French food focus-About living and cooking in rural France,recipes,lifestyle,comments

FRENCH FOOD FOCUS Latest Post Other Posts Recent Older Truffles Cassoulet Index of Recipes L inks House Sitters FiFi About me About 'My' France Comments to: yankinparisot@gmail.com Archives		Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts concerning life in France and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy. If you have some good recipes or if you want to rave about any great French restaurants this is the place to do it. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France! Click Here to send me a comment
		This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right.
	Pizza on the BBQ! Last night we made pizza on our BBQ. This is great fun when you have a crowd of people around since every body gets to make their very own customized pizza. I learned the technique from our German friend, Hellmouth, in Chicago a number of years ago. He's still the Master pizza maker. Here's the recipe, but bear in mind that it can very according to your own taste & preferences. Use whatever topping you prefer. The wackier the better so long as they taste good. Make a batch of the No Knead bread dough. My standard recipe will make about 4-5 pizza crusts of about 8-10 inches in diameter. You can scale up or down according to how many pizzas you want to make. After the initial 4 hour rise oil your hand well and divide the dough into the appropriate number of more or less equal portions. Cover them & let rise for 30 minutes just as for the regular bread making. Make a good batch of Sauce Bolognaise. Again, the quantity will depend upon the number of pizzas you plan to make. For pizza I usually make the sauce a bit dryer than normal, but this isn't very critical. Now you need to start slicing, grating, chopping & what not to prepare all of your toppings. These can be just about anything you like. Here's a list of what we had last night as an example: Thinly sliced salami. Chorizo Thinly sliced ham Fried lardons Diced green peppers Diced onions Sliced mushrooms Pitter green & black olives Anchovies Sun dried tomatoes Grated Cantal cheese Chopped up Mozzarella cheese Parmesan cheese So, just make up your toppings and put them out for people to use. Get you BBQ very hot! Put out a rolling pin some flour near a flat surface. (we us a large cutting board) Give each guest a ball of dough which they can then roll out thinly. Degree of thinness depending upon taste , but not too thin. Once rolled out the dough goes on the BBQ. If the BBQ is nice & hot it will only take a very few minutes to cook on the grid side. Flip it over using tongs of quick fingers. Now load on the toppings, starting with a thin smear of the Bolognaise sauce followed by whatever they like. Put the cheese on last. Close the BBQ lid & let cook. Again this will not take long. Don't let the crust burn! When done slide directly onto a plate using tongs or the beforementioned quick fingers. Enjoy!! As a finale I usually do a large after pizza pizza. It very simple, but delicious. Just make up a mixture of melted butter lots of chopped garlic & chopped fresh rosemary. Cook the pizza as before just brushing on the mixture after you turn the pizza over. Absolutely delicious! This is a great party dish since everyone has a great time making their very own tailor made pizza. Just don't drink too much before the pizza making as we don't want anybody to get burned. Enjoy!