Friday Night Pizza

Friday night, I made the best pizza that you will ever taste at my 3rd cooking lesson. So, you know that a pizza is really made well when there is a nice, crunchy taste. When the pizza came out of the oven, the crust was a golden brown and looked very crunchy. I knew that it was going to be the best "Friday night pizza" (a family tradition) that I was ever going to taste. And well... it was. It was even better than the reputable pizzeria down the street called Tino's. And that is hard to do, because Tino's has awesome pizza. After the crispy dough comes the toppings. The dough made enough for two pizzas. One pizza had tomato sauce, cheese, mushroom, and green pepper.  The other had fresh mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes. This one was the winner for me. This is one of the best pizza doughs ever, so I am sure that the crust helped to make me fall in love with that pizza. 

I was sleeping over at my aunt's house and made her dinner. My cousin Matty was turning two and I helped her get ready for his party. We make the cupcakes together. Then I watched my cousin so my aunt could get some things done. She and my uncle loved the pizza. There were 2 slices left and the pizzas were fairly large. So, I consider that a big win.

On Friday nights in the summer, my Nana cooks "Make your own pizza" on the grill and we have a movie night. Usually we buy the dough (Check out the big shop). My uncle Carter usually also helps make the pizzas. He was a pizza maker at a reputable pizza dealership too.  But, this homemade dough was so good that I have found myself the job of making pizza for 20 people on Friday nights in the summer. And guess what?  I don't even care! Yes, I know you may consider me crazy, but the dough is so easy to make, it won't take too long. My cooking teacher (Check out her blog) adapted the recipe so instead of having to knead the dough (which takes forever) you put it in the stand-mixer and it does all the work.  As I said earlier on, one round of dough makes two pizzas. I will make about 8-10 pizzas every Friday night in the summer. It is going to be super easy. 

This recipe is from My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss  So here is the pizza dough recipe.

Another Traditional French Recipe: Aioli

Have you ever heard of Chez Panisse...or better yet read Fanny at Chez Panisse by Alice Walters? Well, dear reader, it is a story about a girl named Fanny (she is real!) and her mother owns the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.  I SO want to go there. Why isn't my mother like Fanny's mother?  Why don't I get to run back and forth between a restaurant and an open air-market everyday?  Well, the answer is...school. I know lame excuse right? But it's true. I still have my summers free though (Thank goodness!) Instead of a restaurant and open-air market, I have my beach house (with my 16 cousins all living there for the whole summer!) and the supermarket. Not as French as a restaurant and open-air market, but still will do.

Speaking of supermarkets and summer, I am gearing up for my annual job that my cousin and I take on each year. Each week we do the difficult job of grocery shopping for the week for the 16 cousins and aunts and uncles. We buy a ton of food and we are at the store for hours! We spend hundreds of dollars each week.  Yes!  Food is very expensive these days.

Each week, my aunt and my mother make a list of things we will need at the grocery store.  They rotate turns taking us to the store.  We also alternate the side of the store we start on.
For example: week 1, we start on the dairy side (her favorite), and week 2 we start on the fruit and veggies side (my favorite).  At the check out, we have our own procession line.   (We get that much food and fill the carts to the brim!) My aunt passes the food to my cousin, Joanie and she passes it to me. My aunt also helps me line up the groceries in order. I put it on the conveyor-belt. My aunt also helps me line up the groceries in order. Then, we push the 2 and sometimes even 3 carts out to the car.  The best part: we get a treat after doing all that hard work!  And, upon arriving home, we get to watch all our cousins scurry back and forth unloading the food.

So, that brings me to my next topic. What will I use the mayonnaise for?  Well, dear reader, I have it all planned out. In the summer when many good vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes, and beans are ripe, I will prepare a big platter of all the summer's best vegetables and in the middle, put the nice creamy mayonnaise.

This recipe took me three tries to make it even remotely edible, so don't be discouraged if it doesn't work out the first time. The main difficulty that you could run into is they mayonnaise frequently breaks.  What does this mean?  It happens when you whisk the oil and egg and they separate and won't stay together.  Check out Luisa Weiss blog, she has a link for saving the aioli (mayonnaise). So, if it does break, try this tip. It helped me a little to save my broken mayonnaise. And then I broke it again! So, then I started back up with a fresh batch and finally, this one worked.  Here is the recipe.