Pizza On A Flour Tortilla

I feel like I'm having pizza week, long days and pay check to pay check makes for clever ideas. I had a friend who used to make me "Mexican Pizza's" and I loved them. So one day I was thinking taco bell used to make some kind of pizza between two flour tortillas, that reminded me of my friends pizza. I decided to take that a step further and just make any kind of pizza on a flour tortilla.

Mushroom Feta Pizza With Garlic Oil
2 Flour Tortillas
3 Tbsp of EVOO
3 Cloves of Fresh Garlic (minced)
1 Cup of Medley Mushrooms (shitaki, cremini, oyster)**
2 Handfuls of Baby Heirloom Tomato's (yellow and orange grape tomatoes)
3/4 Cup of Kale**
1/2 Cup of Feta
1/3 Cup of Fresh Mozzarella


Set your oven to 550 with pizza stone in the oven, if you don't have a pizza stone make one (see my other homemade pizza to learn more).

You can do these on foil...but pizza stones really are worth their weight in gold especially if you pay under $5 :)


Lightly drizzle evoo (extra virgin olive oil) on the backs of tortillas, lay them down on foil and drizzle about 1 Tbsp of evoo on tortilla, sprinkle garlic, mushrooms, cheeses, tomato halved & kale. (this is half of the toppings)

Repeat....with the other half of toppings :)

Takes 10 min to crisp so watch it close.

** I really love my dried mushrooms I get from Costco for $16 they do last me a few months and I always use them but fresh would also be good.

I will share many more pizzas so watch for them...
Ms. Foodie

Cooking With Passion...May Cause You To Loose Your Mind

I really do love cooking and most of the time I cook with my sense of smell, taste, mood and Passssion! Often I will start with an idea of what sounds good and mix it with what do I have in the fridge. I've tried really hard these past few years of not cooking the same old thing unless it was such a smash that I could not bare to never eat it again. Taking pizza for an example, tonight I wanted pizza with my zucchini I picked from the garden. So the only thing I knew I had was fresh mozzarella, basil, garlic and whole canned tomatoes. Sounds pretty good right? So I open the fridge and see my little sweet onions, I forgot I had just picked up baby heirloom tomatoes in different colors...yummy. In the back I see a few leftover marinated artichokes I've wanted to use up, now this looks like another wonderful veggie pizza. Of course one of my staples in the kitchen "dried gourmet mushrooms." break a few of those up add some hot water, make a quick sauce and start dicing! How I made my sauce:

Quick Tomato Sauce
For Pizza and Pasta

3 whole tomatoes with some juice from a can
5 Basil leaves torn
1/2 head of roasted garlic**

Take a little sauce pan and dump in the tomatoes with juice, tear basil leaves and bring to a boil.
When it starts to bubble, stir so it does not scorch.
Squeeze your head of garlic until you pull out 4-6 roasted cloves drop them in when the tomato sauce starts to look thicker.
Cook down until all the runny liquid is evaporated and you have a sauce that holds it's form on a spoon.
Let the sauce rest and cool down a little bit while you get your ingredients finished.


Now I start chopping my onion, fish out the artichokes, save the marinade for tomorrows salad. Chop the artichokes, squeeze the water out of the mushrooms, save and freeze that juice for another sauce. Slice in half about 6 yellow grape heirlooms and cut up a few of the bigger tomatoes. Get the mozzarella, squeeze out the extra water/whey and run the knife through it so I have different sizes. The oven beep's at 550 so I grab the olive oil, drizzle really fast on my pizza stone apx size of my piece of lavash. Oil running off a hot pizza stone dripping in your oven is not only messy but a smoky, hard to breath environment I do not recommend!

Lavash is down, sauce is spread with the speed of light, sprinkle onions, scatter artichokes, throw mushrooms all around and toss on mozzarella. Shut the oven door and in apx 10 min the pizza will be crisp and perfectly melted...ready to devour. I usually do this with my guy so that you can shut the oven door faster, we alternate who does what, it's crazy and fun.

It is not even 10 min yet but the pizza looks yummy and smells amazing! We pull it fast with a metal spatula from the pizza stone onto a cutting board, slice it up, go sit down with little pizza plates and ice cold champagne, just like that. I take a huge bite and savor that moment, take a sip of champagne and oooppps I FORGOT THE ZUCCHINI!!!!! We both started laughing because the zucchini was the whole reason I started cooking this pizza in the first place.

I realize I get sidetracked but even more so I realize that when I'm in my zone, doing what I love and passion takes over.....I'm out of my mind, I'm out of my head, I'm in the food zone and I LOVE IT!

Hope you enjoyed,
Ms. Foodie

Homemade Pizza That's Faster Then Take Out!

Sometimes when you're to tired to cook but you have some great leftovers, Homemade Pizza might be your answer. I have created many favorite recipes in a very short time of home pizza making. I have also made my own dough and to me it tasted a little to bread doughy rather then pizza doughy. I have bought "Trader Joes" homemade pizza dough for $1.30, I would not call it my favorite pizza dough, sometimes it is just very convenient and to good of a deal to pass up. I will say that "Trader Joes" herb pizza dough is my favorite of the three as long as long as you roll it paper thin and put it on a screaming hot pizza stone, one of the tricks that make a big difference if your using a yeast type of dough. It amazes me how long it took me to get my very own pizza stone, I gave many for gifts, Pizza is one of my most favorite foods and who wants to plunk down $20-$30 for great pizza every time the craving hits....Not me.
So I was wondering, why are pizza stones $25 to $50 to me that was crazy, for a slab of smooth cement? So I went to one of my favorite stores, that is not a food store "Home Depot" and I walked down the tile isle to look at the big 18" floor tiles without coating on them. I could care less how pretty it looked because after a few pizza's your stone looks like a burnt mess anyhow. Sure enough for less then $3.00 I own my first pizza stone. If you do this you better make sure what kind of stone you're buying because I'm sure the coated ones are not good for you, then again the plastic we drink our $1.50 water from is also not good for us. So I took my new stone home, washed it in hot soapy water then put it in a cold oven and heated the oven to about 350 for one hour, I would not say smell was good. Then I let the stone cool over night and I turned the oven on again to 450 and cooked it for another hour, with nothing on it still. The next day I cooked it at 550 the highest my oven will go and cooked it for another hour. After it started to cool I rubbed olive oil with a paper towel all over it then wiped it off with a new paper towel and then baked some chocolate chips cookies on it for my first test run. My cookies were perfect and they cooked fast, I wiped the stone and was ready to make a pizza. My first pizza was America's favorite, pepperoni but my next pizza was so loaded that the center was mush, which I then had to finish cooking it in a frying pan by the slice. So like anything, with practice I honed my pizza skills and I would love to share some of my pizza ideas that I have made up, recreated and perfected. If you have a pizza that you really love to make and eat, please post it so that we can all share the love of pizza together. Thank you for cooking, Ms Foodie

The Quicky 3 Veg Pizza w/Tapenad Sauce

1 zucchini sliced thin
4 small tomatoes sliced medium (1/4 inch)
1 Handful of dehydrated sliced mushroom medley**
EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1 clove of garlic paste or minced
1 cup of Gouda cheese (not smoked)
1/4 Parm/Reggiono cheese
3 Tbsp Black olive tapenad
1 whole sheet of Lavash bread (middle eastern flat bread)

Preheat Oven to 550
Do not oil the pizza stone

Place down your lavash
Mix olive tapanade with 1Tbsp of EVOO and garlic
Spread thin across the lavash
Spread around the slices of zucchini
Drizzle a little EVOO over the zucchini's
Spread the Gouda all over
Toss the mushrooms across
Place fresh tomato's all around
Sprinkle Parm/Reggiono on top
Bake for 7-10 min. the edges will look med/dark crispy brown
Cut into 4 squares and eat hot
Mangia'

Serves 2

** reconstitude in warm/hot water, ring out the extra water after 10 min. You can save the water for a risoto, sauce or soup but if it will be more then 3 days freeze it.
The mushroom medley I like is Shiitake, oyster and porcini

Tips:
If you do not have a pizza peel then you can either make it right on the stone which is screaming hot and hard on the back also you better have everything ready to go and work super fast or get a piece of thin plywood put aluminum over it at use corn meal to roll the pizza off, as long as your pizza is not bigger then the piece of plywood (watch out for splinters).

If your pizza dough does not slide around when you first place it down, DO NOT build your pizza because the toppings only make it heavier and it really won't slide.

The oven must be preheated to your highest setting in order to crisp the whole underneath of your pizza and cook the toppings.