An annual pizza party
For the past 20+ years, I have provided pizzas for a birthday party for my good friend Jeremy. The first year it was held in his bachelor apartment for a handful of friends. His "I don't cook much" kitchen lacked, among other things, olive oil, a cutting board and a rolling pin (we improvised with an empty wine bottle) but the evening was such a success that the tradition continued and expanded.
Jeremy now hosts the party in his comfortable home with his wife Angie (who sets an excellent cheese buffet for appetizers!) Friends and family come from next door, across town, and from as far away as Texas, Nevada and Virginia. Thanks to our wine enthusiast friend Bill, we have expert pairings for every pie. Here are some of the pies we made for the party. Most of these recipes are available in the second edition of my cookbook Thursday Night Pizza which is available on the Saint Bede Abbey website.
I made three different styles of dough (left, center, right): Italian (high hydration, using only flour water, yeast and salt), American (recipe available HERE), and a special crust with added cornmeal, made especially for our first pizza with BBQ pork.
Jeremy and our Texan friend Justin smoked a pork shoulder for the pulled pork, mixed my pizza sauce with some homemade BBQ sauce (not too sweet), then added the pulled pork, caramelized onions, grilled corn and some smoked mozzarella. It got finished off with a little more BBQ sauce and a drizzle of cojita cheese sauce. Most of the guests were big fans of smoked meats, so this one was a hit. Bill paired this pie with a Zinfandel.
I've been experimenting with classic Italian potato pizza, so we used an Italian crust with a layer of thinly-sliced potatoes that had been blanched in hot water for about three minutes. The meat here is guanciale, a rustic Italian bacon made from the cheek jowl of the pig. We used the rendered fat from frying it to brush the crust, then gave it a light sprinkle of the smoked mozz as well. Bill paired this with an Italian Vermentino.
Pizza Diavolo was next. We added some Frank's hot sauce to my pizza sauce, used hot giardineira for the veggies, then added spicy sausage, copicola, and soppressata, topped with pepper jack cheese. Some of us had only a small piece of this, but there were no leftovers! Paired with a Barbera D'Asti.
There were heirloom tomatoes in the farmer's market and an abundance of herbs in my garden, so we had to make a Quattro Formaggi con Polmodoro. In my cookbook it's called a "Four Cheese Tomato Top" although this cheese blend had seven! The herbs are mixed with the cheeses and a beaten egg. I created a bed of this mixture on an American-style crust and added sliced tomatoes that had been drained on paper towels for several hours. This is the favorite pizza of Justin and his family, who says that his daughters adore it. Bill chose a classic Tuscan Chianti for this pie (both the pizza and the wine are among my favorites!)
Piggy in the Vineyard came next, one of my more unusual creations. American-style crust with sherry cream sauce, chopped deli ham, sweet onions and smoked Gouda, then a layer of red grape halves. Once it's out of the oven, it gets a light drizzle of honey and sprinkling of lemon thyme leaves. This is the closest I ever get to making "bougie" food! We always pair this pizza with a Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
Last pie of the night was a "Denver Diner"--all the ingredients of a Denver omelet, including the eggs. You assemble the pizza without the eggs and pop it in the oven for about 5 minutes so the cheese starts to melt. Then you pull it out and use the bottom of a mason jar to make divots in the cheese into which you crack the eggs. It goes back into the oven (that takes some finesse to keep the eggs from spilling) until the eggs are cooked but not hard. I like to show it to the table in all its glory before I prepare it for serving by breaking up the eggs and spreading them all over the surface of the pizza. Salt and pepper on the table are a must! A dry Riesling was Bill's excellent choice to round out the evening.
This annual event is part of my ongoing crusade to convince people that pizza can be so much more than red sauce, greasy pepperoni and thinly-shredded mozzarella. At the same time, I try my best to avoid pizza snobbery, especially now that both backyard pizza ovens and sourdough cookery have exploded nationally. As I wrote in Thursday Night Pizza:
Someone’s always trying to tell us that real pizza only uses a certain flour for the dough, or that you can’t call it pizza unless it has such and such a cheese, or the sauce is made in this way or that, or that you must have a wood fired oven, or that your taste is decidedly inferior if you like non-traditional toppings.
To which I rely: “Piffle.”
Throughout its long and varied history, what we call pizza has been adapted to every region and culture, influenced by farming and commerce, personal taste and public sentiment, and in a few cases, civil law. The pizza that Gennaro Lombardi brought from Naples to New York in 1905 would have been unrecognizable to his 15th ancestors who had never seen a tomato, and its gradual evolution in this country has been as eclectic as it has been inevitable. Food fads and culinary trends come and go, sometimes leaving a lasting influence on our personal tastes and communal traditions. Cultures begin to blend (often after an initial clash) and foods cross borders of nations and neighborhoods. The result is a pizza buffet far grander and generous than any cookbook can contain.
It's likely you are wondering one of two things: 1) Can I get Fr. Dom to cater a party at my house? and 2) How can I learn to make pizzas like that?
As for the first question, you can always use the contact button on my home page to make a request, although unless you live fairly close to Saint Bede Abbey it's unlikely I can accommodate you. But it never hurts to ask!
Secondly, if you are interested in getting some instruction for pizza making, click HERE to learn more about scheduling a presentation to your church or civic group, or scroll to the bottom of that page to learn about the classes I teach at the Bethany House, our monastery's guest facility.
Comments