Thursday, June 17, 2010

This edition is brought to you by various songs mentioning the word "independence"

That's because today's edition features pizza made entirely from scratch.

Here's what it took:

1. Cheese: The procedure for this was relatively simple, at least in theory. I had a huge problem scraping all the compressed cheese off the cheesecloth, which meant, unfortunately, that I got slightly less cheese than I wanted. The bathroom door also attempted to lock me out, and THAT meant that I got to try my James Bond shoulder-the-door-open skills.


(Note: No doors were harmed in the making of this cheese.)

2. Tomato sauce: Okay, see this picture of a can of tomatoes?



Never buy that brand of canned tomatoes. They were disgustingly tinny, and I ended up having to buy a new can. Two roasted cloves of garlic, one bay leaf, liberal amounts of cilantro and ancho chili powder, some cumin, and a touch of honey and cinnamon and nutmeg later, and the Hunt's brand stuff wasn't so bad.


3. Crust: Here's where things really got batty. The crust (a Martha Stewart recipe) that supposedly made "two 7-inch rounds" barely, and I mean barely, hit one ten-inch round. Did the recipe mean seven inches in circumference rather than diameter? It's not that it wasn't good which it was. It's just that after an hour of rising, I expected this stuff to have grown a bit more. No matter; although the quantity wasn't large, what I got was a pleasant balance between crisp and chewy.




I also caramelized some onions and put those on top, along with a squash I didn't cut up last night. I topped it with a mostly-fried duck egg to finish in the oven, sprinkled on a bit of parsley and some sea salt, and bob's your uncle: Mexican duck egg pizza!


No leftovers for tomorrow, though. It vanished pretty quickly. Being able to mop up the egg yolk with the edges of the crust was probably my favorite aspect of this meal.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like lots of fun and I love the duck eggs.
    You must make this for me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have entirely too much free time. I'd be jealous if I didn't know this was your last good bit of free time for a while.

    I'm finally into a house again, but the kitchen consists of a mini-fridge and a two-burner electric range. I suppose that's an adventure in its own way...it just makes me all the more mournful to see your lovely posts.

    ReplyDelete