The pizza stone challenge

Last night, finally, an achievement! I made pizza for what I believe is the first time on a pizza stone. On a heated pizza stone!

God forbid any caloric art eludes me, you know? One of these days I will update you on my other new hobby, ice cream. For now, about this pizza, I made it late last night. Actually I made two. The other one is visible in the upper left, a corner of it anyway.

That other pizza baked on a cookie sheet. But as I lifted the dough up off of the counter I realized, it all stayed pretty much in one piece and it was not sticking. Maybe .. maybe ... just maybe I could roll out the next one and slap it onto that stone.

I almost said forget it. The pizza stone lives on the bottom shelf of the oven and it was searing hot, the way it was supposed to be. To take a pot holder and heft this heavy hot thing out of the oven and slap dough on it -- aiiieeee. I had never seriously considered it. The only reason I even had the pizza stone was that I picked it up at a garage sale at some point. Pizza stones are a hot garage sale item because they are big and heavy and no one actually uses them.

Oh well. Pennario was never afraid of a challenge ...



  ... and neither am I.

Out came the stone. Slap went the pizza. The circle became a little misshapen, and once it is on that stone, that is it, do not try straightening it out. What the heck, it added to the Martha Stewart charm. Back it went into the oven. Slam went the oven door. I did it! I did it!

And it came out great, crisp in a way the cookie sheet pizza, while yummy, was not. This was a thin-crust pizza. One important thing, it incorporated the Gorgonzola cheese from Dorothy.

I am going to call her today and tell her thank you!

The hippie pizza

We continue the hippie food jag with the Moosewood Cookbook's Zucchini Crusted Pizza. I baked it in an iron skillet as in the picture up above. Actually that is my picture. I hate to admit it because I am not a good food photographer but I could not find a good picture online, zut alors.

Cookbook author Mollie Katzen has the recipe on her Web site.

My recipe is a little different from that one. I was cooking out of my vintage edition which is missing some of its pages and is tattered the rest of the way. I have scrawled notes all over it. On the Zucchini Crusted Pizza page it says I made that pizza on Oct. 12, 2005. I wrote that it was South Beach Diet-friendly and that I made it for my friends Toni and Jane while we watched "Night Song."

I remembered that night! We were at Toni's house. But I did not remember "Night Song."



It looks good!

For "Night Song" I added caramelized onions, sliced tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers and mozzarella. Mollie Katzen did not specify the amount of salt and I wrote down 3/4 teaspoon. Yes, I am a chronicler! I used to laugh about that when I was in California with Pennario. I do like to write things down. It is because I am German.

My sweet old Moosewood Cookbook, I had it in my college apartment on Parkside, the one with the ghost. The apartment I revisited that time.

My roommates and I cooked out of it constantly. We ate mostly vegetarian because we were kind of countercultural and also vegetarian cookbooks called for stuff we could buy at the convenience store. Lots of eggs and cheese. We didn't have cars and so we liked that. We used to make the quiche out of the Moosewood Cookbook. That is funny because now quiche seems like so much work, and who makes it? But then we made it a lot. Crust from scratch, everything. At least once a week, dinner was that quiche. Looking at the recipe now sort of touches my heart. The page is all blotted and torn.

The Zucchini Pizza does not really taste like a pizza, at least the crust does not. But it is yummy all the same. We put anchovies on it. And mozzarella from Albrecht Discount.

Too much fun to be having in Lent.

We are almost through it!