A Thai Stir Fry to Cure the [Pre]Winter Blues

eat. I think I have a slight tendency to suffer from the winter blues, a condition which has now been elevated to the status of an official disorder: “seasonal affective disorder” (also known by its amusing acronym, “SAD”).

watching a little cycling cheers me (in foreground) up during winter
photo: Robin McDuff

I’ve often wondered if my olive complexion and dark eyes make me more susceptible to this condition than my fellow fair-skinned humans, and it appears that this may be true: There is some support for the theory that a vitamin D deficiency contributes to SAD, and it’s known that the darker your skin, the less you absorb vitamin D from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

In addition, I discovered an online article about eye color, discussing a recent SAD study finding that

among 165 depressed (bi polar disorder or major depressive disorder) people that “darker-eyed patients were significantly more depressed and fatigued [in the winter] than blue-eyed patients.” [The study team] concluded that lightly pigmented eyes increase the amount of light the eyes receive during the winter, which relieves depressive symptoms in vulnerable populations.

What I crave this time of year—when it’s cold and overcast like today—is a healthy dose of brightly-colored, crunchy vegetables, to remind me of summer.

I harvested the last of my red bell peppers the other day, and had a can of coconut milk in the cupboard, so I decided to make a Thai-style stir fry.


After chopping up the veggies, I mixed a teaspoon of red curry paste into the coconut milk.

that’s a daiquiri in the bottom right, made from
fresh Meyer lemons courtesy of my friend Cathy

To the coconut milk and curry paste I added a healthy glug of oyster sauce (fish sauce would work too), a few tablespoons of soy sauce, and a couple teaspoons of brown sugar. (Just add these ingredients to taste; you’ll know if it needs more umami, salt, or sugar.) I let this mixture simmer for about fifteen minutes, to reduce it. Meanwhile, I started woking up the vegetables.

When you stir-fry vegetables, you should commence with the ones that take the longest to cook. So I started with the broccoli (adding it to about 2 T heated canola oil), and when it was half-way done, I tossed in the bell peppers.

notice how the color of the coconut milk has changed,
with the addition of the other ingredients

Next went in the onions. I had cut a fresh pineapple up into spears that afternoon, and decided on the spur of the moment to add some of it to the mix:


At this point, I decided not to use the eggplant (which I hadn’t yet cut, as they turn brown quickly) after all, as there was plenty of food without it.

When the veg were all cooked—but still crunchy—I poured the now somewhat thickened curry sauce into the wok, and added coarsely-chopped basil.


I stirred it all up, and we served ourselves (over steamed rice), topping our dishes with a sprinkling of pine nuts.


Robin declared it to be yummy (being a fan of sweet-savory dishes, I think she especially liked the addition of the pineapple). I thought it was good too, but decided it would be even better made with regular coconut milk, rather than the low fat variety they sell at Trader Joe’s.

The Other Perils of Cycling

ride. After yesterday’s wild windstorm, it’s clear and still today. But, not surprisingly, there was a lot of debris on the roads and bike paths this morning: bright red and yellow autumn leaves, piles of pine needles, twigs and branches, coastal redwood cones, and a smattering of Starbucks coffee cups and newspaper pages as well. At one point going out to Wilder Ranch I had to stop completely and unclip, to get through an area thick with eucalyptus branches and seed capsules (which, though small, are dangerous objects at high speed).

eucalyptus seed capsules
web photo [source]

I normally ride up to UCSC on Saturday mornings, which are pretty quiet, most students not appearing outdoors until noon. But it was even quieter than usual on this Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, and I encountered no one at all until I reached the Chadwick Garden, below Merrill College.

As I came around the corner near the top of the hill, I saw a woman standing by a car, looking about in an odd way. I thought perhaps she was lost and needed directions, but then all of a sudden she hurried across the street and started walking up the hill. As I approached, I noticed she had a camera in her hand. I followed the direction of her gaze, and saw several young deer on my side of the road, grazing just below the garden fence. The woman was creeping quietly towards them, and I could tell she was nervous that I would spook them, and she would lose her photo op.

I almost laughed out loud. She clearly doesn’t know these deer, I thought—who are so brazen I sometimes have to bark at them to get them to move out of my way when I ride by. (There was an article in the local paper recently, saying that car-deer crashes are up 22% in California over the past five years.)

black-tailed deer on UCSC campus
web photo [source]

Sure enough, although I passed within feet of the grazing animals, they barely gave me a glance as I went by. So I am confident that—unless she’s a real dork—she got her picture.

Shortly after I passed the woman and the deer, as I neared the highest elevation of my day’s ride (at Science Hill, on McLaughlin Dr.), I took a small sip of water. About a minute later, I experienced a short bout of nausea. This is not uncommon; in fact I’d say I get that “I-kinda-feel-like-I’m-gonna-barf” sensation at least once a week. It never lasts more than a minute or two, and is almost always triggered by drinking a little water.

Since none of you, gentle readers, have yet taken me up on my invitation to “Ask Leslie” any questions you might have about food, music or cycling, I therefore decided to ask a few of my own: Why do cyclists get those short bouts of nausea, and why are mine triggered by taking a sip of water?

The most informative website I found on this issue was the Utah Mountain Biking site, which divides cycling nausea into three categories: (1) physiologic-stress nausea; (2) metabolic nausea; and (3) gastric nausea. The third—eating too much or too rich a meal—I could quickly omit, as I rarely eat before I go for my early morning rides.

The second category is the result of a combination of inadequate hydration, low muscle glycogen, inadequate calorie replacement on long rides, and/or heat. This is a possibility, but it seems odd that I would experience this type of nausea after a mere 20 or 30 minutes on the bike, which is not uncommon for me.

don’t forget to eat and drink, or you’ll bonk!
(Tour of California riders on Empire Grade, Santa Cruz)
photo: Kenny Karst

The first category of nausea is caused by pushing yourself to your limit, i.e., to the point where your lungs are gasping for oxygen and your legs are burning. Another culprit is lack of sleep. Now, this is definitely a possibility, as the bouts usually occur during a steep climb, or just as I crest the hill. And I definitely did not get as much sleep last night as I would have liked.

So I’m guessing my nausea is the result of a combination of the first and second categories.

2009 Santa Cruz Classic Criterium competitor

But it still doesn’t answer the question: Why does it occur right after I take a sip of water? I was unable to find the answer to this question. If anyone out there knows, leave me a comment!

Stuffed

eat. Funny to think that’s how an entire nation felt, all at the same time, yesterday afternoon and evening.

Since we are at Robin’s parents’ house, her dad Duffy did the turkey, and her mom Annie Kate did the mashed potatoes (she’s the expert—I learned how from her).

wild turkeys fighting to impress the hens
in Robin’s parents’ back yard this morning
[photo: Robin McDuff]

My self-assigned job was my favorite part of the meal: the stuffing....or would that be dressing?

As I sat down to write this post, I pondered the difference between “stuffing” and “dressing.” My family has always said stuffing, but Robin’s mom says she uses the two interchangeably. Curious, I googled the two words, and learned this:

In the middle ages, stuffing was known as “farce,” from the Latin farcire and French farcir, meaning to stuff. [Fun side-note: A “farce” originally denoted a brief, lighthearted play stuffed in between lengthy religious productions to keep the audience from being bored.] The English term “forcemeat”—for a chopped meat mixture, such as in sausage—evolved from the French word “farce.”

The term “stuffing”—the English translation of “farce”—first appeared in English print in 1538. According to various sources (see, e.g., here), the term “stuffing” apparently did not appeal to the propriety of the Victorian upper crust, and around 1880 the term “dressing” began to be used instead.

Nowadays, both words—stuffing and dressing—are used in the U.S. Some people say “dressing” to refer to that which is cooked outside the bird (i.e., as a separate casserole), and “stuffing” when it’s inside the bird. But mostly, it seems, folks employ one or the other term for both methods. I found a great discussion on the Chowhound website which posed these questions regarding the stuffing/dressing issue: “What do you call it?” and “Where are you from?” From the long list of responses, I gather there is no longer much rhyme or reason, nor geographic relation, to the usage.

For my stuffing, I go a pretty traditional route: bread cubes, Italian pork sausage, celery, onions, apples (from my tree), and walnuts.


First I browned the sausage,


and then I added the chopped onion and some herbs de Provence, garlic powder and black pepper.


Once the onions had softened a bit, I added the celery and continued cooking for another minute or two.


I used two kinds of bread: plain white and whole wheat, cut into cubes. Here’s the bread with the sautéed ingredients, right before I mixed them together:


Next I chopped up some walnuts,

No, I’m not left-handed;
this is staged, with the camera in my right hand

and diced the apples.

These went into the bowl with the bread and sautéed sausage and veg:


Mix it all up together (go on—use your hands!), and then crack some eggs into the glop, to act as a binding agent, and mix these in:


Finally, pour a little stock in, to keep it moist and add extra flavor. I used some dark chicken stock I had in the freezer.


Oil the inside of a casserole well (it’ll stick like the dickens if you omit this step), and fill the casserole with the raw stuffing. You can prepare it up to this step a day or two before the Big Day. (I made extra, which we’ll have next week. Ya can’t have too much stuffing!)


If you make it in advance, take the casserole out of the fridge a few hours before baking. Pour a little oil or melted butter on the top of the stuffing, and bake it uncovered at 350° for 30-40 minutes, until it browns on top.

I experienced a minor drama with my stuffing yesterday. It went into the oven when the turkey came out, but unbeknownst to me, the oven had gotten turned off in the process. So, when I checked on the stuffing a half hour later, there it was, sitting in a cold oven, uncooked. Quelle catastrophe!

I admit I did not handle the situation in as mature a fashion as I might have. Though no one else seemed to mind the delay in dinner (I don’t think Duffy or my brother Kenny even noticed), I fumed and pouted. But a glass of the delicious Nine Points Pinot Noir that my brother had brought helped soothe me down.

Thank goodness for microwaves and broilers. I nuked the sucker for about ten minutes, and then popped it under the broiler, and it was done.

The top got a tad burned (due to setting the casserole closer to the broiler element than I should have in my impatience), but it ended up tasting just as good as it would have, had it been cooked in the traditional method:


Happy Black Friday, everyone!

Requiem aeternam

sing. Several years ago my chorus sang the Mozart Requiem, and the more I learned the piece, the more I fell in love with it. By the time of our performances, it had skyrocketed up to the number one position in my favorite choral compositions.

Mozart circa 1780, by Johann Nepomuk della Croce
web photo [source]

I’ve rarely had the opportunity, however, to hear the Requiem as a member of the audience, rather than as a participant. This makes a big difference: When you’re standing in the middle of the alto section, right behind the trombones, the balance you get is not—as you may imagine—as Mozart meant the work to be heard. So when I learned that the UCSC Orchestra and Chamber Singers would be performing it last weekend, I jumped at the chance to go.

A requiem is a Roman Catholic mass offered for the dead, and consists of a liturgical service for the repose of the soul of the deceased. It derives its name from the first word of the mass, which means “rest” or “repose” (for you grammarians out there—Dad, I’m thinking of you—it’s the accusative case of the noun requies). That first line starts with: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine” (Grant them eternal rest, Lord).

The history of the Mozart Requiem is full of drama, scheming and intrigue, and reads like a paperback novel or a Hollywood movie. (Wait—there was a Hollywood movie about it [I blogged about it here].) Although no one now, some 220 years later, can know for sure exactly what happened, the common consensus is that in early 1791, Graf Franz von Walsegg, a minor nobleman whose young wife had recently died (no, it wasn’t court-composer Antonio Salieri), commissioned the work anonymously, in the hopes of passing it off as his own. Mozart accepted the commission (50 ducats was apparently the price), but unfortunately had other commitments at the time, including finishing La Clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte, the clarinet concerto, and the Masonic cantata.

Near the end of October of the same year, he finally turned to the Requiem, but his health—which had not been good—took a turn for the worse, and he became bedridden in late November. As explained on an interesting website I discovered doing research for this post,

[b]y the fourth of December Mozart felt death was near, and lamented that his life’s work would be so drastically cut short, and that he had not provided better for his wife and children. In the afternoon several singers from the opera sang through the Requiem with him, and at the point where they reached the incomplete Lacrymosa, Mozart was moved to tears; it is possible he would have recognised the bitter irony that the first performance of his Requiem might be the occasion of his own obsequies, his life being cut short like the Requiem itself. Mozart died just after midnight on 5 December 1791.

Mozart directing his Requiem on his death-bed
(from the painting by Mihaly Munkacsy)
webphoto [source]

The Requiem was thus unfinished at his death. The versions we have now—and there are several in popular usage—were completed by others, some of whom were Mozart’s pupils, most notably Franz Xaver Süssmayr. (For a detailed discussion of who might have written/completed which parts, read Philip Legge’s account—from which the above quote is taken—here.)

incomplete last page of original m.s. of the “Hostias”
(notice all the blank staves)
web photo [source]

The UCSC performance of the piece was quite good (except for the soprano, whose voice I found to be pinched and occasionally off-key). I was particularly impressed by the orchestra, which has greatly improved in caliber since my days at UCSC in the mid-1970s.

As I listened to the singing of the choruses, I paid particular attention to the ending consonants—about which our conductor Cheryl is a stickler—and smiled smugly at the odd early “s” or ragged ending. (Though to be honest, the UCSC chorus was pretty darn tight.) All of that wood-shedding we do in rehearsal truly does pay off!

It was great fun getting to hear the piece. I got positively giddy during the “Rex tremendae” (ya gotta love that rolled “r” in “Rrrrrrrex!”), and a bit weepy during the “Lacrymosa.”

Okay, I admit it: I’ve been considering the “Lacrymosa” as something to be performed at my memorial service, and during that movement I did fantasize a bit about such eventuality. But that’s a good thing; we really need to get better about death as a culture, don’t you think? And c’mon, it was a requiem mass we were listening to, after all.

Tarte aux Poires Normande

eat. I’ve probably done more baking in the last few months than I have over the past five years. It’s partly le Groupe Français—the French conversation group that Robin and I recently joined—which requires the hosting member to serve dessert.

But it’s also this blog. The need for new topics to write about is a great inspiration to try cooking items I wouldn’t ordinarily attempt.

So, although I’ve never been much of a baker, I now find that I am slowly gaining more and more confidence in that department. Who woulda’ guessed?

The first real baking I ever did was in cooking school at Cabrillo College in the early 1990s. One of the required courses was baking, and under the careful and patient tutelage of our terrific instructor, Kathy Niven, we novitiates created a host of complicated and delectable treats, such as French bread, Danish, strudel, puff pastry, dacquoise, and chocolate mousse. One of the desserts we made that semester that particularly stuck in my mind was the tarte aux poires Normande—a pear tart in the tradition of Normandy, a region of France known for its pears (as well as its apples, dairy products, and Calvados).

pear tart

Since I still had oodles of pears on my tree, the last time we hosted the French gals, I decided to make that pear tart again. (The recipe is set out at the end of this post.) I pulled out the binder with my class notes and formulae (as we were taught in school to refer to baking recipes), and voilà, there it was: three pages devoted to tarte aux poires Normande. I read through the re...I mean, formula...and was pleased to discover that I already had all the necessary ingredients on hand.

First thing was to make the frangipane, or filling. One of the main ingredients for this is almond meal, which I did not have. But there were some raw almonds in my freezer, so I simply ground them up in the food processor. (You have to be careful not to grind for too long, or it’ll turn into almond butter).


Next I creamed butter and sugar, and added egg and vanilla to this.

some of the frangipane ingredients

Then I mixed the almond meal with some flour, and added this to the butter cream concoction.


Next step was the crust, which is called pâte sucrée in my notes, even though the version we made doesn’t include any sugar. (They normally do, hence the name—“sweet pastry.” You could add sugar to the crust, but I made it without any and it was fine; the filling is plenty sweet without the need for further sweetness in the crust.) This is essentially just a garden-variety pie crust, with egg yolk added for extra richness.

pie crust ingredients, with formula

Cut cold butter and shortening (I used all butter, but lard would be nice) into flour, and mash it with your fingers to make butter “cornflakes” in the flour.


Whisk an egg yolk into iced water and pour this into the dough, tossing it with a fork. Add enough more ice water to just bring the dough together. Chill the dough for 30 minutes and then roll it out.


You can set your tart pan on top of the rolled-out dough to judge how far to continue rolling.


Lay the dough carefully in the pan, and let it fall into the corners. Cut off the excess dough by running a rolling pin over the edges. (I used this excess dough to make a second, mini-tart.)


Next you brush apricot jam on the bottom of the crust,


and then spread the frangipane on top of the jam.


Arrange pear slices on top of the frangipane, working from the outside, in. (The pears can be peeled and sliced in advance, but keep them in water so they don’t brown, and pat them dry before arranging them in the tart.)


Bake the tart on a sheet pan in the bottom third of the oven at 425° F for 15 minutes, and then turn down the oven to 325° and continue baking for another 25-30 minutes.


Take it out of the oven and glaze it with more apricot jam (I heated the jam in the microwave for about 20 seconds, to make it easier to spread). Finish it by sprinkling sugar on the top, including the edge crust.


The French ladies were mightily impressed, and the tart was a big hit. (See photo of finished tart at top of post.) I served the slices with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream dotted with a few of the candied pecans I had made the week before for my dinner party.



Tarte aux Poires Normande
(for 10-12” tart pan; yield 8-10 slices)

The measurements are by weight, as that’s what bakers use (it’s much more accurate), and what my formula has. You can no doubt find equivalents for volume online if you need them.

crust
10 oz. flour
5 oz. cold butter
2 oz. cold shortening (I used all—i.e., 7 oz.—butter)
pinch salt
1 egg yolk
¼ C ice water

frangipane
3 oz. butter
4 oz. sugar
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
1 t vanilla
4 oz. almond meal
½ (2 T) flour

other ingredients
3 ripe (but still hard) pears, cut into slices
(poach slices in sugar water if the pears are green)
4 oz. apricot jam or gel
1 T sugar (to sprinkle)


To make crust: Cut butter in cubes and add to flour. Add shortening, and mash it all together with your fingers to make butter “cornflakes.” Don’t over-mix! Add half of the ice water to the egg yolk and whisk, and then add this to dough, tossing gently with a fork. Add as much of the rest of the ice water as needed—just enough to bring dough together. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 min. Roll out until 1/8” thick. Place in tart pan, letting dough fall into corners. Cut off excess, and chill pan while you make the franipane.

To make frangipane: Cream butter and sugar. Add whole egg and egg yolk and vanilla. Mix almond meal with flour, and add this to butter-cream mixture.

To put tart together: Spread thin layer (about 2 oz.) of apricot jam on bottom crust of dough. Spread frangipane on top of this. Arrange pear slices in spirals on tart, starting at the outside and working inward.

Bake on sheet pan at 425° for 15 minutes, and then turn down the oven to 325° and continue baking for another 25-30 minutes. The edges should be golden-brown, and the pears starting to brown as well.

Take it out of the oven and glaze it with the rest of the apricot jam (you can heat the jam in the microwave first, to make it easier to spread). Finish it by sprinkling sugar on the top, including the edge crust.

King Bolete

eat. A few days after the rain storm we had a few weeks ago, I was sitting in my back yard in the sun in the afternoon reading, when the doorbell rang. Who could that be? I wondered; I wasn’t expecting anybody.

I opened the door and there were Darien and Bruce. Darien smiled as I opened the door, and extended her hand. I looked down, and saw this:


“Wow!” I exclaimed. “It’s huge! And beautiful!”

“It’s for you,” she said, handing it to me. “We were driving down Highway 1 on our way home from mushroom hunting, and I thought as we came into Santa Cruz, I’ve gotta stop and give one of these to Leslie.”

“Wow,” I said again. “Thanks! What kind is it?”

It was a Boletus edulis—aka the “King Bolete”—known as the cep in French, and the porcini in Italian.

“Where’d you find it?” I asked, and then quickly added: “No, don’t tell me; I know you mushroom hounds like to keep your locations secret.”

Darien laughed. “We were up in Swanton, near _______,” she said. (She may have been willing to tell me, but I doubt she wanted to tell the whole blogiverse.) “And don’t worry, it’s been checked by an expert, so you can be assured it’s not poisonous—though Boletes are easy to recognize,” she added. “As we were coming down the hill to the car we ran into a guy I know who’s really knowledgeable about mushrooms, and that area in particular. He looked at it and confirmed it was in fact a Bolete.”

Although I didn’t say so at the time, I was glad to hear this. Not that I don’t trust Darien’s expertise when it comes to things mycologistic (is that a word?), but it’s nice to have a second opinion when potentially poisonous foods are involved.

She also told me that the Bolete is an early-season mushroom, and that they tend to stop coming up once the real rains commence. (Then it’s time for my favorite, the Chanterelle.)

“It’ll be perfect for dinner tonight,” I said. “We’re having pan-fried steaks, and I can fry these babies up in some garlic butter and put ’em on top. Mmmmm!”

I didn’t want to wash the mushroom, as they sauté better when dry, so I peeled the outside, and sliced off the bottom where the humus was sticking to it.


Next I cut off the stem and sliced that up, and then sliced the cap crosswise. I was surprised to see that the gills were a bright yellow:


After I pan-fried our steaks, I set them under some foil to rest and set about sautéing the ’shrooms. I melted some butter in a hot cast-iron skillet, and fried up the stem pieces first (seasoning them with garlic powder and S&P as they cooked).


When frying mushrooms, treat them as you would a chop or steak: Lay the slices in the hot butter or oil, and then don’t move them until they’ve browned. Then flip them over and finish cooking. This method allows them to form a crust, and keeps the moisture inside. If you crowd the pan or stir them too much, all the moisture gets released, and they steam instead of fry.

I removed the stem pieces to a plate, added more butter to the hot pan and let it melt, and then laid the slices of cap in the skillet.


Once brown, I flipped them over and let them go for another minute or two.


I set the steaks on our dinner plates (along with a baked potato—we had a spinach salad too, on the side), and topped the steaks with the Bolete.


An umami-fest, if ever there was one!

Thank you Darien and Bruce!

My First Homemade Pizza

eat. When we were at Bjorn and Kim’s house in San Francisco last week after our evening at Boulevard, I noticed a bunch of fresh basil on the counter and asked what they were going to use it for. “Homemade pizza,” was the answer.


That got me thinking: I’ve never made pizza from scratch before; maybe I should try it. I do so adore those thin, crispy, Neapolitan-style pies. But as you may remember if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I have a bit of a baking phobia, and pizza dough definitely comes under the category of “baking.”

What the heck, I decided. How hard could it be? After all, I have been doing a lot more baking of late, since joining le Groupe Français. And I did have a bunch of fresh basil left over from an insalata caprese I’d made a few nights earlier. So yesterday I took the plunge and made my very first pizza.

I found a dough recipe online. First I mixed the dry ingredients—flour, instant yeast, sugar and salt—together well, and then added olive oil, and warm water, mixing it up until the dough just held together:


The recipe said to knead the dough until a small piece pressed into a disk could be stretched out to the point that it was thin enough to see light through it, without breaking (the “window pane” test). This took about 8 minutes of hand-kneading.


I then put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, turned it over (so both sides had oil on them—it keeps the dough crust from cracking as it rises),


and covered it with a dish towel. Since it was cold in the house yesterday, I figured I’d let it rise for several hours.

Next I prepped the toppings. I had some leftover roast chicken which I shredded, I thinly sliced the last of the tomatoes from my summer garden, crumbled some fresh goat cheese, thinly sliced a half a red onion, finely grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and got some pine nuts out of the freezer. I would wait to slice the basil into strips until right before topping the pizza (so it wouldn’t turn brown).


This is where things started to go awry: After a couple of hours I peeked under the dish towel. It didn’t look like the dough had risen much. It did have a bit of a yeasty smell, but it had not come close to doubling in size. Hmmm. It was still only late afternoon, however, so I’d just let it continue to rise and see what happened. It was rather cold, after all.

At five o’clock, Robin and I convened for cocktail hour (we had both been at our respective computers all afternoon). She had Jim Beam/rocks; I had a vodka gimlet. An hour before we wanted to eat, I turned on the oven to 475° (a compromise between the 450° and 500° that the different recipes recommended), and put my pizza stone on the lower rack.

A half hour before the appointed dinner time (7:00—okay, so it was a two-hour cocktail hour), I looked at the dough again. Had it risen any more? Hard to tell. Oh well, what ever. I punched it down, and set to pressing it out.


I stretched it as far as it would go, let it rest for 10 minutes, and then stretched it out again as far as I could. I sprinkled some dried grits (corn meal is traditional, but I didn’t have any on hand) on my long-handled wooden peel, and set the stretched dough on top. (This is so it will slide off easily.) I turned the edges of the dough in, and then set about topping it.

The recipes had recommended brushing olive oil on the dough, to keep the toppings from leaking moisture and making it soggy. I decided to use some chicken fat I had in the fridge instead, for extra flavor. I brushed that on, and then brushed on a bit of tomato paste.


Next I added the chicken and the tomatoes,


and then the onions and goat cheese.


I finished it with pine nuts, basil, and the grated cheese, sprinkled some more grits on the hot stone in the oven, and slid the pizza onto the stone. This is the scariest part, but I managed to do it okay, with only a few pine nuts flying off in the process.

on the stone in the oven

It took about 18 minutes for the edges to brown nicely and the cheese to melt. I took it out of the oven—using a metal spatula to slide it back onto the wooden peel—and slid it off the peel onto my butcher block. It looked great, I thought—like a real restaurant pizza (see photo at top of post).

I cut it into slices,


and we sat down at the table to try it. I took a bite.

Although the pizza had looked attractive enough, the crust was—I thought—pretty much a failure. Tough and leathery, almost grainy in texture. You can see the crust better in this photo:


Mind you, with all those yummy toppings, it was still tasty, and we managed to almost finish the whole thing. But this morning, I sat down at the computer to read more about pizza dough, to see what the had gone wrong.

I found a great pizza dough trouble-shooting website, from which I gleaned several potential problems: flour with too high a protein content; too low a baking temperature and too long cooking; and/or not enough rising. But my flour (King Arthur all-purpose unbleached) has 11.7% protein, which is under the 12% max the article said. And at 475°, I couldn’t see how 25° more would make that much of a difference. Must a’ been the lack of rising.

I decided to check on my yeast’s viability. I put a teaspoon-full into some warm water with a pinch of sugar, and let it ferment for 10 minutes. Yep, that was likely the culprit; it barely foamed at all. It had been in the freezer for over a year; time to buy a new packet.

So I’m going to try once more, with fresh yeast. And next time, I’m also going to let the dough rise again after it’s been stretched into a crust. And maybe I’ll cook it at 500°. Once I get it right (assuming I ever do), I’ll post the recipe.

If anyone out there has any other advice for me, I’d love to hear it!