Bon Appétit Series Background Recap: I was tired of reading the magazine each month, saying, “Oh that looks great, I’ll make that”, then the magazine ends up in the cupboard or trash, never to been seen again. Never more! Now I’m holding myself publicly accountable; each month I will cook at least one recipe from Bon Appétit and post it on here.
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Per usual, I’m about a month behind in my Bon Appétit series. This recipe for Summer Tomato and Bell Pepper Soup and Fig, Prosciutto, Gorgonzola, and Arugula Pizza are both from the August issue. I’ve still seen some real tomatoes out at the markets, but I don’t think it’s going to be much longer, as summer feels like it’s fading fast. I wanted to ensure I got one last fresh tomato dish in before it does, and I’ve been cooking a lot of pizza lately with my family, so these two recipes made sense as the selection.
The tomato soup recipe was part of a “no-cook dinners” section, so this recipe used all raw ingredients like a gazpacho. I was a little put off by the use of jarred roasted red peppers and plain old tomato juice, but I stayed true to the recipe and used the specified ingredients.
One 1lb heirloom tomato was enough to meet the specified 1 1/3 cup of chopped tomatoes.
I don’t really have many other process photos because this recipe was so quick. I mixed the chopped tomato with the olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, chopped roasted red peppers, and the tomato juice. I only had creamy horseradish in stock, not prepared horseradish as specified, so I added 1 tsp of whole grain mustard as a substitute. Then it went in the fridge and for roughly two hours of ingredient intercourse.
Here I have plated with halved cherry tomatoes, basil, and Sweet Grass Dairy soft goat’s cheese. That cheese is insanely smooth, creamy, and earthy.
The soup was good, but I couldn’t help but think I would have liked it better with freshly prepared tomato juice and red peppers. I cut back on the amount of tomato juice by about 1/3, and it was still plenty thin. You could easily get the juice/flesh/seeds out of some other tomatoes and use that as the liquid. There are lots of uses for the extra tomato exterior you would have on hand, namely pico de gallo. That being said, when I got a bite with the goat cheese and the basil, this soup was delicious.
On to the pizza. Here I’ve sliced the figs, roughly four vertical slices per fig.
I didn’t prepare dough ahead of time, so I purchased some Publix dough (shame!). One problem I’ve often had with Publix dough (and Trader Joe dough as well) is that the dough recoils and will just not get very thin. A lot of times you can leave it out for thirty minute after you first stretch it to let the gluten relax, then you’re able to get it a bit thinner, though often times still isn’t thin enough. Luckily my dad picked up a trick from Diner’s, Drive-Ins, and Dives that works really well.
If the dough won’t stretch out thin and recoils, sprinkle a generous amount of cornmeal all over the surface of the pizza then stretch or roll it out again. It works. The dough won’t recoil at all. If it does, give it a bit more cornmeal. Below you can see the before and after with the cornmeal.
You may be wondering, as I did, how the cornmeal affects the taste. Well, I couldn’t even tell it had been hit with cornmeal, and I’m am dough snob. Perhaps it affects the ability for nice bubbles to form, but the trade-off is worth it; too me a thin and crispy pie is much better than a thick and doughy one.
You can see how I thin I got it by the “window-pane” I created below.
Another benefit of using the cornmeal is that I was able to use one Publix dough ball twice. Below is the 2nd pizza from the same dough ball. The second time I tried the BA recipe, I added some of that goat cheese, which turned out fantastically.
The recipe calls for fig balsamic vinegar to use for marinating the figs, which is stupidly expensive and you will use it twice and forget about it in your pantry. Instead, I took five slices of figs, 1 Tbsp of sugar, and about 1/2 cup of regular balsamic and reduced it by half. There ya go, fig balsamic.
First the pizza is cooked with just the cheese. Then remove it from the oven and add the prosciutto.
Then the figs and throw it back in the oven for 1 minute to heat up the figs.
Then the whole deal is topped with arugula which has been tossed in a balsamic/evoo dressing. The arugula looks like crap below, because it was crap arugula. Whole Foods didn’t have a single decent looking bag of arugula that day.
The fig/cheese flavor combo was killer, though the pizza with the goat’s cheese was even better. The blue cheese can be strong and the creamy Sweet Grass cheese really helped smooth it out. The prosciutto was nice but I wish I hadn’t cooked it even the one minute. It firmed up the beautiful (and expensive) prosciutto di Parma. The arugula could be left off, there’s enough going on here without it.
I drank a 2007 Domaine Rosier sparkler with this. This wine is from Limoux, a region where sparkling wine actually predates the sparklers of Champagne. There are sparklers documented from the 16th century in Limoux. Suck it, Champagne.
This Mauzac/Chardonnary blend is a good value at $17 (Whole Foods Buckhead price, can be found online for much cheaper), especially when compared to decent Champagne. Despite the current economic catastrophe and oversupply, the prices of Champagne aren’t really budging. Eric Asimov of the NY Times wrote a good article on this a couple of weeks ago.
