Beetzza

I just returned from a brief trip east, undertaken in part to see long-neglected friends, spend time with my little sister, go on much-delayed adventures, and finish up that Master's degree I've been paying for, but primarily to make a beet-goat cheese pie that's been over a year in planning.

And by pie, it turned out we meant pizza pie. Which, of course, called for a pizza party.

My bosom friend Barbara and I made a lot of pizza doughs (Smitten Kitchen's recipe x16), bought way too much cheese and one very large can of tomatoes at Claudio's (which got smushed and mixed with garlic, olive oil, and basil), turned up the oven to 500°F, and invited over a bunch of folks with the instructions to bring either pizza toppings or beer.

And people brought such good things! Peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, prosciutto, homemade pepperoni... there was no overlap and an abundance of everything. And everyone got a chance to do a little baking (that's everyone's favorite part of a party, right? Not just me?) and sharing and eating.

For our contribution, we caramelized an onion, boiled and sliced a bunch of beets, crumbled some goat cheese, artistically (or perhaps the more accurate term would be drunkenly) layered it all on a pizza crust, and baked it for about 15 minutes.

It was so damn good.

Lard

Thanks to my dear friend Robyn, I finally made a pie with lard.

 Or, partially lard. Also butter. And peaches.

We had company.

 And the pie crust turned out pretty good.

 Flakier. Prettier. But not tastier. So I'm sticking with butter-crust pies for now.

But a lard crust would do well for a meat-filled pie. And in case we haven't got time to run to the butcher, I know just what kind to make...

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

Life and cooking have had their ups and downs lately, a little more of each than usual. But the good moments outweigh the bad, so that's alright then.

Oh, and I moved back to California. For good. And just in time for tomatoes.

(I still love Philly though! But I hella love Oakland.)

An orange and yellow winter afternoon.

Let me show you an afternoon full of homework, friends, and a spare pie crust.

 
It's rather glorious, and tastes like lemons.

Moroccan Misgivings

I was back in California for a few weeks during the winter holidays, which gave my West Coast baking group an opportunity to celebrate Misgivings - our version of Thanksgiving (kindly delayed until my participation was possible) where instead of being thankful, everyone talks about all the shit life puts them through, and we eat delicious, non-turkey-and-potatoes food. This year we went Moroccan.

My fellow made a nice eggplant thing we found on the internet (authentic!), and our first challenge was deciding which type of eggplants were appropriate for a Moroccan dish. The Berkeley Bowl has an entire eggplant section, so it was a difficult decision. And I don't remember which kind we ended up with, except that it was one of the skinnier ones, not the fat kind. And I doubt it mattered.

While he was doing that, I made a chunky cake, also from the internet.

Then this lovely lady came by and made homemade pita bread, which was so good that we ate the half-cooked test pita and the slightly burned test pita, and almost didn't have enough pita for dinner.

And another lovely lady grated carrots until both her hands hurt, for her fresh carrot salad; and still another lovely lady made a warm, chunky couscous salad; and we wrestled with the chicken-phyllo dough pie, coming to the conclusion that phyllo was not meant to be in unbroken pieces; and I didn't take very many pictures because I was peeling the phyllo sheets apart.

Bowser helped by imitating a kitchen island.

Finally everything - pita bread, coucous, chicken thing (covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon), eggplant, carrot salad, and cake - was done.

So we took out all our misgivings on the food.

And after dinner we were treated to this lovely little video, made by one of our dinner guests and featuring beautiful felted creatures made by the creator of the very same carrot salad that appears in this blog post.