Home-made Pizza with Asparagus

Finally I got the motivation and time to try and make home-made pizza! For whatever reason, I felt making pizza at home is a tedious job but to my pleasant surprise, I was wrong! :-)  Pizza making is quite easy and I can almost compare the preparation time with rotis. For roti preparation, it is always advised to prepare the dough at least 1 hour before, for soft and fluffy rotis. For pizza too, we need to prepare the dough at least 1 hour before baking. I found dough recipe @ The Wednesday Chef

Ingredients:

For Dough:
All purpose flour (Maida)                3 1/2 cups
Active dry yeast                            1 Packet
Salt                                              1 1/2 Tsp
Sugar                                           1 Tsp
Olive oil                                         2 Tsp
Luke warm water                            1 1/4 cups
Pizza sauce                                   8-9 tsp

Veggies I added (you can add any of your choice): Asparagus, Yellow bell pepper, Tomatoes, Onions and Jalapenos

Cheese: Grated mozzarella cheese (I like to go easy on cheese and relish veggies and hence, I added only about 1/4 cup of cheese but you can add it to your taste)

Method:

Preparing Dough:

1. Mix yeast, sugar, olive oil with luke warm water in a mixing bowl and leave until the mix turns frothy. 

2. Add the yeast mixture to the flour and knead it into dough (no need to add additional water for preparing dough. Water in the yeast mixture will be sufficient)

3. Coat the dough with olive oil, cover with damp cloth and leave it for at least an hour. Dough will be now, almost double the size.

4.  Deflate the dough with hands until it comes back to regular size (I learned, this process is called deflating the dough) 

5.  Divide the dough into medium size balls and roll it using rolling pin. I love extra thin pizza so I rolled it to less than 1/4 inch thickness. (Rolling pizza dough is as easy as rolling roti dough.) Dust the surface with flour for easy rolling.
6. Preheat oven and spread pizza sauce on the dough and sprinkle grated mozzarella cheese and top with your favorite veggies. I added the veggies I mentioned above and bake with 15-20 minutes and serve hot!

* Serves 4 people

                    

Mango-tomato salsa for tortilla chips

 

Who wouldn’t love chips with salsa? We got fresh, homemade tortilla chips from our Saturday market and Sailu, my best friend shared her delicious mango-tomato salsa recipe with me. There are lots of variations for  salsa. This salsa includes mango, tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, onions and cilantro. Mango adds a delicious tangy flavor to the salsa.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes                                                            3

Mango (raw)                                                       ¼                                            

Chillis     (thai chillis)                                            2

Onion                                                                  1

Yellow bell pepper                                                1

Cilantro                                                               1 bunch

Lime juice                                                           1 tsp

Salt and pepper to taste 

Method:

1.   Chop mango, tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, onion and chillis into small cubes. Chop cilantro leaves.

2.   Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and serve with tacos

*Serves 4 people