Re: Aaj kya pakaaya/khaaya
Chicken Pizza Recipe;
Ingredients (for dough):
4 cups plain white all-purpose flour
1 tablespooon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup of room temperature whole milk
1 egg
1/3 cup of oil (canola/vegetable oil)
1 packet of dry yeast
a little bit of water (for yeast & during making of dough)
- Take salt and flour and sift together.
- Take a small bowl, put the yeast in it and add a little bit of warm water to it. Mix to combine and make sure yeast is dissolved in water. Cover and set to the side.
- In a separate bowl, mix egg, milk, oil and sugar together. Whisk lightly to combine.
- Take the flour and make a well in the center, add yeast mixture to the bottom and cover with the egg/milk/oil mixture. Knead the dough adding water when it feels too dry. The end consistency should be soft and springy and there shouldn’t be lumps of dough in the overall mixture. It should be smooth.
- Take a plastic bag and put the ball of dough inside it, leaving room for the dough to rise. Place the bag in the oven or the microwave (somewhere slightly warmer/closed off). Leave dough for 3-4 hours (the longer the better). It should be nicely risen and airy.
To assemble the pizza, just knead the dough out until it’s easier to work with and fit into circular pizza pan. Before placing it in the pan, use margarine or butter to grease the entire pan. Once the dough is in place, poke it all around with a fork and let it sit while you cut up your toppings etc.
Toppings I used:
onion
green bell pepper
tomato
mushrooms (please, none of the canned stuff!)
chicken
For the chicken, I simply cooked chicken breast cut into cubes with my favorite spices (crushed red pepper flake, steak spice, salt, pepper, dash of oregano). If you wanted it to be more desi in flavor you could marinate the chicken cubes with your favorite tandoori recipe and use that. Either way works fine.
A lot of people make their own pizza sauce, but I usually cheat on that part bcos I find home-made pizza sauce just doesn’t taste the same. I’ve been using an organic brand I found recently, but Contadina (sp?) makes a great pizza sauce as well. If you really wanted to make it all homemade: tomato paste, garlic/onion powder, fresh basil if available, or Italian seasoning, water, finely diced garlic and tomato, whisk together (add more water or tomato paste to your liking for consistency), simmer for a bit and let cool before covering dough with it.
Assemble (I know, it’s common-sense but I’m being tedious haha):
Pizza sauce
sprinkling of mozzarella
all your toppings
loads of mozarella on top, to cover everything.
Make sure your oven is pre-heated at about 450, place the pizza inside. Generally, when the bottom of the pizza is golden brown it’s done. I’d say it takes about 15-20 minutes for that. Let the cheese become less white as well (if you prefer) and voila! Pizza is done. =)
The samosas are also home-made but I’d have to ask my mom for the recipe haha.