Winter fettucini

Winter pesto, according to sources, is a kind of pesto that Italian people eat in the winter, when basil is scarce but parsley is plentiful. It has a spiciness and bitterness that stave off the winter chill and fortify the body, and a vibrant green -- brighter than basil pesto's often yellowish hue -- that relieve the color-starved eyes of winter and prevent macular degeneration. This isn't that recipe, though, because I don't have a blender.

What this is, is a close approximation.

First, make some egg noodles as described previously, cutting them into fettucini-sized strips. This time, I don't know what I did differently, but after half an hour in the fridge, the dough was extremely tough. It took about ten minutes of vigorous rolling with a pint glass just to get the whole thing flat enough to cover the cutting board. So the noodles were thicker than previous times, but this turned out to be a happy accident -- they sported a welcoming texture.

Actually, one thing I did for the first time was add black pepper to the eggs before I beat them into dough, but I'm not quite ready to believe that black pepper contains dough-toughening enzymes.

For the sauce, take a bunch of parsley and a couple cloves of garlic, and chop them as finely as you can / have the patience for. Remember, the idea is to approximate a blender.

Take the shredded parsley and garlic, and put them in a bowl with about half a cup of olive oil. Grate a lot of parmesan cheese into it (a third of a cup, maybe), and add salt to taste, mixing vigorously.

When the fettucini is done, mix it with the pesto like so:

Special thanks to Deborah Spenser for teaching me that winter pesto is a thing.

French onion miso soup

Do they actually eat French onion soup in France? Or is it like the Guatemalan yogurt: eaten only in Canada. 

not as dark as I would have liked

The basic idea of French onion soup -- according to me -- is to get a sweet broth by cooking the onions until the sugars caramelize. Then you put some rustic bread on top, add gruyère on that, and broil it until the cheese burns a little bit. Unfortunately, my apartment's oven doesn't have a burner at the top, so the cheese shown here didn't get cooked as dark as I would have liked.

Of course, most French onion soup you'll find in restaurants uses beef for the broth. I didn't have any dead cows or bones lying around, though, so I made a vegetarian version. To make up for the lost umami (whatever that is), I added red miso paste. I also added some crimini mushrooms.

Steps

1. Chop four onions into thin slices. The shape doesn't really matter.
2. Stir-fry the onions for a little while in a pot, then add the mushrooms (also chopped) and a pinch or two of herbes de Provence, stir, and cover.
3. Cook covered for a while on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions start to turn brown. Once they're brown -- but not burnt -- add water until they are a little more than covered. Simmer for an hour or so.
4. Add white wine vinegar and salt to taste, but go light on the salt since you're going to add miso.
4.5 I forgot to do this, but I think a few ounces of red wine would be good too.

5. Turn off the heat. Put a little broth in a bowl and mix in a tablespoon of miso (more or less depending on the size of the bowl), and then fill to the top with soup.
6. Put a few slices of bread on the bowl, and some grated or sliced gruyère. Broil until the cheese starts to bubble and turn brown on the edges. Be careful taking the bowl out of the oven.

Apple smosh pancake

I am in no way a pancake expert, much less a pancake champion or pancake evangelist. So I humbly submit myself to the pancake geists, fully conceding that my impetus for pancaking was a bowl of apple smosh™ (which, as everyone knows, is what you get when you cook pieces of apple with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, covered and on low heat, for the better part of an hour) that was left over from making an apple shrub. 

Here's the result:

And what it looks like, half-eaten:

Anyway, as I said, my pancake recipe is far from professional. But this one came out pretty well, so here's what I did:

1. Mix an egg in a bowl with about 2/3 cup of hazelnut milk.

2. Add flour, stirring vigorously, until you get to the texture of batter.

3. Heat some grape seed oil (or some other oil) in a pan on medium heat. When it's hot, pour half the batter into the pan.

4. Wait until the pancake starts to form tiny bubbles on top, then, instead of flipping it, put it on a plate (wet side up).

5. Add the rest of the better, and again wait for the tiny bubbles. Then add the apple smosh (depicted), and a piece of butter.

6. Put the first pancake on top of this (wet side down). Press the edges so the two pancakes seal together.

7. Cook like this on low heat until you think the insides are cooked enough. That might be 10 minutes? Flipping is also permitted.

Here's what the bottom looked like:

Egg and eggplant udon

This recipe also has lots of variations, but the key ingredients are noodles, eggs, soy sauce, ginger, and scallions. Hmm...this is starting to sound familiar. 

To make the serving shown here (enough for three, though maybe not three ravenously hungry), you'll need:

- 2 East Asian type eggplants (the long thin kind)

- 2 eggs

- 2 cloves of garlic, diced

- 1 thumb of ginger, diced

- scallions, chopped

- 2 or 3 servings of dry udon

- soy sauce and chili flakes to taste

- (optional) sugar to taste

1. Fry the eggplant and ginger on medium heat until the eggplant starts to get crispy on the outside. Meanwhile, boil a pot of water for the noodles.

2. When the water starts to boil, add the noodles to the water, and add the garlic to the pan (the one with the eggplant and ginger).

3. When the noodles are done (this should take about 3 minutes), move them from the pot to the pan, and add soy sauce. Then fill the pan with hot water (you can use the water from cooking the noodles). Stir in case the noodles have stuck to the pan in the meantime.

4. The water should quickly start to boil, since it was boiling in the pot before. Taste to make sure there's enough salt, and if not, add more soy sauce. Now beat the eggs and add them, stirring slowly so they spread out into long strands.

5. Turn off the heat, and add the scallions. Stir for 20 or 30 seconds, and serve.

Actually, I usually use tomatoes instead of eggplant, and then it's sort of like a soup version of tomato fried eggs (番茄炒蛋). You can use other noodles too, of course, like ramen and soba.

Dill winter soup

It's not pretty, but I like it.

Like drinking the brine in a jar of dill pickles, except not disgusting. There is absolutely no oil in this soup, so if you don't have any oil, you can still make this.

1. Boil maybe six cups of water
2. Add a thumb of ginger (smashed & peeled), a clove of garlic (whole), and about a tablespoon of fish sauce.
3. Add some Japanese mountain potato, sliced small.
4. Add a red potato, chopped into cubes. Cook for 20 minutes. If it looks like there's too much water, leave it uncovered. If the amount of water is just enough, cover and turn the heat lower.
5. Add some dinosaur kale, chopped.
6. Add half a red onion, sliced. Cook for another 15 minutes or so.
7. Add some white wine vinegar, maybe a tablespoon or two, and a pinch of salt. Cook for five more minutes.
8. Add a handful of fresh dill, chopped fine. Cook for a minute.
9. Pour some broth in a bowl, and dissolve a tablespoon of red miso paste.
10. Add the soup to this bowl, mix, and eat!

Fried rice log

A cuisine unto itself. A form of art subtler than electronica and louder than oil painting. A way of salvaging leftovers.

As anyone with any sense will attest, this is the best thing to do with leftover rice. I usually use basmati rice, which apart from having a nice flavor seems well suited for turning into fried rice because the grains tend not to stick together as much as other varieties, and they hold their texture pretty well when cooked multiple times.

Let's start with the archetypal fried rice. If you get this one down, you can make any kind of fried rice and it'll be amazing.

Archetype

Rice, garlic, ginger, eggs, onions, scallions, rice vinegar, soy sauce, high heat vegetable oil

No proportions since that wouldn't be in the spirit of fried rice. Add everything to taste, or according to how much you have.

1. Heat a pan and add the oil.

2. Beat the eggs, and cook this briefly, then set aside. I like to not disturb them so they'll turn into a pancake shape that I can cut into even pieces, but it's not a big deal if you just want to scramble them.

3. Before doing anything else, if necessary, remove stuck spots on the pan and add more oil.

4. Add the ginger and onions, cook until the onions are translucent, or longer if you want them to be sweeter.

5. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, or until it's fragrant but not yet turning brown.

6. Add the rice, and soy sauce. I find pouring the soy sauce onto the rice blobs (assuming the rice is stuck together) works best. For quantity, err on the conservative side. If the rice is really dry, you might also add some water (hot is better), but don't add too much or the rice will turn into mush. It's also easy for the rice to stick, especially if there's not enough liquid or oil. Break up the rice quickly and stir it so it all gets coated in oil. To do the breakage, crushing the blobs with a spatula is effective. 

7. Add a dash of vinegar, and the eggs (optional: add a bit of sesame oil). Cook for another half minute, or until the vinegar stops overwhelming all the other smells.

8. Add the scallions, and cook for 20 seconds or until they're fragrant. 

This archetype is a helpful way of thinking about the roles of ingredients, and figuring out when to add them and how long to cook them. These roles are roughly as follows:

Egg: Needs to be cooked beforehand, then set aside to be added later. Similar: tempeh, eggplant.

Onions: Source of sweet. Long cooking time, lots of surface area and water. Similar: peppers, zucchini, mushrooms.

Garlic: Medium cooking time, loses fragrance if cooked too long.

Ginger: Long cooking time, high heat. Added directly to hot oil at the beginning. Similar: chili pepper / flakes.

Scallions: Very short cooking time, added right before serving. Similar: basil, cilantro.

Soy sauce: The main source of salt and liquid. Joins the flavors of all the other ingredients and gets absorbed by the rice. Similar: fish sauce, saltwater. 

Rice vinegar: Source of sour. Burns if cooked too much. Similar: black vinegar.
Tomato: This isn't in the archetype, but I think it's in its own category. These add lots of water and balance out the other flavors, but they shouldn't be cooked as long as onions. Usually you would add them either right before or right after the rice. Other examples: enoki mushrooms, spinach and other greens.

Almost anything else you can add takes the place of one of these.

Catalog

Ingredient roles in parentheses.

1. Dill (scallions), zucchini (onions), enoki mushrooms (tomatoes), the white part of the scallions (garlic), rice, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar.
2. Tempeh (eggs), poblano pepper (onions), garlic, shungiku (春菊) (tomatoes), soy sauce, black vinegar.

var. 2                                                     

The cooking secret they don't want you to know!

Italian and Chinese chefs hate him! Make your own fresh noodles with this one weird trick!

A few weeks ago a took a class on handmade pasta. We made ravioli with goat cheese and edamame, ravioli with squash, and fettucini carbonara with shiitake mushrooms instead of bacon. What I took away from the class is that making pasta by hand is simpler than I had imagined.

This recipe was my first attempt since then to make some on my own, without adult supervision. In the class, we had pasta machines to roll the dough uniformly flat and slice it into noodle shapes (for the ravioli, we used stencils). I don't have a pasta machine at home, so this time I rolled it and cut it by hand.

Instead of sauce, I fried some vegetables and tomatoes, and then added the noodles to that. Sort of like the sauce I used to have with Lanzhou noodles (蘭州拉麵) in Chengdu. 

NOODLES

1. Put two cups of flour in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and add two eggs.

Actually I forgot the proportions, so in the picture below I had only added one cup of flour -- hence the egg overflow. But the texture wasn't right until I added a full second cup. 

Two eggs' worth is just about enough for one very hungry person. I'm sure you can adjust the amount according to how much you actually want to make.

2. Beat the eggs inside the well.

As you mix, the flour should start to get pulled into the egg mixture, making it thicker.

Keep mixing this way until most of the flour is absorbed, and it starts to look like dough, i.e. it's too thick to mix with a fork. Then switch to using your hands. 

3. Knead the dough.

Use a floured surface, and press the dough until it has a uniform consistency, and isn't too dry or too sticky. Then knead some more.

Here's how you can tell if it's done: Form the dough into a ball. Make an indentation with your finger. If it returns to its original shape, you're good.

4. Wrap the dough in plastic or parchment, and let it sit for about half an hour. 

Apparently, this lets the proteins and starches bind together better. You might be able to get away with a shorter wait time.

5. Roll the dough flat.

Also on a floured surface. I don't have a rolling pin, so I used a pint glass. A bottle would also work.

Try to make it as flat as you can, ideally in a rectangular shape.

6. Slice the noodles.

7. Bring water to a roiling burl. Add noodles. Burl for three minutes.

SAUCE

1. Slice four cloves of garlic, half a red bell pepper, two Roma tomatoes, a couple stalks of king oyster mushroom, and a few scallion sprigs.

2. Add olive oil to a heated pan. Add chili flakes, then the garlic, then the mushrooms. Cook for a minute on medium heat.

3. Add the tomatoes and peppers. Continue cooking for a few minutes.

4. Add a tablespoon or two of oyster sauce (I used a vegetarian, mushroom-based version), and a small splash of soy sauce.

6. Turn heat to low and wait until the noodles are done. Then add the scallions.

7. Now add the noodles. You can strain them first, or just pick them out of the pot with chopsticks or your hands. Just kidding about the hands.

8. Stir-fry for about 10 seconds, until the sauce and pasta are well combined. I fried them for about a minute, but I think this made the noodles too soft, since they had already been boiled long enough.

I actually used only half the noodles for this, so the other half I dipped in flour to keep from sticking, and put in a plastic container in the fridge. That was a couple days ago, and I haven't looked at them again since, so if there are any problems with this storage method I'll update this.

BPLJ

Lemon juice and black pepper. Am I right? Few things are better, especially when it comes to finding ways of using the rigatoni left over from the recipe two weeks ago.

I initially didn't have very high hopes for this dish, because I didn't have any onions, spinach, or seitan. But this just shows again that lemon juice and black pepper will always triumph. It was a win.

Here's what I did have:

- 2 cloves of garlic

- a handful of scallion bulbs

- some tempeh (a few ounces, maybe?)

- a few fresh basil leaves

- a pinch of herbes de provence

- a dash of chili flakes

- some parmesan-like cheese

- the aforementioned BP&LJ (amounting to one lemonsworth)

1. Heat the pan on low heat and add a little olive oil.
2. Add the tempeh, sliced thin. Fry on low heat until the bottoms start to darken, then flip. Add chili flakes and BP.
3. Wait a minute, then add the garlic, but don't stir it so much the tempeh is disturbed.

4. When the garlic starts to cook, but before it browns, add the chopped scallion bulbs, the herbes, and some salt.

5. Turn up to medium-high heat. Add the pasta. Stir-fry until the pasta is well heated, then add about 2/3 of the lemon juice. Keep stirring.

6. Cook this for another few minutes, then add the basil and turn off the heat. Add the rest of the LJ.

7. Put the pasta in a bowl. Grate cheese on top. Add more BP.

8. Goes with white wine of course.

Addendum: Cooking Challenges

The basil I bought last week, put in one of those supposedly biodegradable green bags, then tucked in the back of the fridge was almost completely dried out and dead when I found it again today. There were a few leaves that still seemed edible, but they were severely wilted. The first thing I did before I started chopping was to pick them off the stems and put them in a cup of water. By the time I needed them, they had revived significantly.

Keeping any kind of greens fresh for a long time is a challenge. Now I remember I have had some success with keeping them in the fridge in a bowl of water. But I don't remember if that always worked. I'll try it next time and report back.

Egg pancake

Egg pancake (蛋餅) is one of my favorite foods in Taipei.

Pictured here is my novice's adaptation.

UPDATE: new photo, slightly better than the last attempt

note that scallions have been replaced by cilantro

First, make the batter. Beat an egg, then add a cup of water, and mix vigorously with a fork. Add two tablespoons of corn starch, and mix again. Add half a cup of flour, and mix again. The texture should be very watery; if it's thick at all, add more water. Let this sit in the fridge for at least half an hour while the chemical reactions happen.

I think the one shown here was too thick. You want the batter to fill the whole pan when you pour it, and be very thin. If it's not thin enough, the middle will be thicker than the edges, and the pancake texture will be doughy, when it should be light and crispy (but not brittle).

Chop some scallions and beat an egg. To the egg, you can add salt and pepper.

Usually they're cooked on a big, flat grilling surface, but a frying pan works too. Heat the pan on medium/high heat, add a generous amount of oil, and put in the scallions. Try to spread them out in the pan -- otherwise they might make the pancake too weak where they're clustered together. 

Fry the scallions for a few seconds, then add the batter. Tilt the pan in a circle so the edges and the middle have the same thickness. If there are any holes, fill them with more batter. 

Fry this until it starts to get crispy on the bottom, and doesn't stick to the pan (having a cast iron or nonstick pan helps). Slide the pancake onto a plate. 

the egg is underneath this dubiously textured pancake

Add the egg, also tilting the pan to spread it out. Immediately turn down the heat so it doesn't get overcooked, and put the pancake on top of the egg, crispy side up. The egg should be only partially cooked, so the top will stick to the pancake.

right after the flip

Now flip the whole thing over, so the egg side is up, and turn off the heat. Here, you can add whatever else you want in your pancake. The usual thing is 醬油膏, a thick, sweet soy sauce paste. You can also add that on top at the end.

ver. 2 - cilantro instead of scallions

Finally, roll it up, put it on a plate, and slice it. Serve with a cup of sugar soaked in black tea.

Variations

I had some batter left, so I made another one. This time I added more water and I think the texture came out a little better.

This time, instead of putting an egg inside, I added tempeh (which I fried first) and kimchi.

I also made one with kimchi and arugula:

Arugula salad with warm, crispy eggplant (AKA Rocket salad with crispy, BTU-enhanced aubergine)

My Parisian aunt taught me this way of cooking eggplant when I was naught but a lad, beginning a relationship with this most nicotine-enriched of edible plants that has sustained me for all these many years.

One of the best things about this dish was how the eggplant's warm, crispy, and sweet balanced the arugula's cold, crunchy, and bitter.

How I did it (if I did in fact do it):

First, I just made a plain arugula salad: washed baby arugula, tossed with dressing made from about one part balsamic vinegar, three parts olive oil, mixed with a fork. I also added some cheese (that farmer's market cheese has carried me a long way).

Second, I sliced the eggplant into discs and fried on low heat with olive oil:

It took some maneuvering to get them all evenly oiled and cooked. Eggplant is extremely good at soaking up oil, but as it cooks it will release some of the oil again, so it's easy to think you haven't added enough, and then end up with way too much. I actually pressed some of the slices that didn't get much oil against some of the ones that had too much, and that helped even things out a little. 

Then I just kept frying them on low heat until they were crispy on one side -- maybe 15 minutes. When that was done I turned them over to fry on the other side a little bit, and sprinkled some salt and lemon juice on top.

Sweet potato leaves and red cupboard barley

This dinner wasn't actually very delicious, but it looks pretty!

The untoothsomeness mostly was because I didn't know how to properly cook the red barley-like grains I found in the cupboard. I put them in the rice cooker, and even with extra water they were hard, chewy, and just not very toothsome. In fact, those things are like some kind of flavor black hole. You can add all the spices you want, but they will all undergo gravitational redshift as they approach the event horizon.

The other thing on top is yam leaves / sweet potato leaves / 番薯葉. I had heard tell of them but I don't think I had ever actually seen some in person -- until farmer's market last weekend, that is.

I wasn't sure what to do with them, so I just stir-fried them with oil, salt, and garlic. The result was very good: like spinach but with more texture.

Before frying, I tore all the leaves off the stems, which were thick and woody, and didn't seem edible. Someone please correct me if they are!

According to Wikipedia, another popular way to eat the leaves is to boil them briefly and then dip them in soy sauce.

Rigatoni Hasegawa

I know, pasta again. Listen. That other half can of crushed tomato, half bag of baby arugula, leftover section of field roast, and partial block of aged goat cheese -- drying and hardening in its wax paper bag in the fridge -- weren't going to eat themselves. At least, based on my observations over the past week, they weren't.

Now don't get the wrong idea. I didn't make this just because I felt sorry for the ingredients. This isn't a pity pasta. No, it has many delights in store for the casual eater.

1. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a heated pan. Put in chili flakes and 2-3 cloves of garlic.

2. Before the garlic gets too brown, add the tomato sauce and a pinch of salt.

3. Add the shishito pepper, sliced long, and the field roast, cubed, as shown.

4. Simmer for 10 or 15 minutes, adding splashes of water as needed. 

5. Compulsively check the rigatoni. When it's within edible range, for i = 30 until i < 1, say the value of i out loud and then decrement i. Drain the rigatoni.

6. Chop 5 or 6 shiso leaves and add to the sauce. (it's an experiment!)

7. Stir the sauce for a few seconds, then pour it over the pasta.

8. Take a handful of arugula that you cleverly washed beforehand, and put on top like so:

9. Sprinkle some cheese on top of that, preferably the aged goat cheese that you bought at the farmer's market a week ago and that now looks and feels like parmesan.

I think the shiso was a success. Next time I make tomato sauce, if I have some shiso withering in the back of the fridge, I'll add even more. It sort of fills the role of basil, but it's more interesting and pungent.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have another shiso hemp milk cordial.

Sweet, sour, spicy, fragrant eggplant

Here's what I did with the other eggplant:

It's basically 魚香茄子, "fish-fragrant eggplant", a really common eggplant dish in China that has no fish in it whatsoever.

Here's how I made it, told in the imperative voice.

1. Slice an eggplant (the long, magenta kind is best) into thin pieces as shown. Fry them with a little bit of vegetable oil (for Chinese food I always use oil that can take high-ish heat, usually safflower oil or grapeseed oil). Fry the eggplant until it starts to lose its water and look well-roasted (no bags under the eyes). 

2. Take the eggplant out of the pan, clean it if you have stuff stuck to the bottom.

3. Add more oil, chili flakes, and diced ginger (about a thumb). Stir for about 30 seconds, then add diced garlic (2 or 3 cloves). 

4. Add the eggplant again, and some fresh chopped red chili peppers (optional).

5. Before you did all that (I know, sorry), you should have prepared the sauce. Mix about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of black vinegar, 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of white sugar (I'm just making these numbers up). 

6. Stir fry for a while, and when everything looks well-cooked and the flavors are all mixed together, add the sauce. Boosh!

7. When the sauce is well mixed-in, it might start to smoke a little bit. This isn't bad, but don't let it smoke too much or it means the sauce is burning (I think) and the flavor will change. Quick, go to step 8!

8. Add about half a cup of water, into which you already mixed a tablespoon or two of corn starch (or other starch). As you stir, you'll notice the sauce getting thicker because of the starch. From this point on, you want to watch how much more you fry it -- if too much water evaporates and the sauce gets too thick, you'll need to add more water. If it's too watery, of course, keep cooking it, and/or add more starch.

9. When the sauce is just about the right consistency, but still a little on the watery side, add chopped scallions. Just the green part, you can save the light green and white parts for fried rice later.

10. Stir a little longer, and then turn off the heat and add chopped basil. I don't know if anyone actually does this in China, but I think basil goes really well in this dish. Especially the purplish kind. 

11. The rice that I forgot to mention until now should also be done. My favorite kind of rice to have with Chinese food is basmati. Therefore my Chinese cooking is always fusion food. 

Spaghetti Melanzane Bolognese (Vegetariano)

Pasta! Who doesn't like pasta. Show me a person who doesn't like pasta. Come on, bring them out. I won't do anything to them. Ok, let's talk about something else.

Last night I made spaghetti with tomato sauce, and I thought it turned out well enough to be worth remembering. And it all started with an eggplant...

I always buy too much eggplant. They look so weird, and you think they'll shrink when you cook them, and above all they don't weigh much so they always trick me into thinking they don't have much substance. So I bought two. Maybe next I'll post what I did with the other one.

First I just sauteed the eggplant by itself. I added a bit of oil, but I don't think it was necessary. After stirring and cooking on medium heat for a little while, the water will come out. One danger with eggplant is not cooking it enough, in which case it can be gross if not painful. With the fat European kind, if it hasn't been roasted to smithereens, it feels like needles are pricking my tongue when I eat it. Does anyone else have that?

Once the eggplant was well-cooked, I added more olive oil, a few cloves of chopped garlic, and some chili flakes. I stirred this for another minute, then added half a can of crushed tomato. Then I chopped a bit of field roast (celebration roast!), and added that along with a small splash of leftover red wine and a pinch of Herbes de Provence, and some salt. I think it's easy to make tomato sauce too sour, or too sweet, or too bland, or too salty, so I also recommend tasting it after each step to avoid any grave blunders.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, meanwhile I boiled the spaghetti. This time I was very diligent about the pasta, because I was hungry and because the sauce was done first, so I kept tasting pieces of it. This turned out to be an excellent behavior, because I knew as soon as it was cooked just enough. And what a difference that made! Pasta cooked just right is like a whole different animal (if pasta were an animal). The sauce almost doesn't matter.

But the sauce does matter. Don't let anyone tell you different, sauce. When the pasta was done and strained I added the chopped basil to the sauce, and turned off the burner right away. Then I served it as shown, with some more of that aged goat cheese (it tastes a lot like sharp cheddar) on top, and some olives. 

A note about the olives -- other times I've chopped them and added them directly to the tomato sauce, but last time I did this the sauce came out way too sour. Any idea why? I didn't even add that many olives. 

One other thing I discovered: orange juice tastes good with gin. Not mixed together, just side by side.