TWD—Baking With Julia—Pizza Rustica

Pizza Rustica—sounds like pizza, but is more like a quiche or savory pie.  We made that this go-round for Tuesdays With Dorie--Baking With Julia.  It is fun to be making these recipes in Baking With Julia now.  I like that we go from simple Irish soda bread to something more involved like Rugelach or this Pizza Rustica.

I like the pie.  Even though I used a low fat ricotta, I know that this “pizza” is not really low fat, so I’ve tried not to eat too much of it.  My only problem with it was the crust.  It was quite a wet dough, did not specify any chilling time and I could not get it to roll out without sticking like crazy to my well-floured surface.  I persevered and ended up pressing the bottom crust in to the pie plate.  Since the top crust wasn’t going to cooperate with being rolling out and cut into lattice strips, I cut it into fun circles and placed them over the top of the pie.  The little circles were much easier to work with getting off the counter. 

I was happy that I even decided while buying ricotta to get some prosciutto instead of just using ham or bacon like I was going to and it was really good.  The only change I made to the whole recipe was that I used low fat ricotta instead of whole milk.

I think this would be good with a different crust, like just a regular pie crust.  Not sure what my problem was with this one, but I followed the recipe exactly.  Maybe the original recipe came from someone who measures flour with a heavy hand.  I weighed mine.  Either way, this is a great pizza pie for a brunch or even breakfast or lunch, whatever, you could have it for dinner, too.

If you want the recipe, Emily from Capital Region Dining or Raelyn from  The Place They Call Home are the hosts this time and they’ll have the recipe posted for you.  Lots of Pizza Rustica viewing for your hungry eyes over at TWD Headquarters.

FFWD—Gerard’s Mustard Tart (And CSN Stores Giveaway Winner!)

Double posting again—be sure to check out the yummy Apple Betty Bars below that I posted for Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies.

French Fridays With Dorie is here again.  We are in to the second week of cooking and baking along to Around My French Table.  The recipe Dorie chose for this week looks great in the book.  I was excited to give it a try.  I don’t LOVE mustard.  I would never purposely put it on a sandwich.  But I have been liking it okay when it’s in dressings or certain recipes where it isn’t the key flavor.  Looking through the ingredients in the recipe for this mustard tart, I was a little skeptical that I wouldn’t  like it with as much mustard that is in it.  Besides that being an issues, I just knew that the whole tart wouldn’t get eaten here.  I LOVE crust, but have noticed that Kevin often leaves a lot of the crust uneaten, even with the most delicious of pies.  Scott does the same thing.

So, I decided to halve the recipe, but when making the tart dough, went ahead and made the full recipe.  I plan to use the other half of the tart dough for something else (next week’s TWD recipe!).  I ended up making two 4 inch tarts and having enough filling left over that I made a crustless one in a four inch cake pan.  The egg-y, frittata like tart full of veggies was pretty good.  I could definitely taste the mustard (I used all Dijon, didn’t have grainy mustard).  I would eat a slice of this tart if I was served it somewhere, but not sure I’d make it again.  OR, I’d make it again and cut way back on the mustard, I do like having a little bit of that taste there, but maybe not quite that much. 

Oh, and it’s no surprise that I don’t really like leeks, since they are in the onion family.  So I skipped the leeks and cut up some carrot, red and green peppers and some cremini mushrooms and I browned them up in a skillet with a clove of garlic and some olive oil first.  I used some dried thyme for the herb as I didn’t have any fresh and I don’t care for rosemary.  The tart really did taste good.  I love the idea of putting lots of veggies in and making such a simple lunch with the mini tarts.

 

This is so fun to be cooking some new things here.  Steppin’ out of the comfort zone.  Next week—some Spicy Vietnamese chicken noodle soup!

 

And now for the announcement of the CSN Stores $75 giveaway winner—I chose a winner randomly from the entries received and the winner is---Sarahe!

sarahe said...

looks wonderful!
If i won I would get some new baking pans...mine are kinda sad :(

October 06, 2010 7:17 PM

Congratulations, Sarah, I will be contacting you for the correct information to get the $75 promo code from CSN Stores to you!  Yay!  (Thank you, CSN Stores for allowing me to have this giveaway!)