Making pizza toast from scratch.

Instructions on how to make pizza toast, courtesy of Zy. But this time, I had to make it from scratch, because I didn’t have any tomato sauce in my house.

To make a vague sort of sauce, I boiled a tomato till the skin started peeling. Then I took off the skin, and cut the tomato smaller. In hindsight, I should have removed the seeds at this time, but I thought I’d strain it out later. If you don’t take the seeds out at this point, you’ll have to strain the entire thing later. Or, you remove all the seeds now, and use a food processor or blender or whatever to puree the whole thing later. I’m not sure how it’s like for the latter alternative though. So anyway, I’d microwaved the tomato, until it was quite soft. Then I strained it. Added a bit of salt and pepper, mixed herbs, and sugar. And microwaved it a bit more.

To assemble pizza toast, you need… Whatever toppings you want, tomato sauce, bread and shredded mozzarella. First, spread tomato sauce. Then put your toppings. My fave toppings are mushrooms and pepperoni. Then liberally pile on the shredded mozzarella. It may look like a lot, but it’s mostly air. Then toast. Toast until bread is quite crunchy. Take it out of the oven, sprinkle herbs on top, and serve immediately. The glory of hot mozzarella.

So anyway, last night me and Zy made chocolate chip biscotti. It was okay I suppose. The biscotti is tasty, but the difficult bit was sawing it into slices. It was rather crumbly. The recipe is from Chef Michael Smith, bless his soul.

Chocolate Chip Biscotti
1 cup of white or brown sugar
1/2 stick (1/4 cup, 4 tablespoons) of butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
2 cups of all-purpose flour
2 large spoonfuls of cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of baking powder
A pinch of salt
1 cup of chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Cream the sugar and butter together in a stand-up mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time and continue to beat for a few more minutes.  Add the vanilla.
Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt and add to the mixer.  Combine well then stir in the chocolate chips.
Shape the dough with lightly floured hands into a log, approximately 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. You may find it easier to divide the dough in half and form two shorter logs. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet flatten slightly and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove from oven and cool until you can handle it.  Slice diagonally, into 1/2-inch slices and return to the baking sheet. Bake again until the cookies lightly brown, about ten minutes. Flip them over and brown another few minutes. Cool and enjoy with a cup of espresso!

Incidentally, I rather prefer my biscotti with nuts. So I was at Popular today, and I came across a recipe in this cookbook. Periplus, Step-by-Step, Something Something Desserts. It was something like this. Very vaguely.

125g nuts
3 egg whites
1/2 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup flour

Toast nuts.
Whisk egg whites until stiff. Whisk together with sugar until dissolved. Gently fold in nuts and flour. Pour into bar pan. Bake.
Take out, slice. Bake again.

Lol. Well, I just glanced through it. But it looked quite easy. I will try it sometime. I showed Zy this photo of me which was really unflattering. Back in the time when I was actually plump. She looked at it, and was absolutely STUNNED. She still is stunned.

In other news, claimed ‘date’ that wasn’t a date, fellow who wanted (please pay attention to the –ed.) to make it up to me (for wanting to make it up to me but then going back on his word anyway) thinking that simply because I deign to look at him must mean he’s made it up to me. Very uneventful. I did sort of have fun figuring how big the place was. Cute hamsters were great. I thought it was supposed to be a special day. Well, I’m glad I expected the worst. Quite expected really. Sitting for at least 30 minutes waiting for him to be done having fun, because my ankle hurt like ohmygod. The most interesting things that happened the whole day was me getting a vague panic attack, and the time I helped some guy who broke his ankle ice-skating (while waiting for fellow to be done having fun). He wanted us to split the expenses until I verbally reminded him. Not really making it up to me, but I guess it’s the best he can do. At least he convinced the parents to let him out longer. He can now go disappoint someone else.

I will now irritate Zy with my lalala-ing.