Turkish "Pizza"

Man, was I in a bad mood last night.  We were taking down Christmas decorations and I was taking turns fighting with all three of my kids while my husband took a leisurely shower right before I needed to start dinner.  Now, this is not the best time of day in our house anyway - dinner preparations typically consist of my youngest child clinging to my leg, cry-screaming, while I try to chop, cook and plate food as fast as I possibly can.  (As a professionally trained chef, this is usually pretty fast, but it is still hard to do with a toddler making his unhappiness VERY loudly known.) Add the normal level of stress to my clutter-triggered OCD and late yesterday afternoon, our house and, more specifically, my kitchen and living room was not a very fun place to be.

Dinner last night was scheduled to be Turkish pizza (or pide, perhaps...I am not exactly sure).  The idea came from my husband randomly stumbling on a blog (http://mykitchenmoovement.squarespace.com/), when googling "squid ink" of all things.  (That one is another story.)  Anyway, this blog (complete with really amazing food photography) is apparently written by a man in Australia, who penned a series on what he cooked and fed himself and his child for a few days while his wife was away from home.  My husband thought most of it was pretty funny and found quite a few recipe ideas that he thought would be super tasty.  One of these recipes was this one for Turkish pizza: http://mykitchenmoovement.squarespace.com/recipes/2010/4/19/wife-away-day-4-pide-lahmajun.html.  I looked it over and, as is my way, took the basic idea and made it my own.

Pictured above is what I ultimately came up with.  I started by slicing a large yellow onion and sauteing it in olive oil until it began to brown nicely.  I then crumbled in a pound of ground lamb that I bought at my regular grocery store (though I have found really wonderful, locally sourced ground lamb at a nearby farmer's market as well).  I happened to have a Turkish seasoning blend (basically coriander, cumin, salt, pepper, cayenne, oregano and paprika maybe?) that I got some time ago as a sample from my favorite spice company, so I added a liberal sprinkle of that when I had all of the meat spread out in the pan.  I cooked the meat and onions together until the meat was browned and the onions were well softened (almost confitted - the rendered lamb fat worked really well to finish cooking the onion slices).  I added two cloves of garlic that I had finely chopped and cooked for about 30 more seconds.  I turned the heat off and added four Roma tomatoes that I had stemmed, seeded and chopped.  (Also, just FYI - I season as I add food, so with each additional ingredient, I add a pinch of kosher salt and usually a twist of freshly ground black pepper.  I recommend cooking this way - flavors are enhanced and create a much more evenly seasoned final dish.)

As you can see, this little mixture was served in a crust of sorts.  I meant, before my no-good, very-bad mood set in, to make a standard pizza dough; I however, ran out of time and found a very easy recipe for an yeast-free dough online, which, again, I modified based on what I had on hand.  My recipe turned out as: 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup of olive oil, 2/3 cup of water, 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.  I mixed the dry ingredients in my standing mixer and, with the motor running, added the oil and water to form a shaggy and kind of sticky dough.  This I took out of the mixer, kneaded it a few times and split it in half to roll out two very thin, 13-inch or so oblong (read: "rustic") circles.  I placed each on a sheet of parchment paper and then on a baking sheet.

On each circle of dough, I heaped a large handful of organic baby spinach and then covered this offensive (to my younger daughter) vegetable with the lamb, onion and tomato mixture.  On one of the "pizzas", I added a seeded and thinly sliced jalapeno pepper, then I folded over the edges of each dough circle to form a kind of tart.  I placed both in a preheated 425 degree oven and baked them for about 30 minutes.  While they were baking, I made a sauce to serve with the "pizzas" - a little bit of Greek yogurt, a squeeze of lemon juice, pinches of sea salt and ground coriander, with a little bit of water to thin it out.

The Turkish pizzas came out of the oven with a lightly golden brown crust flavored with the mingling juices of the tomatoes, lamb and spinach.  The tiny pieces of lamb nearer to the top of the "pizza" were a crispy, deep mahogany color and just so very delicious.  The lamb itself was tender, the veggies were infused with a warm, exotic spice and the jalapenos added a tasty punch of heat to a very savory dish.  The yogurt sauce cooled that heat without completely overpowering it and added a tang that cut through the fat of the lamb and the flaky crust surrounding it.  Man, was it good!  It was filling without being heavy and was "pizza" in a new and unique presentation.  Also...man, did it get rid of my bad mood!  Seriously, that is what good food can do for you - it just makes you feel better, body and soul.  Anyway, this one is definitely a repeat for us - the kids all ate it and my younger daughter even choked down her spinach without *too much* complaining.  That is a win in my house!  Until next time...

Very Little to Do with Food

As the title suggests, I have a feeling that this post will have very little to do with food today.  I apologize for that and I apologize if I offend anyone because this may get a little opinionated (though I will try to keep it civil and apolitical).  This is, however, my blog and I have decided that I will write what is in my heart today, rather than trying to make myself stick to my overall theme.  You have been warned, so if you don't want to hear my thoughts and opinions, please stop reading.

I want to say how horribly my heart aches for the families of the children and adults lost on Friday in Connecticut.  Though I don't consider myself to be a particularly religious person, I have and will continue to pray for that community and especially for those whose hearts can never be fully healed from such a tremendous loss.  

I seemed to have been in a bit of a news bubble on Friday, as I belatedly found out about those tragic events minutes before I was to go pick my own two elementary-age daughters up from school.  I saw comments written on Facebook and immediately turned on the TV to see the President of the United States speaking haltingly while wiping away tears, as he described what had taken place.  I lost it and started crying.  I kept crying after I picked my kids up from school, as I relayed the information to several friends on the school's playground.  I stopped crying when we started talking about everything that happened, the conversation quickly alighting on the wonderfully friendly topics of gun control and religious expression.  My sadness seemed to quickly give way to anger and frustration and I allowed those emotions to cloud a conversation with women that I consider to be my friends, but who hold very different opinions on those subjects.  Since then, my emotions have been all over the place, and I have been thinking, wondering, hoping, trying to make some sense not only of the national tragedy, but also of my place in a society that is far more conservative than I will ever be.  I spent a lot of time thinking about how isolated I often feel here in rural/suburban Texas, especially when it comes to hot button topics, and I spent a good amount of time feeling that I was completely powerless to make any real change, both in my own community and in a much broader and more far-reaching sense.  Oddly enough, I do feel that this relates to my blog theme - my interest in the quality of my family's food and the future of our global food supply is also something that I frequently feel overwhelmed and isolated by; I often find myself questioning whether or not I am making a real difference for my family and if we, by our purchasing power alone, are making a real difference in how our foods are grown and prepared for consumption.  My heart, despite its recent roller-coaster of emotions, has ultimately been telling me for some time now that I need to find a way to make a tangible contribution to our society and my grief over the loss of life on Friday was starting to spin off in a negative and unproductive direction.

A couple of conversations and one Facebook post have started moving my thinking to a much more positive sphere.  First, a friend posted on Facebook the suggestion that we honor the memories of those lost by offering deliberate actions of love and kindness.  Though some of the previous postings (mostly along the lines of gun owners praising the second amendment) had my blood pressure rising and my fingers itching to respond to some of the more inflammatory comments, I read her sentiment and found my desire to argue somewhat quelled.  I had a phone conversation with a friend in regards to a completely unrelated topic, which would require us to approach the administration of the elementary school for help with a program we chair.  She suggested that we needed to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem and to shape our ideas and our presentation within that frame of reference.  She also suggested that we will find success with our venture even if we only touch the life of one other person.  I found both of those comments to be intriguing and immediately started framing my thoughts about that particular topic in a different way.  Finally, I had two separate discussions, one with friends and one with my mother, in which I expressed my anger and frustration at my ideological isolation.  In both discussions, in two very distinct manners, it was suggested to me that perhaps those with viewpoints opposing my own felt very much the same and that they were isolated only by their belief that anyone from the opposite side of the discussion would be willing to hear what they have to say, let alone find room for compromise.  All of these separate instances provoked me into thinking: what if my problems, my disillusionment, my frustration at my inability to contribute to something larger than myself.....what if all these begin and end with me? 

I think it will take some more time to assimilate all of my thoughts into something more concrete than just purely positive thinking, but I have to say that it is a start.  After I realized (though the realization should have come more as a "duh", rather than what feels like a greater epiphany) that I have power and control over my own thoughts and thus over my own situation, I felt a giant wash of relief.  I felt a measure of the peace that I want to share with others in honor of the children for whom I so bitterly wept.  I felt like, regardless of what I do and regardless of whether I change the world, I can act by myself in love and in the name of progress.  I can be part of the solution of compromise, rather than perpetuating the problem of discord.  I can do these things and still offer my friendship to those who disagree with me.  Their disagreement does not determine anything about me or even about our relationship, simply because I am following what I know to be my truth.  They can follow theirs and I can accept that.  I can make choices for my own family - big choices of religious practice and the more mundane choices of what I cook for dinners this week.  I am making the difference that I crave in the lives of my children and my husband and they are who need me to make that difference the most.  As my friend said, if I touch one life, my efforts will not have been wasted and I already know that I have touched four.  If I reach one person with this writing effort, I will count this too as a success.  Even if I don't, I feel better for having shared my thoughts.  To anyone who is reading this: thank you for indulging me and I think you will find a renewed commitment to food and the feeding of a family next time you read.  Until then, I think we should all take my friend's advice:  "what if we said or did kind, loving things in the name of peace for all the families in Connecticut?"  What if, indeed?

Growing our Dinner

I seem to have burned myself out of baking our own bread at this point.  I have (gasp!) been buying bread at our local grocery store ever since we returned from Disney World two weeks ago.  Granted, we have had a couple of emergent and stressful situations come up in that time, so I don't feel too bad about it, but I can definitely tell the difference between how I feel when consuming something I made myself and the products that I find on the store shelves.  (Primarily, feeling "full" and "nourished" with my from-scratch bread.)  This is not to mention the fact that the bread that I used to buy every week (cough....HEB brand 100% Whole Wheat Bread, I am looking at you....cough) is now carrying a label indicating that it is processed in a facility using nuts and tree nuts!  Blerg!  I had to switch to the more expensive, name-brand bread and even that has an ingredient list that might as well be called an ingredient paragraph.  I mentioned to a friend of mine the other day that I was feeling particularly lazy in regards to baking as of late and her response was, "yeah, you are so lazy!  You don't want to bake ALL of your family's bread for the week!"  I know how silly it sounds; I want to get back to baking everything, and now I know that I probably need to get back to it, but the shine is off and, right now at least, it seems like work.  Anyway.....

Despite not baking the past couple of weeks, I have been productive, specifically with my garden plot in our local community garden.  It is actually coming along fairly well, as opposed to the last season, when the basil that had been planted there before over-seeded and basically took over everything.  I was able to harvest some vegetables yesterday afternoon and my, were they gorgeous!  We got three bell peppers, two little crowns of broccoli, tons of rainbow and red Swiss chard, plus a little dinosaur kale and curly leaf kale.  I cooked all of the greens last night with a little olive oil, sea salt, crushed garlic cloves and crushed red pepper flakes.  They were delicious and I can't really describe how proud I was that I had grown them all myself!  Our garden still has a ways to go (namely, we need to finish planting what seems to be a huge space), but it is really something spectacular to be able to cultivate the ground and consume the "fruits" (or veggies, in this case) of your labor.  Last night, we also enjoyed some really, really late harvest tomatoes (our weather here in Texas has been pretty warm this year; I think the first real freeze is supposed to come in this evening), sliced and sprinkled with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  They were juicy and exploded with a lovely little taste of summer on our balmy "winter" evening.  In the next few weeks, it looks like I should have more greens to work with, not to mention purple cauliflower, leeks, fennel and, hopefully soon, some beets as well.  I am definitely still more cook than gardener, but it would seem that my thumb, previously black, has begun to show signs of going green!