Maudy's Cooking Journal!

My friend, a farm girl, gave me two big mushrooms she found on her mushroom hunting. She carefully wrapped those mushrooms and placed them inside her lunch bag. It was so sweet of her to remember me. I love many kind of mushrooms, and excited to try the "new" one. She told me that those are Puffball mushrooms. If I identified them correctly, the scientific name is Calvatia cyathiformis or Purple-spored Puffball. The diameter of the mushrooms that I got were about 4.5 inches/12 cm, but they can get bigger than 12 inches (30 cm). They grow in late summer and fall, and can be found in lawns and the woods.

My friend assured me that they weren't poisonous. I did a little research online and found some tips to examine if the mushroom is categorized as toxic. There are some look-alike species that can cause gastrointestinal symptoms and can be deadly. The physical appearance can be too similar for some people (like me), but the inside are obviously different. So, it is suggested by the experts to slice the mushroom open. The interior of the true Puffball composed of solid, white, homogenous flesh and no sign of stalk, gills and cap. For more information, read this and this.

Last night, I eagerly cut the mushroom. The inside was pure white like a white bread, puffy like sponge, and soft like silken tofu. I cooked it with red pepper, garlic, sweet soy sauce, and fish sauce. What a yummy dinner!

Concerning my lack of sleep last night, hubby offered to buy food for our dinner. He had to work from home tonight so he couldn't cook. He didn't want me to cook either since he knew I was too tired from finishing my writing. The writing is due this Friday, so I stayed up until 5 am to do some revisions. On the way home after handing out the writing to my adviser, he asked me where we wanted to have dinner. Knowing that our refrigerator was full of organic vegetables, I told him that I would cook something simple. He agreed, with one requirement; he couldn't help because he had to prepare a presentation. I nodded.

Among those summer vegetables, bundles of basil leaves, squashes, portabella mushrooms, tomatoes, and peppers jumped out at me. Pizza! Making pizza doesn't require much time.

I started with making the dough. While the dough was fermenting in the sun room, I peeled some garlics, coarsely chopped the basil leaves, mixed olive oil and salt, then food processed the whole ingredients. Voila! the pesto was done. The next step was chopping the vegetables and mushrooms. In the mean time, I boiled four cups of water and a cup of salt for salted eggs. Making bothok telur asin has been on my list this past few months.

I found out that making pizza is a perfect one person's job. When the topping preparation is finished, the dough was ready. It took no time to spread the pesto on the dough, arrange the topping and seal it with cheese. My stomach was growling and hubby was about to faint from starvation when I was about to bake the pizza. Fifteen minutes later, we enjoyed fresh-vegetable pizza while watching Mr. Monk, our favorite TV show. Yummm...

Pizza Hut was the biggest pizza place in my hometown. Just like other fast food restaurants including Mc.Donalds in my country, Pizza Hut is also considered as a nice restaurant. Yes, it is a restaurant where people sit while enjoying their pizza. The restaurant's interior is also designed to make people comfortable using the space to celebrate special occasions or have a date or get together with friends. Since the food this restaurant offers is pricey for average income, this restaurant, that is usually located in a shopping mall, could be considered a "luxury" restaurant.

My sister and I also liked to visit this place once in a while. We had pizza dates when I went home during my college time. We ordered personal pizza, risotto, and a portion of salad. For the salad, we could only fill up our bowl once or we would get charge for the second portion. So, sist & I (as well as some people) would use our best talent to pile up the vegetables and fruits as high as possible. Haha...hubby always got annoyed when I did that. My sister and I always had a great time. We were excited with the food at the first bites, then the satisfaction dwindled as we scooped more and more food. Before we finished everything, even before we filled full, our stomach usually would feel queasy and we promised not to visit that place anymore. But, the next day or two, we changed our mind and planned for another pizza date. Haha...she still brings this thing up sometimes when we see Pizza Hut restaurants.

I think I like pizza more than I did before, because I can always finish at least 2 slices of big pizza, and my stomach is fine. I also sometimes have moments when I really crave pizza. Furthermore, now I like to make my own pizza like what I did on one Friday evening. For the crust, I used recipe from More-with-Less Mennonite cookbook I got from my friend Ruthie on our wedding day. For the topping, I used whatever vegetables I could find in my refrigerator. Hubby loved...loved...the crust.

Pizza Crust
Source: More-with-Less Mennonite cookbook
Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
1 pkg yeast (about 7.5 gr)
1 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs olive oil
1 1/4 cup flour
1 cup additional whole wheat flour

Combine water and yeast, let sit for 10 minutes. Add sugar, salt, oil, and 1 1/4 flour. Beat until smooth.
Add the whole wheat flour. Knead until elastic, about 5 minutes.
Place in greased bowl and let rise until double, about 45 minutes.
Divide the dough to 2, roll and stretch to fill 2 greased pizza pans. I don't have pizza pan, so I used the 3 base of my round springform pans with diameter 8, 9, and 10 feet. Let sit for 10 minutes.
Pour the sauce over crust, arrange the toppings, and sprinkle the cheese. Bake at 400'F for 15 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

When still got weekly vegetable boxes from Megan, we had superfluous fresh basil leaves in our refrigerator. Since I was sure we couldn't finish the whole things before they got rotten, I made pesto basil then saved it in the freezer. I almost forgot about my frozen pesto basil, until I thought about making pizza the other day. My favorite pizza is ones from Tomato Head, a local restaurant at the heart of downtown. They have a lot choices of pizza sauces, not only the regular tomato sauce one like most pizza places offer. One of my favorite is their pesto base pizza topped with mushroom, spinach, olive, and other vegetables. Yummm...

Pizza Crust
Recipe is adapted from here
Mix:
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. instant yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
Add:
1 ¼ cups warm water
2 Tbsp. oil
Mix to form a soft dough. Cover and let rise until nearly double in bulk. Grease large pizza pan or cookie sheet. Roll out dough on floured board. Place on greased pizza pan or cookie sheet. Stretch the dough as necessary.

Pesto basil sauce, adapted from here
2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
black pepper
Combine the all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped.

Topping:
Portabella mushroom, sliced
Fresh spinach
Tomato, sliced
Red onion, sliced
Mozzarella cheese

Spread pesto basil, leave 1/2 inch from the edge. Sprinkle half of the cheese. Arrange spinach, tomato, mushroom, and red onion. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese.
Bake at 425º for 15 minutes or until it bubbles and the cheese just begins to brown.

Hubby decided not to like eating arugula as part of salad. The taste and the smell is too weird to him. Since it is part of our CSA box and we have committed to eat whatever we get, I tried to find recipe that uses arugula as its main ingredient, instead of eating big chunk of it uncooked. I was happy when I found an arugula pesto recipe. I made plan using this pesto for our dinner. We had vegetarian night today. I added roasted portobello mushroom and boiled pinto bean to substitute meat. We are not a big meat eater, but we like to have a little meat, for flavor. I don't mind for not having meat once in a while, but he does mind. But portobello mushroom is very rich, he loves it and considers it as meat replacement.

Roasted Portobello
Ingredients:
2 portobello mushroom, sliced

Marinate with:
3 Tbs Smoked tomato sauce or balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs cooking wine
3 cloves garlic, crushed

Marinate the mushroom for 30 minutes, then bake covered at 400'F for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake again for another 10 minutes.

Arugula Pesto
Ingredient:
A bunch of arugula
5 stems of parsley
2 Tbs walnut
3 cloves garlic
3 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp Salt

Mix all ingredients using food processor. Set aside. Make multiple recipe then store it in a jar and refrigerate. That's what I want to do if there is more arugula in our CSA box.
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