and put the cloth over the bowl with the dough. Let it rise for at least one hour.

That gives you enough time to devote to a tomato sauce.

Ingredients (it might be even to much for that dough):
Splash of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, slices
About 10 basil leaves
400 g tinned tomatoes
200 ml water
Salt, pepper
Splash of red wine vinegar

Method: 
Heat up the oil in a pan at low heat. Toss in the slices of garlic.
When you have the wonderful odour of garlic going all over your kitchen, toss in the basil leaves as well. Oh, that's even better.
Now pour in the tinned tomatoes and the water. Don't harm the tomatoes. Bring it to the boil and reduce to simmer again. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Then you can crush the tomatoes and if you don't want to put your sauce into a liquidizer afterwards, do it properly.
Leave simmering for a further 15 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
Finally turn off the heat and add the splash of red wine vinegar. Sauce is ready!

Pizza is not ready!
The dough should make for three reasonable sized pizzas.
Hm, as it seems, this all is a at least a bit of work. Well, the evening before I did just an easy thing: quick tapas ...


But back to the pizza now, although those tapas might not be totally unrelated. You will see at least three of the above food items again later on.
It's time to heat up the oven as much as possible. I managed about 250 °C.
One part of the pizza dough received some more kneading and then rolling up to a kind of round object.
We have to get to the pizza topping somehow. You might guess that the chicken and chickpeas will end up on the pizza. I thought about it ... yes, really ... but as you have seen I especially prepared a tomato sauce for it.
Therefore I just went for the chicken.
First of all, spread some of the tomato sauce on the blank pizza. Add some stripes of ready chicken breast. Some slices of green chillies (see above - tapas plate) on it, too. Don't bother with getting rid of the seeds from the chillies. We need some mozzarella as well and maybe some more basil leaves. Nice! OK, a few small splashes of olive oil might be even nicer.
16 more minutes and the pizza is ready ... that is if you don't forget to put it into the oven for the aforementioned 16 minutes ... delicious!

Fine, only four more hours to go until the start of the Oscar night ... well, that is of you like to watch people walking on the red carpet and hear some thoughts about fashion ... just hypothetical.
At a time then, when most, if not all of my neighbours finally had gone to bed, the actual show started ... after watching it, now I at least now, what movies I might still have a look at or ... which ones not. It was interesting to watch the show, while I have never done so before, because the constellation of circumstances hadn't been towards favourable the years past.

"At the end of the day you're another day older!"

I went to bed at a time I usually get up and ... had some more pizza for breakfast ...

Right, time wise that couldn't be classed as breakfast considering that it was lunch time by then. At this point it happened to be the case, I already had run out of mozzarella.
Of course, I would never allow it to run out of cheese completely. After all there was still some manchego left I didn't use for the tapas plate and while already at it, why not use some serrano ham on top of the pizza just as it was coming from the oven ...


I can only say so much ... it was even more delicious than the day before. 
As a conclusion I guess I won't be doing pizza again this week. In fact. So far I didn't feel like doing much cooking so far this week. Still, that won't be the last you have seen of that serrano ...

4 comments:

  1. Oh, how I love your descriptions. "Don't harm the tomatoes!" should be on a plaque in EVERY kitchen.

    This pizza looks wonderful. I skipped the Oscars because I didn't see any of the movies. We saw Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games, which we thought should have won all the awards. Oh well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Should I get the rights to the phrase "Don't harm the tomatoes!" then?
      Yes, did I mention, the dough would make for three reasonable sized pizzas? Well, then it has to remain a mystery as to what happened to part three ...

      Delete
  2. Chicken and Serrano on one pizza, how wild. It really looks amazing. I no longer have cable tv so no suffering, just looked online the next day who one lol.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's not bad to be wild at times, if still happening in a bit of a controlled manner.
      As strange as it is these days with all the internet and things, it's not so easy to watch things live online.

      Delete

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