Quote:
Originally Posted by ET2SN
Spinach is under rated as a topping.
Not really as a traditional topping, but layered under the cheese.  |
Not underrated by me, I swear it! Its my second-most liked topping. But:
Handling fresh spinach is not fun in the kitchen, you need a huge volume of it to get a tiny small amount once it has crumbled in the pan, pot, heat, whatever. You need to clean it, there is always two or three tablespoons of sand escaping the cleaning in water, it seems, and your teeth then let you know. Its voluminous. No, handling fresh spinach in the kitchen I find not entertaining. I hate it.
Here in Germany, I preferred to buy spinach as frozen blocks, but the last manufacturer selling frozen
full leaves of spinach has stopped doing so: he still calls it "full leaves spinach" on the box, but in fact he now, like all producers, cuts it into a titsy-tiny mess so that it has the consistence of smashed potatoes. Its
pesto that way, while the box shows photos of full and complete leaves. Its betrayal, when I think of it. I wonder if this is a Geman thing only, or if it is like this in other countries, too...? Anyway, its stupid.
It also has ruined a Chinese recipe I love to do where full leaves spinach is fried in a Wok-pan with oil, onion, ginger, chicken broth, soy sauce and sherry, but it does not work with "pesto spinacci", it worked fantastic with frozen full leaves spinach. With fresh leaves you initially do not need a wok, you need a
bathing tub.
On pizza, I used to have spinachi in high quantity, together with feta cheese (lots), and after baking: garlic in oil (also lots of it, 3-4 claws per pizza). Its the only pizza where I use garlic. Thats a heavy and dense and wet topping, and the dough needs to be thicker to not stay with the consistency of a greasy soft cheese. Or you indeed put just a few single leaves on the pizza, and they burn into flakes of ashes in no time and they add neither arome nor taste nor anything else to the pizza - thats wat they serve me here in town as pizza spinacci then, and demand a higher price due to the "expensive" spinach and increased workload, and feta they have not on it, too. Its a rip off. Pizza with 6 or 7 flakes of ashes. Great. Generous.
So,
I love pizza spinacci, but only in a special way, and topping as rich as the topping for Margerita is spartane, and with garlic and feta and olive oil. A storng dough is needed, due to the lots of topping on this one (usually I avoid overloading pizzas, but not here). Margerita and spinach pizza are the two tests by which I test every pizza restaurant I still dare to try out these days. Usually the experience is very sobering. Preparing that pizza myself I do not do often, the failure rate is significantly higher than with others if using frozen spinach (and pressing the water out after it thawed, my preferred way of preparing any spinach for any purpose). And that full leaf-spinacch frozen that I want, I do not get anymore, as explained.
Now you know why there are no photos of spinach pizza.
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BTW, if somebody wonders on how I gte the slightly blackened crust on the pizza's rim, when I put the dough disc on the hot stone, before closing the oven I use a thick, soft brush with just water to wet the outer rim, and then, between fingerstips like you do with salt, I have some flour or semola distributed on that rim, just a tiny bit. The heat then burns it to ashes, and thats the visual effect you see. I work faster than a lightning strikes when doing that, so that I do not loose all the heat in the open oven. The water-on-the-dough-trick also is done with bread baking, if a certain type of crust is wanted. Sometimes egg white is put on a bread, too, to make the crust shiny. The same effect can be acchieved by using open fire on the rim after baking, like they do with creme brulée to get the surface caramelised, but it takes time to work your round around the pizza after baking with a lighter. I do the first
because of the characteristics of the oven I use, its construction reminds a bit of a waffle iron. A real pizza oven with its typical temperatures and open fire of course would not need that, but when the cover in mine is closed, it depends on the dough'S type and thickness whether or not it rises to the exact height it needs so that the heating elements in the top can really darken it, or stays low enough to escape that fate, then it is still kind of crispy, but pale, white. The dough in this kind of oven should be not fully covering the round stone, because then it touches the closed lid, and the lid burns a pitchblack ring into it then. The hot air must circulate around the disc from the sides, and so when the stone has a diameter of 30cm, typical for these kind of ovens, make the disc not bigger than 27 cm - and center it right! - As I said, this all is owed to the oven construction, and if you have a better oven, you can completely ignore it. You then would instead turn the disc once or twice during the baking time, so that the fire in the oven covers not just one part of the rim, but all. Thats what the pizza shovels with these very small blades are for: turning the pizza in the oven.
