pizza on the go

The phrase "kill two birds with one stone" is common-place nowadays. However, have you ever heard of that phrase being used in connection with cooking?

Recently, I have been watching the programme "Sugar" on Asian Food Channel on cable television. The pastry chef would usually show the audience how to make two items. The final part of the show is what she calls "switch up" where she uses one of the items that she has already made and creates a 3rd item.

Confused? Let me elaborate. Imagine that you decide to cook some pasta sauce one day. Ordinarily, what would you do with the pasta sauce? Add the sauce to cooked pasta, of course. However, what if the pasta sauce can be used for other purposes? With one pot of pasta sauce, you can create several dishes, such as:-

(a) spaghetti

(b) lasagne

(c) pizza

Aha! Sounds interesting, doesn't it? As we are all busy people, we do not have much time to indulge in cooking. I personally prefer to do the cooking when Da and I have guests over at our home for dinner. I derive a lot of satisfaction from cooking my own meals. However, as I work long hours and my weekends are very precious, I try to be innovative in my cooking. As such, for certain types of food that I cook, I have discovered that I can also do a "switch up" and create more dishes out of the same base dish.

Whenever I am in the "Italian mood" and I cook a meal with an Italian theme, depending on the size of the dinner party, my typical dinner menu would include:-

(a) home-made garlic bread - I make my own garlic spread. When time permits, I make my own bread as well.

(b) spaghetti with tomato based sauce - I prefer to cook the pasta sauce from scratch using tomato paste and tomato puree. If, however, I am rushed for time, I will use a pasta sauce as a base.

(c) lasagne - I use the pasta sauce to make the lasagne.

(d) finger food - eg. baked chicken nuggets, etc.

(e) fresh salad - Da makes an excellent salad dressing using olive oil, apple cider vinegar, honey, mixed herbs and lime / lemon juice.

(f) pizza - I use the pasta sauce as the topping for the pizza. If time permits, I would prefer to make the pizza base using a recipe that my friend, SC, gave me.

For my pizza-on-the-go, I will use a Mediterranean pizza base. I find that this pizza base tastes like pita and does not have the thick flour-like taste that you find in commercially prepared pizza bases.

What you need to do is to spread some of the pasta sauce (with the ingredients, of course) onto the pizza base. Add a generous amount of grated mozarella cheese and grated cheddar cheese on top of the pizza and sprinkle a liberal amount of bacon bits. Bake the pizza in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes or until the cheese melts.

The pizza-on-the-go is a sure winner with little kids and the not-so-little-kids.