Pizza, over easy, please!

May 21, 2011

Sometimes ya just need a good slice of pizza. For me, I prefer to make mine at home. Pizza dough can take a while to make, since you have to let it rise, beat it down, then let it rise again...but it is worth it!

If you do not have the time to make an awesome pizza crust, get some dough from the grocery store, or just order a pizza!

My favorite place to get a pizza in Beaufort is at Panini's Cafe. They have a great selection, and a true thin-crust flatbread-style pizza. The guy that throws their pies into the brick oven always wears a shirt that says: "Never trust a round pizza." My experiment this evening with pizza did end up with an oblong-ish shape...but more on that later.

They also put "non-traditional" toppings on their pizza like preserved lemon, chorizo, and mustard aioli. My favorite is the "Palermo," which has preserved lemon, roasted chicken, peppers, pesto, and mozzarella cheese.

This is my attempt at making this pizza at home, minus the chicken. I did not have any chicken on hand tonight, even in the freezer. The only chicken available is in a form that is unacceptable and harvesting said chicken is considered murderous cannibalism in these parts. So instead, I used eggs as a topping.

This is my "Pizza Palermo a la SBC."

Ingredients:

2-3 tablespoons of Pesto (make it from scratch or from out of a jar, Classico makes a decent one)

1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese

Thin sliced sweet red pepper

1/4 of a preserved lemon, sliced into thin strips* I made my own, see note below

2 large eggs, organic or from your own stupid baby chickens is best

Pizza dough

fresh cracked black pepper

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 500 F

Put your baking stone into the oven while the oven pre-heats

When the oven comes to temperature, you must work fast, lest you end up with an ugly oblong-shaped pizza like mine.

If you are really good, and have a pizza peel or wooden cutting board "lubricated" with semolina or corn meal, you can build the pizza there, and then attempt to slide it into the oven, atop the stone. My attempt at this failed miserably tonight, hence the ugly pizza pictured below. It did not want to slide!

Roll out your pizza dough to desired thickness, take care that it doesn't stick to the board.

Get your ingredients chopped, grated, and ready to build the pizza.

When your stone is hot, remove it from the oven and place on the stove top.

Place your pizza dough on it, then the fun begins.

Quickly: smear your pesto onto the dough, then sprinkle the lemon, red pepper, Parmesan cheese, and then crack the two eggs onto the desired locations on the dough. Sprinkle a little cracked black pepper directly on top of the raw eggs.

* Some members of your family may be grossed out by this, so place the eggs where the pizza can be cut around them into single servings.*

Carefully put the stone + pizza back into the hot oven for 8-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of your crust.

Remove when the eggs are cooked (they will look like fried eggs sitting on top of the crust). Let the pizza cool slightly, cut and serve!

No preserved lemon on hand? You can find them at Whole Foods, international markets, and Indian/Middle Eastern grocery stores. You can also make them yourself! If you are a fan of this blog, you are aware that every winter my Aunt Susan gives me gorgeous Meyer lemons from her back yard. I make some of them into limoncello, some into lemonaid, some into Meyer lemon pies, and some into preserved lemons.

Here is an excellent recipe for making preserved lemons. It is really super easy, and takes about 1 month from lemon to preserve.

These really are a good way to put a salty-sweet note on the pizza. The "pickling" process takes away the sourness of the lemon and leaves a nice tang that works well with pesto.

Don't just think that making preserved lemons limits you to making pizza with them. Go online and look up some Moroccan recipes that call for preserved lemon. YUM!

I hear that the Russians really like eggs on their pizza. I wonder if this is also true in Poland? There is only one way to find out.......but in the meantime, we should ALL make eggs on pizza at home!