Baby Arugula Salad with Grilled Peaches and Strawberries

If you're making this pizza, this salad almost makes itself. If you're not making a grilled peach pizza, you need to (a) think carefully and deeply about why you would deny yourself such indescribable happiness and (b) decide to make one after all. But let's say your flour has been abducted by muffin-obsessed aliens and it's a national holiday and your neighbors have locked their doors and shuttered their windows in a selfish strategy to hoard all their own flour for their own grilled pizzas and they've removed the ladder that used to go up to your Plan B secret entrance on their second floor so you really, really, really can't make any pizza. None at all.

In that case, you are allowed to make this salad without its grilled pizza accompaniment. Note that you can use just peaches or just strawberries or both, depending on what the aliens have left you. And sorry about the aliens. And the paranoid flour-hoarding neighbors. Especially if I'm one of them.

Ingredients
2-3 handfuls baby arugula
Olive oil
1 handful of strawberries, halved lengthwise and sliced
Half a peach, or two halves, grilled and sliced
A couple slices of prosciutto, torn or cut into pieces or strips (optional)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 pinches chopped fresh rosemary, or more to taste
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar, simmered until volume reduces by half

Toss the arugula in enough olive oil to coat very lightly, sprinkle in a pinch of rosemary, then arrange on salad plates. Top with the fruit and add prosciutto here and there if desired. Sprinkle with another pinch of rosemary, a pinch of salt, and some freshly ground pepper, and drizzle with balsamic reduction.

Serves 2.

Grilled Pizza with Peaches and Prosciutto

I am, at present, approximately 37 parts ecstatic to 2 parts distraught. C'est la vie, you will say, if you are prone to saying things in French while browsing online—it's happiness and sadness, the yin and the yang, the pot and the kettle—you can't have one without the other. But I maintain that, had someone informed me earlier that you can grill pizza, the two parts distraught could have been entirely avoided.

As it is, I am left to bask happily in the warm grilled glow of warm grilled pizza, smiling dazedly in delight, planning future multitudes of grilled pizza evenings...while heroically trying to overcome the terrible knowledge of the lost opportunities of ungrilled pizzas past.

If you'd care to join me, I'll be jubilantly drowning my sorrows in a slice of grilled pizza. Did I mention? It's possibly probably the most amazing thing on earth.

Bonus: For almost no additional work, you can throw together a mouthwatering side salad using some of the leftover pizza ingredients if you set aside a bit extra. (Just grill two peaches instead of one, set aside a couple extra handfuls of baby arugula and a little extra chopped rosemary, and reduce 4 tbsp of balsamic vinegar rather than 3—then follow the recipe here).

Ingredients
Crust:
1 tsp dry active yeast
1/2 cup warm water (about 110 degrees F)
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp stone-ground whole wheat bread flour
3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp plus one pinch salt
3 pinches chopped fresh rosemary leaves (2-3 sprigs)
2 pinches lemon zest (grated on a microplane, else very finely minced)
Coarsely-ground cornmeal
Olive oil for brushing

Top:
1 small clove garlic, pressed
4 oz grated Monterey jack cheese
A little grated parmesan
2 oz prosciutto
1 peach, halved along the seam, cut side dipped lightly in granulated sugar, and grilled
2 handfuls baby arugula, divided
Pinch chopped rosemary
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Black pepper to top (optional)

Follow the instructions in this recipe to prepare the pizza dough (or use store-bought dough if you must, but making your own is easier than you think, way healthier, and deeply delectable).

After you grill the peaches, leave your grill set on high. Let the peach halves cool for a few minutes, then slice fairly thinly.

Meanwhile, heat 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar in a small pot over medium-low heat. Simmer until volume is reduced by half, then remove from the heat and set aside. Make sure the rest of the toppings are prepared and ready to go, so that you can top the pizza quickly (the cheese needs to melt from the heat of the grilled crust).

Sprinkle a wooden cutting board with cornmeal. Take the pizza dough out of the bowl and gently form a ball, then place on the cutting board and begin gently pressing and stretching it outward to form a flat pancake. You want to end up with a flat disc that's about 12" in diameter.

Lightly flour a rimless cookie sheet, pizza peel, or one of those flexible plastic cutting boards. Flip the disk of pizza dough onto it so the cornmeal side is facing up.

Ball up a paper towel tightly, dip it in olive oil, and use tongs to wipe it across the grill.* Slide the pizza (cornmeal side up) onto the oiled grill and close the lid. Grill for 2-3 minutes, until the crust bubbles on the top. When it starts to bubble, lift up one side of the crust to check underneath for grill marks; when the grill marks are dark brown or starting to blacken, slide back onto the cookie sheet or pizza peel or a wooden cutting board (don’t use the plastic one now that the pizza is hot).

Working quickly, flip the pizza cornmeal side down (so that the grilled side is face up). Brush lightly with olive oil and rub with the garlic. Sprinkle with cheese, then layer with prosciutto and peaches. Scatter a handful of arugula over the top, and sprinkle with a pinch of chopped rosemary.

Turn the heat down slightly and return the pizza to the grill for 3-4 minutes, covered, until the prosciutto just starts to curl and the bottom of the pizza looks toasty and brown (it will start to blacken in a few spots as well).

Remove with the pizza peel or cookie sheet, slide onto a wooden cutting board, slice with a pizza slicer, and drizzle with balsamic reduction. Scatter another handful of arugula over the top, sprinkle lightly with freshly ground black pepper, and serve hot.

Serves 2.

*This trick and most of the know-how for pizza grilling courtesy of the instructions here.

Grilled Peach Salad with Rosemary Vinaigrette

We took a cooking class at our co-op recently and finally learned how to grill peaches. This is important, because as far as we can tell, there was Life Before Grilled Peaches and then there is now. (Now is decidedly better, as time periods go. We have thought carefully about this, while a breeze scented with caramelized peaches wafts from the grill, and while gazing at grilled peaches, and while eating them. Mouths full, hyperventilating slightly from the big gulps of peach-scented air, we say to each other "Mrahmaba gralled pashas." And it's true. Gralled pashas are certainly mrahmaba. Just make some. You'll see.)

Here is what you do: Find some peaches that are ripe but fairly firm -- they should be fragrant, yielding a bit to pressure from your thumb, but not yet very soft. Cut each one in half along the seam (which I'm sure is not what it's actually called on a fruit, but you know what I mean). Remove the pit.

Preheat your grill to 500 degrees.* Set each peach half cut-side down in a plate of sugar, then lay face up on a plate or cutting board (or sprinkle the cut side with a little sugar, if you prefer to use a bit less). This helps the peaches caramelize later on the grill.

When the grill is hot, brush with olive oil, and place each peach half cut-side down, oriented so that the grill marks will go crosswise (perpendicular to where the seam was). Grill for 5-7 minutes until there are golden grill marks along the underside. To prevent the peaches from sticking, you can move them back and forth just a bit every couple minutes (so that they slide along the grooves of the grill marks, rather than making new marks).

Remove the peaches from the grill and let cool for a few minutes, then slice into wedges (parallel to where the seam was). You can grill these an hour or two ahead of when you want to use them, but don't slice till just before you serve (the slices get a little brown if they sit for too long).

Use to top a salad. This recipe is especially good for when you have guests and want to serve something that looks fancy but is actually pretty easy to throw together. It is also good for when you don't have guests and want to eat lots of grilled peaches.

Ingredients
Vinaigrette:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
1/2 tsp minced fresh rosemary leaves
Pinch salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 lb mixed baby greens (or sub baby arugula if you want a bit more of a kick to it), washed and dried well in a salad spinner
1 oz mild goat cheese (e.g., North Valley Farms Chevre)
2 tbsp sliced almonds, toasted (scatter in a pan over medium heat on the stovetop and toast for a few minutes, shaking from time to time, until golden brown and fragrant.)
2 peaches, grilled and sliced as above

Whisk the oil and vinegar together to form an emulsion, then stir in the rest of the vinaigrette ingredients. Drizzle about three-quarters of the dressing over the baby greens and toss well to coat the leaves.

Serve in a big bowl or on individual salad plates. Crumble the goat cheese over the top, sprinkle with almonds, and top with the grilled peaches. Drizzle the remaining vinaigrette over the peaches, and serve.

Serves 4.


*You can also do this in a grill pan, which is what our cooking instructor did, and she had it on medium heat.

Quick and Classy: Fruit-Filled Melon

After our melon with moscato, it was really only a matter of time before we started dunking more fruit into wine. The arrival of miniature honeydew melons in our CSA box gave us the perfect excuse to try again, this time with late season peaches from Ikeda's and some leftover anise hyssop from the produce box. You could use pretty much any fruit here, or even just a different color melon.

Ingredients
A smallish melon, halved
Peaches, peeled and cut into pieces
Moscato or another sweet dessert wine (or champagne -- just don't let it soak so long that it goes flat)
Anise hyssop, chiffonade (optional)

Fill the melon with peaches, then pour moscato over. Refrigerate during dinner to let the wine soak into the fruit a little, then garnish with anise hyssop and serve.

Nectarines with Anise Hyssop and Moscato Drizzle

If you ever find yourself within reach of some fresh anise hyssop, grab it and make this. Anise hyssop, as we discovered this week after finding it in our CSA box, turns out to be an herb that tastes remarkably like those little sugar-coated fennel seeds often found in Indian restaurants. You might find it at a farmer's market, growing in your garden already (it has pretty purple flowers), or nestled between two other things you've never seen before in your own produce box.

Ingredients
Nectarines (could substitute peaches), pits removed and sliced into wedges
Moscato (a current favorite is Trader Joe's Late Harvest 2009)
Fresh anise hyssop (2-3 leaves per nectarine)

Arrange the nectarines on a plate. Make a chiffonade from the anise hyssop: tightly roll the leaves and then slice the roll into thin ribbons. Sprinkle over the fruit, drizzle lightly with about one spoonful of Moscato per nectarine, garnish with anise hyssop flowers, and serve.

Goes well with a glass of Moscato or a cup of fresh mint and anise hyssop tea (just steep a handful of leaves in hot water for a few minutes before pouring).