When the Moon Hits Your Eye...

Oh my sweet, gentle readers, 14 hours later I can still taste the fresh, juicy tomatoes, feel the crunch of the bell peppers, smell the freshly toasted garlic, see the wonderfully browned tops of the one day old mozzarella, and, and, um, hear the olives, shaking in their aluminum can. You see, friends, last night, I stole Peter's idea, and Rachel and I made Pizza.

OH it was glorious! It was fresh, it was flavorful, it was easy and it was fun, but most of all, it was Peter's idea, and I stole it.

Before launching into the recipe (which, I know, is not the general practice in this space), a little background. Sunday began as all Sunday's do, Cafe Pettirosso and a Crossword, duly dispatched. Sitting around and shooting the breeze about the day's possibilities, the topic of the Ballard Farmer's Market was breached. Never mind that I had shot down that possibility when it was earlier mentioned, we were off.

The very first booth of interest was a cheese booth (surprise, surprise, there are probably 17 cheese booths at the Ballard Farmer's Market), where Rachel and I picked out a Cow's Milk cheese which was a bit pungent and very good, and then grabbed a tub of Mozzarella, which the woman behind the counter duly informed us was yesterday's milk, which was pretty exciting to hear.

We went in search of produce, but (it being winter and all) were unable to do better than beets, turnips, carrots, etc. which I vetoed on the grounds that I don't like beets, I don't like turnips, and we never use our carrots anyway. It was around this time that Pedro mentioned an interest in making Pizza that night. Now, normally I shy away from the labor intensive practice that is baking, especially seeing as I still work in a bakery, and don't particularly enjoy it. But for whatever reason, I had been thinking about baking that very day, cookies, bread, something, so Pizza piqued my interest. Long story short (I know, I know), rather than share my mozzarella with Peter, I stole his idea instead.

{+} K and R's Italian Love Fest

Rachel and Andrew's Sauceless Pizza
serves 4, or 2 with leftovers.

The pizza dough recipe I cannot take credit for and neither can Rachel. We pulled it from that oh so useful of Kitchen Resources: The Joy of Cooking. Rather than reproduce it here, I'll just give you a link. The only variation we made, not being comfortable enough with the process to experiment a lot, was to toss some thyme and some snipped chives into the dough, just to add something interesting. I'm not sure you could taste them, so next time we'll add more. anyway, here are some dough pictures.

Rachel's dough turned out much better than mine, possibly because we let it sit for a little longer after having risen and been separated (the state the dough is in below), or possibly because she is less of a screw-up than I am (show of hands on which is more likely....). At any rate, her experience as a pizza girl at a small town grocery store in rural Michigan helped her infinitely in making a nice, round basis for her pizza. Below right.

As is implied above, this is a sauceless Pizza, meaning we were way too lazy to make a tomato sauce, and way too stuck up to buy a prefabricated one, so we just chopped and chopped and chopped our little hearts out. There's no point listing our ingredients, because there's no reason not to use whatever you want on your pizza, but I'll list them anyway, then show you some pictures of chopping, some pictures of pre and post-baked pizzas, and some pictures of what a cute, classy, little Italian couple we are.

2 whole tomatoes, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can olives, sliced
1/2 each of red, yellow, orange and green bell peppers, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 ball super-fresh mozzarella, sliced
6 or 7 mushrooms, chopped
1/2 a white onion, chopped

when you do all that chopping you will have this:
So after coating the dough with olive oil, just add as much or as little as you want to add, as artfully or haphazardly as you want to add it, and throw it in the oven at 475 for 12 minutes. If you live in an incredibly small apartment, like we do, a 475 degree oven will set off the fire alarm every time you open it, so be prepared for that. We only baked one at a time, because that's all we could fit on the bottom rack of our oven, these are 12" Pizzas, nothing to shake a stick at, but you could probably finagle it such that you baked them simultaneously. We knew we weren't going to eat both in one night, so it was no biggie.

Serve with bread, olive oil and balsamic, with some red pepper flakes and thyme, pour some deep glasses of Chianti, and you are in for an adorable provincial Italian date meal.

oh friends, that's amore.

Kribs

PS: terribly sorry to steal your proverbial thunder, Pedro, but I have a feeling your spirit of one-up-manship will see you though, no?