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Recipe: sourdough pizza

The pine pollen apocalypse ended last week, giving way to smoke from distant wildfires burning in and around our beautiful state. We swept and vacuumed and air-purified the house to keep the allergens at bay, cautiously taking advantage of short windows of clear air (still smelled smokey) to get outside. It was a chance to let Neva get some leash training on her hike and to stretch her swimming legs once again after a long crappy (i.e. low snow) winter. My parents arrived in Boulder for the summer, too, which meant shuttling about on the flats and getting them settled in. Over the weekend, remnants from Hurricane Bud in the west pushed through Colorado and brought us our hoped-for rainy relief.

the colorado high country: our happy place

the parental units at happy hour

on the road to crested butte: neva is getting better about car rides

As the weather heats up, I tend to avoid baking. That means my sourdough starter, Wheatley, gets fed once a week and chills out in the refrigerator for long stretches of time. But I woke Wheatley from his slumber last week to bake an épi de blé sourdough baguette for my parents. And then I thought – why not keep the starter out so I can make some pizza? We grill our pizzas on a stone, so it’s not going to heat up the house. Pizza is perfect food for any weather, any season. I used to make pizza dough using this wonderful recipe, but since acquiring a sourdough starter from my professional pizzaiola friend (Dawn), I knew the switch to sourdough pizza was inevitable. I started in the spring with great results.

it snowed, we grilled pizza, neva was impressed

This pizza dough is flour, water, and salt. The commercial yeast pizza dough recipe I used to use also had olive oil in it, but after discussion with Dawn and my own testing, this sourdough pizza dough doesn’t really need it. The levain is sourdough starter, and if you are the kind of person who keeps your starter going on the counter and makes large amounts, then it’s no big deal to scoop what you need out of the starter to make your pizza dough. I’m not that kind of person, so I calculate the amount of levain I need and measure out how much to feed my starter. Just take care that you remember to reserve some starter that isn’t going into the pizza dough or else you, Sad Panda, won’t have any more sourdough starter. As for the flours, you can use all-purpose flour, bread flour, or a combination of the two (which I did here).

levain, bread flour, all-purpose flour, water, sea salt

weigh the levain

dissolve the levain in water

roughly stir in the salt and flours

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Recipe: lobster morel agnolotti

It wasn’t long after finding my first blonde morel that I had collected enough to shoot a recipe. The temptation to simply flour and fry these morsels nags at me constantly because it’s easy and delicious and probably my favorite way to enjoy my favorite eating mushrooms (porcini remain my favorite “finding” mushrooms). However, the first freshly foraged morels are automatically designated for new recipes because one is never certain – but certainly hopeful – that there will be more.

two buddies emerging from the grass and leaf litter

mushrooms on mushrooms

I knew I wanted to involve lobster and then I threw asparagus in there because it’s spring and asparagus and morels typically appear on the plains around the same time. Why not stuff it all in some agnolotti, which is a pasta I was unaware of until a few months ago? Agnolotti is like an easier version of mini ravioli and I’m a little obsessed with it. The filling is dotted or piped in a line along a strip of pasta and then folded over and cut. Well, it’s more complicated than that, but you get the gist… or you will after you read the post!

Start by making the pasta dough. I don’t have any one definitive pasta dough recipe. They all seem to involve a combination of flour, eggs, and salt, and sometimes egg yolks and/or olive oil. It’s a mess of flour and flecks of dough that eventually come together into a nice ball if you are patient and stick with it. Don’t throw out that excess flour – sift out the chunky bits and use the rest for flouring your work surface.

the pasta dough: flour, eggs, salt, olive oil

stir the eggs, salt, and olive oil in a well in the flour

incorporate as much flour as the dough will absorb (you will have extra flour)

knead the dough

when the dough springs back from a poke, it’s ready to rest

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Recipe: japanese potato salad

The monochromatic tones of the cold months have given way to new growth greens and even tiny dots of color if you know where to look. The snows keep falling every few days in the mountains, but you can tell their efforts have less impact under the mighty sun. We have wintry days and we have springlike days, but the trend is toward leaving the warm hats and gloves behind because the sunshine feels so good on your back – like an old friend offering a backrub after the long slog of a low-powder winter. The trails are more dirt than snow around town (still snowy in the high country) and all three of us have been anxious to get out for hikes and trail runs. Reacquainting ourselves with those warm weather muscles that get neglected during ski season.

neva is so happy to be hiking the trails and smelling the smells

a newly sprouting pasque flower on my trail run

juicing the last of the blood oranges (to freeze for summer cocktails!)

Our spring cleaning efforts have been ongoing such that it feels like this could become a habit. Taking a proactive approach to the chest freezer, I am excavating all of those random food items that might otherwise languish in the depths for years and incorporating them into our menus. Two little pork tenderloin chops became a lovely meal of tonkatsu rounded out with leftover vegetables, rice with furikake, and Japanese potato salad.

my idea of a happy meal

I must confess that I was more excited about the potato salad than the tonkatsu. Before a few weeks ago, the only time I ate Japanese potato salad was at Japanese or Korean restaurants. I’m slightly addicted to the creamy, tangy, slightly sweet, salad and once Marc posted the recipe, I knew it was my destiny. It’s dangerously easy to make.

potatoes, onion, carrot, cucumber, ham, mayonnaise, rice vinegar, salt, sugar, more salt, white pepper

slice and dice

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