Witchy Kitchen

Tag: pizza

  • Eclipse Pizza

    Eclipse Pizza

    Who should I summon with my pizza?

    It’s finally here!! It’s #Witchtober, hosted by Fiction Food Café. THAT’S RIGHT WITCHES!! Check out the tag for Witchy recipes from fiction all month long.

    The House of the Devil (2009), written and directed by Ti West, is a bit of a haunted house movie, a bit of a slasher, and a bit of witchy movie rolled in to one. What’s otherwise a basic tropey horror movie gets elevated by it’s full 80s style. From the titles to the soundtrack to the camerawork to the feathered hair and Satanic Panic, this movie feels like the cover of a VC Andrews novel and I loved it.

    An eclipse features heavily in the film, being both the occasion for the final ritual as well as inspiration for the special of the day in the pizza parlor that our final girl Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) and her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig) have lunch. “Eclipse Pie” is detailed on the chalkboard: white sauce, garlic, tomato, olives and feta. I put together such a pie using a few techniques I’ve collected over the years: those for New York pizza dough, white sauce, and deliciously slow-roasted romas that I make all the time and use for everything (you know, salads, pastas, drawing pentagrams). And voila: pizza fit for a demon.

    Eclipse Pizza

    For the white sauce
    From Serious Eats

    • 2 tablespoons olive oil
    • 1 small onion
    • 2 cloves garlic
    • 1/4 cup heavy cream
    • 2 sprigs thyme, chopped
    • salt & pepper

    Heat olive oil. In a food processor, blitz together onion and garlic (alternately you can finely chop both), and cook until softened and most of the moisture has evaporated, being careful not to brown. Add heavy cream and thyme and a pinch of salt & pepper, and cook for a few minutes until reduced and thick. Remove from heat.

    For the tomatoes (slices or sauce)

    • 2 pounds roma tomatoes, trimmed and medium sliced lengthwise
    • 4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
    • olive oil
    • salt & pepper

    Heat oven to 300°. Toss tomatoes and garlic with generous olive oil, salt and pepper, and spread in a single layer in a couple roasting pans or a couple baking sheets. Cook for 1 1/2 hours. They can be used as is, OR if you want to make a sauce for drawing symbols and such, transfer to a food processor and blend with just enough water to get a thick but squirtable consistency. Transfer to a squirt bottle.

    For the pie

    • One New York-style pizza dough (recipe from Serious Eats)
    • white sauce & tomatoes (above)
    • 4 ounces ricotta
    • 4 ounces mozzarella
    • salt & pepper
    • palmful kalamata olives, sliced
    • palmful basil, small chop
    • palmful feta

    Heat oven to 500°

    Grease a pizza peel, stone, or baking sheet, and gently stretch the dough to a 14 inch round. Top with white sauce.

    Mix ricotta and mozzarella, season with salt and pepper, and spread over the pizza. Add olives, basil, feta, and either the whole tomatoes or draw a pentagram (or heart or happy face, whatever).

    Cook for about 15 minutes (start checking at 12) until golden and bubbly. Allow to cool slightly, slice and serve.

    Bonus: Samantha bopping around the spooky house like an 80s music video!

  • Vampire Slayer Pizza

    Vampire Slayer Pizza

    Everyone knows vampires hate garlic, but there’s also this other little piece of mythology that I feel like I’ve heard a couple of times and keep forgetting, which is that if you scatter seeds in front of a vampire’s grave he will be compelled to count them before returning. The Sesame Street Count is based on this myth – ah, ah, ah!

    vampire-slayer-pizza

    For this reason, I made a super garlicky white pizza, but I also threw nigella seeds in the dough (if the garlic doesn’t keep vampires away from my pizza, they’ll at least have to count for awhile before they get a slice).

    Great for date night (um, if your typical date night is making food and watching movies on the couch after the kids go to bed – woo!), just make sure you both eat some!!

    Vampire Slayer Pizza

    For the dough
    Slightly adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance

    • 1 cup warm water
    • 1 packet (.32 oz) rapid rise yeast
    • 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
    • 3 cups flour
    • 1 tsp salt
    • 1 tbsp garlic powder (NOT garlic salt)
    • 1 tbsp nigella seeds (optional)
    • 2 tbsp olive oil

    In a small bowl, combine the water, yeast, and sugar. Wait for ten minutes until is foamy (if it’s not foamy, yeast dead, use new yeast).

    Meanwhile, combine 2 cups of the flour, salt, garlic powder, nigella seeds and olive oil. Add the water and mix until it forms a very sticky dough – dump out onto a well-floured board (or well-floured counter in my case) and knead, adding flour little by little until it comes together, and afterwards a sprinkle here and there if it gets too sticky to handle. Add just enough to keep from going crazy, otherwise the dough will be heavy and dense. Knead for 10 minutes, then roll into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with a tea towel and leave it somewhere like the microwave for an hour.

    For the pizza

    • 2 heads garlic, outer paper removed and the top 1/4 inch cut off
    • olive oil
    • salt & pepper
    • 8 oz burrata (2 4 oz balls) or 4 oz each mozzarella and ricotta
    • parsley and red pepper flakes for garnish

    While dough is rising, heat oven to 375° Drizzle each head of garlic with about a teaspoon of olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Wrap in foil and roast for 45 minutes to an hour, until very soft and golden.

    At this point, retrieve the dough and knead again for a couple minutes and spread onto prepared baking sheet(s) or stone(s) – you can use one large square baking sheet or two smaller circle ones. Let sit 10 minutes or so while you prepare the rest.

    Heat oven to 500°

    Squeeze garlic cloves from their paper, leaving some mashed and some still with some shape. Strew around the dough. Tear burrata into small pieces (or tear mozzarella and use spoonfuls of ricotta) and strew evenly around dough.

    Bake for 12-15 minutes (mine usually takes around 13) until crust is golden and cheese is bubbly. Let cool and serve, sprinkled with parsley and red pepper flakes.