It seems like every day the past week and a half has found us on the road. That makes it hard to be creative in the kitchen! Even if we’re home for most of our meals, just driving all over the place gets exhausting and drains creativity. But, at least I came up with a good Pie of the Week: Chicken Parmesan Pizza!
This is a little different take on the pizzas I’ve been doing lately. But really delicious, nonetheless. It uses ingredients left over from making the blackened chicken wraps yesterday. But we unwrap the wrap, put it on a quasi-neapolitan pizza crust, and give it a couple of minutes in the Roccbox.
I’m not much of a New York style pizza fan. Sorry. In the regional pizza battle, I fall squarely in the Chicago camp (the deep dish, not the thin crust. Chicago offers two powerful indigenous pizza styles…). But this week, as part of my triumphant turkey tribunal, I at least made a pizza based on a “sandwich” named after one of New York’s five boroughs: the Turkey Manhattan.
This week, I decided to get a little meta with the pizza. French Onion Pizza: essentially deconstructed French Onion Soup on a Neapolitan style pizza crust. Different. Yummy. Would do again.
The spatchcock chicken recipe I posted Tuesday may have led you to think I abandoned the pie of the week project. Never fear: here’s this week’s: an onion marmalade, walnut, blue cheese pizza!
After making an untold number of farm to flame pizzas the last several weeks, and a bunch of them for thanksgiving, I nearly took a break from my weekly pizza experiments. Sorta. In the end, I did make one I’ve been contemplating for while: chili cheese pizza. I also had my first major pizza failure.
I really miss the large family thanksgiving meals we used to have. Seriously – we rented a school so we could fit everyone in! In just a few short years, it shrunk enough to fit in the second floor community room at Grandma’s retirement/assisted living place. Then, suddenly, completely gone.
The last few years, though, have replaced it with a more intimate gathering. Just my wife and me, going to my Mom’s to make something fun. Occasionally we’ll add in a friend without other plans – this year we had a friend and her child join us. We’ve done a whole turkey and all the fixings, chicken and noodles (a tradition borrowed from my Dad’s side/great aunt), Detroit style pizza, and more. This year, I brought over the Roccbox, and we did Thanksgiving pizzas.
In last week’s pie of the week, I took a detour from the usual round pizza. This week, I went back to something much more traditional: round pizza. With round things on it.
A couple of folks at the farmers’ market mentioned they were enjoying following my pizza journey, but noticed I had not posted a Pie of the Week on my blog yet. Never fear: I’m still making farm to flame pizzas every week! Our internet was down for over two weeks, so I’m pre-dating this post back to when it should have been made. Rural internet: it’s slow and unreliable, but at least it’s expensive!
But, Pie of the Week #7 was another one inspired by my love of the Indian buffet… In particular, I love the various dals. For those who have yet to fall in love with Indian food, dal refers to both an ingredient and a dish. There are many of both. Dal the ingredient is a lentil or split pea, or a similar small bean. Dal the dish is a richly spiced stew made from dal the ingredient, cooked until it begins to break down. They have wonderfully rich flavors, that blend well with all of the runny sauces from the other dishes you pile on your buffet plate. And, the best way to eat them is by using naan, an Indian flatbread, as an edible shovel. What is pizza, but an already-filled flatbread shovel? So, dal pizza it is!