Soooo.... the other day I was talking to Aubrey and I suggested that maybe I should take a day off from cooking and we should just chill out and order pizza. It was raining outside and for a couple of seconds I was just not feeling an 'all-day'cooking'project'. Somewhere in the middle of trying to justify that I decided that I wanted to make it instead. I decided to make 2 pizzas.
1. Pepperoni, Jalapeno, egg yoke, 3 cheese.
2. Charred- Tomatillo , Achiote Barbecued Chicken, Queso Fresco, Cilantro.
The pic above shows the first pizza of the night. I fired up the green egg to make the sauce for the second pizza and decided to use to char the onions for both sauces. The sauce on the red pizza was pretty much a combo of San Marzano tomatoes, Charred yellow onion, Garlic, Vinegar, Sugar and oregano. All this stuff was simmered for about 1 hour and then went into the Vita-Prep. It then went back to the stove-top for some further reduction.
The dough for these pizzas had been slowly doing it's thing in my fridge since about 10am. It was a basic pizza dough with only minor augmentation.
Flour, yeast, Sriracha, sugar, olive oil, water, salt. I don't measure ingredients for pizza dough anymore. It's all about the way it feels. Even yeast is added to water by the pinch. I admit that I often get different results by throwing measurement aside but I enjoy observing such events.
I removed this dough from the fridge about 1 hour before rolling it out. I like to par bake my dough on a stone for about 2 minutes before pulling it out and then adding the toppings. This firms the crust up slightly and makes it much easier to slide the composed pizza onto the oven without spilling toppings all over your stone.
1. Pepperoni, Jalapeno, egg yoke, 3 cheese.
2. Charred- Tomatillo , Achiote Barbecued Chicken, Queso Fresco, Cilantro.
The pic above shows the first pizza of the night. I fired up the green egg to make the sauce for the second pizza and decided to use to char the onions for both sauces. The sauce on the red pizza was pretty much a combo of San Marzano tomatoes, Charred yellow onion, Garlic, Vinegar, Sugar and oregano. All this stuff was simmered for about 1 hour and then went into the Vita-Prep. It then went back to the stove-top for some further reduction.
The dough for these pizzas had been slowly doing it's thing in my fridge since about 10am. It was a basic pizza dough with only minor augmentation.
Flour, yeast, Sriracha, sugar, olive oil, water, salt. I don't measure ingredients for pizza dough anymore. It's all about the way it feels. Even yeast is added to water by the pinch. I admit that I often get different results by throwing measurement aside but I enjoy observing such events.
I removed this dough from the fridge about 1 hour before rolling it out. I like to par bake my dough on a stone for about 2 minutes before pulling it out and then adding the toppings. This firms the crust up slightly and makes it much easier to slide the composed pizza onto the oven without spilling toppings all over your stone.
To assemble this pizza I smeared a reasonable amount of sauce over the whole thing, Then added shredded Mozz, Asiago and Parm. Atop that I placed thin slices of very large pepperoni and some jalapeno slices which I pickled earlier in the day with a warm mixture of lime juice and salt. Then I spotted the whole pizza with egg yokes before firing it.
In retrospect, I would have pulled this thing out of the oven 2 minutes before it was done and added those yokes. This way they would have been bleeding all over the place when I cut the pie. Still, they were awesome. A sprinkle of Truffle-Salt on each one made them a moment of bliss each time one was encountered on a slice.
In retrospect, I would have pulled this thing out of the oven 2 minutes before it was done and added those yokes. This way they would have been bleeding all over the place when I cut the pie. Still, they were awesome. A sprinkle of Truffle-Salt on each one made them a moment of bliss each time one was encountered on a slice.
For the Chicken/Tomatillo pizza my Green Egg was a big player. I started with a direct, high-heat fire to put a nice char on the tomatillos and onions. After those were done they came off the grill and went right into the Vita Prep where they were liquefied and then reduced on the stove-top while other ingredients such as lime, sugar, salt and garlic were added to taste.
The chicken was marinated for about 2 hours in a mixture of raw garlic, achiote-paste and beer. I salted it heavily and added some dried citrus zest before putting it on the BGE for about 3 hours at 225 degrees. I decided to turn the leftover marinade into a baste for the chicken so I simmered it for about 20 minutes on the stove-top and added sugar and lime juice to it for balance and "glazability".
The above pic is how the chicken looked as it was resting, just after being removed from the BGE. While the meat was juicy, the real flavor was in the skin. For a shredded chicken pizza I really didn't think the skin had a place on the crust and this made me sad.. So i decided to peel the skin off, place it on a Silpat and crisp it in it's own fat in my oven until it could be crumbled on to the finished product in place of parm or some other aged hard cheese.
I hereby admit to eating most of this skin before it had a chance to reach the pizza.
I hereby admit to eating most of this skin before it had a chance to reach the pizza.
The final pic: One ugly pizza.
Between the steam fogging my lens and the absolute look of clutter on this cutting board, this pizza was perhaps, the best thing we ate that night. It's ugly as hell but the flavor profiles which were represented within it were awesome.
In the future i may try to turn this concept into some kind of Mexican calzone-type thing. Something deep fried and almost in "Stick" form. I will of course refine and revise until those words ring true. Until then..
Order a pizza and just chill.
