Pizza with tomato, basil, asiago, onion, mozzarella and parmaggiano – 6 June 2012

When I bought their sourdough pizza dough at The Cheese Board yesterday, the package they had set aside for me was almost 1.4 pounds of dough, so I cut it in half and saved a batch. D said I should go ahead and make the second pizza today.

I chose this particular one b/c it uses Asiago, which I had left over from the artichoke pizza last week. The only recipe I have for this one, though, is a photo of the “Pizza of the day” description from the Cheese Board wall, in their recipe book. So I had to make up the actual recipe.I decided to use their temperature – 450 degrees – instead of my usual 500, so I knew I’d have to cook it a bit longer.

I grated about 4 oz defrosted Precious part-skim mozzarella from Costco, then grated (also form Costco) Parmaggiano Reggiano, perhaps 1 oz, and mixed the two together. I used half or a bit more of this mixture as the first layer on the 1 1/2 minute-baked crust. I sliced perhaps half a large onion as thin as I could without using a Benriner, and strewed that over the cheese. I didn’t use all of it, but definitely, lots is good. I sliced up two moderate-sized Romas that I got at the Bowl, one rather tasty and the other pretty crunchy and not interesting.

The same pizza, in the evening light from the kitchen window

The tomato slices were not thick, perhaps 1/8″ or a bit more. I distributed these over the onion, and then salted and peppered them. I tore into large pieces quite a few basil leaves, till I had pretty good coverage of the tomatoes. I put the rest of the mozz/parm mix over all of this and cooked 6 minutes. Then I distributed perhaps 1 – 2 oz of grated Stella Asiago over the pizza and returned it to the oven for 4 more minutes, when it got quite pretty and looked done. At least one slice, with the tastier Roma, was quite yummy, and the tomato definitely added to that. I courageously saved a piece for tomorrow’s lunch.

Knowing that I wanted to encourage myself not to eat half the pizza, and also that the veggie content of this one was pretty minimal, I got out a small yellow zuchinoid squash (bright yellow with rich, darkish green ends) and sliced it, and chopped the very end of the onion, and cooked the two together in olive oil, salted and peppered, very long and slowly till the pizza was done. I ended up with more basil washed and dried than I thought I needed on the pizza, so I tore up the rest and added that to the zucchinoids, too, a few minutes before they were done. this was a very tasty side dish.

We had two leftover wines – the 200ml container of Chateau Mayne Guyon from last night, which was fine but slightly odd (definitely tasted good after the pizza) and then a mystery in the long-necked bottle. The blog suggested it might have been the Volteo, but I just realized we had the whole bottle of that. The Epicuro Primitivo? I thought this was better than that, but it will just remain a mystery, I guess. The two bottles did a nice Laurel and Hardy imitation.

~ by berkeleybarb on 2012/06/06.