Posts Tagged ‘grape pizza recipe’

Natural yeasted Rabbit pizza with Castelveltrano olives and grapes

Well, now that I’ve confused everyone with my natural yeast quackery, lets make a pizza.

For this recipe, I was inspired by one of my favorite pasta recipe books, Pasta Sfoglia. This book is written by Ron and Colleen Suhanosky with Susan Simon and includes my inspiration on page107-The Cuscinetti, black olives, green grapes and parsley recipe on this page sounded great because of the bag of Vidal Blanc and Cabernet Franc grapes Neal gave me. I just tweeked it a bit using some goat cheese, flat leaf parsley and those beautiful bright green olives called Castelveltrano. They are brined when immature and are from the province of Trapani, (of the sea-salt fame.) The mellow unassuming taste of the olive will be a perfect foil for the grapes.

                           

Ron has a new book out called “The Italian Table.” and has a great nack for finding the heart of flavor using simplicity and old-world common sense like his Whole wheat spagetti with cabbage, wild mushrooms, guanciale and caraway or combining juxtaposing flavors that meld together with the bridge of another ingredient like another spagetti dish- using shaved melon, basil, cracked black pepper and extra virgin olive oil. Thank you Ron, this pizza tasted great and…like Picasso said, “Good artists borrow but GREAT artists steal.”

Let’s roll another pie out now. I go to the French World Pizza Championships in Paris tomorrow, so this has to be a fast one.

For the Dough:

Set aside one seven ounce dough ball (from the natural yeast dough recipe on this blog…last one to be exact.)  to use after the olive/grape sauce is made.

                             

For the sauce: Slice one bunch each of the Vidal Blanc and Cabernet Frank grapes, deseed only if you haven’t had coffee. Cut a handful of Castleveltrano olives around the pit. This will mimic the sliced grapes.

                       

Chop one clove of garlic into a fine dice, add to a pan on medium high heat with one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil for four minutes or until the garlic is just starting to brown. Add the olives and toss frequently for three minutes, then add the grapes and cook for another three minutes. Do not overcook this, you are only melding the flavors.

Place into a bowl and add one tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Stir and set aside.

                       

For the Rabbit: Select tenderloins from your butcher or farmer if possible. (ask for some fat too, this will add a tremendous amount of flavor and help in the cooking. If you cannot obtain tenderloin then two loins will suffice. Place the fat in the pan first and cook on medium high heat until just crisp. Salt and eat or discard.

Saute the tenderloin on medium high until just browned on each side. Cooking should be determined by a “rare” look. Remember, you will be cooking these on a pizza soon.

 For the pizza: preheat the oven to 485 degrees and place an upturned, heavy cookie sheet or pizza stone on the middle shelf.

                       

Make a disc from the dough ball. Add a creamy goat cheese like this French Soignon then some chopped parsley to the dough.

                              

Add the rabbit and place into the oven to cook for 12 to 15 minutes or until the crust is nice, brown and charred in places. The cheese should be melted and rabbit now medium to medium rare. Perfect!

Bring out of the oven and place the sauce atop the rabbit. Eat with the knowlege that you are creating the full circle of life and death. The rabbit ate the grapes, the grapes told you they didn’t like the rabbit, so you killed the rabbit and because no one likes a ratfink, you killed the grapes also. The parsley, goat cheese and olives were snitches so they had to go also! That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. 

See you in Paris!  AND thank you Neal and Oui at Shade Winery, you guys are awesome!

Big fat Turkish Pide with Grapes and Pancetta

Don’t you just hate when bloggers apologize for not doing a post? The excuses can be endless and they usually lose me at “Sorry, but my cat…” So I’m just gonna just shut up and show you some stuff I’ve been doing instead of writing blog posts:

I made about 30 of these pides last Saturday, including the Turkish pide with grapes. Not to mention the the Nectarine/Stilton pizza (right) and the Brie Boat with pear.

Along with the Ohio University students coming back, I’ve been scrambling to accomodate my bread lovers at the Athens Farmers Market. Here are  just  some of the 300 breads, pizzas, flatbreads and other weird stuff  I did on 9-11-2010. (Take it easy on a critique of my presentation, dudes. I just finished 12 hours of baking, plus my customers were breathing down my neck.)

You’ll notice the Turkish Pide with the grapes. That’s what we are gonna make today. But first let me take you to where I got the grapes: Neil Cherry Vineyards and orchard in Crookville, Ohio where we visited last year for the Schiacciata Con L’ Uva or Tuscan Grape Harvest bread.

The skins of these heavenly grapes are thick and chewy and exude the brightest of grape flavors, along with watery flesh that explodes in your mouth. They are best described as “That’s what grapes tasted like in my youth.” Yes, these three varieties of seedless grapes have a grape quality that only local, unsprayed, real grapes have .

Here are some other grapes we are gonna use.

You may laugh at this recipe, but I don’t care. I love cumin with grapes, chevre and bacon! This baby’s got the fatty, salty pancetta (Italian cured-but not smoked-bacon), the creaminess of local Integration Acres chevre’ (creamy French Goat cheese), the sweetness of these killer grapes and the unexpected crunch of walnuts.

Let’s go.

Preheat a heavy cookie sheet placed upside-down in your oven at 475 degrees F.

Using the Easy Dough Recipe on this blog, cut a 7 ounce dough ball and freeze the other for later use. For this recipe,  use bread flour. It  has more protein iand therefore will stretch better when “tying a knot” with the dough.

3-4 slices of pancetta (bacon will do but will leach more liquid than the pancetta. I will cover that later so don’t worry.)

1 teaspoon plus 1/2 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 heaping teaspoon cumin

1 quarter cup walnuts, pounded into small tooth-like pieces

1 inch thick piece of chevre

1-2 cups of seedless grapes

1 egg for eggwash

Place the pancetta in a saute pan under medium high heat with the teaspoon of olive oil and sweat the juices. Toss well for  2-3 minutes. (If using bacon, cook longer but avoid browning it.) Add the cumin and the 1/2 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil. (If your pancetta created enough oil to soak up the cumin and still leave oil, do not add the extra oil. This will probably happen with the bacon.) Cook for 2 minutes more.

Add the walnuts and saute for only 1 minute. Set aside for the pizza.

Take the round dough ball and pull on opposite ends to form a football shape. Using you fingertips, press out into an even larger footabll shape, measuring 12 to 14 inches across. This will be your Pide base.

Place the dough on parchment, then place the pancetta, cumin, and walnuts on the dough and spread it out. Place the chevre on top in small dollops, all around the dough.

To tie the knots, start on the middle of the boat-like dough. Pull up from the middle to the end. The dough will slacken when you get to the end. Grab this dough and start spinning or twisting the dough, gabbing any slack that may make the middle of the boat fall back down. Gently pull the twisted end and tie in a knot.

Place the grapes all around the top of the pide. Some may fall off. Press down but not hard.

Crack the egg and scramble with a fork or whisk. Brush this eggwash all over the outside edges of the pide. Dab enough egg on each end knot to sink it into the folds.

Place the pide on the preheated cookie sheet  and bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until the bottom is dark brown and the top is golden brown.

Pull out and enjoy with your dining partner. Woof!