PIZZA!! PIZZA!!

Not to fear, Chel and Edwin are here!! A break from cooking intensively due to knee surgery kept us from bringing you, our loyal readers, delicious recipes. We had lots of ideas for this post ranging from risotto to pork chops and even made a video which we were unable to upload. In the end we decided to go with something that we both really enjoy and actually is my (Edwin) favorite food: Pizza.

The problem with pizza now a days is that it is stacked with unhealthy calories. When I go to Pizza Hut I refuse to walk over and read the nutritional information for fear of knowing exactly how much their pepperoni pizza is going to clog my arteries. So for the longest time I've wanted to make my own pizza where I can control what ingredients go in it and use a sauce that isn't store bought filled with ingredients that have more than one syllable. It wasn't until I met a dancing-machine-Spanish-teacher from Wisconsin that I was finally able to fulfill my pizza-makin' dream! We both ventured together onto the internet and into the kitchen to bring you this amazing pizza recipe.

We will start with the best part, the sauce. We found a great recipe for sauce online that is a little bit of an arrabiata sauce, so if you do not enjoy the spiciness as much, you can always cut back a little on the red pepper flakes. We also got away without using marjoram and we added a bay leaf. Here is what you will need:

Ingredients:
28 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
½ tsp. dried marjoram
2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
¼ tsp. salt
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely minced

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Allow to cook for at least 15 minutes. Once finished cooking, remove from the heat. If you prefer a smoother sauce, use a potato masher or immersion blender to break up the chunks of tomato. Alternatively, simply leave it as is if you prefer a chunkier sauce. The website for this sauce is here: http://annies-eats.com/2009/07/23/pizza-sauce/

We like this sauce because it isn't time consuming, it has a bit of a kick to it and is really delicious. Note on the sauce- we strained it after cooking because it was very liquidy. This is a good idea.

The Crust!

On our first try, the crust was a bit of an issue. We bought the Pilsbury kind that comes in a can, but it didn't cook evenly and our pizza ended up a bit soggy, delicious, but soggy. So this time we opted for a ready-to-go pizza crust like the Boboli kind they sell at the grocery store. We actually found one that was made with honey and turned out all right, but Boboli will do just fine.

Toppings:

For our toppings we went with fat free mozarella cheese and TONS of vegetables. We sauteed onions, zucchini, yellow squash, yellow and red bell pepper, and some spinach and placed them neatly around the pizza. We popped it into the oven at 450 for about 12 to 14 minutes and what came out was this:

Beautiful? We think so! It was very delicious and we recommend trying your own version of this dish by adding whatever ingredients that make your belly very happy. Another successful dish by Team Chel and Edwin. We really hope you enjoy it. Until next time, bon apetit y buen provecho.