We’re back

It’s been over two and a half years since E was born and I’ve had so many drafts started that never got published. Maybe one day I will. But right now I’m going to write about pizza.

We cook 5 or 6 nights out of 7, even though E goes to a daycare that feeds them 3 hot meals a day, cooked on premise. This was pretty important to us after being at his first daycare, where they catered in food that was processed and gross. All he ate was bread and crackers. Here he is served congee, fried rice, noodles, fresh fruit, soup… He doesn’t often end up eating a full dinner at home with us but we still make him a plate.

As he gets older I try to get him to help us make food. Last night we made pizza from scratch – Ryan brought home 2 balls of dough from work and I got topping ingredients. We had pepperoni and a veggie pizza. I’d made stuffed shells earlier this week and had a lot of leftover ricotta so I decided to make a white pizza.

Mince a bunch of garlic and heat it up in some olive oil until just softened. Spread it over the dough, top with ricotta cheese – just spread a thin layer on. Lightly salt this. You can also add some lemon zest to the ricotta. I used a mandolin to thinly slice some zucchini, then drizzled with a little olive oil and sprinkled Aleppo pepper on top. You can use regular chili pepper flakes, but I like to use Aleppo because it’s slightly smoky and sweet and doesn’t have a lot of heat, which is good for little man.

It only takes about 12 minutes in the oven to cook, and YOU DO NOT NEED A PIZZA STONE! Ryan’s crust is thin and chewy, and E gobbled up the white pizza with me.

It’s great the next morning too, with egg on top for breakfast. E enjoyed dipping his piece into it. I’ve had a hard time with getting him to eat eggs, so I’ll take it! He even took a bite of the pizza with egg on top.

Ain’t nothin but a pizza party

Ryan used to work for a number of USHG (Danny Meyer) ventures and during one of them opened up one of the food stands at Citi Field, making hundreds pizzas a day. Mimi invited us over to make pizzas so we put him to work, stretching out the dough. Originally we’d wanted to make our own but with time constraints (and him working 6 days/week) we decided to get the ready-made dough we found at Fairway. It turned out to be decent, pretty chewy and it held up to our toppings. The trick is to parbake both sides first, then add toppings, then bake it on a pizza stone. Mimi has a cast iron pizza pan that works really well.

#1: Roberta’s Bee Sting by Mimi & Anthony. Tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, soppresatta (we used Genoa salami). Finished with acacia honey and hot oil. Such a crowd pleaser and a good way to start the night. I love this pizza because it’s got creamy-salty-sweet-spicy all in one bite.

#2: Lobster mushroom by Ryan. This is lobster, Danish fontina, and baby bellas on a lobster bechamel, topped with an herb mixture of tarragon, parsley, and chives. I admit that I had my doubts as I’m not a huge fan of cheese on seafood but this worked really well.

#3: Prosciutto, fig, & raddicchio with creme fraiche. I wanted to do a prosciutto and fig pizza and was looking for ideas online. This is a combination of two different recipes. I was mad I couldn’t find fresh figs anywhere but they’re not in season so I bought dried black mission figs, which worked out. This one is also finished with a bit of acacia honey to balance out the raddicchio.

#4: Pistachio goat cheese by Mimi. By this point we were getting so full! But this was a good way to end it, on a semi-sweet note. Pistachios got the honey treatment, then topped the dough along with goat cheese and red onions. A tiny bit of honey at the end to finish.

For dessert, Steve’s key lime pie, which is probably the best I’ve had. To drink, Bear Republic Red Rocket Ale and a Riesling Mimi bought from L18. The name escapes me, but it was full and good.

Two things I learned:
1. I want a pizza pan.
2. Never set two hungry people loose at Fairway. We also ended up with paté de foie and dried cherries for another night, as well as a gallon jug of Turkey Hill Sweet Tea.

Texts from this morning:
“I’m thinking we reconstitute those cherries in brandy.”
“That or Jameson’s”

#AlwaysThinkingOfTheNextmeal

P.S. These were taken with RetroCamera, NOT Instagram.