The easiest way to make Pizza

Is it Saturday night and you forgot to buy some ingredients to make your own pizza, and no local take away pizza fully satisfies your taste?
Ok then, forget dough, flour, yeast etc and all that mess. You don’t need them…
Instead, you can use your off bread loaf or sandwich slices or buns or even rusks!

Ingredients (for 4 persons)

500 grams /17 oz grated cheese (any type you got)
200 ml Jim Dell’s pizza sauce* or tomato juice or ketchup
500 grams /17 oz of sliced bacon or ham or salami or pepperoni or sliced sausages (or… if you like, you can combine all these and make a mix, it depends on what you got in your refrigerator)
200 grams/ 7 oz of green peppers (or red or yellow… any type you got, non-hot) sliced in thin rings.
300 grams / 10 oz canned or fresh chopped mushrooms
A pinch of oregano

Tip: these ingredients are optional, if you prefer you can use any other ingredient such as sardines, pineapple, corn, sliced tomatoes, olives or prawns…

Method

For bread loafs: cut the loaf horizontally in 3 long slices
For sandwich buns: cut the buns horizontally in half
For rusks: wet them down lightly before you use them.

Spread Jim Dell’s Pizza Sauce or ketchup (or tomato juice with some oregano, black pepper and salt) on the sliced bread, buns, slices, rusks etc. Then, cover the sauce with the half (250 grams/ 8.5 oz) of the grated cheese. Add, all the cold meat (scattered here and there), mushrooms, pepper rings and any other stuff you like. Cover with the rest of the grated cheese. Bake for 10 min in a pre-heated oven at 420 degree F / 220 degree Celsius.

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* Jim Dell’s Pizza Sauce
In a small saucepan add 200 ml tomato juice, 3 tsp of oil, 1 tsp salt, 1/3 tsp black pepper, ½ tsp oregano, 15-20 drops of Tabasco®, or your tabasco-style hot sauce, or 1/3 tsp boukovo. Stir well and simmer the sauce for 10 min.

Now tell me, is there any easiest way to make pizza at home?

Rent the best movie you can find, get some cool beers and enjoy!

Make your own tabasco-style sauce at home!

This was my family’s secret for yeas but now it’s time to be revealed…

Ingredients:
-3.2 pounds of red hot peppers (any type, but i would recommend chili or thai)
-21 fl oz vinegar
-2 teaspoons salt
-2 teaspoons sugar

Method:
Put on a pair of rubber gloves (and I also recommend a doctor’s mask) open the window and place the peppers in a blender with some white vinegar(1-2 oz is ok). Don't place the whole stuff in the blender. Instead, try to blend the peppers by 1 pound each time.

Find a large bottle, able to contain aprox. 1,30 gallons and fill it with the “red hot pulp” you' ve just created, using a funnel. Fill the one third of the bottle. Fill the rest of the bottle with the rest white vinegar and leave a space of 2 inches from the bottle’s mouth (for 3 pounds of peppers you need 21 ounces of vinegar). Add salt and sugar.

Seal the bottle with wax and place it in dark, dry place at least for 2 years (I recommend to stick a label with the production date on it, so that you will know when you are going to open it.


Straining the hot stuff (2 years later...)

Use an alight candle to melt the wax seal and open the cap. Use a metal strainer to strain the pulp in a jug or jar. Do not try to strain it in another bottle at once, because the pulp is too thick and the thin red liquid will overflow the bottle externally. Ok, now you' ve got the HOT sauce you dreamed off.


Tip:

Do not throw away the strained pulp. You can keep it in a jar in your refrigerator to spice any food you prefer hot. It's very hot, so be careful with the quantities.

Cheers!

Spicy Chicken with rice

This is a very simple recipe and takes just half an hour to prepare a delicious, filling and impressive meal. A nonstick frying pan is essential.

Ingredients (for 2 persons)

2 chicken breasts
1 cup of parboiled rice
1 tablespoon of olive oil (or any oil you commonly use)
Salt, pepper, oregano and boukovo


Method for the Chicken

Chop each chicken breast in 4 slices so that you got 8 slices in total.
Salt and pepper the slices. Add a pinch of oregano and a teaspoon of boukovo.
Put a tablespoon of oil into the nonstick pan and wait for 3-4 min to get heated. Wiggle lightly the pan so that the oil to cover the whole pan surface.
Place the slices in the pan

--Tip1: when placing each slice, try to dip it in a small amount of oil that already is in the pan surface

Fry the chicken from both sides using a wooden ladle and after 15 to 20 minutes it will be ready.

--Tip 2: to make the meat getting a nice red color you can pour 1.5 ounce of water while the frying the chicken. This will cause steam to rise and will give instantly a nice red color to the chicken.

Method for the rice

Use a sauce pan and ad 22 ounces of water. Wait until it reaches the boiling point. Add a teaspoon of chicken (or vegetable) powder base or 1 chicken (or vegetable) cube base (alternatively you can you a teaspoon of salt, a pinch of pepper and a pinch of curry powder (if you got some). Put the rice inside and boil it for 20 min. (You can prepare this cooking at the time you place the chicken in the pan, and so you will have the rice ready at the same time with the chicken)

You can serve it as I suggest you in the photo above…

Good appetite… yum-yum…

What is “Boukovo”?

Boukovo (perhaps the origin of the name is Bulgarian) is the spicy, very hot, flake powder made from hot red peppers (usually hot Thai peppers that Greeks call “tsuska”, but you can use any type of red HOT pepper). Boukovo is very popular in the Balkan countries and people there use it very often to spice soups, sausages, meat and casserole dishes.

How to make your own Boukovo if you cannot find it at the spice/herb store

First of all you will need 4 to 5 pounds of well dried red hot peppers. You can dry the peppers by placing them in thread chain. Take a needle with thread and sew the peppers one by one from the calyx (or the area between the calyx and the pedicle). Pass about 40 to 50 pieces in each chain. Then, hang the chains in place with a lot of sunlight and fresh air. After two months you’ll get a lot of well dried peppers.

Put on a pair of rubber gloves (and I also recommend a doctor’s mask) open the window and place the dried peppers in a plastic bag. Then start to crumble them in small flakes as I show you in the photo above.

That’s it! Remove the calices and the pedicles and place the “red hot snow” in jar with an airtight cap.

Good Hunting!

Make your Tabasco style sauce at home

Pasta "Inferna"

Well this is one of my favourites "made-easy" recipes and my family loves it. It's very hot though, so it's recomended only for the bold ones...


Ingredients

-Any type of pasta

-Fresh pepper or/and onion (Chopped in thin slices)

-Fresh hot (green or red) pepper (any type) or Boukovo (?) (Boukovo is the result of crumbling dried red hot peppers)

-500 gr. Tomato juice, or minced tomatoes or at least ketchup...

-400 gr. Fresh mushrooms (chopped in thin slices) or 240 gr (drained) canned ones

-Salt, pepper and oregano

Alternative
If you haven't got any mushrooms or even onion or fresh peppers you can use sliced ham, or bacon to give extra taste to the sauce!

Method

1. Put some funy/joyful music on your stereo system! Remember Cooking means to have FUN!
2. Cook any type of pasta (spaghettini, linguini, penne, farfale, pennette, fusilli, rigatoni etc) in the way I advise you in the blog entry "Boiling Pasta Secret"
3. In a saucepan, saute the chopped onions, fresh (non-hot) peppers, fresh hot peppers and mushrooms, until they get shrinked and red (not black which means that they are carbonized he he..)

4. Pour the tomato juice or minced tomatoes (or 200 gr of Ketchup with 200 gr water)

5. Add Boukovo (1 spoonful) or 1 teaspoonful of Tabasco sauce, 1 spf of salt, some black pepper and oregano.

6. Boil the sauce for 15 min.

AND THAT' S ALL! Good appetite and Fun!

The basic elements...

The most basic elements in easy cooking are pasta, tomato sauce, onions, peppers, milk cream, chilli peppers, salt, pepper, oregano, olive oil, mushrooms and IMAGINATION!