Aspie Insiders Cooking: Homemade Pizza and a Basic Tossed Salad

 
Our Insiders have been cooking for quite some time, building upon their skills and seeing real-world results. Many of them use the recipes we provide and experiment a little, finding simpler ways to get a finished product or adding to the original recipe with a signature touch that is all their own.

Today gave the Insiders another opportunity to cook, and so we decided to do homemade pizza and a basic tossed salad. The interesting thing about this dish is that it is largely what you make it. If you want your pizza to be really cheesy, for instance, feel free to throw on the cheese! If you like pizza sauce, don't hold back. And in terms of toppings, the sky is the limit! Black olives, green peppers, pineapple chunks, avocado slices, hot sauce, pepperoni, ham, coconut... there are toppings aplenty! For salads, it's much the same: it's all about the toppings. For today's salad, we chose romaine lettuce, carrots, green peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. One of our Insiders threw some grapes into his salad as well to sweeten it up a bit.

In making homemade pizza, one of the most challenging things to do is something that we simplified. Preparing the crust — perhaps the most important part of making a pizza — can be either a lengthy process requiring many ingredients, or it can be as simple as pulling the crust out of a bag and tossing on the toppings. Many recipes call for making dough from scratch. For our pizza, we simply bought some frozen dough balls instead. And for the simplest crust of all, simply buy a premade one from the frozen section of the grocer.

In making our pizza and salad, the Insiders noted a few particulars they thought would help anyone else trying to do the same thing:

Non-stick, non-worry!

• The non-stick aluminum was helpful when preparing the dough. After the pizzas were cooked, they also didn't stick to the foil at all, which was nice. Of course, adding flour to the dough keeps it from sticking and gives it shape, so between the two we had no problems with sticky dough (or crust).
• Make sure to use flour when forming the dough. Otherwise, it can be a pretty sticky situation (pun intended).
• We used frozen dough for today's pizza. Given the time we had, we opted to microwave the dough a little to thaw it out. Our suggestion? Don't do this. Give it time to thaw instead. When cooking in the oven, our pizza crusts took much longer to cook thoroughly, and we think this is why.
• All ovens are different. Even if your instructions say to cook for 25 minutes, start checking on it minutes before. You know that your pizza is ready when 1. the crust appears golden-brown, and 2. the cheese is melted throughout (including the middle).

Below, you can see our finished product. According to the Insiders, the pizza was delicious. Not only that, it was simple to make. With a 10-minute preparation time and 20 minutes of cooking, this makes an easy 30-minute meal for two:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not quite a perfect shape, but definitely a perfect taste!

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ASPIE INSIDERS COOKING PROJECT, CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POSTS HERE, HERE, AND HERE! THE FIRST ONE FEATURES A MEXICAN DISH THE INSIDERS DID, WHILE THE OTHER TWO ARE ABOUT OUR COOKING EFFORTS FOR THE RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE. IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW, SHARE YOUR OWN RECIPES FOR OUR INSIDERS — WE MIGHT JUST USE ONE NEXT TIME WE COOK!