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August Recipe Meddybemps

My wife and I split out time between our home here in the hills of Central Massachusetts and Downeast Maine. In Maine, we tend to have a lot of company; in fact we sometimes joke that we operate the only nonprofit bed and breakfast in the state. We end up preparing a lot of meals in the course of a summer and doing elaborate recipes becomes a bit of a chore, especially as August rolls around. We tend to look for recipes that are good, maybe a little over the top, but most importantly, easy. The August recipe qualifies on all three counts.

In the afternoon when the days activities are over, the beer is coming off the ice and the martinis are being mixed in the pitcher, it is someimes nice to have something to offer up besides the usual cheese and crackers. We have found that thin crust pizzas serve admirably because they are fun to do, easy and almost always come out well. Our guests love them and I think you will too. Let's deal with the basics. First, these are meant to be really thin. You can go to the trouble of making your own pizza dough or even using store bought dough and rolling it out. We do neither. We use plain flour tortillas or Armenian lavash bread. Pita bread might work was well, but we have never tried it. We always make at least two different varieties. Part of the fun of these is that you can make two or three different pizzas easily and everyone gets to sample some slices of each. A quick survey of the leftovers in the refrigerator will suggest combinations you can try. Let's start with something familiar: pepperoni pizza. Here's how we do them. First the ingredients.

1.Flour tortillas or lavash bread, 8, 10 or 12 inch
2.Olive oil
3.Tomato paste
4.Mozzarella cheese .. shredded or cubed buffalo mozzarella
5.Pepperoni slices
6 Parmesan or one of the four or five cheese blends you find in the local market
7.Pizza seasonings or Italian seasoning and pepper

Here's how:
1.Turn you oven or grill to 450 degrees.
2.Place the tortilla on a pizza pan, stone or baking pan. Brush a generous amount of olive oil on BOTH sides of the torilla.
3.Using the back of a spoon, spread about a tablespoon of tomato paste over the surface of the tortilla. Remember finger painting when you were a kid?
4.Spread a modest handful of cheese over the tomato paste
5.Lay out the pepperoni slices on top of the cheese.
6.Scatter another very light layer of cheese over the pepperoni.
7.Sprinkle pizza or Italian seasoning over the entire surface followed by a light dusting of parmesan or cheese blend.
8. A drizzle of olive oil
9. Place the pan in the now heated oven or grill for 6 to 10 minutes. You will have to judge how things are going on your grill or in your oven as we have found that temperatures can vary a lot from grill to grill, oven to oven. The pizza is done when the edges just begin to curl and turn golden brown.

So there you have it; pepperoni pizza.The exact quantities are all pretty much to eye and individual tastes. Have at it. Even your failures will be pretty good.

It would probably be enough to leave things as they are, but pepperoni pizza is so...so...well, pedestrian. You kind of know how it's going to turn out. Where's the fun in that? So, we never make just one kind. We search the refrigerator for those odd ball leftovers from meals past for inspiration. You'll have to go no further than the menu from your local pizza joint for other combinations. We add different varieties of olives, anchovies, smoked salmon, moose sausage( you have moose sausage on hand, dont you?), left over bar-b-qued chicken, fiddle head ferns, spinach, the contents of that skimpy bag of salad greens, ham, crumbled meatloaf,bits of lobster, clams, mussels and....well, you get the point. The key here is to keep the topping thin and the crust crispy.

We do the thin crust pizzas mostly as appetizers, but you might want to try them as a light lunch or dinner.In that case, increase the thickness of the toppings a bit and lower your oven temp to about 400 degrees. Beats the cardboard frauds you buy out of the freezr chest in the local Pggly Wiggly. We often make them in advance of guest's arrival and stack them up on the counter so we can pop them in the oven when we hear tires on the gravel driveway out front.

For something really different, consider making a pizza tart as a dessert. We have done blueberries, rasberies,or strawberries with a sweetened ricotta underneath. No reason why you couldn't do apples, cinnamon sugar and, what the hell, grated cheddar cheese. A plain tortilla, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with maple syrup walnuts and cinnamon , baked and sliced into thin wedges goes well with ice cream in a pinch.

OK, there you have it. The August recipe is not so much a recipe as it is a call to those of you who inhabit this foody forum to play with some tortillas over the next few weeks. Let see what you can do. Post the pictures and have fun.

Now, let's see if I can post the pictures of the smoked salmon and fiddlehead fern pizzas from a week ago........damn, they were good.