Last week, I had some friends over for a pizza dinner. One friend brought over two large balls of dough, which we split into four to make four pizzas. I had three strong ideas for toppings based on ingredients I had gotten at the Farmer's Market the previous Saturday and was hoping the fourth idea would come to me while cooking (as you might be able to guess from the title of this post, it didn't really succeed).
I started off with the ingredient about which I was most excited: the squash blossoms. I wanted to experiment a little with the blooms before the following weekend where I was going to be frying them for a dish (to be written about in the next post). I have had the truffled squash blossom flatbread from COCO 500 twice now, and I really like the rich truffle taste coupled with the delicate squash blossoms, and wanted to play with that a little. I had some leftover white truffle oil, which I mixed with the four cheese cheese mix before spreading it on top of the pizza (a suggestion of my friend Rebecca whose father used to make pizzas every Sunday while she was growing up), which serves to moisten the cheese and blend the flavors together. I spread this cheese across the pizza the place the squash blossoms on the pizza, with petals facing in, and then added lines of ricotta in between. While the dough was sort of on odd shape, I really like the ingredient layout.
I then went on to make a pizza with some prosciutto I had bought at Bocallone. I wanted to play off the idea of eggs and bacon, so my idea was to have a pizza with prosciutto and fry an egg on top of the pizza in the middle of its being in the oven. I really do love fried eggs on pizza as it is not only a totally interesting and unusual presentation, but the taste of warm egg yolk as it freshly bursts across the pizza is quite detectable.
The third pizza idea I had was a basic marguerite, which I made with fresh basil with roots (a week and a half after buying the basil, it's still fresh!) and some heirloom tomatoes.
By the time, I had finished these three pizzas I had hoped a flash of brilliance would have come to me, which unfortunately it didn't. The best I could think of was five cheese pizza. The basic cheese I had been using was already using was a three cheese mix to which I then added parm and a hard goat cheese. At this point, the dough had gotten quite warm, and the pizza had been hard to role out completely, so I knew it was going to be a little thick. The result, however, was a block like pizza that look horribly unappetizing to me and all but one of the people there.
He took it home.
I started off with the ingredient about which I was most excited: the squash blossoms. I wanted to experiment a little with the blooms before the following weekend where I was going to be frying them for a dish (to be written about in the next post). I have had the truffled squash blossom flatbread from COCO 500 twice now, and I really like the rich truffle taste coupled with the delicate squash blossoms, and wanted to play with that a little. I had some leftover white truffle oil, which I mixed with the four cheese cheese mix before spreading it on top of the pizza (a suggestion of my friend Rebecca whose father used to make pizzas every Sunday while she was growing up), which serves to moisten the cheese and blend the flavors together. I spread this cheese across the pizza the place the squash blossoms on the pizza, with petals facing in, and then added lines of ricotta in between. While the dough was sort of on odd shape, I really like the ingredient layout.
I then went on to make a pizza with some prosciutto I had bought at Bocallone. I wanted to play off the idea of eggs and bacon, so my idea was to have a pizza with prosciutto and fry an egg on top of the pizza in the middle of its being in the oven. I really do love fried eggs on pizza as it is not only a totally interesting and unusual presentation, but the taste of warm egg yolk as it freshly bursts across the pizza is quite detectable.
The third pizza idea I had was a basic marguerite, which I made with fresh basil with roots (a week and a half after buying the basil, it's still fresh!) and some heirloom tomatoes.
By the time, I had finished these three pizzas I had hoped a flash of brilliance would have come to me, which unfortunately it didn't. The best I could think of was five cheese pizza. The basic cheese I had been using was already using was a three cheese mix to which I then added parm and a hard goat cheese. At this point, the dough had gotten quite warm, and the pizza had been hard to role out completely, so I knew it was going to be a little thick. The result, however, was a block like pizza that look horribly unappetizing to me and all but one of the people there.
He took it home.
Posts
2 comments:
invite me to your next pizza fest!!
Invite me, too!
Post a Comment