One of our favorite restaurants, Veggie Planet, serves up a really good spicy black bean purée with salsa and cheese over pizza bread that I get nearly every time we go for lunch. I figured that the recipe couldn't be terribly complicated, so we made our own this evening.
We made some more pesto for dinner, which made us wonder why we don't have it every night. While at Whole Foods picking up the basil, fighting small children for the free samples, I had some white bean dip that was pretty tasty, so, after dinner, Nicole and I attempted a modified version of the dip.
I made pizza for dinner tonight. It isn't the cheapest meal to make, and ordering a pizza is probably cheaper, but I like homemade pizza. It is very satisfying to make, particularly because it is not hard to make (with store bought dough, I suppose), and yields a delicious meal.
Sautéed Bell Pepper and Onion PizzaI had a lot of trouble with the dough the first few times I made pizza. I kept stretching it out, but once it went on the pan the whole thing shrunk back to about half the desired size. I also don't have a great location to put flour on the dough without getting it everywhere. I realized, however, that putting the flour into the bag of dough allowed me to prepare the dough without making a big mess. At the end, the dough comes out, nicely floured, and the bag can be thrown away with whatever extra flour was left. It also allowed me to handle the dough more thoroughly and to figure out the best way to stretch it out. The rest is pretty easy. Butter a cookie sheet, throw the dough on, spread a small amount of pasta sauce on, and layer some provolone cheese. We're tried different cheeses, but provolone works and tastes best. While the pizza is baking, the onion, garlic and bell pepper can be sautéed with olive oil with salt and basil. When the pizza is ready, the toppings are distributed on and the whole thing cools for a minute so it is easier to cut.
The picture isn't great, but the pizza was delicious. I misplaced our grocery receipt, so I can't break the ingredients down by price until later.
I cashed in some rewards points I had from my bank and got a three cup food processor and called up my ma to get her pesto recipe.
Mom's Pesto
