Culinary Chronicles: Molé Pizza with Arugula, Apple and Bacon.

I think I'm on to something here.  I made a pizza last week that used prepared molé sauce instead of a tomato sauce or pesto.  I'm sure someone else has thought of this, but I'd never heard of it.  (Google tells me I'm right, of course others have tried it, but most seem to have kept it Mexican in theme, and I took it in a totally different direction).  It was good!  As I've talked about before when I made tamales early in the year, I think the prepared molé that I can get at Pro's Ranch Market deli section is better than the brands like Dona Maria that are available in most supermarkets.  It's got a pretty high cinnamon flavor to me, but is still (hot) spicy too, and so toppings would have to adjust according to the exact flavor of your molé.  I topped my pizza with garlic, ricotta, apple slices, fennel seeds, brie cheese, arugula and bacon.

This is what it looked like spread on the crust.  Not too much because its got a lot of flavor.

It comes as a dry cube, so I blended it with just a little oil before it was spreadable like above.

Next I layered on the garlic slices, cheeses, apple and fennel seeds.

Finally the bacon and arugula.  The bacon is apple smoked and the arugula rather bitter, which I thought contrasted nicely with the sweet spiciness of the molé, sweetness of the apple, and creaminess of the cheese.

The finished product.  I would have added a bit more arugula if I'd had it since it baked down to almost nothing.

The molé would be great with pineapple too.  I recommend this highly.  Let me know if you give it a try, and what you combine it with.

Weekend Edition: Wrapping Up Summer Projects

Remember this dress I purchased back in July as part of a big vintage haul?  Vintage 80's drop waist that needed a complete overhaul to work for my body type in 2010.  It's silk, and I really liked the intense red and fuschia floral pattern.  Obviously I thought I could make something wearable out of it.  I cut off the skirt, removed the sash, turned it front to back and deepened the yoke, removed the shoulder pads and narrowed the shoulders, and voilá, it's a long tunic blouse that can be cinched at the waist.  Much, much better.

Sorry for the grainy mirror photos, its impossible to take a good outfit shot in my house, which is why I never post my outfits.

So much better, don't you think?

I also finally made mozzerella this weekend.  I hadn't done it since last fall, when I made several pizzas to use up random garden harvest ingredients.  I had a problem with the rennet being old, at least I think that was the problem, and the curds didn't set up like they were supposed to.  I had to drain it through cheese cloth, and the process took about an hour and a half longer than it should have.  In the end, the mozzerella was delicious though, and the pizza even better.  There were a lot of toppings, a true garden variety.  The best was roasted eggplant that I marinated in olive oil and white balsamic vinegar and rosemary before throwing on the pizza.  I love roasted eggplant.

Garden pizza, pre-oven.

Roasted & marinated eggplant, black olives, red peppers, garlic, basil, and homemade mozzeralla and asiago cheese.

Did you make anything delicious this weekend?

Cardoon Pizza

In the Summer of 2008 I took a solo trip to Virginia to finally see Monticello. Of all of Thomas Jefferson's endeavors, my favorite was the vegetable garden. Well, and the figs. I never would have imagined that figs would grow so well there.

I love vegetable gardens anyway, and I especially love gardens that try to grow the same or similar varieties to what would have been there during their historic heyday. In the gift shop I chose culinary souvenirs, a cookbook of Monticello recipes and a few packets of seeds. One was cardoon. We started the cardoons this spring from seed, and transplanted them into the back garden interspersed with our artichokes. They grew like mad (see here), but I wasn't sure how to harvest them. Turns out you can eat both the stalks and the root, so this fall I've been judiciously pruning them so that I can try them out.

The problem is that cardoon is a difficult vegetable. It has extremely sharp needle like thorns along its stalk and is very fibrous. Its also really bitter if you don't blanch it before cooking. Most recipes I've found instruct you to blanch the cardoon, drain it and then boil it again for 3o to 45 minutes. One may have instructed braising, I can't remember. The boiling process destroys the bitter flavor and leaves a mild artichoke flavor behind, which is good. However it also makes for a really soft and somewhat watered down vegetable. I'm not sure its worth it.

In order to maximize the artichoke flavor I first tried to make soup. It was okay, but had a fairly weak flavor. The next time I decided to use cardoon as a topping on pizza. Much better. I still over-cooked the cardoons during the pre-boiling phase, and need to watch them more closely next time. However, so far I think this is the best use.

Pizza ingredients: mozzarella, pesto (from garden but frozen), rosemary, cardoon, yellow potato, caramelized onions.

Pizza just out of the oven. The crust was the same as last time, made from the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipe.

On the plate.