5/14/2011 Basket - Pizza & Salad Dinner

The first meal we made with our 5/14/2011 basket was a MangoBerry salad with homemade pizza. It was awesome. We neglected to take pictures before we ate it, but will in the future.

MangoBerry Salad

Uses: Romaine lettuce, mango, blackberries

Tear up romaine lettuce, add chopped mango and blackberries

Top with cinnamon almonds (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Roasted-Almonds/Detail.aspx)

Mix with mango yogurt dressing (1/4 cup vanilla yogurt, 1/4 cup chopped mango, 1 tsp. lemon juice - puree all in blender/food processor)

Pizza

Uses: Artichoke, tomatoes, onion, green pepper

Prepare artichoke: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_cook_and_eat_an_artichoke/

Caramelize 1 onion: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_caramelize_onions/

Slice 2-3 plum/roma tomatoes and marinate in 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 tsp salt, and 4-5 minced garlic cloves for at least 3 hours. The longer the better.

Chop 1/2 green pepper

Make pizza dough: Use your favorite recipe, or try this one that we like:

Emeril's NY Style Thin Crust Pizza (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/new-york-style-thin-crust-pizza-recipe/index.html)

Basic Pizza Dough:

1 package active dry yeast

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)

1/4 cup lard or vegetable shortening

3 to 4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

Olive oil

In an electric mixing bowl, whisk the yeast, sugar, water and lard together to make a paste. Add the flour and salt and mix, using a dough hook, until the dough comes away from the sides and crawls up the dough hook. Remove the dough from the bowl. Grease the bowl with olive oil and place the dough back in the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide dough in half. Roll the dough into balls, cover, and let the dough rest for 15 to 20 minutes. The dough is ready to be shaped.

Yield: dough for 2 (12-inch) pizzas

Once you have the dough prepared, brush each pizza with the olive oil/garlic marinade used to marinate the tomatoes. Then cover each pizza with 1/2 of the marinated tomatoes. Cover each pizza with 4-8 oz. of cheese (to your preference). Then top each pizza with caramelized onions, chopped green pepper, and chopped artichoke hearts (from the artichoke you prepared above). Bake each pizza at 500 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until the cheese bubbles and the edges are golden brown.

A note about pizza: If you are cooking with a pizza stone, make sure to preheat the oven with the stone inside and slide the uncooked pizza onto the hot stone. If you cook a pizza on a cold stone, the top will burn by the time the bottom is cooked.

So there you have it - A meal that uses 7 of the ingredients from this week's basket. We'll definitely finish by Saturday at this rate.