Simple Watercress Salad

What do you eat for dinner when you've stuffed yourself silly with pasta for lunch? Salad, of course! A summery, peppery and light salad.

Ingredients:
arugula
watercress
red grapes
endives
Roquefort
a light vinaigrette with white balsamic and dijon mustard

Pizza Dough Recipe

OK. Pizza experiment. Day 2.

First day's pie came out sponge-y and flavorless. So, I added more garlic and cheese, and a ton more salt and pepper, which really did make a difference in taste. I rolled out the dough thinner, about 1/8" all around. This technique allowed for a crisper and more authentic crust and crunch. Pat on back, it turned out really well tonight. The real beauty of pizza is that anything tastes great on it. I topped mine with chevre, sweet peppers, heirloom tomatoes, garlic and a couple of fried eggs.

I can vouch for prissy Ms. de Laurentiis' pizza dough, but here are my measurements (I strayed a little from the original recipe):

Pizza Dough

3.5 cups organic unbleached flour
1 cup organic bleached flour
3.5 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
One packet of yeast
1.5 tbsp sugar
4 cups of warm water (110-115 degrees. This is important as it allows the yeast to activate properly)
2 tsp sea salt

Mix sugar, water and yeast together. Let sit about 15 minutes until foam develops. In a large bowl, combine the salt, flour, yeast water mixture and the canola and olive oils together. Using your hands, knead dough into ball. Transfer the ball of dough into another bowl that has been coated with some oil so as to allow the dough to rise. Cover with a towel or cling wrap. Wait about 1 hour.

The result should be a sponge-y dough ball about the size of a cantaloupe. Makes about 4 medium sized pizzas.

Wow, the egg on the right looks like it had the stomach flu:

Sufferin' Succotash!

I won't even begin to tell you how long it took to chop and dice everything. (And yes, that is bacon in my succotash)

Cold Soba Noodles

I made some delicious soba noodles with just a touch of cilantro and scallions (scandalous, I know!), but they turned out very fine and Q. There is not one drop of oil to prevent the noodles from sticking because I put them in an ice wash as soon as they were done cooking in boiling water.

There is nothing better than a mouthful of clean-tasting buckwheat noodles with a little bit of ponzu and bright cilantro and spicy scallions.