Pie of the Week #6

After five weeks of making, on average, four different pizzas a week (though usually only one to highlight), I must admit to feeling a little over-cheesed. Cheese is great, of course! But I wanted to mix things up a bit. And, while pizza marinara might have been the obvious choice, I decided to be different: Pizza Tika Masala!

After all, India and Italy both start with I, are 5 letters long, and end in a vowel. And, pizza is really an American phenomenon. AND (chicken) tika masala is generally considered the national dish of the UK, and to have originated in Scotland. So why not do the thing Americans truly excel at: cultural appropriation!

For my pizza tika masala farm to flame pizza, I decided against chicken, and instead went with broccoli and cauliflower. I still had some of the delicious broccoli from Countryside Orchard I used in week 5. Truly fresh produce can remain fresh a long time! And there was some cauliflower in the freezer. I also loved the way our red onions looked (and tasted!) on several recent pizzas, so decided to include those. Oh, and the tika masala sauce? There was a frozen pint from the last time I made Crockpot Tika Masala Sauce.

I also followed my own advice from week #4’s Broccoli Cheese Pizza and pre-roasted the broccoli and cauliflower. I just put them in a Detroit style pizza pan, tossed with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast them at the cooler front of the Roccbox while it was preheating, giving them an occasional shake. I didn’t cook them quite all the way through – just until they had some nice color and caramelization. They finished cooking while the pizza was baking.

This farm to flame pizza was a great success! I made pizza tika masala again later in the week, which is a first! The color was a beautiful summer sunset: orange isn’t something we see a lot of on our plates, let alone pizzas, with green broccoli trees and the purple of the onions, and little cauliflower clouds… And, for those better at color theory than I am, the orange-purple-green made a triadic color scheme even the best art director or interior designer would be proud of!

But the flavor? The sweet, spicy, tangy, earthy richness of the tika masala, the bitter sweetness of the broccoli and cauliflower, and the char of the cole crops and the Neapolitan style crust was a Chhau dance for the mouth! And, somehow, despite all the butter, it was indeed a welcome reprieve from all the cheese.