Pizza - my first home made ones

In my earlier post on wheat flour cake, I had mentioned that before I ventured into the journey of Atta cake we were through with our dinner which was pizza. More accurately my very first home made pizza. Well, don’t get too excited, I didn’t make it from scratch as in the pizza bread was a 6” pan pizza bought from the local grocery store. Maybe I’ll muster the guts (more importantly the time & patience) to make pizza from scratch one day. Till then I don’t mind basking in the glory of what I experimented the other day. I made 2  kinds of pizza – one was with tomato based sauce with topping of chicken and capsicum and onion with mozzarella cheese. This pizza tasted just like the chicken pizza that you normally get in the pizza outlets. What I was little more excited about was the Pineapple pizza.  I am going to mention both the recipes here. Where as the Chicken Sausage Pizza is a definite item to be liked by all and tastes exactly like the pizza outlets’ pizza. The pineapple pizza is for people who want to try out something slightly different.

Chicken Sausage Pizza ( with capsicum, onion, tomato and mozzarella cheese)

(Recipe for one 12” pizza)

For the sauce:

1. In a mixer make a paste of 3 tomatoes
2. In a wok heat 1 tsp oil (any cooking oil) add ½ tsp of minced garlic
3. Add the tomato paste
4. Add 1 tsp chilli powder, (1 tbsp Tabasco is a better substitute), ¼ tsp sugar and salt to taste
5. Continue stirring the mixture till the sauce thickens. Before removing from fire add ½ tsp oregano or any other herb seasoning of your liking.

For the Chicken Sausage topping

1. Finely chop one large onion and 1 medium capsicum
2. Chop the chicken sausage (3 pieces -6” long would be more than sufficient)
3. In a wok heat 1 tbsp oil fry the onion till transparent-around 3 minutes; lower the flame and add the capsicum and fry for 5 minutes
4. Add the chopped chicken sausages. Now add pepper, 1 tsp schezwan sauce, 1 tbsp tomato sauce and salt to taste
5. Stir for 2 minutes. Remove from fire

Spread the sauce on the pizza base (take care to leave a border of half inch) and spread the prepared chicken sausage toppings along with few pieces of chopped tomatoes. Grate generous amount of Mozeralla  Cheese all over the pizza.

Pineapple Chicken Sausage Pizza recipe

      For the sauce:

1. Bring out 2 slices (not cubes) of cheese and put in the centre of the pizza base next to each other.

Tada that’s it !

For the toppings

1. Spread out the prepared chicken sausage toppings (the one prepared in the above recipe) and put in pieces of chopped pineapple –here and there. Tear in a few basil leaves and add them as your toppings.
2.  Generously grate mozzarella cheese all over the toppings.

Trust me on this, that it is very very delicious. Try it to believe it. It ‘s quite simple too!

The Manchurian Candidate!

Okay there were candidates, pros-cons with each and then the quick election. It was saucy and spicy. And it was accepted by the audience (my dear husband) well. For all those who are wondering that when did the classic movie Manchurian Candidate become saucy, I’ll explain- It didn’t.

I was just trying to come up with an interesting title for the post other than the typical -Soya Chunk Manchurian. This post is about Soya Manchurian and how soya got elected over the other more popular candidates like chicken, paneer (cheese cottage) and gobi (cauliflower) in my kitchen district.

Well, I had just reached home after a relaxing day at office and I wanted to cook something nice yet easy. Considering I had an exceptionally relaxing day at office, I didn’t really want to spoil the day by getting busy and sweaty in kitchen-why break the monotone. There was rice in the fridge which I knew I have to use coz I really don’t like stuff lying in the fridge for more than a day. Even this rice got into the fridge coz the husband announced after I put the rice on stove that he had a lunch appointment. Obviously then there’s no question of me coming home alone for lunch. So, in (fridge) went the rice and out came the mayonnaise and tomatoes. I quickly made a sandwich & packed it for lunch. That’s how I had a pot of rice leftover which I wanted to use the same day itself.

Rice was on the list for dinner’s menu tonight. And a quick peep into the fridge and I knew it was going to be Chinese fried rice. The spring onions had to be used. Chinese fried rice & Chicken Manchurian –lovely combination but there was no chicken at home. No time to sit and make paneer and no patience to cut the cauliflower heads, dip it in the corn flour mix and then fry that separately etc etc. Suddenly it struck me, how about Soya chunk Manchurian! Believe me, I thought I am the first one to get this ingenious idea until I googled just before writing this post. Anyways, I quickly took out the soya chunk and dipped it in boiling water and it puffed up in two minutes. Drained the soya and kept it aside. This is something my husband (let’s call him ‘S’, his name is real long to keep typing) taught me. Oh yes! I had never had soya chunks until I got married, the general curries made with soya chunk is still not in my list of things I like. So I used to make it really differently, generally substitute it for Chana in chana masala recipe only then I started liking it. Okay so going back to Soya Manchurian, this is what I did with it.

1. Soak soya chunk in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain. Keep aside.
2. Heat oil in wok, add some finely chopped garlic, spring onion and ajinomoto & about 1tsp of ginger garlic paste.
3. Throw in a dash of soya sauce, tomato sauce (I used tom-chi), and Schezwan sauce. A little bit of vinegar and pinch (just  a pinch) of sugar.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. In the end add the drained soya chunks and mix it well with the sauce.

And tada- Soya chunk Manchurian is ready. This is how mine looked.

It definitely doesn’t taste as good as chicken or gobi but it’s a close contender for paneer. The soya chunks have no taste of their own so the more you let it fry in the sauce or simmer in the sauce the better. Even if my soya chunks won the election by default, this Manchurian Candidate delivered more than what it seemed to be promising when I started!