Quick Meals--Less than 30 Minutes--Easy Pizza

Pizza's are notoriously easy to make with a few extra equipments and a couple of know-hows.

Special equipment needed:
Cuisinart (7- or 10-cup model)You can mix by hand; it just takes longer.
Pizza stone -- You can use a pizza pan, but you won't get crunchy, thin pizzas.
Rimless cookie sheet -- The kind without the rim on 4 sides so you can slide the pizza onto the pizza stone
Large cutting board -- for the finished pizza. A large spatula or turner is also helpful to get the pizza out.

For the dough (t=teaspoon, T=Tablespoon, c=cup)

1 cup warm water
2 t active yeast
1/2 t sugar
2 to 2-1/4 c bread flour or 00 pizza flour
1/2 t salt
2 T olive oil

1/2 lb. cheese (mozzarella or whatever)
tomato sauce
fixings: vegetables such as peppers, mushrooms, onions, basil, etc. and meats such as salami, pepperoni, anchovies...
Corn meal

Mix the first three ingredients together and let sit until the yeast is nice and bubbly. If yeast fails to bubble, it's dead. Start with another batch.
While yeast is bubbling, measure flour and salt and put in the Cuisinart. Pulse a few times to mix.
Add olive oil to the yeast mixture and pour through the top opening of the Cuisinart with the machine running. If the mixture is too wet, add more flour; if too dry, add more water. When the dough is mixed and comes off the side of the mixing bowl, continue to run the machine for 30 seconds.
Take out the dough. It will be sticky. Make a ball and slap it for a few minutes or until the dough is smooth and no longer sticks to your hands. Put the dough in a bowl, cover and let rise.
Slapping the dough somehow makes a difference! I found it to be an important step.
Place pizza stone (if not already in) the oven and turn on oven to 500F. I've tried 400 and 450, but 500 makes for a thin, crunchy, authentic crust. While the dough is rising and oven is heating, grate the cheese (either by hand or using Cuisinart,) cut up vegetables and meats for the pizza. Also make salad or any other dish you're having with the pizza.
Spread cornmeal onto the cookie sheet to keep the pizza dough from sticking to the cookie sheet.
Take 1/2 of the dough and pat it flat, then start to stretch the dough. Be careful not to make holes in the dough. You can do this in the air or on the cookie sheet or a combination, whatever works. Sometimes if you let it sit a while, the dough relaxes and gets easier to work with. When the dough is stretched to about 12 to 13' in diameter, cover place tomato sauce and the desired fixings. Make sure dough doesn't stick to the sheet.
Carefully slide the raw pizza onto the pizza stone. Oven is hot, so pay special attention. Bake for about 10 minutes or until cheese is bubbling and edge of pizza is browned.
Remove pizza onto a cutting board. Let sit 3 to 5 minutes before cutting. Enjoy!

Serves 2 to 4

Cancer and Chemicals

I feel finally vindicated! After years and years of preaching to my friends and family about trying to avoid the thousands of untested chemicals released into the environment via fragrance, detergent, additives, preservatives, coloring, flavorings, etc., Nicholas Kristof has finally written about it in the New York Times! He tells people to only use glass and ceramics in microwaves, too. (My in-laws used to think I was crazy!)

"Air fresheners" are like chemical bombs you release in your house. It's one of those hyper "cleanness" modern psyche that industries are mining for easy money, just as they are with "wipes" and "sanitizers." I worry more about the chemicals and sensitization in those things than germs. Remember, you can kill most germs pretty easily, but you cannot get rid of great many chemicals. They stay in your body and in the environment for a long, long time!

So, stop wasting your money on air fresheners and vitamin drinks, and smell some fresh flowers and drink or eat some real fruit!

Roasted Chicken

I love roasted chicken. It's easy, it's delicious, and I can get at least three meals from a single 4lb chicken: dinner, lunch, and soup for another meal or two. It's one of the greatest "economi" dish!

I always roast my own chicken, because I can't imagine not having gravy with my chicken. It's the best part! Besides, once you slather the chicken with a mixture of garlic, salt, olive oil and some pepper, all you do is wait (or do other things) while it cooks in the oven. It's easy peasy.

As with any meat, the key is to put enough salt on the chicken. For me, this works out to be about 1/2 teaspoon per pound. I also use about a clove of garlic per pound of chicken. I mince the garlic, add salt, then add olive oil to make a runny paste. After adding pepper and/or other herbs, I cover the inside and outside of the chicken with the mixture. I cook the chicken for about 20 minutes per pound at 350ºF. I guess it would be hard to do if you don't get home until 6 or 6:30, but a freshly roasted chicken is really a comfort dish for me. With gravy, of course.

I've heard a lot of people say making gravy is hard, but not the way I make it. After you put the chicken onto a service plate, I pour the excess grease into a cup (good for matzo balls later.) I put 1/2 to one cup of liquid (water or combination of water and wine) in the roasting pan (I use Calphalon's Everyday Pan for roasts to make this step easier) and let the liquid sit to soak the drippings for a few minutes while you prepare the rest of dinner or clear the table. After the drippings have softened a bit, I add one to 1-1/2 tablespoon of flour directly to the pan and dissolve the flour in the tepid mixture. After the flour is mixed up, I start heating the gravy mixture while scraping the bottom of the pan with a metal spatula to loosen all the drippings. When it starts bubbling and the gravy mixture thickens, I'm done! Taste and add salt and other seasonings as needed. If the gravy is too thin, I add some mixture of flour and water until the desired thickness is reached. That's it! If at anytime during this process I notice large chunks of flour, I use a whisk on the gravy. This trick breaks up most flour chunks.

Side dishes can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them. I like to have something to eat with the gravy, and the easiest thing for me is rice. The rice cooker cooks it for me. For vegetables, I sometimes roast yams and sweet potatoes in the oven with the chicken (cut them up to about 1-inch chunks then coat them with olive oil on the cookie sheet then stick in oven), or quickly steam green beans. This is my kids favorite dinner! And you can also have great chicken sandwiches for lunch the next day...

Cheaper than McDonalds

A few weeks ago I had to make dinner for 40 high school kids including several vegetarian kids. My first thought was pizza, but at over $20/pizza, it would cost around $200! After consulting several cooking experts, I settled on drum sticks and baked polenta with vegetables.
Here's what it took.

45 drumsticks -- about 13 lbs at $1.29/lb (on sale at Safeway, normally it would have been $1.49/lb) -- $17
15 to 20 clove of garlic, 7 teaspoons of salt, 3 teaspoons of ground pepper and coriander, 1/4 cup of olive oil -- $1?
6 cups of polenta - $3
2 large packages of frozen spinach - $4
6 large Roma tomatos - $3 (no GMO worries with Roma tomatos)
2 onions - $1
3 bell peppers - $ 2
1/2 cup olive oil and 3 teaspoons salt - $1?
2 packages of shredded parmesan cheese - $8

Preparation time was minimal: about 20 minutes to process the garlic, salt, etc. in the food processor and coat the drumsticks, and 30 minutes to chop, measure, and mix the ingredients for the polenta. It took about 4 hours total of cooking time after I started peeling the garlic to when I started putting the food into the car for delivery. I also took a 30-minute nap while the meal was in the oven.

All in all, I was able to feed 40 hungry dancers for about $1.00 per person.
You see! With a little thought and work, and without compromising quality, I saved $160 compared to the pizza solution!
It was reported that the dinner was a hit!

Mumblings

Economi is "eco's fruits" or "fruits of eco" in Japanese. Eco stands for ecology and economy.

Someone once said that anti-consumerism is the ultimate environmental conservation. Having been brought up by a mother who experienced the aftermaths of WWII in Japan, I grew up with the doctrine of waste not want not. With work, kids, and other obligations of life, it's often hard to find time to cook, saw or clean or even think, but hopefully with a little ingenuity and effort, we can lead healthier and more satisfying lives while saving a little money and being kinder to the environment.