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(upbeat music) - You know how many pizzas are consumed every year in the US?

3 billion.

I know, I looked it up.

Make that 3 billion-and-one.

However, today, I'm going to make some homemade pizza that's over-the-top.

- Today, you are going to enter the church of real pizza.

- Okay.

One of my favorites is made on the grill and comes from my friend, Elizabeth Karmel, the barbecue queen.

- Ooh!

- Ooh!

- Look at that.

- Okay.

- I love it!

- [Sarah] It's covered in blistered corn, asparagus, and pesto, and I think there's some brie cheese in there, too.

Delish!

- Look at that.

- That is spectacular.

For the kids, I have another favorite, pasta pizza.

I bet you have never had pizza that had pasta at the bottom, have ya?

- No!

- No!

- [Sara] Just to make sure it's healthy, we've got great veggies with a great peanut butter dip on the side.

Do you like the peanut sauce?

And on Ask Sarah.

- I have been having a lot of trouble with the pizza dough.

I always try to roll it out and then when I roll it out, it either gets stuck to my rolling pin or it flies all over the place.

- I learned this trick.

(upbeat music) I picked up the most beautiful corn.

I found some lovely asparagus.

- Oh, good.

I cannot wait to make real pizza with you.

(acoustic guitar music) - Well, it's grilling pizza time and I'm here with my friend, Elizabeth Karmel and you wrote a whole book on the subject.

- I did.

I am passionate about grilled pizza.

- Well, so am I but I didn't write a book, but wow!

(Elizabeth laughs) What are we making today?

I can't wait.

- I just love it.

- You know what?

I wrote it with my very good friend and pizza partner in crime, Bob Blumer.

- Oh yeah!

- And this is his favorite pizza.

This is his house pizza.

- Soon to become mine.

- It is blistered corn, asparagus, and pesto pizza.

- Oh, my God.

You're killing me.

- It is really, really.

- It's summer on a piece of bread.

- It is, it is.

And you know what?

I bet our corn and asparagus.

Oh my gosh, it's perfect!

Okay.

This is the key to the recipe, the blistered corn.

- Okay.

- So you don't want to take it off the grill until you get all those great blistery pieces.

- Wow.

- Look how fabulous that is.

- So like, popcorn grilled corn, isn't it?

- Yes, yes.

- Yeah.

And this was about, we oiled it, we salted it, we grilled it for about how long?

- Just about 10 minutes.

- And now, what kind of heat?

- A medium direct heat.

- Okay.

- [Elizabeth] And then the asparagus actually takes a little bit less time than the corn.

- [Sara] And then just olive oil and salt.

- Just olive oil and salt.

- Okay.

So you want to chop these up?

- Right.

- Okay, I'll just be on vegetable duty today.

- Okay.

Great, great.

- Okay.

- I love that, I love that.

I get to make the pizza and you're doing all the mise-en-place for me.

- Yes, yes.

- I usually use a pizza peal or the back of a cookie sheet or sheet pan.

And the first step is to put down some grits.

- Grits, you southern girl.

- Grits.

Or polenta.

- I was going to say, some of us up north - Right.

- Like polenta - Right, right.

- [Sarah] Or cornmeal, even.

But coarse is what you're looking for.

- But first of all, not only do I love this because it looks great, but it gives the pizza a rustic texture and this is my favorite moment.

- My pizza dough.

- And you know, you can make homemade or you could buy store bought.

- You just took the words right out of my mouth.

- Okay.

- I was just going to say that.

So I'm gonna just divide this great big ball of dough in half because I want to make this pizza about as thin as possible and I just want to play with a little bit in my hands when I get a nice circle.

And this is the trick.

I'm going to put olive oil on both sides of my dough and this helps to keep it really tender and also, makes it very easy to roll out.

- [Sara] Wow, what a great tip!

- [Elizabeth] It also moisturizes your hands.

- Oh, I love that.

Yes, olive oil is very good for us ladies.

- Yes, yes.

So you can absolutely use a rolling pin if you want, but I love using my hands because I think if you get an organic shape, it makes it taste better.

- Okay, okay.

- I know it sounds really corny, but real pizza is like a religion.

So today, you are going to enter the church of grilled pizza.

- Okay, Elizabeth!

- It's one of those things like religion that you have to experience it before you fully understand it.

- Okay, okay.

(Elizabeth laughs) I am ready, I am ready.

- But once you take a bite, you'll never want to eat it any other way.

Let it rest just for a couple of minutes.

All right, let me check the temperature of the grill because this is very important.

We don't want the grill to be too hot because our dough will burn.

It's a little bit warm, so I'm going to actually leave it up and make sure it's really clean.

- What temperature are you looking for, Elizabeth?

- I'm looking for a temperature of about 400, 425 degrees.

You want it to be hot enough so that the yeast will instantly rise and that the crust will start cooking and puff up, but you don't want it to be so hot that it's going to burn.

- Gotcha.

- The other thing that's really, really important to have is a clean cooking grate.

- And what's the best way to clean it?

- With a brass bristle brush.

- Okay.

- And a little bit of elbow grease.

You turn all the burners on high, let everything turn to white-gray ash, and then you brush it.

- Oh, gosh.

- Guess what?

- What, it's time?

- I think it's time.

- [Sara] Well, I'm going to come over and watch you.

I'll come back to vegetable duty, so.

- Okay, so I'm going to let you.

- Open it.

- Open it.

- I can do that!

- Okay.

Okay.

- And then, I'm also going to let you hold this for me.

- Okay.

- Okay.

I'm going to pick it up just like you were putting clothes on a clothesline.

See, it's not going to fall through the grates.

And just put it down.

It's ready to go!

- Right.

- So that will take about two to three minutes.

- And I'll just keep corning away.

- Right, that corn looks so good.

- [Sara] Doesn't it?

(acoustic guitar music) - [Elizabeth] So let's check and see where we are with the crust.

- Okay.

- Ooh!

- Ooh!

- Look at that!

- Okay.

- I love it, I love it!

All right.

You never know when it's going to happen.

When there are bubbles.

- Yeah.

- You want to pop them.

- Oh!

- So that it'll be flat on the bottom.

- Okay.

- And I'm gonna.

Oh, look how perfect that is!

- [Sara] That is beautiful.

Wow.

- And now, before we top it, I'm going to turn off the burners in the middle because we're going to switch to indirect heat.

Okay, I'm going to put the pesto on first.

- [Sara] Okay, so indirect heat is when you leave the burners in the middle off and you leave the ones on the other sides on.

- [Elizabeth] Exactly.

And then we're going to just put the food over the burners we've turned off.

- Okay.

- So you see, I've put it all around to about a quarter-of-an-inch on this side.

So we have a nice border in case anything, you know, food has a way of traveling as it gets hot.

- Yes, it can.

- [Elizabeth] So I'm going to put the red down next and you can put the asparagus down or the sun-dried tomatoes down.

I'm doing this because I want you to be able to see the asparagus because you know how I feel about us eating with our eyes before we taste.

- [Sara] Yes, we don't want green on green.

- We don't want green on green.

Okay, now we're going to put brie cheese and I have to tell you - This is another fight.

(Elizabeth laughs) With Bob.

- Yes.

Not actually a fight.

- Your partner on the book.

- Right.

He loves to take the rind off.

I think the rind is the most flavorful part of brie and so, I love keeping the rind on.

- Ah, interesting.

- Okay, that's perfect!

- Okay.

- Okay, now how good does that look?

- That looks great.

- Okay.

- And how much longer is this going to take now?

- This is going to take about seven to 10 minutes and the best way to do this is to just slide it right off.

- Do you know, when I've done it, I always do it with my hands and they were over the grill.

That's so smart to set up sort of a what do you call it?

Peal!

- A pizza peal, right.

- Situation.

- Hoo!

- All right, Sara.

It's done.

You want to bring that pan to me and we will - Slide it on.

- Thank you for your help.

Hoo!

- What do you mean?

I've got a vested interest here.

- [Elizabeth] Wow, look at that.

- That is spectacular.

Wow, what are we going to serve with it here?

- Celery - Celery.

- and Parmesan cheese, a little bit of salt, and olive oil.

It is so refreshing and so crunchy with the pizza.

I love pairing them together.

- Wow, well thank you so much.

I really learned a ton about grilled pizza!

- I loved showing you grilled pizza.

- There you go.

Okay, well, we'll be patient and taste this in a few minutes.

- All right.

(upbeat music) (acoustic guitar music) - So I get all these questions on my website, saramoulton.com, and it's so much fun to answer them, but I want to share them all with you, so we're going to answer a few today on the show and I have David Ramirez from Greenwich, Connecticut.

I've heard you cook a lot.

That's terrific.

- I do, yes.

- A young person who cooks.

Early, great.

What kind of stuff do you make?

- I love making the traditional, you know, pasta, all that food, but I also like making food from Colombia, where I'm from, so I learned a lot from my parents.

It's great.

I get to cook all different kinds of things.

- So you have a question for me?

- Yes.

I have been trying to make homemade pizza lately and I have been having a lot of trouble with the pizza dough.

I always try to roll it out, and then when I roll it out, it either gets stuck to my rolling pin or it flies all over the place when I roll it.

- Oh yeah!

Oh, it's just so annoying.

Several people have tried to teach me how to throw it up in the air, you know, and stretch it, letting it hang off the table.

- Yeah, it's very hard.

- It's very hard.

I can't do it, so I learned this trick and it's just the coolest trick and I want to share it with you, and you will never have problems rolling out your pizza dough again, so let's watch this.

- Awesome.

Thank you.

- Now if you've ever rolled out pizza dough, you roll it on the counter on flour.

Don't you find that when you use flour, you roll the dough this way.

It comes right back.

You roll it this way, comes right back.

You feel like you, you know, it's just so hard to get it to stay out there.

I learned this from Pam, my wonderful makeup artist, whose mother is an amazing Sicilian cook.

Pam said her mom always rolls out her pizza dough on oil, not flour.

Look at that.

Isn't that amazing?

So what do you think?

Are you going to try it?

- Yeah, what a great tip!

I never knew I could do that.

- Yeah, well I didn't either until my makeup lady showed me from her Sicilian mom.

I was like, "This is so cool."

Now I'm just going to say one thing because I've talked to some Neapolitan pizza people.

They say, "Oh, that's not authentic pizza," but Italians tend to do that anyway because it's very, very thin (David laughs) and they like their dough to be a little craggy and have little holes in it, but you and I, since we're pizza rolling impaired, that's how we do it.

- Thank you so much for joining me.

- Yeah.

Bye, Sara.

Thank you!

- Bye, David.

Hope you try pizza soon.

(acoustic guitar music) I first learned about this wonderful dish, pasta pizza, from a test cook at Gourmet, Leslie Glover-Pendleton is her last name now she got married and I thought it was just brilliant.

She developed it for In Short Order, which was a column in Gourmet for fast recipes and this is definitely a recipe that would appeal to kids because it's a pizza with all the usual stuff on it, but it's a great way to use pasta or leftover pasta.

So I'm going to start by making my sauce.

You could certainly just use bought tomato sauce.

I'm not such a fan of store-bought tomato sauce because it's usually got extra sugar and all this other stuff in it and it's so easy to make a really quick one.

So you start with some fresh onions.

This is not a slow and low one.

This is just a 20-minute tomato sauce.

I found out recently, you know those diced tomatoes?

They have been treated with something that makes them keep their dice so the dice doesn't break down, so they're sort of chewy.

I want to get my pan going here.

And we're going to put in two tablespoons of olive oil and I'll get this in.

The pan's not quite hot, but It really doesn't matter.

This isn't rocket science.

And then two garlic cloves.

Sometimes if I'm feeling a little lazy, all I do is crush the garlic and throw it in hole.

Okay.

A little salt, a little teaspoon of hot pepper flakes.

Oh, you know what?

I have kids coming over.

I'm going to add a half-a-teaspoon.

But if you don't have kids coming over or if you have kids who like hot food, add the whole teaspoon and get wild.

All right, onto the tomatoes.

Whole tomatoes, as I say, because those diced tomatoes are just dicey in that they're crunchy.

They will never soften up.

And preferably, get the real San Marzano from Italy.

And I'm going to show you.

I can either just get in there with my hands and crunch these up.

You know how when you're cutting up tomatoes, you put them on the cutting board and then suddenly you're chasing sauce all over the place?

Well, this is a better way to get it sort of started and we want all that nice liquid as well.

Make sure, of course, that your scissors are clean and you only use them for culinary purposes.

There we go.

Well, I'm just one more second on that.

I'm going to get my basil ready for later because we're going to finish the sauce with just some coarse-chopped basil.

You could rip it, you could chop it.

I'm going to chop it a little bit.

Basil and tomatoes is a match made in heaven, but then again, tomatoes go with so many herbs.

It's amazing.

This is not even a chiffonade, nothing fancy.

Just a few little chops.

Okay, into the bowl for later on.

Now I'm going to add my tomatoes.

And we're going to let this simmer for about 20 minutes.

It's going to cook down and then we're going to taste it.

I'm going to add another pinch of salt and drop my pasta.

So the pasta, the star of the show, the bottom part of our pizza, is nothing more than angel hair pasta, also known as capellini.

This is really the best because it clumps up.

It really sticks together and makes it a lovely, crispy crust.

Okay, salt.

Make sure you add the salt because something starchy like pasta really needs the salt from the very beginning.

Now as soon as you get the pasta into the pan, stir it.

And the reason I'm stirring it, have you ever thrown your pasta into the pan and then walked away and then noticed it's become one?

You've just got a wad of pasta in there so you have to stir it.

Capellini, angel hair pasta, only takes about three minutes.

So I have to stay aware.

I'm going to slice up some peppers, which we're going to put on top of our pizza.

It's one of our toppings.

Of course, you can use any toppings you want.

We want rings, just because we want it to look pretty.

Now for this, you're going to want a nonstick or stick-resistant pan because pasta has lots of starch.

I'm going to put a tablespoon of oil in each one of these.

These are stick-resistant pans, ceramic on the inside.

All right, white these are heating up, I'm going to drain my pasta.

That's why I just love capellini because on a weeknight, you can just make it really quickly.

Sometimes what I do is, I make the capellini, then I toss it with a little bit of chicken broth, a little bit of Parmesan, perhaps a bit of butter, and it's oh, so good.

I'm going to let that drain for half a second while I get the peppers going.

I'm using red and green.

You could use all green, you could use all red.

As I say, we're just wilting them.

Aren't those pretty?

There's nothing more beautiful than red peppers.

And most kids, I find, my son certainly, when he was little, it was one of the few vegetables that he would eat.

And we're going to get our pasta in the pans.

And you notice, I didn't wash the pasta at all because we want all the starch that's in there.

One pound of pasta will make about six pizzas.

And I'm going to turn them down after I get this in there.

It's sticky.

See, it's sticking together, which is perfect.

You just spread it out and I'm going to smoosh it with my smooshing tool, but these really do need to be way down because you want to just crisp it slowly.

It gets the most delicious texture.

Here we go.

Boink, boink, boink, boink, boink, boink, boink.

Very scientific.

Perfect tool for the job, one of these flexible spatulas.

Wow.

Okay, while that's cooking, I'm going to go on down and make some peanut sesame sauce that I know the kids are going to love.

We're going to start with.

And by the way, this is a recipe from a friend of mine, Rosa Ross.

When I worked at Gourmet one time, we did a Chinese New Year and Rosa came in and she was the one that made this peanut sauce and I just, I'd never tasted peanut sauce like it before.

I was just astonished.

We want about a third-of-a-cup.

And when I was going and developing my cookbook, I wanted to have a peanut sauce and I wanted it to be as good as hers, but I didn't want to rip hers off.

So I went and tried to make a peanut sauce of my own using all the ingredients that people usually use, all the usual suspects, and mine just wasn't as good as hers.

So finally, I went back and looked at hers, and I figured out that her recipe had one thing, just one thing, that mine did not.

The scallions.

The scallions are what put the sauce over the top.

Okay, two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.

It doesn't get much fresher than that.

Hoisin.

I have decided this is like Chinese ketchup.

It's just, it's sweet, it's got depth of flavor.

So there's half-a-cup.

We need three-quarters-of-a-cup of the natural-style peanut butter, you want the real stuff, and there's some that's labeled that has nothing added, or some stores actually grind up fresh peanut butter.

And there's a fair amount of ingredients in here, but this is a wonderful sauce that really lasts for a couple of days or even a week and besides being great with crudité, I'm going to add two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil.

It's a sauce that you can cook up fettuccine, save some of the pasta cooking liquid, swirl in this sauce with some of the pasta cooking liquid, and you have sesame noodles.

Fantastic.

A tablespoon of soy sauce.

Again, because I have the neighborhood kids coming, I'm going to go light on the hot sauce, but if it was for me, I'd add a lot of that because that's what I love.

I'm going to add a little bit of water.

We'll probably add some more in a minute.

This sauce comes out quite thick, so that's everything that goes in.

We need to do it for just a little bit to make sure that the scallions totally get ground up in there.

Okay.

See how smooth it becomes.

You could do this in a blender and it probably would be smoother in a blender, but oh boy, you'd have to keep knocking it down and this is just fine.

Oh, that is delicious.

Wow.

It's great for picnics, too.

Okay, there we go.

Peanut sauce.

I bet you these guys are ready to flip.

Let's have a look-see.

Whoo, perfect!

Oh yes, wonderfully crispy.

You have to be aggressive.

Don't be shy when you're flipping them.

Okay now, let me get the toppings.

I got some provolone because I thought that would be a nice kid-friendly cheese and it's a beautiful melting cheese, and then I've got some prosciutto.

Just rip a little bit up.

It's sort of fun, just like you just put it in any which way.

We're going to use about, well, for each piece, it's about an ounce of prosciutto and two ounces of cheese.

The side that we did first, the one that was down 20 minutes, is the crispier side, so we want that on the bottom.

So I'm going to flip it back so that that's on the bottom.

Isn't this amazing?

What a magic trick it is.

Okay, now I'm going to put my basil.

I'm going to just put my basil and my sauce right now, stir it up, and put a little bit of sauce on top.

Now one thing that people tend to do with any kind of pizza is they put way too much sauce on it because it just sogs it up.

Why do we go to all of this trouble to make the pizza so wonderfully crispy if we're just going to sog it up?

Oh, that's so pretty.

It's making me happy!

I'm going to decide what order I want to do this in.

Let's see, okay.

So, I actually think I'm going to put the prosciutto down first.

You can put them any which way you want.

I'm just going with prosciutto first.

I'll put some of this in there.

This is our provolone.

I'm just going to rip it up a bit.

We're not quite done because we have to melt the cheese.

So what takes the longest with this pasta pizza is just crisping the bottom.

The toppings are a cinch.

Oh, more cheese is always better, don't you think?

Okay, and then an assortment of peppers.

They'll just melt right in.

Okay, now I'm just going to cover them and let them melt, and that just takes three, four minutes because the pizza is essentially done.

(doorbell rings) Oh, there they are!

(acoustic guitar music) Hello, welcome!

I hope you're hungry.

- Yes.

- I've got a very special dish for you all.

Okay guys, why don't you all have a seat and I'm going to bring you over your special thing that I made for you.

And what you've got for a drink there is something that I call a Peter Soda.

It's orange juice and seltzer, so have a sip if you like and I am just going to cut up our pizzas right here.

So do you all like pizza?

Do you normally eat pizza?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yeah?

What kind of pizza do you usually eat?

What do usually like?

- Plain and pepperoni.

- Pepperoni?

Oh, you're going to like this, then.

I have something that's a little bit like pepperoni.

Alex, how about you?

What kind do you usually eat?

- I usually eat like, bacon pizza.

- Oh, well we know that you're going to be happy with this.

All righty, I'm going to get the crispiest ones.

Alex, do you want to?

- Sure.

- [Sara] Okay.

Good for you.

Thank you very much, Alex.

- Thanks, Alex.

- [Sara] Very nice hostess.

There you go.

So I'm going to come on over and join you, but dig in!

You can use your fork and knife.

Yeah.

So I bet you have never had a pizza that had pasta at the bottom, have ya?

- No.

- No.

- No?

You want some help there?

I need to go (mutters).

Oh boy, that's good.

Here we go.

Let's take a little.

- [Girl] Can you cut mine too?

- I will!

Oh, dear.

One thing I've just learned is that maybe it's a little hard to eat, but that's okay.

- But it's really good.

- Is it?

Alex, you managed to get in there?

- Mm-hmm.

- Kate, here you go.

You know what, it reminds me of that shredded cereal that you have for breakfast.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Doesn't it?

It's sort of interesting.

- Yeah, it does.

Cool.

- [Sara] If you want to pick it up, go for it.

- Yeah.

- Pick it up.

Let's do it together.

What do you like?

Carrots, broccoli, or red peppers?

- [Boy] Red peppers.

- Red peppers.

Just like my son Sam.

There you go.

And how about you?

What do you like?

- I like carrots.

- For you, madame.

- Thank you.

- Do you like the peanut sauce?

Isn't that good?

You know, it's also good with noodles.

Very good.

All righty, there we go!

- This tastes amazing.

- Pasta pizza.

Oh, that's what I want to hear.

Pasta pizza is great for the kids and it's great for the kid in you.

I'm Sara Moulton here with Kate, Alex, and Chase.

My favorite kind of people.

They're all shorter than I am.

I hope to see you next time on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

All right, let me cut you another piece.

(Jazzy music) Should we have a toast?

Let's all sort of lean over towards Chase because he's the shortest of us all.

Okay, ready?

Oh!

Okay.

Now we take a sip and say cin cin.

For recipes and videos, go to our website, saramoulton.com.

Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by USA Rice, Sunsweet, Ninja, Chef's Choice, and thanks to the generous support of.

- [Announcer] The 2016 Subaru Legacy with symmetrical all-wheel drive plus 36 MPG.

It pairs well with every kind of road.

Subaru, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(piano music)