Peacock Orchard

Best ever pizza crust recipe and Wine Review: Colimoro Montepulciano D’abruzzo

Years ago, 11 to be exact, I married my amazing husband and began my experimentation in the kitchen. I have developed a large variety of go-to recipes over the years but none surpass my amazing pizza crust recipe. I experimented with SO MANY recipes before settling on this particular one. It’s so versatile and so forgiving. Plus it didn’t need to rise in the fridge, which is great since I once forgot I had a crust rising in the fridge and it kind of became it’s own entity that took forever to clean out. I don’t remember where I discovered this recipe. I haven’t used an actual recipe in years and years. I go by look now. I have a basic recipe that I change depending on our mood. We’ve added honey and different seasonings and it’s still been an amazingly well put together crust. So, without further ado, here is the recipe:

Easy Pizza Crust

2 ¼ tsps yeast
1 tb sugar
1 cup warm water
3 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
3-5 cups flour
Your choice of seasonings to taste (I use Italian seasoning, paprika, garlic and onion)

Pre-heat the oven to 420 degrees. In a medium sized bowl mix the yeast, sugar and water. Add seasonings to taste. Then add the salt and olive oil. Next add the flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Set aside to rise while the oven is pre-heating.

When the dough has risen spray your hands with cooking oil and shape the dough as desired, add toppings and cook for 20 minutes.

Note: I live in high altitude. A longer cooking time may be necessary in lower altitudes. Just keep an eye on it.

Our usual toppings are pepperoni (deli pepperoni and the regular old bagged kind you find in the store), olives, onion, bell pepper, meunster cheese and mozerella cheese. The taste is sublime. Love it!

A pizza baking experience would not be complete without at least one child demanding ingredients. Daughter demanded cheese, cheese and more cheese. Then, when all the cheese was gone she moved on to demanding pepperoni. I also have a few very loyal “please drop something tasty” dogs waiting in the wings.

Now, I usually just use a plain pizza sauce, no seasonings, on top. I figure the crust is seasoned well enough it doesn’t need added flavor. However, we had an amazing tomato harvest this year which has led to a LOT of canning. So, we made our own pizza sauce while the dough was rising. It was pretty amazing. I am going to share that recipe next week.

We usually sample a wine on Friday nights. It’s an enjoyable, relaxing time for us as a couple. But…I really wanted to fine a great wine to go with our pizza. So off to the liqour store where I asked the amazing wine guy what wine would go best with pizza.

That is how we ended up with this wine:

Colimoro Montepulciano D’abruzzo

Description: [from the wine makers website] Colimoro Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is bursting with aromas of dried cherries accented by a hint of spice. Medium in body, this is a fruit-forward wine balanced by moderate acidity and soft tannins. Aged in large Slavonian oak casks for 6 months, this is an easy-drinking wine best enjoyed young with everyday meals.

The back of the bottle explicitly says it pairs well with pizza.

Wine Review:

This wine has a really strong flavor in my opinion. It has a nice scent, very “winey” for lack of a better term. It is rather dry, and thus, bitter, but not bad. I enjoyed my first few sips. However, even though it is specifically to be paired with pizza and pasta I thought it over powered every flavor. We tried this first with the pizza and again, later, with some home made spaghetti. Still, too strong.

I did start out thinking this wine was pretty great. I had a few sips before I started eating and thought it had a pleasant flavor and that it was going to be a “whole bottle” kind of wine tasting. It wasn’t. I just had the one glass. I like to taste my pizza and this just didn’t afford me that luxury. Also, I felt it grew more bitter when paired with the food. So I had my 1 glass and was done, both times we tried this wine.

I think I’m going to find a nice chianti and try that with the pizza.

My review of three potato gardening methods

I have finally completed the experiment. The potato tires were the last to be harvested and I am ready to give a review of the various methods I used. I did not do a lot of the container methods as I am terrible at remembering to water and we live in an arid region. I did not think they’d survive my climate and neglect in a container.

The first method I used was simply placing the potatoes on top of the soil of a raised bed and covering them with straw. Super simple. Good yields. Easy to harvest as well since they did not go very deep in the soil. My only issue with this was that the poultry liked to dig them up.

Potato tower being planted.

The second method was a potato tower made of tires. I only had it 2 tires high and perhaps I waited too long to put the second tire on. There were no potatoes in the second tire. Yields were less with this method than with the straw method. Also, it was dangerous. While I know the spiders were doing me a great service by eating pests I had quite a fright when I flipped the first tire and found a black widow living between the 2 tires. I found quite a few in my harvest. I won’t do this method again. It’s too labor intensive, yields were not great and it’s a risk to my health.

The third was perhaps the laziest method of them all since I never watered them, ever. I simply buried the seed potatoes in the berms. They did grow. They even produced a few seeds. However, I believe most of them to have been eaten by ground animals. That’s ok by me. Rather they eat the potatoes than my tree roots.

It’s time to begin gardening inside again.

Sons dresser is in use again as plant habitat. I dug up 4 pepper plants that I’s started late in the season. Some of them were setting fruit but there was no way they were going to survive the dropping temperatures to ripen. Inside they came. Also inside now is the ginger plant and jasmine plant that had hung out on the back porch all summer. They really enjoyed the summer weather and have grown nicely. Do you like the giant web in that window? We have 2 such spiders in separate windows doing a good job of collecting pests for us. We haven’t bothered them. We like spiders.

Thai hot pepper anyone?

I am having an issue with the black peppercorn plant still. It has been infested with these little white eggs for some time. I never see a bug, just the eggs. I keep doing stuff to get rid of them but so far, no luck. No real ID on what it is either. I suspect spider mites but I’m not sure.

I am quitting my day job in December. I have plans to alter our unfinished basement to become my new plant nursery. So stay tuned for that!

Home Made Spaghetti Sauce- my first time

It has been an amazing tomato harvest for us this year. I’m very happy. I am also learning how to preserve tomatoes now. Sauce, salsa and diced tomatoes are what I’m after. I haven’t canned before though, well aside from the salsa. I’d never made my own spaghetti sauce and so I took to the internet to figure it out. Two recipes really stood out to me. This one and This one. The first is a Sicilian style sauce with wine. As you may know, we love wine. I grabbed my favorite Merlot, as can be seen in This post, for it. The other was slow roasted in the oven. I had to try both. So I divided my tomatoes up and set to work. I mostly followed both recipes. I must admit, I have a hard time following recipes to the T. I have my own style.

First I went out and hunted down all the necessary herbs from the yard.

Oregano

Basil

Sage and Thyme

Washing and shredding herbs

Washed and shredded herbs

Next, I chopped my onions and garlic, for both versions. The kids were eager to help, as usual. Son was very excited about helping “skin” the garlic. Daughter washed the tomatoes. For the record, while I love the kids helping I do rewash stuff. Their version of washing is just spraying water all over my kitchen. GAH!

I added bell pepper to the roasted tomato sauce. I happen to love roasted bell peppers so it was an obvious addition for me!

And now, the tomatoes! I did not skin any of them. I was going to blend them anyway and was cool with the skin remaining. I harvested the seeds from the best tomatoes while I was cutting them up for the sauce. I simply put them in the strainer, washed them off and then left them to dry in a labeled coffee filter.

I did enjoy a good glass of Merlot, while also adding some Merlot to the Sicilian sauce. If you are interested in our review of this Merlot see Here.

I cooked the Sicilian sauce down a bit and then crushed everything up a bit. Well, the kids did, enthusiastically.

While the sauces were cooking low and slow the kids and I made fish and chips for dinner. Turns out Son is all talk about his love for fish as he refused to eat any until I convinced him it was chicken. This in spite of him helping me with the fish…. I did tell him after he’d eaten that it was fish. He’s caught onto me and when he asked if the pork I offered him at a later meal was chicken I asked him if he’d prefer I lie. He stated yes and ate the pork. It’s all good.

As an aside, doesn’t my kitchen remodel look amazing so far!

The kids were in bed before the sauces were ready to be blended and jarred. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to have to explain 9 million times to Son that I would not allow him to put the jars in the hot water because he’d likely burn his arm off. Oh how many times I’ve had that conversation already. If you are wondering why I simply don’t let him learn the hard way, I have. He just likes to ask the same question over and over and over and over and…………………..

So I added some lemon juice and sugar, popped the sauces in the blender, jarred them and put them in the hot water until they were ready. A LONG process but a satisfying one. The sauce from both is amazing!

Review: Dark Horse Sauvignon Blanc 2014 and Lobster

Wine:

Dark Horse 2014 Sauvignon Blanc $

[Description from the Wine Makers Website] The most refreshing wine from Dark Horse, our Sauvignon Blanc offers bright aromas of grapefruit and gooseberry lined with fresh green notes. Layers of citrus and melon flavors create a crisp taste with medium viscosity and a long, refreshing finish.

Cheese:

None. We ate Lobster. The kids ate crab. The Red Lobster website suggested that Lobster paired well with sauvignon and we happened to already have the Dark Horse wine so…..yay!

Lobster was cooked according to the recipe on the Red Lobster website.

Wine Review-

The wine was very enjoyable. Certainly something I’d have a glass of alone. However, it paired so well with the lobster that I was simply in heaven. Obviously lobster is an expensive but enjoyable meal no matter what. Pairing it with this wine simply brought out the best flavors in this exquisite crustacean and made the meal a real pleasure to have.

Of course, I was cracking crab open non-stop for our children. I swear our Daughter can eat a pound of crab without blinking an eye. Son is not quite as voracious and prefers to crack the claws and then talk non-stop about it. Daughter did not like the lobster. Son claimed he did but refused seconds. That is his usual way of pretending he enjoyed something. He usually reserves that for eggs and cheese.

First tomatoes and peppers- delicious salsa

There is so much beauty in a harvest. The colors, the smells, the flavors. My kitchen is a cacophony of natures amazing bounty. Peppers, tomatoes and herbs right now. I’m loving my harvest this year. The tomatoes, oh the tomatoes. So beautiful and so plentiful. The peppers have amazed me with their size, quantity and flavor. This is a partial tomato harvest and a full pepper harvest. I asked Daughter to pick the red peppers and she just went to town grabbing them all so…..I let her. I picked only the ripe tomatoes for this. So many tomatoes!

I can’t even name the varieties of tomatoes I have grown this year. Many were given to me unlabeled. The seeds I grew are San Marzano and Black Krim.

The kitchen is making me SOOO happy right now. The sink has been a godsend in prepping produce for canning. I don’t think I could have done much of this in the old kitchen. I certainly couldn’t fill up the necessary pot. I’ve had colanders full of produce being washed in the sink by my little angels who seem as excited by this process as I am.

I did look up salsa recipes and I did base my salsa off of a particular recipe, however, I didn’t follow the recipe practically at all. I’ve simply never canned my own salsa before and I was looking for a guide for doing it.

So, here are my peppers and onions getting washed Delicious!

The tomatoes receiving the same treatment.

So I removed the skin using the hot water method. I did it incorrectly though. Some of the tomatoes were perfect, as below. Some were left too long and were mushy. Those tomatoes I hand chopped, the nice ones were run through the food processor.

Chopping over cooked tomatoes here.

Salsa! It’s a bit watery but I’m ok with that. Cilantro was an easy grow for me so I had a plethora of that.

Hot water bath canning. I did not have the correct tools yet. My mother had a bunch of canning stuff and I did retrieve it from her later. The gloves worked great for this though. You can find them Here. Husband bought the gloves for our pig roast (see here) but they have been hanging out with my pot holders and I enjoy them quite a bit in the kitchen.

As for taste, perfect. Not too hot, very flavorful. I’m very happy with how this worked out.

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