Monday, March 29, 2010

Grilled Pizzas


What better way to end an adventurous puppy weekend full of dog park dates, dog brunches, and dog training than inviting my friends over to play with Kaika while I grill them home-made pizzas? My cousin, Jenny (Jeff's sister), has very graciously given me the secret to her home-made pizza dough, here. And if there is anyone to trust for a good pizza recipe, it would be Jenny. Jeff was an extremely well-versed pizza aficionado and it seems to have run in the family. Jenny has gone through several recipes and experiments to find the perfect pizza dough recipe, and I'm reaping the fruits of her labor.

Knowing that I have no skills in forming a good pizza, I made enough dough to allow for mistakes. In fact, you can tell from the photos that I posted, that my pizzas went from a thicker crust (the top photo) to a crispy, thin, and chewy in the middle crust (the bottom photo), after I started to get the hang of it. Here's the method that worked for me (with a few tips from Bobby Flay):

Grilled Pizza

Pre-heat the grill to high. Generously flour your work surface. Begin stretching out your pre-made dough on the surface using gravity and sort of shaking it mid-air. I try to make an oblong shape. If you're comfortable spinning/flinging the dough in the air, give it a try. Once the dough is as evenly thin as you can get without seeing through it, place it on a pre-oiled cookie sheet. Brush olive oil on both sides and further stretch out the dough on the cookie sheet to your thickness preference.

Here's the tricky part: Try to gently place the dough directly on the grill without breaking it or mucking it up. Let it grill for a minute or two and it will be relatively easy to flip over. There should be grill marks on the first side. Remove after another minute or two of grilling.

Place the finished dough on foil, then top it with toppings. Place it back on the grill with the foil and cover for about 3 minutes till cheese melts. The dough is already cooked, so the foil helps to keep it from cooking more, but it will crisp the bottom. And trust me, it truly does crisp because it will give you a very satisfying crunch as you cut through it.

For our toppings, I used goat cheese (dotted in an artful blob distribution on the dough), prosciutto, figs, grilled asparagus, and arugula on one pizza. For the other, I used shredded fontina cheese, goat cheese, grilled chicken, grilled asparagus, grilled peppers, and home-made pesto. The verdict for this recipe: hands down the best grilled pizza I've ever made. Thanks Jenny!

P.S. With all this cooking, I often wonder why I don't make my darling little puppy boy some of his own organic gourmet food, since I always go through that effort for me and my friends. And then I watch him lick dirt, sniff other puppies' poop, and swiftly stop him from eating dead animals on our walks......so perhaps not.

2 comments:

collin said...

That is interesting. :P

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Unknown said...

YUM.

hey, did i ever send you adam's grilled pizza recipe?

it's here at bryce's blog:

http://theroguegourmet.com/index.php/the-rogue-s-kitchen/recipes/pizzas/adam-s-leftover-rib-pizza-on-the-grill/