Butch's Steel Pan Greek Pizza

It's hard to go wrong with a meal when it's pizza. The dough is pretty happy being thick or thin, however you like to stretch it. I made healthy homemade wheat dough when my kids were little, but today, with my personal schedule, I just pulled a ball of storebought white pizza dough out of the freezer at lunchtime and let it thaw till supper time. 

Making a pizza has never scared me, but turning my oven up to 600 degrees? Now, that was a little scary. In fact, I literally covered my eyes with one hand, peeking through my fingers as I pressed the "up" button on the digital oven temp gauge. 450. 475. 500. Yikes! Dare I go higher? 525. 550. Learned something new today. 550 is as hot as the parsonage oven will go.

As you may have guessed, a Greek pizza is not a Greek pizza without feta cheese and kalamata olives. There are other fun things about this pizza, like fresh, thinly sliced red tomatoes instead of tomato sauce. Next time around, I'll try Roma tomatoes. The ones I used were too juicy and seedy. I used both dry basil and fresh from my herb garden, altho it made me a little sad. Why? Because I realized as I carried the fresh basil into the kitchen that we are at the end of August now, and our fresh herbs won't be with us much longer. Soon I will need to start drying the herbs for winter. 

The recipe called for artichoke hearts. True confession: I skipped them. If the Resident Archaeologist had been eating this pizza, yes, I would have added them. But me, I'm not crazy about artichokes. However, I did liberally sprinkle kalamata olives all over this pizza. I adore kalamata olives and the R. A. won't touch them. Hah! Clever way to keep his hands off my pizza, don't you think?!

The oven really did cook this pizza without catching the whole house on fire. I was impressed. Who knew an oven could get as hot as 550? It just feels like the oven police should be pulling me over and giving me a fine for high heat. I kept looking at the oven thinking it might burst into flames at any minute. But it never did. And the pizza turned out terrific and tasty.

This pizza has a sweet story behind it, and you'll want to get the cookbook just for the story, altho do make the recipe, too. They are both sweet.




Comments

Post a Comment

I welcome your comments. Please be kind and considerate. Thanks for stopping by!

Popular posts from this blog

Maine Party Chicken

Image
 As I read the ingredients for this recipe, I had a flashback to my childhood. My parents enjoyed having friends over, and my mother was not a chef by any means, but she would look for recipes that were easy to prepare for a crowd. This is one of the recipes she used to make.  I used to be a can-of-soup cook, like my mom, when a white sauce was called for. But since I learned how to do a bechamel, oh my, there is no going back. Not that there is anything wrong with an easy pop-top cream of mushroom soup once in awhile. It does the trick, and you just tuck this dish in the fridge overnight and do a three-hour bake the next day, which gives you time to focus on putting up party banners, or whatever, for your company. I'm not sure I care for the dried beef in this dish. Awfully salty. But the bacon, when you do a slow bake, smells fantastic for three solid hours. Can you say Anticipation?! I say, when you go big, go easy. Try this recipe for a crowd. You'll be glad you did!
Read more

Riverhouse Scallops "Benedict"

Image
 If elegant and easy ever paired perfectly, this would be the recipe for such a happy marriage. I saw the minimal ingredients, and thought to self: "This is where the quick hors d'oeuvres meet the 'oh wow' from the guests, with the hostess barely lifting a finger, except to sip some wine." Now, that's my kind of hors d'oeuvres! Slice the very fresh scallops into thin circles. Drop them into fresh lemon juice to "cook." You are also supposed to slice the avocados into circles, to mirror the scallops, but mine ended up being whatever shape the avocado chose. I don't argue with avocadoes about their shape, I just eat them and am grateful they choose to show up on the plate at all. The recipe calls for a few shakes of hot sauce on each scallop slice. I used Cholula Sweet Habanero Hot Sauce.  This is a fabulous appetizer that will impress your friends and family!
Read more

Spruce Beer Uncorked

Image
 Yes, we are mid-January. 2021. Aaand I know my personal challenge was to finish all the recipes in the Maine Bicentennial Cookbook by the end of 2020. So what are we doing now? Well, beer has a life of its own, and I had to let the bottle sit around in the kitchen, doing its fermenting thing, for a week. Then sit around in a cooler location for a week. Today's the day! I chilled the beer, popped the cork, and boldly toasted the new year.  This beverage gives you the refreshing taste of sweet nature: essence of spruce, brown sugar, a splash of lemon juice, ale yeast, and water. On another go-round I'll try honey as the sweetener. And I'll be more adventurous with the spruce. I was so concerned that the spruce flavor would overwhelm. But it didn't! In fact, I could have added a wee bit more. Have you ever tasted mead? This beverage is really rather like mead. How do I know? I was gifted a bottle of mead at Christmas. No spruce essence, but it was pretty good. In fact, I
Read more