Friday, July 2, 2010

Another Pizza Party

Remember the first Perfect Pizza Party?

Well it was so good that we just had to do it again. And this time, things got fancier. Carmelized onions...pesto...smoked gouda cheese - yum yum and yummmmm!I don't usually like cooking with other people, but in the case of pizza decorating, I enlisted one of my roommates to toss on a splash of this and a dash of that.Lessons learned from the first time: sometimes rolling out the dough can be tricky! It wants to stay in a ball, but I want it flat as a pancake (or as pizza...duh!). So I rolled it out. Then weighed it down. That's what I call resourceful! Like last time, I bought ready-made pizza dough from Trader Joe's. I like the whole wheat crust best - it's so easy to just buy it and start rolling!

We made 3 pizzas:
Pizza #1 - Smoked Gouda Half-and-Half Pizza
This was a 2-part pizza:
- Whole wheat crust
- Red sauce
- Pesto Sauce (See my recipe here. I froze the extras from when I made it the first time, and de-frosted it for the pizzas!)
- Smoked gouda cheese
- Caramelized onions
- Cherry tomatoes
- Olives
- Mushrooms
- Spinach

Pizza #2 - Chicken Everything Pizza - was the same as #1, except that we used mozarella cheese, and added sliced chicken meatballs for the carnivores of the group. Have you tried the chicken meatballs from Trader Joes? They're so good! Pizza #3 was a Pesto-Less Pizza (because maybe some people don't like pesto???):
- Regular crust
- Red sauce
- Mozarella cheese
- Red bell peppers
- Olives
- Mushrooms
- Caramelized Onions
- A sprinkling of spinach
- Half of it had chicken meatballs

It was, again, a perfect pizza party!

I hope you all have a fantastic 4th of July weekend! Maybe make some pizza on the grill? I mean, what's more American than pizza? (I realize the ridiculousness of that statement...but I stand by it. Pizza to Italy as hamburgers are to Germany...aka Americans have kinda sorta taken them over!)