Pizza Night, Steak Shawarma & Lentils, Pumpkin Pasta, Strawberry Lemonade Bars

Pizza Night with Bellegarde Dough

We have a friend in town for a workshop in Abita Springs for a few days, so it felt like an excuse to make pizza!

Bellegarde makes it so easy with their frozen dough. My method is to defrost the frozen dough balls in the fridge for about 24 hours or so and then set out to rise an hour or so before prepping.

I then sprinkle parchment paper with some cornmeal and coat my hands with olive oil and stretch the dough by hand. I find this much easier than using a rolling pin and it can stick to the rolling pin.

Meanwhile I pre heat my oven and my pizza stones to 500 degrees. Then I dress the pizzas on the parchment paper and transfer the entire parchment paper to the pizza stone when ready to bake. It works better than dressing the pizzas directly on cold pizza stones and the parchment certainly makes it easier than trying to move the dough by hand to the stone!

For the toppings, I did one with truffle oil, smashed black garlic and sautéed oyster mushrooms seasoned with Smokey Shiitake & Black Garlic Seasoning. I just used grated mozzarella for that one and topped it with fresh parmesan.

For the second one, I used a little of the almond/cashew dip I make weekly as the sauce, plus red onions, sun-dried tomatoes and both grated mozzarella cheese and fresh mozzarella cheese, plus a few dollops of goat cheese. Once it was cooked, I then topped that one with arugula tossed with olive oil, Meyer lemon vinegar and black garlic salt.

Finally, I did one with tomato sauce (actually just olive oil and tomato paste with a few diced tomatoes), plus Castelvetrano olives, our Andouille sausage and grated and fresh mozzarella cheese. They all came out so tasty!

The Beginnings of Lasagna Soup

I also made soup to go with the pizza, maybe not the most common pairing, but in the dreary weather, I always want something with nourishing broth as the base (and we also ended up dunking our pizza crust in the soup!).

My plan was a Lasagna Soup type recipe, but I left it a little “unfinished” for the first night.

First I made another batch of beef broth. I roasted the bones while cooking some breakfast potatoes, then put them in the Instant Pot with water, sea salt and splash of apple cider vinegar.

Then I sautéed some sausage, deglazing as needed with beef broth. Then I added yellow onions, then garlic, fennel seed, thyme and nutmeg and eventually tomato paste, letting that caramelize a bit before adding canned diced tomatoes and more beef broth.

Then I added carrots, diced small, plus the stems of some collard greens (added the leaves later on). That on its own made for a hearty, Italian flavored soup.

I planned to add some garlic and parmesan and other seasonings to goat creole cream cheese to dollop on top like a seasoned ricotta and cook some pasta to make it really lasagna-esque. But for pizza night, we settled on just creole cream cheese on its own in the soup and with the pizza, we didn’t really need pasta in the soup!

But I will likely do both of those things to enjoy the soup leftovers this week.

Steak Shawarma, Lentils, Brussels Sprouts and Tahini Sauce

This was a fairly quick and easy meal that also made for great leftovers for the week!

First, I did a combination of black lentils and farro cooked in the Instant Pot with onions, garlic, carrots and sun-dried tomatoes, bone broth and spices including coriander, cumin and turmeric.

For the steak, I sliced partially frozen sirloin tip steak and seasoned with allspice, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, fenugreek, garlic powder and turmeric and roasted on a sheet pan at 400 degrees.

Finally, I started some Brussels sprouts on the stove in a cast iron pan and transferred to the oven to finish. We had some Nur’s Kitchen hummus on the side and topping everything with a delicious tahini yogurt sauce.

Pumpkin Fettuccine with Bacon & Lion’s Mane Mushrooms

I needed some comfort food on Friday and this hit the spot!

I have tons of roasted and pureed pumpkin in my freezer, so I did a quick pumpkin pasta with Il Supremo’s fettuccine (hand cut and really more the size of pappardelle!).

First, I cooked some of our bacon while the pasta water was coming to a boil. I removed the bacon and drained the bacon fat and then sautéed some lion’s mane mushrooms, too.

Once the pasta was draining, I added some pumpkin puree to the pasta pot, along with some milk and seasonings (garlic powder and nutmeg, mainly). I finished it by adding some goat cheese and melting that into the sauce before tossing in the pasta, stirring in the mushrooms and topping the bowl with crispy pieces of bacon.

Strawberry Lemonade Bars

With the last of my Meyer lemons of the season, I was excited to make these bars.

I’ve made really good grapefruit bars a couple of times before, so pureeing strawberries into the lemon juice mixture seemed like an amazing idea and it did indeed come out very delicious.

I didn’t quite have enough lemons for all the zest and juice I needed, so I also zested and juice a lime and a navel orange. That citrus combo was super lovely with the strawberries.

I used this recipe as a guide, but I subbed two enormous eggs from our geese for the six chicken eggs it calls for.

The finished product is like rich lemon curd infused with strawberry flavor on a buttery crust. Very good, somehow decadent and refreshing at the same time.