Pizza à la Bucharest

Well, my loyal readers (who am I kidding), I surprise you with one more post before I leave Minnesota - as promised, pizza.

Last fall, while traveling around Europe, by friend Dan and I found our way to this nice little pizza place in Bucharest. We decided to share a pie; the one we ultimately settled on was described as having gorgonzola, mozzarella, green apples, and olive oil. I'm not normally a blue cheese person, but it sounded worth a shot. Turns out it was possibly the best pizza flavor I've ever had. Since then, I've tried to replicated it for dinner three times—once for my host family in Denmark, once for my parents in New Jersey, and just last week for dinner with Ann and Varsha at school. Although it's never been the same, each time it's been pretty damn good.

Most pizza dough recipes call for sugar, but the recipe I used in Denmark did not, and tasted great, so since then I've tried to find recipes without sugar or cut the sugar from the dough. Ann didn't believe that the dough could possibly rise without sugar for the yeast to eat, but it does.

Mixing the dough:

We don't have a rolling pin in the 2nd Davis Lounge, so lately I've been using an empty beer bottle. Such is college cooking...

Varsha wasn't all that interested in gongonzola-apple pizza (most people aren't, until they try it and realize how AMAZING it is) so she made her own mini stuffed-crust Mexican pizza. It wasn't my favorite flavor profile, but the crust was very good.

After rolling out the crust, we put it in the oven which we had set to about 400° for about five minutes to start cooking, since the crust takes longer to cook than the toppings. While the crust was pre-heating I sliced about half an apple really thin. After a few minutes, we took the pan (which barely fits in the tiny oven) out and sprinkled on the toppings. First I poured some olive oil on the crust and spread it around with a paper towel, then I put on the apple slices, and finally I sprinkled on the two cheeses. In the future I plan on maybe cooking the crust longer before adding the toppings, or adding the apple a little later so the slices are still fresh and crispy like they were in Bucharest. I forgot to add fresh basil this time, but that would be a nice addition that I've used in the past.

When the pizza looked done (about 15 minutes later?), we took it out, let it cool a little bit, and sliced it into quarters.

The gorgonzola and green apple flavors complement each other really well, and melted gorgonzola is really creamy and pully. Ann enjoyed it.

P.S. If there are only a few people eating a pizza, the dough recipe should make more than enough. Wrap up the extra dough in saran wrap and save it for another day - if you don't have to make the dough, making pizza is surprisingly easy! (Making dough is easy too, but admittedly time-consuming) Ann and I used the rest of our dough to make a midnight pizza snack during finals.

Pasta Pronto Procedure

Before Ann and I part ways for the summer, we figured we get in one last blog post from one of our cooking adventures over the past week. For Christmas, Ann got a pasta maker and so we've used it a couple times to make a fresh and delicious dinner. One of those times was a week ago Saturday.

In celebration of (the end of) spring, and the fact that my neighbor and one of our loyal readers, Liz, had a jar of tomato sauce she needed to use, we made spinach pasta with fresh greens and asparagus from the farmers' market. We also made some plain white pasta to make sure we had enough for everyone, and we had parmesan cheese and fresh basil from the plant growing in my window with which to garnish.

Making pasta is surprisingly easy. With some slight adjustments we made while cooking, here are the recipes we used: plain pasta & spinach pasta. Ann and I both love cookbooks, especially ones with photos, but I don't know how we'd ever cook if it weren't for recipes we find on the internet. In the spinach pasta we used organic frozen spinach for the sake of convenience.

Here is the set-up from the first time Ann made pasta:

Kneading the dough:

Ann turned into a scary green monster from the sticky spinach dough:

Putting pasta through the machine:

Some of the spinach dough got stuck in the machine so I had to get it out with a knife between each run-through. I eventually figured out that the key to getting the spinach pasta sliced successfully was speed--if you turn the crank fast enough, the dough doesn't have a chance to get stuck and bunch up.

Sarah sautéed the vegetables.

We timed it just right so that all the different veggies turned out perfectly cooked!

Liz holding some freshly sliced pasta:
Green & white pasta hanging on a ski-pole, waiting to be boiled:

The finished product. Delicious!

On that note, I hope everyone has a wonderful summer. We may, at times, have updates (I might update about pizza-making last Wednesday before I leave school). Otherwise, The Second Davis Lounge will be back in September.

Until then...Your friendly bloggers

Jacket with Seed Stitch Bands

This past week I finally finished knitting my first sweater, a project I have been working on for over a year. I made the baby sweater for one of my little cousins. With foresight I chose to make the largest size; hopefully it will fit. If not, there are many other younger cousins it could go to.

Here is the finished product:

The pattern, which I borrowed from Ann, is Debbie Bliss' "jacket with seed stitch bands" from her Baby Knit Patterns. I would have finished a week or so ago but I needed to buy and sew on the buttons. Not only has this been my first sweater experience, it's also been my first buttoning experience! Overall, I think it worked out pretty well, though I have no intentions of making another sweater, even such a small one, anytime soon. Hopefully my other baby cousins don't get jealous.

Unfortunately, I don't have any babies nearby to try on the sweater to see how it looks on a real person. However, I did try it on myself. It was a little snug.

I've since started a cabled hat, though if I don't finish that in the next week (or get my own set of size 7 double-pointed needles), that project will have to go on hiatus for the summer.

Vegetarian Hakkebøf

Dear Blog,

This is my first post ever. Ariel and I have quit eating at the dining hall - now we just shop there. This means we make all sorts of delicious things in the 2nd davis lounge, and everyone from the floor stops by and says it smells delicious. The other night we made a vegetarian version of hakkebøf, which is a Danish dish composed of ground beef patties atop toast with caramelized onions. Ariel became a fan in Denmark, where her host family would treat her to it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (just kidding!). We made ours with boca burgers and added sauteed spinach and a slice of colby-jack cheese. Mmmm.

Spinach and onions sauteéing. Note the disgusting stovetop.

The final product.

Ariel ready to dig in. As this is Ariel's first photographic appearance, she merits an introduction:

Meet Ariel*: the designer and principle idea-haver behind the blog, and my crafty and culinary life. She is a New-Jerseyan, and as such, has been learning about plants and birds this term from me (my father is a master naturalist, so I feel qualified to teach). When not crafting or cooking, she spends her free time thinking about her other, geographical loves: Star Island, Denmark, and Ghana. She also spends her not-so-free time writing 30 page history papers, which I find commendable and terrifying.

*Also and mostly known as Scary, sometimes I forget she's actually named Ariel. So does her mother.

Sushi for Supper: a project from the past

Last summer I learned the fine art of making sushi. Turns out I had a knack for making sushi, and successfully supervised the making of sushi for about 100 hungry drunks as a midnight snack. Since then I've made sushi twice, once for my parents at the end of the summer and once this past January with some friends.

It's hard to find good sushi supplies in rural Minnesota, so my friend Theo and I drove to the Twin Cities to find sushi quality fish and an Asian market. Luckily we found them right across the street from each other. We returned to school with seaweed, tuna, eel, crab, soy sauce, wasabi, cucumber, carrots, avocado, and these weird gourd strips that we never ended up using. Once we started the rice cooking, we went to the liquor store to pick up some Sake. The sake turned out to be quite gross—even Seth, our friend who will drink absolutely anything, thought so—but the sushi was delicious and fun to make. Although I think sushi without fish is rather boring (eel and tuna are my favorites), Ann the vegetarian found plenty to enjoy.

Claire making sushi (we ran out of white rice so we had to switch to brown rice which worked out surprisingly well)
Sushi being eaten as fast as we could make it

Lab snacks

Meet Ann. Ann is a biology major from suburban Minnesota. This summer she will be working on an organic farm in Iowa. Ann likes to knit, quilt, bake, and read cookbooks. She spends most of her time studying organic chemistry and cell biology.

On Tuesday Ariel went to the local farmer's market and bought some fresh rhubarb so that Ann could bake lab snacks with it. Here is the result...Strawberry-Raspberry-Rhubarb Mini-Pies:

Fresh from a dorm kitchen...

Ann and I decided to start a baking/crafting blog to show off all the things we've been making.
Enjoy!

Coming soon:
Strawberry-Raspberry-Rhubarb Mini-pies
A baby sweater