40s (2023)

Time for some challenges from the weeks in the 40s!

Week 44 - Halloween

I'm not big into "decorative" food (kind of lacking in artistic ability), so I wasn't sure what to make for this challenge. A lot of internet searching led me to a Food Network recipe for white ghost pizzas, and that seemed doable so I went with that. Of course, Trader Joe's didn't have any plain pizza dough that week, so we ended up with garlic and herb pizza dough (which we normally like, but this was for ghosts). I consider this a semi-fail not because of that, but because of my inability to truly shape them as ghosts. The pizzas were topped with an olive oil and garlic base, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, and some black olives for eyes. They tasted good, but I don't need to make these misshapen ghosts again.

Week 45 - drying

Another theme I wasn't especially excited about, because I had no intention of dehydrating food, and most of the already-dried food I could think of was fruit, meaning I had to mix fruit with savory, not my favorite flavor profile. I eventually settled on a caramelized onion and fig pizza from Taste of Home, which sounded like a good combination using dried fruit. The pizza had a cream cheese-olive oil-thyme base (which was useful, because I had a block of cream cheese in the fridge that I needed to use), and it was topped with caramelized onions (one giant onion I got from TJ's), chopped sun-dried figs, prosciutto, pine nuts, and cheese (quattro formaggi from TJ's). The combination was good, but other than pineapples (and I guess banana curry pizza), I still prefer my pizza without fruit.

Week 46 - gourds

I chose a bit of an easier route for the gourds challenge, opting to use canned pumpkin, and make a pumpkin pasta bake from Skinnytaste. It was a recipe we had tried before, mixing in some greens and canned pumpkin, and topped with breadcrumbs and cheese. I don't know where my head was at that night, because for some reason I threw on the breadcrumbs before the cheese instead of the other way around, which just wasn't as good. Lesson learned for next time.

Week 48 - grains

The grains challenge came up right around the time we needed to use up some just-expired wild rice in our pantry, so this wild rice stuffing from Iowa Girl Eats was perfect. I had tried using some of the wild rice blend previously on its own, following the package directions, and it was too crunchy and seemed undercooked despite doing everything we were supposed to do. I was kind of dreading making more of it in case the same thing happened, but this recipe was just right. The rice texture was great, chewy but cooked enough, and with lots of flavor thanks to everything added in (bacon, shallots, mushrooms, celery, cranberries, walnuts, and cheese). I would absolutely make this again.

Week 49 - clear

When I think clear, I think soup (also jello and broth, it hasn't been that long since my colonoscopy diet), and one of my favorite soups of all time is Italian wedding soup. I thought trying a new recipe for that would be perfect here, especially with the colder weather setting in. There was a wedding soup recipe on Once Upon a Chef, a site I have found good luck with before, that sounded a little different since it combined ground beef (used Impossible) and sweet Italian sausage (we had one in the freezer already) with garlic, herbs, cheese, and breadcrumbs for the meatballs. It really did make for some flavorful meatballs that were excellent both on their own and in the soup. Looking forward to making this again soon.

Week 50 - root vegetables

Back in 2015, I made a loaded baked potato salad based on a FoodieCrush recipe for the picnic food challenge, but since I wasn't officially participating back then, this root vegetables challenge seemed like a great time for the recipe to make a return. It has been years now since I made it, but it was just as good as I remembered. It could have used a little bit more bacon (some of ours was too overdone) and maybe some more cheese too (I don't think I used the full amount), but it was excellent and made enough leftovers for multiple lunches. I could have used multiple recipes that week for the root vegetables challenge since we left BJ's with a 5-lb bag of Idaho potatoes and a 3-lb bag of sweet potatoes, but it was nice to make this again.

Afghan Pesto Pizza

A few days after the kofta pizza, it was time for our second Afghan pizza! I used the same recipe page from Afghan Culture Unveiled, this time for the pesto pizza. I hadn't been sure originally if I was going to make both or just the kofta one, but we had a bunch of cilantro laying around, which was a main ingredient in this pesto, so it made a lot of sense to make this too.

Instead of making my own pizza dough or even using a ball of pre-made pizza dough, this time I opted for some prepared pizza crusts from Trader Joe's. That saved a lot of time and effort, since I didn't even have to let the dough sit or roll it out. I had never tried these before, and they barely fit into our reusable bags and our fridge, but now having tried them, I am a fan since they are incredibly convenient.

The pesto consisted of a bunch of scallions, a lot of cilantro, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. In the 1.5-year span since we first did our Afghan food exploration, we became proud owners of an immersion blender, which was perfect for making this (and which I probably would use in the future if we were making something like the shor nakhod again).

The last component (besides the cheese topping) was a combination of yogurt and feta cheese designed to mimic quroot, since I had no idea where to find that and the recipe recommended this combo as a substitute.

The yogurt sauce went on top of the crust, followed by the pesto, and then the whole pizza was topped with mozzarella cheese. Everything together was amazing. I was so impressed by the combination that I knew immediately that I would want to make this again sometime. The pesto just had so much flavor, and it was different from any other pizza or flatbread we'd had before. Although we were eating a lot of pizza in a very short time, I was glad that we had expanded the AtWCC to add a pizza for each place, because we had already had two great pizzas!

Kofta Pizza

At the end of the last post, I mentioned rounding out our exploration of Afghan cuisine and moving on to Alabama, so it would be logical if you thought the next post in this series was going to be either a summary of our Afghan journey or our first Alabama dish. Surprise! It's another post about Afghan cuisine here.

As the AtWCC has progressed over the past few years, it's evolved in so many ways. We broadened our "walk around the world" to include countries out of order (mostly thanks to the 52 week cooking challenge, but also other things). I originally was only going to do a few dishes for each country, since it's impossible to cover everything from everywhere, but then decided to keep going until it felt "done," like we'd had a good sampling of different types of offerings.

The most recent evolution of the challenge was to include a pizza for every location. I had already been aiming to spotlight bread for each location (whether making it myself or just focusing on bread, now that the bread-baking height of the pandemic has passed), but considering one of B's favorite foods is pizza, that seemed like the next logical addition. Pizza or flatbreads or similar foods exist in so many places, but even where they don't, making a pizza with ingredients celebrating a particular locale seemed like it would work. Not a great addition for my cholesterol or triglycerides, especially since the whole wheat pizza dough at Trader Joe's seems to have been discontinued, but definitely a fun exploration.

Since the pizza idea didn't arise until spring 2022, and we were already working our way through Albania at that point, that meant going back to the places we "finished" to make some "catch-up" pizzas. The first place we returned was where we started, Afghanistan, but we didn't only return to make pizzas. Earlier in 2022, I learned about a cookbook called Parwana, full of Afghan history, culture, and family stories, written by a family that runs restaurants in Australia. I'm not sure how I didn't find it before in all my googling for Afghan cookbooks, but alas, I did not. I was so intrigued by so many recipes there that I started making those alongside all the rest of our AtWCC projects. With all those additional meals to make, it did feel sometimes like we would never be done with the As, but it's been so worth it. More on the Parwana recipes in future posts.

Back to the pizza. One of the blogs about Afghanistan culture and food that I really enjoyed during the first part of our journey was Afghan Culture Unveiled, and sure enough, they had some ideas for pizzas right there! There was a pesto one and a kofta one, and I decided to go for the kofta one first. The first step was making the meat sauce. The recipe used lamb, but I went for beefless beef, which was combined with onion, garlic, tomato, tomato paste, salt, pepper, paprika, and ground coriander. On top of the meat sauce went some rounds of mozzarella and sprinkles of feta.

This pizza was a great way to kick off our AtWCC pizzas! The sauce was delicious on its own, and it made for a good base for the cheese. I think if I made it again, I would just use shredded mozzarella instead of the rounds so it would be spread and melted more evenly, but that's about it. It reminded me a bit of a lasagna pizza with a meat sauce on the bottom topped with cheese. Despite pizza being one of his favorite foods, B actually didn't eat much of the pizza, but that might have been my fault for giving him too many mozzarella rounds and crumbles of feta before dinner. We ate this with a salad on the side, and it was a wonderful pizza night!

The Last Third

Time for a group challenge post for the last third of the year! Skipping weeks 40, 41, 45, 47, and 51 because they're also for the AtWCC and week 49 because I already wrote most of that one separately. Not sure if I'm going to get all these posts done before the end of the year, but I'm going to try my best!

Week 36: smashed

My immediate thought when hearing "smashed" was smashed potatoes, probably because A makes them so often (and so well). With A's help, I put together loaded smashed potatoes (based on a recipe from Budget Bytes) topped with cheddar cheese, (vegan) sour cream, bacon bits, and red onions. We don't usually top them with more than garlic and herbs (and they are delicious that way), but it was nice to try something different, especially that tasty melted cheese.

Week 37: honey

I stumbled upon a honey butter biscuit copycat recipe on Let's Dish when doing research for this challenge, and they sounded like a good thing to try since I'd never been to the Texas-based Church's Chicken chain before (and A had never had the biscuits). They apparently sell millions of biscuits a year and have even trademarked the term "Honey-Butter Biscuit" (not sure how since that sounds like a generic description to me, but I'm not a trademark professional). The biscuits were good, although I think I might have cooked them too long since the honey butter browned a bit too much on the bottom, and I personally prefer my drop biscuits not so sticky. Maybe we'll give these another try for the Texas part of the AtWCC.

Week 38: cultured

They announced the week 38 theme far in advance for people who wanted to do things like culture their own yogurt, but that was still far beyond my comfort level for safety reasons, so I figured I would just stick to using a cultured product like yogurt. I went with Molly Yeh's yogurt-marinated chicken skewers which were flavored with ras el hanout and harissa, and skewered with peppers and onions. These came out good, but probably not something I would make regularly at this point considering the marinating time and how long it takes me to skewer things.

Week 39: soaking

I like having overnight oats for breakfast, but they've become a bit of a running joke in our household because I'm always talking about them and rarely making them because I forget to set them up at night. This challenge was the perfect motivation to actually make them, and this bowl was overnight oats with almond butter, oat milk, chia seeds, flaxseeds, cinnamon, maple syrup, and topped with blueberries and blackberries. I really do need to make them more.

Week 43: punny names

"Punny names" is the type of concept challenge that I'm not good at picking recipes for. I spent a long time googling punny foods, punny recipes, and all variations of that, but found very few things that interested me. Eventually, I got attached to the idea of doing pizza for "pizza my heart," but at the end decided on "little pizza my heart," which made more sense because I was making little flatbread pizzas. The pizzas were topped with artichoke pesto sauce, mozzarella, provolone, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses, and a pancetta and mushroom heart. I was actually really happy with the combination flavor-wise, and the hearts, while more difficult to make than I thought they would be, kept their shape thankfully.

Week 44: Greek

The country weeks are usually a no-brainer for doubling up with the AtWCC, but I wasn't in the mood for trying regular spanakopita when this challenge rolled around. I don't know why, but I was really fixated on making it into a Christmas tree. (Note: It was not Christmas or December, not even Halloween yet.) I followed the recipe on Dimitra's Dishes for the spanakopita Christmas tree, and with a little help from A for making the tree "branches," it turned out pretty well. Probably more time-consuming than making regular spanakopita, which I'll likely do next time instead, as fun as this was.

Week 48: leaves

There are lots of things you can do with leaves, but I naturally gravitated toward salad. Now, if I had been doing these in order, you would have known that I made at least three other chicken-based salads in the second half of the year. I can't explain why, but my brain just really wanted salads like this, so I just went with it. This one was very loosely based on a Food52 recipe for a farmhouse chicken salad, and the leaves I ended up using were arugula, parsley, tarragon, chives, and thyme. I also made some tarragon radishes on the side. Good salad, but a ton of work with all those fresh herbs, so this is probably a one-time thing if made exactly like this.

Week 50: rosemary

Last one for this batch! I thought I might end up using this for the AtWCC too, but it was not meant to be. I chose rosemary aloo paratha based on another Food52 recipe, since I'd always wanted to try making paratha and rosemary and potatoes were such a good combination. (I didn't want to make more smashed potatoes since I had just done that for a challenge recently.) Unfortunately, there was something wrong with one of our potatoes and it just would not get soft enough for mashing despite being fork tender when boiled. I should have just used instant mashed potatoes but I was trying to do it the "right" way. That meant that the chunks of potatoes that wouldn't mash broke through the dough, and the whole thing was a mess. I'll try paratha again for the AtWCC, and hopefully it'll come out better next time.

Week 1 - Weird Al

The 2022 challenge started off with Weird Al, and there were a lot of options here because there are a lot of Weird Al songs that deal with food. After a little looking around, I decided on the song Spam, because it was a good excuse to make something new with Spam, something that B absolutely loves to eat.

I ended up combining Spam with another thing that B loves - pizza - for a Spam Hawaiian pizza. Pineapples on pizza are controversial to a lot of people, but we love it, along with other more unique pizza toppings like bananas. That banana curry pizza from last year's challenge was one of our favorite things we tried, and our love for exploring different toppings on pizza has led to an additional development to the AtWCC (but I'll save that for another post whenever I finally get around to recapping those, hopefully soon).

Hawaiian pizza usually has pineapples, red onions, cheese, and ham, but here, I replaced the ham with Spam, for a delicious salty and tasty combo.

This was a big hit with our family, and we would definitely do this again. After a disappointing end to last year's challenges (that akutaq, if you missed it), it was nice to start the year on a high note.

Week 12 - Banana

Pineapple is a pretty controversial ingredient on pizza here (we like it), so I can only imagine how people would react if shops started putting bananas on pizza. I was skeptical, but banana curry pizza is so popular on Swedish pizza menus that I felt like we had to give it a try for the banana challenge. I've made banana curry before (for the bananas challenge in 2015 and a few times after that), which was delicious, so I hoped this would be similarly delicious.

I didn't really follow a specific recipe for this, but just read a bunch of different ones (my favorites were these two) and then put together my own version. The ingredients for our version of banana curry pizza were:

- 1 lb of pizza dough

- 1/2 jar (about 7 oz) of pizza sauce

- most of a bag of pizza blend shredded cheese

- 3 slices of black forest ham, torn into pieces [would do more next time]

- 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

- 2 bananas, sliced

- curry powder

- avocado oil spray

The steps for making the pizza were:

1. Prep - slice onions, slice bananas.

2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper, and spray parchment paper with oil spray.

3. Stretch pizza dough to fit baking sheet. [This was harder than I remembered because it was so elastic and I kept stretching holes in it. I think I need a pizza-making class to learn how to do this properly.]

4. Add toppings in the following order, spreading as evenly as possible over the pizza dough: pizza sauce, pizza cheese (about half of it), ham, red onions, banana, curry powder, rest of the cheese.

5. Bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, until crust is starting to brown and cheese is bubbling.

The pizza was fantastic. We all loved it, and the combination of the bananas, curry, ham, cheese, and sauce just worked. I would definitely make that again. In doing this research, I read that Swedish pizzerias generally have over 50 varieties, so I'm excited to see what other tasty pizzas they've come up with. I can see us making a lot of pizzas for the AtWCC, which I'm sure would be fine with B since he loves pizza so much. I have my eye on a kebab pizza that sounds amazing, so maybe that one will be next!

Hello San Diego

Our San Diego vacation from last October feels like it was just yesterday, and we wish we were back there instead of in New York's cold winter (even if today felt like spring for a day). We normally do separate posts for every place we visit on our trip, but since the first day was mostly spent traveling and we hit up lots of places that are repeats from other recent trips, I'm going to combine them all here to move things along faster.

We flew out on JetBlue from JFK, so there weren't a ton of fast options for lunch. A chose to go with Famous Famiglia's pizza, getting one slice of plain pizza and one slice with sausage and pepperoni, the first of which he found bland and the second a bit too salty. They both could have used more time in the oven, and generally he didn't particularly think too highly of them.

I went to the Boar's Head Deli which had a fancy tablet ordering system, and got a chipotle chicken sandwich with lettuce, avocado, and provolone. I remember the menu saying something about a mango mayo but didn't taste anything like that. This sandwich was supposed to be a panini, but it wasn't very pressed. The provolone cheese was melted, but the sandwich just seemed to come out like it would if I put a sandwich in the toaster for a few minutes, not a panini press. I had thought the chipotle chicken would be chunks of chicken, not slices, but that was not the most logical expectation considering where I went to get the sandwich. It was nice having some avocado, but since that was in chunks, it kind of fell out and made the sandwich harder to eat. The sandwich wasn't cheap, but at least the flavors were good.

In-flight, we got our usual free snacks - lots of water and (for A) some ginger ale, plus some chocolate chip cookies and Cheez-It crackers. We've mentioned JetBlue's free snacks plenty on this blog, and we hope they never stop doing that.

Once we finally arrived in San Diego and got our bags, our first stop was the Ryan Bros coffee stand near baggage claim. Ryan Bros was a local micro roaster, but A had no idea of that when he opted to get coffee. Unfortunately, he didn't think it was that good. He's not judging the whole brand by this offering though, because it was really late and this was just a small kiosk with coffee sitting in those silver cylinder dispensers and not freshly brewed. It really wasn't a very good cup of coffee.

To close out the day, we went for pretty much the same meal we always do when we first get to California, In-N-Out Burger. Is that what most people from the East Coast do when they go out west? We were pretty hungry, so we got three double-doubles, animal style of course, and two orders of animal style fries. It had been so long since we had In-N-Out that we forgot our usual order also added raw onions to the burgers, but it was fine without them. Everything was so, so, so, so good, and we were thankful that we got there at the exact time we did because that branch was packed. It was so crowded that the drive-thru line went out of the parking lot and circled down the street, and at one point after we ordered, we saw the restaurant line go out the door. Can't think of any fast food out here that would inspire that type of line other than Shake Shack (but you definitely couldn't get out of Shake Shack with all this food for $20).

It was a good first day of our trip, mostly traveling, with the San Diego portion kicked off by a delicious visit to In-N-Out. We were pretty excited for the upcoming week of relaxation and good food, and couldn't wait to get started.

Uncured Pepperoni Pizza

We first tried this pizza as a sample a few months ago and liked it, but didn't end up getting it for dinner until recently. Here's the quick review.

Product name: Wood Fired Naples Style Uncured Pepperoni Pizza

Price: $4.99

Quick review: This pizza combined pepperoni with a bunch of different cheeses (primarily provolone, but also fontina, monterey jack, and parmesan) and tomato sauce on top of a crust that they describe as hand-stretched and cooked in a wood-burning stone oven. It was pretty quick to make, about 12 minutes in the oven on our pizza pan, and came out well. The texture of the crust was good, better than some other frozen pizzas, the pepperoni was bold and full of flavor, and the combination of cheese worked well together. We also liked that the pepperoni was uncured pepperoni with no nitrites.

Buy again? Yes. It was good, but it remains to be seen whether it is our favorite TJ's frozen pizza.

Citi Field

Back in June, we wrote about the food at Yankee Stadium and mentioned how much more we prefer the offerings at Citi Field. We were lucky enough to be able to go to a baseball game at Citi Field this summer, but since we got to the game a little late and lines were long, we pretty much limited ourselves to places with short waits. That turned out to be a great move though, since it was how we ended up at Papa Rosso, one of the new spots this year.

Papa Rosso was the new pizza place at the ballpark run by Danny Meyer. We figured the pizza would be good, especially since we had previously had the pizza at Marta (also Danny Meyer, and which we will someday write about) which was delicious. There were three options - pepperoni, margherita, and mushroom and cheese. We got two pizzas, since if we were still hungry, we could always just buy something else.

The mushroom and cheese pizza was topped with fontina, ricotta, pecorino, mushrooms, and rosemary, and the margherita was pretty standard for a margherita pizza with crushed tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. Both pizzas were really good. The flavors were great, and the crusts were crispy but still soft inside. Between the two, we preferred the mushroom pizza because it had more flavor, but they were both good. This isn't grading on a curve either because it was pizza at the ballpark. It would have been just as good from an actual non-ballpark restaurant.

Midway through the game, we found out that our tickets (which we had gotten from a friend) also included access to the Promenade Club. Since a lot of the food kiosks had lines, we decided to venture in there to check out the options. We were greeted with shorter lines and options for wings, empanadas, arancini, and where we ended up going, the Goya burrito bar. We had seen a nachos stand outside that looked really good, so we got some chicken nachos, covered in rice, beans, pico de gallo, salsa, jalapeños, lettuce, cheese, and guacamole. Not the best nachos ever, but certainly good enough for a ballpark snack.

When people talk about Citi Field eats, they usually mention Shake Shack, the Pat LaFrieda steak sandwiches, or now, Fuku. But even outside of those very popular ones (with long lines), there's plenty of other good food all over the ballpark. We haven't been to every ballpark, but Citi Field has to be near the top when it comes to the breadth of options for food. As far as food goes, it's always an enjoyable place to catch a game.

Week 32 - Inspired by Video Games

Shortly after they announced the "inspired by video games" theme for Week 32 of the cooking challenge, Pokemon Go was released. We were quickly addicted to the game and all the positive ways it was affecting society, and it was a no-brainer which video game we should be inspired by for this challenge. We didn't want to consider actually eating any of the Pokemon we had worked so hard to catch, so after some brief looking around on the internet, it became clear we should make a Poke Ball Pizza, which we paired with a salad so it wouldn't be absurdly unhealthy.

Usually when I roll out the pizza dough, it becomes vaguely like a rectangle, but we needed a perfectly round pizza this time, so I leaned towards getting a pizza kit. I guess I could have just gotten a round flatbread from Trader Joe's, but we went to Costco first, and I remembered they had pizza kits, so we went with that. The ingredients for our Poke Ball Pizza were:

- 1 pizza flatbread with 1 packet of tomato sauce from pizza kit ($1.95)
- 6 oz of quattro formaggio shredded blend (parmesan, asiago, fontina, provolone) ($2.50)
- 1.5 oz of pepperoni slices ($1.65)
- 1/2 can of sliced black olives ($0.60)

The amount to make the pizza (since the pizza kits went on sale at Costco for their organic summer coupon special) was about $6.70. Adding on the Caesar salad kit (also from Costco, more on that later), the total for dinner was approximately $10.49. For a quick and easy dinner where the only work I had to do was place ingredients on the pizza and stick it in the oven, and mix together a salad kit, it was absolutely worth it. Sometimes you just need an easy, convenient dinner.

In order to make the pizza look like a Poke Ball (and it wasn't perfect around the edges), I first laid down the pizza sauce and then a thin layer of cheese. The top half of the pizza got pepperoni on top of the cheese, the bottom half got another layer of cheese, and the middle got a string of black olives. It looked enough like a Poke Ball, even if after baking it, the cheese messed up the edge.

The pizza was pretty good. It was a little salty from the pepperoni and the cheese, but that was to be expected. Also, the salt helped counteract the pizza sauce a little, because that was a bit too sweet. The cheese was good as always (my favorite pizza cheese from TJ's). The pizza wasn't as crispy as we would have liked, but that was on me, since I didn't bake it long enough. (I did it for about 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees on a pizza pan, even though the instructions did that right on the oven rack. 15 minutes would have been better, as we tested later.) It was a fun experiment though, and it made us pretty happy seeing the Poke Ball come out of our oven as we sat in our apartment catching Pokemon.

Arugula Pizza

Now that our favorite spinach and kale pie is done and discontinued (still very sad about that), we don't really have a go-to convenient frozen dinner to take its place for busy nights, like nights we go grocery shopping. As a result, we've been trying new things, like frozen pizzas we've never tried before. I originally intended to pick up the new pepperoni pizza for dinner, but they were out. Plan B was this arugula pizza ($3.99), which is apparently imported from Italy.

The arugula pizza takes pizza dough and tops it with mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes, arugula, parmesan cheese, manchego cheese, provolone cheese, pecorino cheese, and a bunch of other seasonings. We had never had this as a sample before, but it sounded good. Also, I liked that it had actual tomatoes and arugula in it, instead of tomato sauce being the only "vegetable." (Remember when Congress declared pizza a vegetable because of tomato sauce?)

The pizza was very easy to make. They suggested putting it directly on the oven rack, but I've never really been that comfortable with that so we used our baking sheet and added a little extra time. Their recommendation for baking on the oven rack was 12 minutes if you wanted a crispier crunch. We probably did it for 15, since we like our pizza cheese a little bit browned.

We liked this pizza. The flavor was good. It crisped up nicely in the oven. It wasn't that expensive. It had vegetables. Good enough for us. Was it as good as actual restaurant pizza? No, but we weren't expecting that. We were pretty satisfied with the choice (especially when paired with a salad, more on that another time), and it reminded us that we used to buy frozen pizza a lot more back when we lived in Chicago. Not sure why we don't do that as much here, but maybe it was easier transporting the giant pizza boxes home when we drove to the grocery store there. Who knows. What we do know is that we have a lot more TJ's pizzas to try.

Buy again? Yes. We might try some other ones first so we can pick a favorite, but this was good.

Roberta's

We've wanted to go to Roberta's for a while now. A lot of people say they have some of the best pizzas in the city, but they've also been known for some long waits. We didn't really want to trek out to Bushwick just to wait in a long line to get some pizza. They've also had some spots at the outdoor markets but whenever we went by, the lines were always kind of long with not much seating. Lucky for us, a branch of Roberta's opened up in the Urbanspace Vanderbilt food hall, and on the weekends, it's much less crowded, so it was pretty easy to get over there to try some pizza with no wait.

We decided to get 2 large pizzas, even though it was a little bit late and we had dinner plans. I was really hungry and didn't think the large (12 inches) would be that much bigger than the small pizza (8 inches). We finished it all, but we ended up super full after dinner.

The first pizza we got was called the bee sting ($17 for the large), which came with tomato, mozzarella, soppressata, chili flakes, chili oil, and honey. Between the 2 pies, A preferred this one, because he liked the spiciness of the soppressata, combined with the subtle sweetness of the drizzled honey and the basil. I liked this one but I found some of the pieces of soppressata a little harder to bite through (A had no problems). Also, since the soppressata didn't cover the entire pie, you got quite a few bites without it, which weren't as good as the ones with it.

We also got the lil' stinker pizza ($15 for the large), which had tomato, mozzarella, parmigiano, double garlic, onion, and pepperoncini peppers. I liked this one better since I liked the garlic, onion, and pepper flavors a bit more, as well as the combination of the 2 cheeses, and also found these toppings more evenly spaced out on the pie. Each bite had a better chance of getting all the different flavors in one. That said, we both expected this one to have a much stronger garlic flavor since it was supposed to have double garlic. There were parts of the pizza where the garlic flavor really came through, but more where it did not.

One thing we really liked about both pizzas was the texture. Since they were wood-fired, there were charred spots throughout, and it just got that special flavor you can only get from a real pizza oven (which we can't replicate at home). The crust was nice and soft, and the red sauce on both was also really good. We really liked the pizzas and would definitely return, as there are a number of other varieties we want to try out. We're glad that there's a much closer location to us now so we don't have to head out to Bushwick and wait in line just to get some great pizza!

Week 35 - Pizza

I had grand plans for the Week 35 theme, pizza. We were going to be away on our road trip during pizza week, but what I planned to do when we got back was attempt to recreate the pizza al pollo asado that I really like from Trader Joe's. We already had a bag of masa harina that I need to use more of and that would be a creative take on the challenge. Of course, by the time we got back, I was too tired and exhausted from the trip and my ragweed allergies to want to think too much about making that pizza, so I just decided to make a pizza that I hadn't made before and wanted to eat. The challenge is just to make a pizza, no need for it to be spectacular. (I'm not even officially participating anyway!)

For this pizza, I used:

- 1 package of whole wheat pizza dough* ($1.19)
- 1/2 small jar of TJ's pizza sauce ($1)
- 1 lb of sweet Italian pork sausage ($4.49)
- 10 oz box of cremini mushrooms ($1.99)
- 1 onion ($0.50)
- salt and pepper, to taste ($0.03)
- garlic powder, to taste ($0.05)
- 6 oz of shredded quattro formaggio (parmesan, asiago, fontina, provolone) ($2.50)

* Yes, I could have made the dough from scratch for the challenge, but we don't have a ton of counter space. Or a rolling pin. Or a good board to make the dough on. And I was tired. Whatever, I still made a pizza.

The pizza came out to about $11.75. Not really that cheap, but it was filling.

The first step was to prepare the toppings. I chopped up the mushrooms and onions and removed the sausages from their casings. We cooked the sausage first, breaking it up into smaller pieces as it cooked, and then added the mushrooms and onions, letting them saute until there wasn't too much liquid left in the pan.

Once the liquid in the pan started to reduce a little bit, I started setting up the pizza. I sprayed the pan with nonstick spray, added a layer of corn meal, and then began to spread out the dough. Once that was done, it was time to add a layer of pizza sauce and then the toppings (which I drained as I spooned them out because all the liquid wasn't gone, but it was done "enough").

The last thing to add was the cheese, and then we were ready to go. This was the first time I had tried using the quattro formaggio blend on a pizza instead of regular mozzarella, so I was hopeful that it would be good.

I generally follow the instructions on the pizza dough package when it comes to baking, so we baked it at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. I probably left it in there for another minute or so after that just to make sure the cheese was all melted and starting to brown on top. Then we let it sit for a couple of minutes before cutting it up.

Overall the pizza was good, but I was expecting more. I think one of the problems was that the sausage itself wasn't very flavorful. We've bought this sausage in the past and it had lots of spices and flavorings mixed in, but this one was much blander, more like ground meat than sausage. I did add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to it while it was cooking, but most bites, the sausage just didn't live up to what I thought it would be. The quattro formaggio was a good cheese choice though. It added a depth that plain mozzarella (much as we like it) wouldn't have, and covered up for the shortcomings of the meat. While everything together did taste good, it was definitely the cheese that brought it all together and elevated it a bit. So not the most imaginative or creative pizza night, but it was pizza so it counts!