Kale & Sweet Potato Pizza

Well hello there aren't you a naughty little thing? So good to see you. I want to introduce you to some people. Okay?

So I am still using the Emeril deep dish dough recipe; it works well and can easily be loafed into bread. The results yield a flexible dough that rises nicely. This time I used semolina flour instead of corn meal (which allowed me to make corn bread out of the Necronomicon). I actually preferred the crunch of the corn meal in the dough, and may try a half and half of the corn meal and the semolina.

In a follow up, then to the Sarson Ka Saag pizza and the Vegan for Lent pledge (this is pizza recipe one of five), here is a next pizza recipe. This one is also pretty easy going and doesn't have any ingredients you can't get at a supermarket. It has more pan work than the others, but pretty good work flow for timing. The pizza itself is a nice savory sweet and salty pie.

Start about forty-five minutes into the dough rising. Chop up a large yellow onion, and get into caramelizing it. I like to use my cast iron skillet. The labor of love that is properly caramelizing an onion is largely balanced on dehydrating the onion while raising the temperature gradually to heat the sugars, catalyzing caramelization and maillard reactions.

There are no great shortcuts, adding water inhibits both, salt can help to dessicate the onion by drawing out the water through osmosis but still you must stir all the more frequently as there is less of a buffer to keep from burning the onions. Slicing thinly and small increases surface area for sugar to heat all the more directly. But both salt and slice only shorten the time and love minimally, so take the time to put care into those lovely onions rather than try too much to rush them. (I have found that if you need to go do something, you can toss them in the oven at 200'F to have them hold their temp without needing to stir for a bit.)

Once they are nice and caramelized you can toss on a bunch of chopped kale and turn up the heat to high. Douse with a hearty dose of either braggs aminos or tamari, add a quarter cup of water, stir, and cover for five minutes to steam the greens. Remove the lid and add a splash of balsamic and a half cup of red wine.

Remove the onions and the kale to cool off, allow the remaining liquid to reduce. Slurry 1 teaspoon of cornstarch in 1-3 teaspoons cold water (or better, you would use arrowroot or tapioca starch for acidic sauces like these).

Preheat the oven to 450'F. Start a second, small fry pan at medium heat to toast some spices (paprika, cumin, coriander, ancho powder); once toasted cover with a quarter cup of olive oil. Saute some finely minced garlic in the oil and spices then remove once softened and pour into a small bowl. Stir the slurry then whisk into the reducing wine sauce. Continue to reduce until it turns into a nice glaze. Pour off into a spouted measuring cup.

So the dough recipe yields two shells. I cut the risen loaf in half, tossed until round, punched until flattened out, tossed to round some more, then press into a greased pie pan (I used a 14" heavy aluminum pizza dish).

Brush the dough shell with the oil, spices, and garlic; chop and cover with parsley. Top with the onions and kale, then the roasted sweet potatoes. Sprinkle on some toasted sesame seeds (or fresh toasted walnuts if you have any). Sprinkle on daiya as you like, and then drizzle with the wine sauce reduction.

Now the option here is to either brick or not to brick the pizza. This recipe crisps up quite nicely in the aluminum pan. That said, if you are paranoid or utterly convinced nothing is as good as stone bricked pizza, you can pop a stone in while you pre-heat the oven.

A pizza brick will make it harder to heat the oven, and use up more gas. That said, it will also stabilize the temperature as it is a heat sink.

The brick will not necessarily yield a better crust for a thick crust, but for a thin crust it is almost obligatory.

Anyway, the way I test dough is to lift it in the pan and scrape the bottom with a metal spatula. When you can hear the dough's tooth at the tip, and feel it in your fingers, it works to brick it.

Bricking the pizza the entire time is another option, but I find it easier to go in a pan as it allows you to infuse the outside with fat and ensure a crispier, moist crust. I find a wholly stoned pizza to be drier, though even crispier to a crunch. Works well with corn meal dusted shell bottoms. Anyway, here are my results after about 10 minutes at 450'F, then 12 at 375'F.

My results betray that I burtnet the potatoes. They were over-roasted to begin, but the second baking killed them dead. I also over sauteed the garlic and had a few crispier bits. No big deal in either case, and not symptomatic of the recipe. This is a savory, sweet, & salty pizza that chews big and brings a smile to sweet and salty lips. I topped mine with a smidge of sriracha to give it added spice.

(Look at those air pockets!)

Portable Shepard's Pie: Pot Pie Cupcakes - how to pt. 2

So last time, we talked about how to make fillings. This time, we will be focusing on how to make the cups and fill and bake.

So first, if you don't have time to let some beer, flatten some in a stand mixer with the whisk on low. Preheat the oven to 350'f. Beating the bubbles out is what will be necessary. Once the beer is good and flat, you can use any beer dough recipe, I went with my fall-back of 4 1/2 cups flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 12 oz flat beer. Sift together the dry, mix them while gradually pouring in the beer. Don't over-knead, but mix until it gets nice and balled up.

Once the dough is done, each batch can make about three 12" shells. So if you're looking for a super easy ber dough recipe, that's it.

You'll start the same as if you were making a pizza. Cut the dough ball into 1/3s to make it easier to portion. Lightly flour a working surface. Gently roll out the dough a bit, toss for a minute in the air by hand, and roll it out some more. You will want it to be pretty thin. 

Cut into rectangules, at about 4x2". In a extra-jumbo muffin pan, wrap the strip around the outside. Once you get your pan(s) all loaded with potential shells, pop them in the oven. This is a multi-stage process.

It takes about 15 minutes to parbake the shells. However, you will need to punch them down about 5-8 minutes in. The shells will start to rise in the muffin pan, and will shoke out the middle area. With a large plastic serving spoon, press it back around the edges.

Bear in mind, this is baking dough, and depending on how you wrapped it around the edge, it may have seams. You can make them worse when pressing it back, and you can also make it better. Smooshing against the edges, directly back will be safest. pushing back against the wrap will smoosh the dough into the seam and possibly seal it. 

Once the shells are done baking (they will be soft and browned) pull them out of the pans to cool.

If you want to fix some seams, you can brush with coconut milk and bake again free-standing on a cookie sheet. There's probably a better way. Either way, they will fill nicely as long as there aren't gaping seams an your filling isn't too runny.

Now I'm not going to give away someone else's recipe, but I topped with one tablespoon of the corn bread biscuit batter form the Vegan Pie in the Sky Lemon-y Blueberry Cobbler batter. You can find a corn bread biscuit recipe other than that one, or use it.

So add 3-4 ounces of your filling, (add the smoked seitan on top for the Seitanic ones,) top with the corn bread biscuit batter, and bake until the biscuit is done. It's going to work, trust me. It is great.

Check out the gallery for the rest of the pictures.

The Clintonvillain's Pozole: Clintonville Chili Bowl

Saturday there was a chili cookoff. This is my first chili cookoff, and first time making chili at all (I know, QQ...) since, since turning vegan. 

Frankly, I have been intimidated of relying on my newer skills to attempt something like this. Chili was my favorite meaty meal. In the few months of being vegan I have encountered many tacitly solicited opinions on the things people could never give up. Obviously at the top are bacon and cheese; personally, it is over-medium eggs for me, and I still have longings when I see them. 

But the thing that, before the jump, I thought I could never give up cooking was chili. Just flick through that tag. I have made every variant of chili worth making. Ham Stock (the Youngstown Brown), Brisket, Pulled Pork, and Venison having been my favorite mediums, I have nonetheless almost always had a vegan counterpart when bringing a crock somewhere. At the Huffman's chili cook off, I had a Texas Red, French-Onion & Mushroom Brisket chili next to my vegan Curried Pumpkin Chili.

While I have always loved my darling vegan chilis, and given them every ounce of care and attention I gave to the meat chilis, they were always simpler. Fewer steps, less prep, less clean up; easier. There is an obsessive demon in me that would pursue tesselated and 3-d flavors in the meat chili that was never satisfied by the gastronome's admonition that ingredients should taste like what they are. It exorcised itself when working with meat, but not without.

I have a kind of discomfort with not going everywhere and saying everything all at once with my chili. Granted, working with Paul for the ICS Fire Fest and being with Beth has taught me to improve my sense of what urgently goes with what, and to be sympathetic to having a very clean palate (rather than bland, mine usually take a turn for muddy or hyperactive).

So what's wrong with veg*n chilis? Nothing. In most cases they're as good as most meat chili; terrible.

I am a snob sometimes. I am as egalitarian as it can get frequently. But I can really be a fucking snob on occasion, especially if I have some inordinate love for whatever it is. It's not a good thing and it makes it difficult to just do some things. And one of those things is making chili. 

So I came up with an approach to chili that can engage me. Here's the rough sketch; Red Pozole styled chili, using a smoked seitan 'meat' to sub for pork; it didn't pan out exactly in that way so here goes.

The Clintonvillain's Pozole (Vegan; sorry, no human flesh like the traditional recipe calls for);

I.1) Begin by making your chili paste. Put 8-12 dried peppers (ancho, pusilla, mulatto, guajillo varieties) in a hot iron skillet and toast on each side until they start to get really fragrant. Cover with water and simmer for 30 minutes. Pour off water, reserve; put peppers in a colander and remove the pith, seeds, and stems.  

I.2) Dry out your cast iron skillet and heat back up, dry toast your spices for your chili paste. I relied on ancho powder, paprika, cayenne powder, cumin, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, clove, mustard, turmeric, and cumin.

I think in whole there was something like a half cup of spices toasting up nicely in there.

When done I added it to some additional no-pepper chili powder I had made earlier in the week. It was similar, but had a cup of toasted pepitas and two tablespoons milled flax seed (omega 3s and thickening agent).

I.3) Now you will puree the peppers to a nice thick paste, adding some of the reserved 'bitter water' from the simmering to keep it smoothing out. You should end up with something like this depending on your water to pepper to spices ratio. Add the toasted spices to this.

As for the chili itself, I started with a pretty standard build;

II.1) Begin - Saute a few cups of diced yellow onion until soft and translucent. Add a few cloves (I went with six large) of fresh diced garlic. Once all of this is good and gooey an lovely, add a nice big dollop of the chili paste so you can get your bearings. Then cover with 6-8 ounces of Yeti Stout (oak-barrel aged, chocolate and espresso infused stout). Definitely take the time to taste this stuff; do yourself a favor. Pour over a cup of strong coffee and a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. Bring to a simmer and let those stickey strands get going.

II.2) Build - I used one large can of skinned, whole plum tomatoes (crush and shred in your hand then drop in), one large can of tomato puree, and one large can of diced tomatoes (drain then add). Stir it up and cook it down.

II.3) From here you are going to get the herbs and seeds started. First taste to make sure the chili paste is still kicking. Add more as necessary. In all I think I had about a cup and a half of it in 6 quarts. After, add some fennel (aids indigestion) and bay leaves (mine were all very small so I shoved them in a cloth teabag and add them, could also have added some whole cloves this way). Add 3-4 whole dried cayenne peppers, and 3-4 cups tart dried cherries, and 1/4 cup of dried bird's eye peppers.

You should know by now that I don't hold to times very much. Especially in the case of chili. It's done when it's done, and you just need to learn that. That said, if you're not sure and you have time, go longer.

II.4) I added the hominy about two or three hours into cooking, with another 90 minutes to go. I like to add beans at the last minute, so that they retain their natural texture (i.e. don't turn to mush, especially if it is going to be in a crock pot for three more hours). Hominy is resilient enough to hold on despite hours of cooking.

III.1) Salsa - This is a vegan chili, so it is not high in fat. I used olive and toasted sesame oil while building i up, and there is some fat in hominy, but relative to your run-of-the-mill ground beef chili, it has next to zero fat. So what? Well, that means you have little buffer against the capsaicin. Adding sugar and starch to the chili masks it, vinegars can carry and cleanse it (there were Apple Cider Vinegar, Bragg's aminos, and White vinegar in there); but you need oils (esp. solid ones) to dissolve the capsaicin. Combining these things allows you to enjoy more hot without being overwhelmed by it. We add it with healthy fats via a salsa.

The salsa was simple; three plum tomatoes (fresh), one lime, and one red onion diced in nice big chunks, with four fresh avocados cubed up nice. [Beth taught me this: If you want nice clean cuts to your avocado, slice it in half, twist and remove the seed; with a knife cut a grid into the meat while in the shell, then scoop out with a spoon.] Pour over some apple cider vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice, a smidge of toasted sesame oil, some olive oil, and finish with a generous splash of the Yeti Stout. When tossing avocado in salad or guacamole, best practices would have you add lime juice to prevent browning; however this oxidation process can be prevented by coating it with any mildly acidic liquid.You are going for a thick dressing to the salsa, not some runny water-y scurf. Finish with additional herbs as you see fit, best practices for any salsa include a generous helping of coarsely chopped cilantro (which I omitted from the chili itself for the sake of any tasters who hate cilantro).

IV.1) Finishing - So the chili should be chugging along pretty good. When you are nearing the end of the stove top time and are getting ready to transition to the crock pot, start adding your herbs and verify that the chili paste is still topped off. The crock pot can be a good place for this as well, but I like to have it pretty much in forget-about-it mode by then. The big punch for both the salsa and the chili is to take some ground up plantain leaf and add a tablespoon or two to the 6 quarts of chili and a teaspoon or so to the salsa (after which put some saran wrap over the top of the salsa and refriegerate). Add a 1/4 cup of some oregano to the chili and transfer t crock pot.  

IV.2) Plating - For taster size portion about 4:1 is the ratio of chili to salsa you're going to want to hit. Too much salsa and it's too tart. Too little and they get robbed of those tasty avocados and their soothing fat. Top with sour supreme if you so desire and a twist of pepper and some smoked salt. 

This chili is not your garden variety chili. It is a bit awkward and utterly unexpected. But in spite of everyone's trepidation, there were a good many surprised grins that slid out from under the weight of furrowed brows. That's my favorite reaction, where you can watch someone go from wtf to omg to holy shit. This stuff is hot hot. and its bitter and tart and sour, its sweet and more toothy than any veg*n offering you've likely ever had before.

Here's a link to the gallery of pics

I surmounted my fear that veg*n chili is just bean stew, and so can you.

The moment that we believe that we have never met | another kind of love, it's easy to forget

When we are all alone then we do both agree | we have a thing in common, this was meant to be 

My Little Abomination: Los Luciernaga Pizza

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Anyway;

Sunday my mind hatched an evil scheme. I bided my time, and executed it Monday night.

• For anyone who knows me or has been following nomfg for a minute, it comes as no surprise to hear me profess my adoration of the Jolly Pumpkin brewery. From their beautiful packaging, to the pour and the sniff and the taste and the swallow, each one of their beers is a call from the ethereal beyond.
• For anyone who knows me or has been following nomfg for a minute, it also comes as no surprise that I can't drink anymore. I'm not the best when it comes to being able to drink responsibly and deal with life; my proclivity for emotional self-medicating is quite effective.

So how does beer and not drinking make for do-no-goodery?

Los Luciernaga Pizza: Beer dough crust made with Luciernaga, with a Carrot-Cardamom flavored Parsnip Puree, topped with Carmelized Shallots & Bosc Pears, and dressed with a Roasted Garlic Luciernaga Glaze

Well;

We went down to Columbus' arena district to get some vegan lunch, but the special at the place was pulled (and has subsequently been added back, indefinitely; grats!). So we scampered over to North Market. I'm a fan of the place; no devotee to be sure, but who doesn't love a good bazaar? Anyway after a Brezel and a few samples of Cajohn's hot sauces (that Vicious Viper is aawwwesome), I headed in to Barrel & Bottle where the Braiden works to check it out. I have a habit of assessing stores by the shelf space afforded Jolly Pumpkin. I'm not sure why, I guess as some mark of familiarity.

They had a few, including one of my favorite go-to's;

Luciernaga

"The Firefly"

An artisan pale ale brewed in the Grand Cru tradition. Enjoy its golden effervescence and gentle hop aroma. Coriander and Grains of Paradise round out the spicy palate, melting o so softly into a silken finish of hoppiness and bliss! Make any season a celebration!

(yum)

It came to me in the middle of some conversation. I don't quite recall about what, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. The rest of Sunday was dedicated to figuring out how to bring this sin to manifest.

Beer Dough. It is a dirty, dirty trick. And I love it. Normally I use malty lagers and Mexican beers, or whatever I am unafraid of wasting. Instead of water and yeast being used to wet and bind up the flour for the dough, you just use flat beer and ground salt. Easy peasy.

But what happens when you take an uber unflat beer whose directions indicate that you should pour like champagne? Well for one, you get a dried out crust. The excessive air really doesn't to the dough any favors. So let it go flat, but don't skip out on the foam collar in pouring. Flatten it (8-12 ounces worth) but be sure to pour correctly to unlock the beer.

So once you've poured a beer to use in the dough, here's where we go from there; 

• Pre-heat oven to 400'f; Cut the top off a bulb of garlic, peel away papery skin, place in tight fitting oven-proof container and douse with olive oil, cover container with foil and pop in oven for ~30 minutes until cloves are delicate and easy to smoosh
• Peel and trim 10 parsnips and 1-2 carrots, cut into 1-2" segments and place in a pot, cover with water and simmer until they are soft (15-20 minutes); pour off all but 1/2 cup of water, continue simmering until garlic is done (don't turn off oven)
• Remove parsnips and 1 carrot from pot, put in food processor with three cloves of the roasted garlic, 1/2-1 teaspoon ground cardamom, black pepper, ginger
• Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon miso paste or other vegan soup base to simmering stock from parsnips, bring to a boil and give a go until it has some kind of yummy flavor
• Add 2-4 tablespoons butter and the simmered stock to the food processor and puree everything
• Halve and thinly slice two shallots. Core and thinly slice 1 bosc pear. In a cast iron skillet, start sauteeing shallots in oil (from roasted garlic = yum) until translucent, Add a pinch of cardamom, add three cloves roasted garlic and mash and stir, then add sliced pears. Toss pears until they start to soften, then pop in the oven covered with foil to continue softening.
• 
• Time for dough; sift together 4 cups flour with 1/2 teaspoon each salt and baking powder, drop in stand mixer and turn to low with bread hook. Take flat beer (put in a pouring container if it isn't in one already), pour it slowly into the flour and let it all come together (recipe works easily by hand too; just mix with your hand while pouring).
• You should have some kind of a dough ball; you can break it up into halves or thirds, either way roll out what you've got to a nice flat shell. Rub both sides with olive oil (extra points for herbs), sprinkle corn meal on what will be the bottom and flip so that side is down.
• [Working on a  peel with parchment is a tidy option; if so, preheat oven to 450 with pizza stone inside]
• Remove pears and shallots and goodness from oven and transfer the big bits to a bowl but reserve as much liquid as possible. Continue with heating the liquid goopiness on the range. Once you start to get nice little bubbles, pour on some of that Luciernaga, first the flat stuff. Let it bubble down and reduce. Add a hit of flour too and work it in for a thicker sauce. Stir frequently while dressing pizza. Be sure to use a flexible spatula to scrape the bits from the bottom.
• Spread puree over dough shell. Top with the pears and shallots (toasted walnuts or pecans would have done well at this point too).
• Once pizza is dressed you are going to home stretch that sauce or glaze or reduction, whatever you call what you make, you're going to hit it with a nice final splash of the Luciernaga and make sure it isn't to liquid-y (you want a glaze at minimum). Then transfer to a pourable container and dress the top of the pizza.
• Bake until done. (You should be able to put a spatula under the dough and spin it without it sticking, toppings should be browned slightly.)

The pizza has a lovely peppery sweet taste that at once lulls and spices. Changes I would make? Make sure beer is more flat than it was this time around; the beer itself has an incredibly collar not to be ignored, but that must be compensated for.

Making beer dough yesterday I poured the beer out into the standmixer and set it to low for about ten minutes then let it sit for about an hour. This time I was using a stout (Shell's Stout, from a brewery in New Ulm MN); it fell flat in a magnificent way. Lesson learned. 

Additional changes/adjustments? I used a bit too much cardamom. It was basically a new spice to me so I went a bit overboard and assumed that it would disipate or distribute more evenly than it did. Tasty and over the top? Yes. Ready to tame, maybe toast while glazing the pears? Peut-être.

Anyway, a sixteen dollar bottle of beer, with only 7 ounces drunk by mouth from a glass and the rest consumed in the cooking process; it may sound a bit sinful. Or maybe it sounds like a waste of beer without the gluttony. Either way, I will say it was a great pizza and the parsnip puree cardamom candied pear combo was wth the effort alone.

Dreamsfood Bounty #1 - Vegan Comfort Food

From the Dreamsfood section...

So the first Dreamsfood Bounty has been announced, Vegan Comfort Food. Everybody wants it right about now, and you're all going to need it in a few weeks, so let's get some planning down and get our collective wheels spinning.

• If you have a recipe and would like to join in and participate, email a recipe card to recipes@dreamsfood.org and get on board!
• If you want to vote and participate in the bounty and the dinner, email me at mfg@dreamsfood.org so I can invite you to the facebook group and get you all signed up

Even Mitt is getting in on it!We have a few subdomains right now, first there is the parent site Dreamsfood.org , and then we've also got:

• voting.dreamsfood.org - host site for the recipe cards, head on over and check out what we've got going; recipe deadline is December 4, 2011, voting starts December 5 (again, email recipes@dreamsfood.org if you want a card posted for looking over!)
• calendar.dreamsfood.org - contains the bounty board and the upcoming voting cycle schedule and the dinner meetup
• docs.dreamsfood.org - not much here yet, might be used for spreadsheets and illustrations, or an archive of recipe cards

Update on 4:19PM by mfg

Here's the offical announcement on the Dreamsfood page!

Carnitine and Greens Pizza

It's hard coming up with the worst names for food, but the challenge has been fun and I do it all for you.

So in yesterday's post on a Potato Pizza for Ranchers (why did I originally call it cowboys? stupid non-allusion to ranch dressing. seriously messed up that URL... re-named it and screwed up the SEO, good morning), I mentioned the second shell my dough would make. Well, actually, even after making another, thicker 9" pizza last night I probably have a third shell. w00t. Also, I mentioned something about spinach and tempeh as the basis for the next pizza. Well done and done. Beth and I agreed that the marinade could get a bit salty, so I will try to fix that, but otherwise it's a great pizza.

Here's the rundown;

• 1 package of tempeh
• Marinade: Soy, Teriyaki, Bragg's aminos, splash apple-flavored liquid smoke and tabasco, oil, apple cider vinegar, water, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, 1 dried and torn tien tsin pepper (play around with liquid balance to taste), 1 tablespoon sesame seed (toasted)
• 1 modicum thawed, frozen spinach drained
• 1 9" pizza shell, with flour and corn meal for dusting, oil for oiling bottom
• More flour, rosemary

So start by cutting your tempeh into little, flat'ish chunks and steaming for about 10 minutes. While steaming mix up marinade. You will want enough to almost completely cover the tempeh; not because you ever actually need that much marinade, but because you will be upcycling all of it. Add steamed tempeh to marinade and put frozen spinach in a plastic colander, run some lukewarm water through to rinse, press down on top to squeeze out some water, leave in sink to drain.

Go to figure drawing class at Wild Goose Creative. Buy watered down coffee after getting a seat from Leen O'Kaffe (seriously, I think he ran out of coffee, didn't feel like giving me back my cup with the 3-4 ounces in it for free, and topped it off with steamed water). Get tired of drawing tedious model doing crazy athletic poses (he did seem like a nice guy, I just didn't have the energy to keep up with him). Return home after tempeh has soaked for about 90 minutes.

Sautee the tempeh on medium heat in a bit of the marinade to firm up the flat sides; reserve remaining marinade. Remove tempeh, set aside. Throw a spoonful of the marinade into the pan and warm it up, start sauteeing the spinach. Add some paprika. Once you get a smidge of crispy on a squeak of the greens, pour all that reserved tasty marinade on top. Bring to a bubble and bubble it for a minute (as in, the metaphorical minute, around 180 seconds or however long you feel like it; not minute as in an actual 60-second incrrement). Remove spinach with a slotted spoon after the liquid reduces by about half.

Pre-heat oven to 350'f; grease 9" cast iron skillet with shortening.

Leave the remaining marinade in the pan. Hopefully you have about a cup or so. We're going to do one of my favorite things now. Turn it into gravy. YAY! So bring the marinade first to a good hard bubble all around, stirring frequently. Once the vigorousness of the boil breaks down and you've reduced the  marinade to about 1 cup, start sprinkling flour onto one half of the pan while tilting the other half down (forcing liquid down and dropping flour above). Using a fork or the slotted spoon or a spatula, gradually intergate the flour into the marinade (it should have enough oil to make a nice gravy) by working the liquid through the flour swiftly and vigorously. Of course you'll want to watch out for clots and graininess in the gravy (hence why making a roux in separately is ideal, but I wanted to minimize pans). Fold a teaspoon (or more!) of rosemary into the resulting gravy, let sit.

Lightly dust working surface for dough. Take your pizza shell and press it out against surface, lightly flour both sides. Flip it around to see what your working with. Press cast-iron skillet down on dough to stencil-cut the shell. Oil once (or both) sides of the dough; dust with corn meal and pat down. Put shell, corn meal side down, into pan. With a fork, tap down outline of peripheral crust, then poke holes through the center to inhibit gas pockets. Spread down spinach, then lay out tempeh.

Drizzle on gravy sauce (see note below), and pop in the oven at 350'f for about ten minutes; then up it to 450'f and leave it in there until the top of the crust begins to brown (or the bottom of the crust, however you like it). Cut with a knife. Serve.

NOTES: Now. Here is the point where I think it got salty:

• I don't think I sufficiently cut the rosemary gravy (my first time making it in any form, let alone a non-gravy gravy form); it packed a BIG teriyaki-Bragging-soy punch, that the spinach served to reinforce, and the tempeh couldn't hold back the flood.
• What to do? I should have reached for the marsala is what, or even some more vinegar, and turned the gravy into a sauce that I could have applied as a drizzle instead of what was more of a paste.

At any rate, the majority of bites were perfect and tasty and great and amazing; next time I make it I will just need to watch out for the punch of the marinade.