Pizza

A slice of home made pizza with chicken bell peppers and onion toppings and extra cheese on the top

Pizza is the world famous comfort food. It is very flexible food recipe that can be modified according to each and every individual's taste buds. It is considered high calorie and fattening food as well. If you learn to make pizza at home, you have control over what goes into your pizza. There could be whole wheat pizza, thin pizza to minimize carbohydrates, cheese according to your preference and all healthy proteins, vegetable toppings as you want. You can make dough and refrigerate for later use. You can use your left over vegetables as toppings. It actually takes 12- 15 minutes to bake a fresh pizza if you have dough and toppings ready. That is way less time that you wait for a pizza delivery to your home. In addition to healthy versions of home-made pizza, the freshly baked bread makes your senses happy.   

Ingredients:
Pizza dough
All purpose flour (2 cups)
Egg (1)
Instant Yeast (2 teaspoon)
Salt (1/2 teaspoon)
Olive Oil (1/4 cup)
Sugar (1 tablespoon)
Milk ( 1/4 cup)
Water (1 cup)

Pizza topping
Tomato paste (1/2 cup)
Shredded Mozarella cheese or/and Parmesan cheese ( 1 to 1.5 cups)
Chopped and cooked chicken or any meat
Chopped and half cooked vegetables (bell pepper, onions or any of your choice)
Dried basil powder or italian seasoning (1 tablespoon)

Note on ingredients: You can use other kinds of melting cheese. Tomato paste can be replaced by pasta sauce or pizza sauce or even pesto sauce. There are uncountable variety of toppings you can use. You can experiment according to your preference.

Protocol: 
Mix sugar in milk and microwave or warm it until luke warm or until about 30 degree C. Mix instant yeast well in it and let it stand for 5 minutes. You will observe forth forming on the top of the liquid. That means the yeast is getting activated. Yeast is being fed on sugar and milk.

While you wait for yeast, mix flour, egg, oil in a bowl. Then add yeast in the flour mix. Add water little by little mix with a strong fork. Add water and mix until all the flour form clumps. Now you can use your hand or stand mixer to make very soft and sticky dough. You do not have to knead for long time.

Pizza dough kept at room temperature to double in size

Oil the inner side of a bowl and transfer the dough in it. Cover with a plastic wrap and let it stand on you counter top or stove top at room temperature. If your oven is warm or stove is warm keeping it on the stove counter will help to rise the dough faster. Well, the idea here is to keep it at room temperature or warm temperature. Leave it for 45 minutes to 2 hours.

Take it out and knead for 3-4 minutes. Note that I am using 2 cups of flour. Now according to your preference you can either make thin or thick  bread pizza. My family likes think bread pizza. They like the freshly made bread as well in addition to the taste of pizza toppings. Here, I am making one 12 inch pizza. If you are making thin pizza, divide the dough into two parts and use for two pizzas.

Pizza dough spread to 12 inch diameter, before adding toppings

Since the dough is still very soft and sticky, dash enough flour on the platform where you are spreading the diameter of pizza. You can also use butter paper. Press the dough with your fingers and spread it into a flat round shape. You can use roller pin but my pizza dough is always very stretchy that I can just stretch with fingers and it turns out good.

Spread 1/2 cup of tomato paste or pasta sauce evenly on the dough. Add basil or Italian seasoning on it. Spread cheese on it. Add chopped cooked chicken, bell peppers and onions.

Pizza with chicken topping ready to be baked.

Pre-warm your flat iron pan or pizza stone at 450 F in the oven. Keep your iron pan in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Now its time to transfer your unbaked pizza on your hot iron pan inside the oven. Take out iron pan and dash some corn flour or any flour on the pan. Very carefully slide your pizza on the iron pan and return your pan inside the oven. Bake for 12 minutes. If you want cheese to be on the top of your toppings, spread additional cheese on the pizza and keep in the oven for 3 more minutes. Take your pizza out and cut into pieces and serve with hot sauce or chili sauce or just by itself. Try it yourself and share your experiences, comments or any questions you may have below.  I hope I made it easy for you to make pizza at home. Enjoy!

Pizza ready to be cut and eat !!!!

Thick bread home made pizza. Yumm.

Malpuwa

Malpuwa with spicy sauteed potato strips. Yumm.

Malpuwa or Malpa is very common Nepalese fried bread. People like to have this semi-sweet food as breakfast with warm cup of tea or coffee. It goes well with halva as a sweet companion or with any savory vegetables like sauteed potatoes or chickpea curry. Not only for breakfast, its good to have at any time of the day as snack or desert after lunch or dinner. On the contrary to being very common household food, malpuwa is not a everyday food to prepare at home. It is made only on festive occasions unless you really crave for it like I did today and instantly made some for myself. There are small cafes or shops in every corner of big or small cities of Nepal that fry snacks like this everyday especially in the morning. People can go and buy this for their breakfast in minutes.

Its sweet or usually semi-sweet, crunchy at the edges and soft and little gooey inside and milky in taste. Its really not complicated to make this to its perfection. Here I am going to tell you really simple way; flexible recipe and method for making malpuwa. One thing very important that you need to make this bread is the patience.

Ingredients: 
Rice flour (1 and 1/3 cup)
Milk (1 cup)
Ripe banana (1 medium or small)
Sugar (1/3 cup)
Clarified butter or ghee (1 tablespoon)
Vegetable oil to fry
Baking powder (1 teaspoon)
Salt (1/2 teaspoon)

Note on the ingredients: Malpuwa can be made with wheat flour or rice flour. This time I made it with rice flour. If I document the making with wheat flour in the future, I will definitely share my experience. People also like to put fennel seeds that give it a specific flavor. I did not use fennel seeds here.

Protocol:

  

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well with a whisker. If you are not lazy to clean up your electric hand blender or regular blender, you can use them to make a smooth batter instantly without much of a hand work-out. The consistency should be thick enough but should have a smooth flow as shown in the video clip. The consistency is important if you want to make the shape and the texture of malpuwa as of malpuwa. Set it aside while you heat the oil. 

Heat oil in a deep frying pan or a fryer. I use a sauce pan that has slightly bigger diameter than of malpuwa size I want to make. This way I do not need to waste a lot of my oil after I am done. Well, its only my thought. You can use any fryer. The important thing to keep in mind is that the oil should not be very hot at the beginning. It should be medium hot. Turn heater to a low medium heat in the beginning when you are ready to pour the batter. It is also important not to have smoking hot oil regarding safety as well, especially when you are using small vessel like I did. Bubbling and consequently splashing of oil may happen if you plunge your batter directly in smoking hot oil.

 Use a 1/3rd cup to pour the batter in the fryer. After 1 minute turn the heat to medium. Turn the side of  malpuwa after you see browning of the edges. Wait until you see light browning at the center as well. It will take few minutes each side. Have some patience waiting for it to get done well. Take it out on a paper towel that will soak up extra oil. 

Here you have a warm malpuwa. Serve with any quick curry or sauteed vegetables or meat. I like to have it with a cup of masala tea and spicy sauteed potatoes. Try it yourself and share your experience, comments or any questions you may have below. Enjoy!