Wednesday, June 16, 2010

oh pizza, welcome back!

Actually, we recently had two other kinds of pizza. Some, from zpizza (mmm!). I ate the Tuscan Mushroom sans caramelized onions. Cardo had a chicken sausage and arugula pizza rustica. We also ordered the dip 'n' sticks, although we never eat the marinara.

About a week ago, I picked up a couple of individual frozen pizzas from the grocery store. Frozen pizza used to be a frequent indulgence for us. It's been probably over a year now since that's been true, but we really like pizza and we rarely order takeout.

Our other option is me making pizza. And, I'll be honest, I've been so entirely lazy about this lately. I keep saying that I'll make pizza and I keep not doing it. However, today, I actually got around to it. And, duh, it's so easy for me to make. I know that not everyone has the time to make the dough and wait for it to rise and then put the pizza together and then bake it, but, well, I have all kinds of time.

Tonight, I just had pizza on the menu, nothing specific. (And, oh yes, the menu is back. It's amazing to me how easily we stray from this and also how easy it is to get back to writing and following a weekly menu. We'll see if I'm still doing it next week.) In the fridge, we had zucchini and spinach. I had a tomato on the counter (I was sad we only had one tomato, though).

I made the dough (and was incredibly excited to see that it actually rose because I'm always paranoid that my yeast will be dead or something). While that was rising, I shredded the mozzarella, sliced and seasoned the zucchini (half a huge zucchini with about a teaspoon of olive oil, some kosher salt and some freshly ground black pepper...this is always how I prepare my zucchini), and chopped the spinach and tomato. When the dough was ready, I floured my baking sheet and kind of spread/stretched out the dough on it. I brushed the top with olive oil and then added the cheese, tomato, spinach and squash, in that order. (I was afraid the zucchini somehow wouldn't cook well, so I sliced it really thin and I made sure it was the top layer.) When the pizza finished cooking, we grated some parmesan over the top.

And...it was tasty! Holy gracious, it was good. I ate the two pieces pictured, plus another piece right after that. It's sitting on the stovetop waiting to tempt me later on.

As always (as if I make pizza every other night or something), I used a pizza dough recipe from a Moosewood cookbook calzone recipe. I can't remember which Moosewood book it's from. I don't have the book (alas!), I had checked it out from the library and written down the recipe. Eventually, I'll remember to try adding herbs to the dough. Oh, and I meant to sprinkle cornmeal on the dough after I brushed on the olive oil, but I forgot. Maybe next time. Tonight's pizza really didn't need anything more, though.

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