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I have Papa John’s on speed dial. Their store is a mere two blocks from my house, so I can even avoid the tip and delivery fee by sending my boyfriend to pick it up. I’ll be honest; at times, there is more than one Papa John’s box waiting to be recycled at my home. When the house is a mess, the cats won’t stop yowling, my partner is working late, and work just sucked, all I want is pizza.
Pizza’s been my comfort food for a long time. When I was little, the Totino’s party pizzas were a freezer staple. As I got older, I made the homemade Chef Boyardee pizza kits every few weeks. In college, my roommate and I ordered Papa John’s about once a week, and any time either of us had a paper due, a bad exam, a fight with a friend, or a breakup. More recently, I make pretty much every pizza that Pioneer Woman posts (they’re all good). Pizza is the go-to.
Focaccia pizza isn’t as easy as dialing Papa John’s, but it’s a lot easier than making a dough, letting it rise, and teasing it out. It’s basically a two-step process (make sauce, then make pizza), and it feeds the need for carbs and cheese quite nicely.
Focaccia Pizza
Serves 2 generously, 4-6 as an appetizer
You will need:
1 loaf focaccia bread
Olive oil
1 can crushed tomatoes (I recommend Hunt’s or Miur Glen, or you can use jarred pizza or marinara sauce)
I clove garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
Mozzarella, shredded
Toppings of your choice
Preheat the oven to 450. Slice the loaf of focaccia in half lengthwise and brush with olive oil. Toast the bread briefly in the oven, without letting it get too brown.
Meanwhile, heat 1 tbsp. olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the can of tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste, and stir to combine. Reduce at least ten minutes.
Top focaccia with sauce, shredded mozzarella, and toppings of your choice. Bake for 5-10 minutes (cooking times will vary according to your cheese and how long you toasted your bread previously) or until the cheese is melted and golden brown. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese, if desired.
With bacon.
With chopped olives.
Topped with fresh basil.
Spiced up with red pepper flakes.
Add sauteed mushrooms.
Add half a chopped onion.
On penne, topped with mozzarella, and broiled.
Blended smooth and served with angel hair.
Using cherry tomatoes instead of canned.
These are just some of the ways I’ve customized and tweaked this very basic pasta recipe. Pasta with tomato sauce is a regular in my house. It comes together quickly, measures out well, and depending on our hunger level, either leaves lunch for tomorrow or leave no leftovers at all. Also, except for the pot you boil the pasta in, it’s a one-pot meal you can prepare with ingredients you have on hand.
Pasta Pomodoro
Serves 2
You will need:
1/2 lb. dry pasta (your choice; this dish works equally well with shorter and longer pastas)
1-2 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 14-oz can diced or crushed tomatoes (I recommend Hunt’s or Miur Glen)
1 pinch sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese, for serving
Prepare the pasta according to package directions.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When the oil shimmers, add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the can of tomatoes, sugar, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine. Let reduce at least ten minutes.
When pasta is ready, place pasta directly into sauce pan. Toss the pasta in the sauce and continue to stir for one minute. Serve immediately, topping servings with freshly grated parmesan cheese.
Photo by Christian Cable, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
There’s a satisfaction in making a dish that gets your hands dirty. For these meals, which I can never seem to make without getting every bowl and plate in the house dirty, I find it easiest to start with a clean house. When the kitchen, living room, and dining room are straightened and ready, it feels like cheating to literally beat a meal into submission, sling it through egg and flour and oil, and then serve it with wine and candles.
Tonkatsu, a Japanese dish of thin, breaded, and fried pork loin, is one such dish.
I’ve been making tonkatsu for several years, and I learn something new every time. First, any cut of boneless pork seems to work well, but I generally choose a boneless pork loin. Second, pounding the pork with a meat mallet until it’s quite thin will reap huge rewards in tenderness and taste. Third, using the spiky end of the meat mallet only increases your pounding dividends. Finally, the oil should be quite hot before you fry the tonkatsu, else the tonkatsu will overcook and lose its tenderness.
Tonkatsu is traditionally served with a mustard sauce (a quick Google search of tonkatsu sauce will yield you plenty of combinations to try), but I prefer to use the spicy soy sauce I make for Chinese dumplings. If you’d like to try some spice with your pork, combine equal parts soy sauce and rice wine vinegar (about a quarter cup each) with a dash of sesame oil, half a teaspoon of red chili paste, and one clove of minced garlic in a saucepan. Simmer until hot and fragrant, and serve on the side.
Tonkatsu
Serves 2
Note: The roasted Japanese sweet potatoes make a lovely accompaniment to this dish, as does roasted broccoli, seasoned with red pepper flakes. a
You will need:
2 boneless pork loins
Salt and pepper
Flour, for dredging
1 egg, beaten
Panko flakes
Vegetable oil, for frying
Heat about 1” vegetable oil in a deep saucepan over medium-high heat. (Cover to make it heat more rapidly.)
Pound both chops with the business end of a meat mallet until they are quite thin. Season both sides with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour. Dip both sides in beaten egg, and coat well with panko flakes.
When oil is hot (the end of a wooden spoon, when dipped in the oil, will bubble immediately), place the panko-crusted pork into the pot. Cook until both sides are golden brown, and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. It is best to do the pork chops one at a time.
Slice each chop into thin trips. Serve over sushi rice and alongside the dipping sauce of your choice.
“Do you want to rethink that necklace?”
My 16-year-old self looks down. I’m wearing heeled boots, jeans with some sort of design on the back pockets, a form-fitting top, a bracelet on each hand, shiny, dangling earrings, and the requisite too much eye makeup. And some sort of baubly necklace.
This was not the first time my mother gently (ha) encouraged me to tone it down. Like all young women, I became overexcited at the prospect of dressing up, growing up, being paid attention to. I fit in with my friends well, most of whom wore similar amounts of too much. We all felt that if one necklace was good, three was better.
Something similar happens to me with roasted vegetables. If a potato tossed in salt + pepper + olive oil and then roasted in a pan produces that sought-for exterior crispness and interior tender savoriness, then adding extra herbs, spices, and oils to the mix can only lead to improved taste!
And then my boyfriend brings home a Japanese sweet potato. This potato, long and thin with thick purple skin and surprisingly white flesh, begged me not to abuse it. I briefly considered drowning him in some sort of honey-miso-chile glaze, or mashing him with ginger.
“Do you want to rethink that?” the sweet potato scolded me. Curiosity about what this mysterious vegetable tasted like before he’d been accessorized into submission won out. I sliced him into wedges (skin on, always), tossed him with salt + pepper + olive oil, and roasted him for about 20 minutes at 450. He tasted wonderful—like a better version of his orange cousin—and I’ll never again try to make him any other way again.
Roasted Japanese Sweet Potatoes
Serves 2
Note: This technique works for pretty much any root vegetable— sweet potato, regular potato, new potato, turnip, carrot, etc. It also produces great results for asparagus, broccoli, and tomatoes. For non-root vegetables, just adjust the cooking time and keep an eye on them.
You will need:
1 1/2 lb. Japanese sweet potato (or 1/2-1 lb. other vegetable)
2 tbsp. olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 425. Wash sweet potato well, and cut into 1 1/2” wedges. On a baking sheet, toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for 15-25 minutes, checking for tenderness with a fork. (I’ve found roasting times vary greatly depending on the density of the vegetable and whether I’m also cooking something on the stove.)
These potatoes make a great side to pork tonkatsu or roasted chicken.
When Handsome and I had just started dating, he clued me into the miracle that is Tillamook cheddar cheese. Tillamook, which comes in medium, sharp, and extra sharp varieties, melts well over nachos, tastes great on its own, and happens to make the best grilled cheese ever. This cheese is not expensive, and over the past several years I have seen it show up in more grocery stores. My local HEB grocery store carries it for about $5 a pound, give or take, and it keeps well in a ziploc bag in the fridge.
Our hometown grocery store has a “Good and Grainy” variety of bread that also makes the perfect grilled cheese, and I always forget to stock up when I go home. Alas, I have not been able to find a sufficient approximation in my current locale, but the nine grain bread made by my local grocery store does the trick just fine.
I also have a trick for keeping my bread fresh, as I don’t eat bread that often. I keep my bread in the freezer, properly sealed, all the time. The bread melts on the skillet, and the thawing bread also gives your cheese more time to melt.
I understand the appeal of a good ole Wonderbread and Kraft singles sandwich. It hearkens back to childhood memories of grilled cheese and tomato soup, and it has its place (particularly when the eater is about eleven years old). I’m an adult now, and my grilled cheese has grown up as well.
Growing up is hard, though. I frequently get overexcited and set the burner to a higher heat than is appropriate for my grown-up grilled cheese, resulting in either burned bread or cheese that hasn’t melted. No fun. But when I do it right, this grilled cheese stands up well to dunking in tomato soup or serving alongside a simple snack. It also makes a quick and easy snack.
A word about the bread: A grainy bread adds a nice nuttiness to the sandwich, but will completely overpower milder cheeses. If you get ambitious and decide to do a caprese salad-style sandwich, for example, you will want to change the bread you use as mozzarella will disappear behind a flavorful bread. Trust me, I’ve tried.
If you are counting calories, too, you can easily substitute olive oil for butter, or use half the butter and a drizzle of oil. Tastes great!
Grown-Up Grilled Cheese
You will need:
2 slices whole-grain bread per sandwich
1 pat of butter per sandwich
Several slices of cheese, to taste
Heat a small skillet on medium heat. Place the butter in the skillet to melt it; when melted (you can let it brown– browned butter is delicious!), swirl it around in the pan.
Meanwhile, slice the cheese. I use the sides of my box grater, but a knife would work fine. Cover one slice of bread with the cheese, place the bread (bread side down!) on the skillet, and top with the other slice of bread.
Use a spatula to press down on the sandwich, allowing the bread to soak up all that delicious butter. Then, leave it alone for a few minutes. You want the skillet to be no hotter than medium, even though it takes longer, so the cheese melts properly; this will take 3-5 minutes per side. When the first side is done (all crispy and brown), flip the sandwich over and do the other side.
When done, cut the sandwich into triangles and consume. Triangles, people. Triangles.
If you must cut the sandwich into something other than triangles, I will allow you to cut it into small squares, to serve as croutons in a bowl of tomato soup. You must seek my written permission first, however.
Handsome and I keep going back to this pasta. It’s a great, simple base for so many dishes. I’ve had success adding broccoli, peas, zucchini, tomato paste, shrimp, and chicken to it, but it’s also fabulously comforting on its own.
The key to this pasta dish is “the spice,” as we call it in my house. Handsome brought home a packet of spices from Italy when he was on a business trip, and we’ve been working through it ever since. The mixture is made up of dried parsley, dried chopped garlic, and dried chili flakes. I don’t know the exact proportions, so when we run out of this packet I’ll be guessing until I get it right! (Or sending Handsome back to Italy.) It’s also important to use good olive oil and good parmesan in this dish; I’ve tried to make it with less good ingredients, but since there are only four ingredients, using substandard ones is really noticeable.
Pasta with Oil and Spices (serves two)
1/2 pound pasta (I usually use linguine or spaghetti)
Olive oil, once around the pan
Two pinches of “spice” (mixture of dried parsley, dried garlic, and dried chili flakes)
Finely grated parmesan cheese, to taste
Boil the pasta in salted water until al dente. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil over medium low heat in a skillet and, when the pasta is close to done, add the spice to the oil. When the pasta is done, drain it in a colander and transfer it to the skillet with the oil and spice. Toss the pasta in the oil and spice. Plate it up, top with parmesan, and enjoy!
Tip: If you choose to add veggies or meat to your pasta, then sautee the veggies extra ingredients in olive oil and spice (add an extra pinch of spice) and remove them from heat until the pasta is done. When your extra ingredients are done, remove from the heat until the pasta is done. Toss the pasta and the other ingredients in oil and spice, and proceed as usual.
