Pizza

PIZZA

Dough for pizza's base

Ingredients

2 cups all- purpose flour

1/2 cup self rising flour

1 sachet dried yeast

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/3 cup milk

Ingredients for pizza’s top

200 g. chopped mushrooms

100 grams of ham

1 green pepper chopped

1/2 cup chopped pitted olives

800-900 grams of kosher cheese or any other soft cheese

4 tablespoons ketchup

5 large ripe tomatoes

Instructions

How to make the dough for pizza’s base

Put in a bowl the flour and make a pile of it.

With your hand make a hole in the center of the pile and pour in the oil and milk.

Mix a portion of the flour with the oil and milk.

Put 3 glasses of water in a small saucepan and heat it up.

Put the yeast in half a cup of warm water and dissolve it.

Add the dissolved yeast into the flour and mix.

Add warm water as needed to achieve diluted dough.

Your dough should stick to your hands and should be a little thicker than the cake batter.

If your dough turned out accidentally tight, dilute it with a little warm water.

If your dough turned out too thin, to tighten it add a little flour

Grease a baking tray with dimensions 31CH41CH5 cm and sprinkle it with flour.

Turn the pan upside down and pat it, to drop the excess flour.

Put in a bowl the remaining warm water.

Dip your hands in to it and wet them.

Put the dough (that looks like batter) in the pan.

Spread the dough with your wet hands evenly in the pan.

Put the pan in the oven in the middle rack and bake at 175 K degrees for 15 minutes.

This time is sufficient to form on the dough a crust.

Leave the pizza’s base to cool.

This pizza’s base has a thickness of about one centimeter.

It has the thickness of a slice of bread for toast.

The pizzas in the U.S.A have enough dough in their base and remind fine bread.

In Italy the pizzas have very thin base, like a pie sheet. 

Assembling the pizza

Pour over the baked pizza’s base 4 tablespoons ketchup. With a brush spread the sauce all over the base.

If you bought sliced cheese you will use it as it is.      

If your cheese isn’t cut rub it in the food processor.

Cut with a knife each slice of ham into 12 small pieces.

Put the pieces of ham over the ketchup on pizza’s base.

The pieces of ham should not touch each other but leaving space between them.
If you use too much ham on your pizza, it will become very heavy.

Over the ham place the slices of cheese, one next to the other.

If you rubbed your cheese, sprinkle it with your hands over the ham.

Cut the pitted olives into smaller pieces.

Rinse the pepper and mince.

Rinse the tomatoes and cut them into slices with thickness less than one centimeter.

Rinse the mushrooms and dry them with paper towel.

Cut them in thin slices.

Place tomatoes slices over cheese.

Take care that each tomato slice touches the next one. This way the whole surface of the pizza is covered with tomato slices     .

Put salt and very little olive oil on the mushrooms and mix them.

Scatter pieces of peppers and mushrooms over the tomatoes evenly.

Pour over the pizza top all the pieces of the chopped olives.

Put the pan in the oven on the middle rack.

Bake the pizza at 200 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the tomatoes are baked.

Remove the pizza from the oven and let it cool slightly.

Cut it into pieces and serve.

Vegetarian pizza

Make the pizza base exactly as described before.

Ingredients for the pizza’s top

5 large ripe tomatoes

3 large dry onions

5 large cloves of garlic

Oregano
800 grams of soft cheese that melts

1/2 cup chopped pitted olives

3 artichokes fresh or preserved in oil, finely chopped

2 chopped green peppers

200 grams of mushrooms cut into thin slices

3 tablespoons olive oil

Sauce

Peel the garlic and mince.

Peel the onions and mince.

Put the olive oil in a deep frying pan and place it over medium heat.

Put the onion and the garlic inside the pan.

Stir occasionally and cook them until they are soft.

Rinse tomatoes and cut into medium-sized pieces.

Cut each tomato in 12 pieces.

Put the tomato pieces in the pan.

Add oregano and salt and mix well.

The dressing should be boiled 15 minutes to prepare.

Remove the pan with the dressing from the heat and let it to cool.

Assembling the pizza

Spread evenly the tomato sauce over the pizza’s base.

Cut the cheese into rectangular pieces or rub it.

Place on the sauce the pieces of cheese or the minced cheese.

Scatter over the cheese the olive pieces, the chopped pepper and the chopped mushrooms.

Cut the artichokes into thin slices and put them over the mushrooms.

Finely chop an onion into thin slices and put them over everything else.

Bake the pizza on the middle rack of the oven at 200 Celsius degrees in the operation of resistors.

The cheese melts and spreads across the surface of the pizza.

Dough for Italian pizzas

The base in the Italian pizzas is a thin sheet that I open.

I describe below the dough that I make and open into thin sheet.

Ingredients

300 g. all-purpose flour + flour for the opening of the sheet

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon of vinegar

2 tablespoons milk

1 cup lukewarm water to dissolve the yeast

Warm water for kneading the dough

Instructions

This recipe is for a pizza pan 38 cm in diameter.

If your pan is smaller don’t use all the dough.

Dissolve the yeast in one cup of warm water.

Put in a bowl the flour and form a small pile.

Make a hole in the middle of the pile and put in the oil, the vinegar and the milk.

Mix them with the flour.

Add the dissolved yeast and knead.

You are trying to make soft dough, which will not stick to your hands.

If your dough is too soft you must add a little flour. If your dough is too hard, add water or milk until you achieve the dough you desire.

Leave the dough covered with a fluffy towel to rest.

It is better to prepare the dough the night before, cover it with a clean fluffy towel and leave it in a warm place all night.

The next morning the dough is ready and opens into sheet easily.

Open the whole dough in one sheet.

Put the sheet into a greased and floured pan.

Put the pan on the bottom rack of the oven and bake at 170 C degrees in resistors for 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven.

Leave it to cool and then make any pizza you like.

The pizza raises infinite variations.

You can put over the base of pizza anything you like.

You can put sausage, salami, ham, onions, eggs, anchovies and any kind of vegetable you prefer.

 For vegetarian pizza omit the meat products. Put tomato slices, olives, peppers, mushrooms, oregano, other herbs and anything else you wish.
Bake the pizza on the middle rack of the oven at 200 degrees Celsius until cooked and vegetables are soft and browned.

 When the cheese warms up, it melts. If your pizza pan is very shallow some of the melted cheese pours out of the pan into the oven.

So it is better to have some room in the pan to keep the melted cheese and avoid spillage outside the pizza.

Rabbit in the oven with potatoes

RABBIT IN THE OVEN WITH POTATOES

Recipe for six people

Ingredients

1 rabbit 1300-1500 grams

5 large ripe tomatoes

Salt, pepper, oregano, savory

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon black pepper grains

1 tablespoon coriander grains

1 cup olive oil

2 kilos potatoes

The juice of one large lemon

Instructions

Ask the butcher to cut the rabbit into 13 portions. He will cut 4 portions from the feet, 8 portions from the body and 1 portion from the animal's head.

Put on the meat salt, pepper, oregano, savory, coriander and ground cumin.

Put the meat in a deep pan with dimensions 31CH41CH5 centimeters.

Smear with oil the meat from all sides.

Wash the tomatoes and cut them in the blender.

Spread the grated tomatoes all over the meat. The tomatoes cover all the surface of the meat like a red wrapping.

Add water in the pan until it covers the 2/3 of the meat.

Put the pan in the oven on the first scale from the bottom.

Cover the pan with non stick baking paper.

This paper protects the surface of the meat from burning.

Bake at 250 K degrees for 1 hour.

Peel the potatoes and put them in a bowl with water.

Wash them well and cut them into pieces with the size of a walnut.

Pour the remaining oil over the potatoes and stir them until all get smeared with oil.

Put the potatoes in the pan with the meat and cook them together for one hour.

With a long fork check, if the meat is tender.

If the meat is undercooked, cook it longer until tender.

When the meat is soft and tender, take it off the pan and put it on a platter.

Cover again the pan with the non stick baking paper.

Bake the potatoes for an hour.

After that time uncover the potatoes and turn them upside down. This way the potatoes from the bottom come to the surface.

Take off the wax paper and let them to cook until brown.

Shortly before the finish, spread the lemon juice over the potatoes.

When the potatoes are ready, put again the rabbit in the pan over the potatoes.

Turn off the oven but leave the food inside covered with wax paper to keep warm.

(Sometimes I invite a lot of people at home. In these occasions I bake two rabbits.

The potatoes are cooked separately from the meat because they don’t fit into the same pan.

First I cook the meat then I take it off and put it on a platter. Then I put the potatoes in the pan and cook them separately).

Small shrimp pies fried

SMALL SHRIMP PIES FRIED

Ingredients

1/2 pound large shrimp gross, fresh or frozen

2 medium ripe tomatoes

1 sachet of dry yeast

110 ml warm water

70 g flour

2 tablespoons olive oil + 120 ml oil for frying

Instructions

Rinse the tomatoes and cut them in the blender into small pieces.

Pour lukewarm water in the blender.

Beat the tomatoes and the water together.

Pour the tomato juice in a bowl.

Add in the bowl some salt, two tablespoons of oil and the dried yeast.

Stir with a spoon to dissolve the yeast.

Put the flour into the bowl and mix.

You are trying to make a batter not too thick.

If the batter you have made is very thin, add some flour and stir.

If the batter seems too thick, add water and dilute.

Rinse the shrimp well. With the scissors cut all the legs and the antennas.

If you won't cut them they will stick to your mouth.

Keep for decoration of the dish five whole shrimp.

With kitchen scissors sever the heads of the remaining shrimp. You will fry them later.

With scissors cut the shell of each shrimp in the middle of the back in its entire length.

Remove the shells and throw them in the trash.

With a sharp knife scarify every shrimp along the back.

Open the skin and try to find the gut along its back, which is usually black.

With the tip of the knife remove it carefully.

It is necessary to remove it because otherwise the food will have sand.

Cut each shrimp into 5 pieces. 

Add the pieces of the shrimps in the batter.

Mix well so the pieces of the shrimp will disperse evenly in the batter.

Put a nonstick skillet over medium heat.

Pour half the oil in the skillet and let it warm up.

Take a tablespoon batter with three or four shrimp pieces and pour it into the hot oil.

A small circular pie is immediately created.

Repeat this process until the pan is full of small pies.

Take care that there is space between the pies and the don’t touch one another.

Let them cook well on one side and form a red-brown crust and then turn them to the other side.

When they are well cooked on both sides, take them with a fork and put on a dish cover with a layer of kitchen napkin.

The napkin absorbs the excessive oil.

When the oil is reduced in the skillet, pour the rest of it in it..

Dip one by one all the heads of shrimp into the batter and fry them.

Dip the shrimps you kept for decoration into the batter and fry them.

You will easily understand it that they are cooked, because their color changes to red.

A few minutes of cooking is enough.

Decoration

Put in the middle of the platter the small shrimp pies.

All around them put the fried shrimp heads and the whole shrimps.

This dish is a delicacy, Do not eat too much of it because it is heavy.