Zucchini with Thyme (Courgette with Thyme)

In an effort to feature appetizing vegetable dishes outside the boundaries of the traditional Filipino veggies like “ginisang gulay” a.k.a “pinakbet tagalog”, “abraw” or “inabraw”, “laing” and even “chop suey”, among those already posted here, and to continue the surprising saga of the now popular “beef with broccoli” recipe, I heeded to our group’s request that I cook zucchini. So when we went shopping for our weekly food provisions over the weekend, a medium-sized pretty zucchini is among the new food items that we acquired. We are hoping to transform it into a delectable veggie dish for our Sunday dinner.

Like broccoli, zucchini is a European vegetable now widely available in the fresh harvest section of most Philippine supermarkets. As some of us know, it is now successfully being cultivated and produced in the cool regions on the Philippines like the environs of Baguio City in Benguet and probably Tagaytay City in Cavite. It is a fine–looking and intriguing produce which is akin to a cross breed of the local gourd or “upo” and squash or “kalabasa”. While its skin’s usual deep green color with tiny white spots (there is a golden variety colored yellow or orange) resembles that of the skin of a young squash, its flesh is pretty much like that of a gourd, soft and whitey.

Zucchini as commonly called in North America, Italy, Germany, Australia and the Philippines or courgette as known in the United Kingdom, Greece, New Zealand, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and South Africa, is a popularly cultivated summer squash that can grow big (up to one meter in length) but harvested while still immature at just half the size. While botanically, zucchini is a fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower, it is considered a vegetable in the culinary context. Meaning, it is usually cooked and served as a savory dish or accompaniment rather than consumed raw or fresh.

Easy Sliced Bread Pizza

There is “something” in pizza that could really make me drool. When craving hits me, it is really difficult to ignore or resist such a desire. While the “probably best pizza restaurant” in Sri Lanka which I featured before in my post “Best Pizza in Sri Lanka” is just a 30-minute ride from our area of residence, it is only open at night and not available during the afternoons when cravings usually arise. To make things worst, there are only a few other pizza houses or restaurants serving decent pizzas particularly in the city which we frequent during weekends. Therefore, easy ways of preparing pizza within the limited resource of our accommodation is something I have been continuously exploring.

In connection with this, I have already posted how to make a home-made chunky pizza sauce and a home-made crust or pizza shell in the past. In addition, I have prepared and featured how I make pizzas like the “Chicken Sausage Pizza” and my all-time favorite, “Shrimp Garlic Pizza”. While I always make sure that at least, I have a regular stock of pizza sauce, I usually ran out of shell as its preparation takes a longer time which I hardly have during weekdays, after office hours. So out of necessity, I have been preparing pizza using sliced bread as crust. And I should say, the resulting pizzas aren’t bad. They also have that “something” which I always wanted in a real pizza and the most important thing is that they always satisfy the cravings. :-)

With the ordinary flat bread pizza crust available in the frozen section of groceries here, which we found to be quite thick and too bready, I guess using sliced bread is in fact a better alternative in the absence of our home-made pizza shell. For as long as crusty and firm sliced bread are used, an amazing pizza is in the making.

The ingredients needed to make this easy and quick fix pizza are sliced bread or sandwich bread, of course, some sausage or ham or bacon or salami or any other processed meat you like, good quality mozzarella cheese, some fresh vegetable for toppings like tomatoes, mushroom, chili peppers or bell peppers or capsicum, onions, etc.

As normally done in creating pizzas, all fresh vegetable ingredients are properly washed and chopped or sliced into correct topping sizes, cheese are grated or if too soft, crumbled, sausages or other meat products are lightly fried or cooked and thinly sliced. Then, everything are arrange within easy reach during cooking along with the gorgeous chunky pizza sauce.

First preheat your oven to 375 - 400 degrees Fahrenheit (°F). That’s about 190 to 200 degrees Celsius or Centigrade (°C) or Gas Mark No. 5 - 6 on your oven.

In a perforated pizza pan or better yet pizza stone or baking stone, arrange about 4 slices of bread, more if your pan is wider. Evenly spread about 1 to 2 tbsp pizza sauce, with all the chunky goodness, on each slice of bread.

Then distribute the vegetable ingredients on top which, in this case, are just tomatoes, chili peppers and oyster mushroom. On top of the veggies, evenly scatter the delicious sausages cut up to small pieces.

Put the pan inside the pre-heated oven and bake for about 10-12 minutes or until the toppings are cooked through and the bread crust lightly toasted to golden brown.

Take it out from the oven and quickly spread the crumbled mozzarella cheese on top. Return it to the oven and cook for 5 minutes further or until the cheese has cooked through and melted just right. Don’t overcook the cheese.

With such a stunning pizza, it is so human to immediately take a piece, grab a bite and forget the lesson we already learnt many times before that while cheese in pizzas seems perfectly cool from the outside, it could still be scorchingly hot in the inside. :-(

But a few burnt taste buds will not thwart us from continuously enjoying this sliced bread pizza with all that juicy but still crispy veggies, tasty sausage and sumptuous melted mozzarella cheese. After all, we probably have a large glass of ice cold cola drinks by your side prior to eating, which comes very handy in such events of fiery incidents. :-)

Try this at home…….but avoid a blatant mistake….…make sure to have the first bite when the melted cheese is really cool, in and out. Enjoy! c “,)

Fresh Fruits for Dessert

Dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food such as cakes like banana cake and chocolate cake, cookies, pastries, ice cream, candies, puddings, chocolate bars, sweetened fruits like “banana que” and sweetened banana, sweet delicacies and my favorite, fresh fruits. Dessert is an important part of a meal as it enlivens the eating satisfaction to a higher level. Sort of completing the food intake to a point where taste buds will attain a state of pure pleasure and will temporarily shutdown in craving for foods or anything. :-)

Fresh fruit is my preferred dessert for every meal. With so many good things being attributed to fruits I guess no elaboration is really needed. However, it is worth mentioning that fruit provides energy in the form of natural sugars which our body can extract without even feeling fulfilled. Said sugars are digested in a short period in a chemical process with no toxic waste byproduct. Fruit also contains substantial amount of the important fibers and high percentage of water which is almost the same water percentage of the human body at 80%.

Being in a tropical country like the Philippines, we are blessed with many varieties of fruits available to everyone at a relatively low cost here in Sri Lanka. I have featured before some of the local harvests of fresh fruits in season as well as the remarkable king coconut and banana which we enjoy all year round. There are many more which I hope to post one by one or in groups in the future.

For dessert we usually have, as shown above, pineapple. It is the crunchy-sweet variety which is also a favorite of our Japanese friends.

For very good source of natural sugars + water, we have water melon and melon which provide a refreshing dessert at the end of a satisfying full Filipino meal during weekends. :-)

Imported fruits also make a good dessert although not quite cheap here. Grapes, apple, oranges and seedless water melon are perfect at the end of a sumptuous meal during special occasions.

As we get old, our interest in nutrition increases and we are getting more conscious about what we eat. Consequently, our interest in fruit and its contents grows. As expected, more and more people are now eating fruits for dessert. c“,)

Garlic Bread with Real Garlic Bits

Garlic is probably among the most important ordinary and inexpensive cooking ingredients. It imparts a fantastic taste that varies extensively depending on how it is cooked or prepared. It can provide different flavors from a subtle sweet to a mild piquant to a strong almost overpowering one. From the posts in this blog alone, you can find many diverse uses of garlic in various food preparations where the rather simple garlic assumes a major role in creating a truly tasty dish.

The delicious Gambas Al Ajillo is basically shrimp in lots of garlic. The wonderful Shrimp and Garlic Pizza is surprisingly good with just the two toppings, shrimp and garlic, plus some cheese. The widely popular Garlic Fried Rice of the Philippines is mainly fried leftover rice and garlic and yet sumptuous and very delicious. The Toasted Chili and Garlic is so versatile and particularly impressive as add-on to dips and in making ordinary soupy dishes extra special entrees.

Garlic is a species in the onion family “Alliaceae”. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek and chive. It has a characteristic pungent, spicy flavor that mellows and sweetens considerably with cooking. A bulb of garlic, the most commonly used part of the plant, is divided into numerous fleshy sections called cloves. The leaves, stems and flowers on the head are also edible and are most often consumed while immature and still tender.

In praise of the versatile ingredient, another garlic laden dish will be the feature of this post – Garlic Bread. Garlic bread typically consists of crusty bread topped with garlic and olive oil or as many restaurants now prefer, melted butter. It is often eaten as a simple accompaniment to pasta and other Italian dishes. It is either grilled or broiled until toasted or baked in an oven. A modern variation on the recipe tops the garlic bread with a variety of cheeses, often mozzarella, cheddar or feta.

Typically garlic bread is made from baguette or Italian or French long and narrow loaf. However, other similar types of loaf bread can be used when you don’t have baguette at hand. In fact, I used even ordinary crusty type of bread and it’s also wonderful like this local loaf bread of Sri Lanka.

For the one loaf bread above, the other ingredients needed are 1 head garlic, peeled and minced, 1 stick unsalted butter, to be melted, ½ tsp dried oregano, ½ tsp dried parsley, a pinch of salt and 2 stalks fresh flat leaf parsley. If salted butter is what you have, use it by all means but just adjust the amount of salt.

First, using a sharp bread knife, slice the bread to about ¾ inch thick. If you are using baguette, slice it in half along the entire length. Then cut them into manageable lengths, about 6 to 8 inches. For my loaf, I sliced it in such a way that its slice has an outer part as shown below.

Before proceeding, preheat the oven to 350°F or about 175 °C. Doing this will save you a considerable amount of time in the kitchen. :-)

In a small sauce pan, melt the butter on a very low heat. Lifting and swirling pan as necessary to control the temperature and just melt the butter and not heat it to oil consistency. Turn the heat off and add the minced garlic to the melted butter, stirring lightly. Add inn the oregano, dried parsley and salt and stir to blend. Finally add in the fresh parsley and stir once more.

Arrange the sliced bread cut side up, with the outer part on their backs. Spread the butter-garlic mixture over the sliced bread carefully distributing the garlic and herbs on top. Slather the butter basically soaking the crust. Place the prepared bread on a baking pan and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Transfer the baking pan to the highest notch closer to the heat and adjust the oven setting to high heat. Broil for further 2 minutes or until the sides or edges of the bread is golden brown and toasted. Be careful not to over broil and burn the bread though. If you want a slightly soft on the inside just shorten the period of broiling.

After broiling, let garlic bread cool for about a minute. Slice diagonally to about inch thick. Transfer in a plate and serve immediately with your favorite pasta dish or soup.

I ate it on its own over a cup of Ceylon tea and it’s also wonderful. But I felt strong cravings for some spaghetti…….whew. Enjoy! c“,)

Shrimp-Garlic Pizza

Pizza is a world-popular dish made with an oven-baked, flat, generally round bread that is often covered with tomatoes or a tomato-based sauce and cheese. Other toppings are added according to region, culture, or personal preference. In restaurants, like the one in Bentota Beach Resort which I posted before, pizza can be baked in an oven with stone bricks above the heat source, an electric deck oven, a conveyor belt oven or, in the case of more expensive restaurants, a wood- or coal-fired brick oven. On deck ovens, the pizza can be slid into the oven on a long paddle called a peel and baked directly on the hot bricks or baked on a screen or a round metal grate.

Modern pizza originated in Italy as the Neapolitan pie with tomato. In 1889 cheese was added. According to the original Italian rules, the genuine Neapolitan pizza dough consists of Italian wheat flour, natural Neapolitan yeast or brewer's yeast, salt and water. For proper results, strong flour with high protein content (bread flour than cake flour) must be used. The dough must be kneaded by hand or with a low-speed mixer. After the rising process, the dough must be formed by hand without the help of a rolling pin or other mechanical device, and may be no more than 3 mm (1/8 inch) thick. The pizza must be baked for 60–90 seconds in a 485 °C (905 °F) stone oven with an oak-wood fire.

This process might be different to yours or mine in some ways, but it does not matter. The important thing is that we create a sumptuous pizza our own way.

The bottom base of the pizza, called the "crust" in the United States and Canada, may vary widely according to style. It could be thin as in hand-tossed pizza or Roman pizza or thick as in pan pizza or Chicago-style pizza. It is traditionally plain, but may also be seasoned with butter, garlic, or herbs, or stuffed with cheese or recently, sausage. When making pizza at home, it can be baked on a pizza stone or baking stone in a regular oven to imitate the effect of a brick oven.
Recently, I posted how I make my pizza crust or shell. Earlier before, I also have a post about how I make my chunky home-made pizza sauce. But for today’s pizza, I decided to prepare one that is not using tomato or tomato based sauce. I call it shrimp garlic pizza which I developed trying to re-create the pizza gamberetti I usually eat at an Italian restaurant here in Sri Lanka which serves really delicious pizzas.

The ingredients for this pizza are: 1 pc prepared pizza crust from my recent post, about 8 pcs shrimps, shelled, about 8 gloves garlic, some Gouda and mozzarella cheeses, salt, freshly ground pepper and extra virgin olive oil (even just good olive oil will do).

To prepare, first, chopped your shelled shrimps and seasoned with salt and pepper. Crush, peel and mince the garlic. Grate about 1 cup of Gouda cheese and about 1½ cups mozzarella cheese.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius (°C) or 392 degrees Fahrenheit (°F). Spread about 1 tbsp of olive oil to the crust (more if your crust is bigger), then top with the garlic evenly. Spread the shrimp pieces followed by the grated Gouda cheese.

Put this inside the oven and bake for 20 minutes. After which you will have this.

And then spread the mozzarella cheese on top and return to the oven for another 5 to 8 minutes. Making sure the mozzarella cheese is cooked and melted just right. It’s that simple. It's fun right?

Grab a bottle of your favorite drinks and be ready to be delighted with this distinctly delicious pizza. The combination of shrimps and garlic plus the combination of Gouda and mozzarella cheeses, creates a very unique taste that really works for me. Try it and enjoy! c“,)

Basic Pizza Dough & Crust Recipe

I somehow promised in my Chicken Sausage Pizza and Chunky Pizza Sauce posts that I will feature the preparation of pizza crust or pizza shell some time later. I know how fulfilling it is to create a pizza from scratch. Using the commercially prepared pizza crust from the frozen section of groceries and supermarkets simply does not ring a bell for me. Cold yes, but uncool I should say. Aside from the fact that it is relatively thicker; it always tastes like ordinary bread.

Last night, I finally had the chance to do it. Anticipating the visit of a friend who used to work in our firm here, I decided to prepare pizza crust just in case I might need to do some pizza sometime today or tomorrow. Being ready with such an easy and yet much-sought after snack food will probably lessen the stress on entertaining the guest.

I used the basic pizza dough recipe for this post. Whilst I have a more special recipe for crust, I am reserving it for future posts when we are to make really extra special pizzas. Though this recipe is fairly basic, don’t think it is inferior or something for it will still result to really delicious pizzas. I have used this recipe many times and it never failed to impress visitors and guests alike. Of course the toppings, sauce and cheeses also make the difference, but an amazing pizza always starts with a good crust.

The few ingredients we need are: 41/4 cups + 2 tbsp All-purpose flour (wheat four is the common flour here in our place so I’ll be using it), 1 ½ cups lukewarm water, 1 tbsp white sugar, 1 tbsp or 1 pack dry yeast, 2 tbsp olive or salad oil (I used vegetable oil :-) ) and 2 tsp salt. Yes, that’s all.

Sift the all-purpose flour and salt in a wide mixing bowl. Add the oil and mix the ingredients.

In a small mixing bowl, pour the lukewarm water then add the sugar and dry yeast. Without mixing, let it stand for about 10~15 minutes or until the yeast is bubbly.

Pour the yeast mixture into the bowl of flour mixture. Mix thoroughly until it starts to form into a ball. Transfer the dough ball on a clean table and knead (folding and pushing) for about 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Use the 2 tbsp of flour to work it when it gets too sticky.

Grease a deep pot. Likewise, slightly coat the dough ball with oil to prevent the surface from cracking when it rises. Place the dough inside the pot and cover with damped cloth. Let it proof for 1½~2 hours, until it doubles its size.

For better result, punch the dough in the center to release the air and let it rise again for 30 minutes. After which, knead it again and divide into 4 smaller balls. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 340 ˚F or 175 ˚C.

Place one small piece of the dough in a floured surface and roll into thin crust of around 14 inches diameter. Carefully transfer in a perforated pizza pan. This is not easy to do if you are after a perfect circle pizza crust with uniform thickness. I can do it now, but through constant practice and after gaining 5 kilos due to over eating pizzas. Just kidding! :-)

Bake in the center of the oven for 8 minutes. Remember: 8 minutes only. Allow to slightly cool and then transfer in a rack to cool completely. Do the same for the next 3 pizza shells.

At this point I usually put them in a large plastic bag and carefully stock inside the freezer. I just take what I intend to use at least 5 minutes before cooking time to properly thaw it. c “,)