Spicy Red

Oooooo, spicy!!! I had planned to do pizza one night this week and I had pondered a few different ideas but then when it came time to actually make the pizza we were starved and hadn't prepared any sauces or anything yet so it ended up being a quick turn on the oven and toss whatever we have on the dough kind of pizza. And well, it turned out pretty darn good, we just felt it was a little too spicy. And when K admits that something is too spicy you know it has got to be HOT!

Here is what I put on the store-bought whole wheat pizza dough...

• a little bit of salsa
• chipolte seasoned kidney beans (this is where our heat came from - we used a little too much chipolte, oops!)
• onion
• tomato
• red bell pepper
• avocado (put on the pizza as it came out of the oven)
• No need to pass the hot pepper at the table but we did pass the nutritional yeast

We both rated this an 8. It had great flavor, just a bit too hot. We also felt that more tomato would be good (I only had a rather small tomato to slice up). , I'm not sure which would be better - either more fresh slices or some extra tomato sauce mixed in with the salsa on the base. I also might try this on a different kind of dough next time. With just a scaled down spiciness and more tomato this pizza would be pushing the 9 or even 10 rating (could we really eat it every day? )

southwestern flair in green

It has been awhile since we've made pizza, mostly because it has been too hot to turn on the oven lately. This week we have been getting some thunderstorms and rain which is really cooling things off so I fired up the oven and made a pizza last night - yum!

It was a rather unusual pizza that I made, but it tasted pretty good. I made my own whole wheat pizza crust (actually half whole wheat and half white flour). The sauce was an herb & black bean puree which had cilantro, basil, garlic scapes, garlic, cumin, lime, nutritional yeast, salt, and obviously, black beans. For toppings, I sauteed some summer squash and mushrooms and I also added slices of avocado when the pizza came out of the oven. As always we passed red pepper flakes and more nutritional yeast at the table.

On the new 10 point scale we give this a 7. It looked pretty in a rather monochromatic way but some brilliant red would have enhanced the visual apeal as well as the flavor. My preference would have been some slices of fresh tomato (the tomatoes at the farm are still green so we won't be seeing them for another week or so.) K suggested roasted red peppers on his half which I agree would taste good as well. I might also throw some olives on next time.