Pizza Night
When I say pizza, you say time!
PIZZA!
[tries to mumble through a mouth full of pizza] TIME!
PIZZA!
[choking on pizza, turning blue] TIME!
PIZZA!
PIZZA!
PIZZA?
Well that didn’t go as planned. But the pizza did.
So last spring during the first of these many, many shutdowns we’ve endured, I really wanted some pizza. However, most pizza delivery here in Seattle is, well, sub par at best. Not that I’m some sort of fucking snooty New Yorker, but, fuck it, I guess I am. It’s not that the pizza is bad per se, but it doesn’t really hit the “I want pizza” craving spot. First there’s only place that will deliver to us without using one of those capitalist dog, employee fucking, shitworks like über eats or door dash. I’m also very much not of the “doesn’t matter, had pizza” camp, like there are some times when it’s just not fucking worth it.
Also, attention everyone: a whole pizza is a pie. When you’re talking about multiple pizzas you call them “pies”. You order a pie with pepperoni on it. Don’t question this, just accept it. Plus, it means you get to eat pie for dinner.
So yeah, anyway, I wanted pizza, but like the place I wanted to get pizza from was closed indefinitely so I impulse purchased a backyard pizza oven, not much unlike the time I lived in Brooklyn and was fucking high as a kite and wanted some ice cream so I ordered and ice cream making, apparently too fucking stoned to a) remember that I had ordered it b) realize that ordering it online wasn’t going to get me ice cream right then and there. A few weeks later though my pizza oven arrived, and since I wasn’t fucking high when I ordered it, I wasn’t surprised when it arrived!
The downside, if there is one, and I’m not saying there is, to having a backyard pizza oven in Seattle is that it fucking rains a lot. (Yeah, yeah Seattle readers, I know “it’s not rain is really more of a mist” and “did you know it actually rains more in NYC than it does in Seattle”. Go cry over your fucking Dominos delivery. Also, like, what the fuck was up with January, are you goddamn kidding me?) I can make pizza in 50º weather, but I can’t make it when it’s just fucking wet. Although, to be quite honest, I’d really like it to be in the mid-60s if I’m going to be cooking outside.
Also, let us address the elephant in the room.
Yes.
That is motherfucking pineapple on that motherfucking pizza.
Yes.
I am fine with that.
While I might be picky about the combinations of dough, sauce and cheese I spent my calories on, I’m not a fucking aesthetic purist here. A lot of shit tastes good on top of a well-made pizza, and the best part about pizza is that you can just wait for the next one if you don’t like what’s on this one. One day I’ll get my kids to enjoy anchovies, I fucking swear. Speaking of dough this is Kenji’s Neopolitian dough, and the “sauce” was just a can of Italian san marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, with a good pinch of salt added.
Being my kids though, what did they get? A cheese pizza. None of this fresh mozzarella shit for them. If I had a goddamn sprig of basil within 50’ of the pizza when I made it they’d send it back. No, this is straight up shredded low moisture mozzarella. But I did get them in the end since that’s just crushed tomatoes and not a cooked tomato sauce underneath. Suckers. On the upside the pizza was good enough that it made them both quiet for the ten minutes they spend shoving it into their face holes.
The other two pizzas were my wife’s favorite that is unashamedly stolen from Pizza Loves Emily in our old neighborhood in Brooklyn: Pepperoni, hot peppers and honey. I had pineapple though in the fridge from the fish tacos earlier in the week, so that got added too. Did you know she once ate so much pineapple she got an acid burn in her mouth? That’s a lot of pineapple. Also, I’m probably sleeping on the couch for the next several years, so cheers friends, it’s been real! The other pizza was a white pie with thinly shaved fennel, peas and ricotta. There is something magic about the flavor of fennel when it’s been singed on the outsides and how it combines with the flavor of the peas. I would have usually made some sort of white sauce to go down as the base on the pie rather than just more mozzarella, but fuck it, I’ve been on call this week and the pager was blowing up as I was trying to prepare for it, so you got mozzarella. It’s still pretty fucking good though.
