Food and Wine Pairings

We were all happy to be back in the full swing of Pizza Night again this week. I have found that, with new traditions, diligent repetition is key. We all know how easy it is to take a week off from a new thing, life comes in to play and very soon - if you are not careful - the new thing will evaporate into thin air as part of history.

This week we had the usual suspects, Larry, Sr., Sara, Larry, Jr., Todd, Me and also William (Larry, Jr.'s brother). Our pizzas were Barbecue Chicken and Veggie.

Larry, Jr. and I now have the iPhone 4 so we made our Virgin Video of Pizza Night in action. You can expect to see more of these videos in future posts. The MC in this video is Larry, Jr. and the Pizza Artiste in the background is the infamous Sara you have heard so much about. I am the one behind the camera that you hear commenting here and there.





As you can see from the video, the barbecue pizza got a good helping of barbecue sauce. I know it may  sound extreme, but if you recall from the BBQ Extraordinaire post, the barbecue sauce tends to dry on the grill so a generous helping is needed to keep the pizza tasting moist.

This time we had chicken instead of pork on the barbecue pizza followed by pineapple, red onion and mozzarella cheese.

As always, we need our salad, which we took in the form of a Veggie Pizza. Sara used olive oil, garlic salt and pepper as the base followed by red onion, artichokes, fresh tomato, green and red pepper, fresh basil leaves, feta and shredded mozzarella cheeses.

Both pizzas came out looking absolutely magnificent. The feta cheese browned a little too enthusiastically, but was not inedible in the least.

The barbecue pizza looked and smelled delectable, which is what we expected, but Sara had other ideas. She had a secret ingredient that she added to the pizza at the table. Do you know what it is? Can you guess?

White wine. How we wish we had a video to get this stunning performance!

I know, I know, you want the story. Well, right as we were all about to sit down and grace the food Sara smacked her "top-heavy" wine glass over and white wine drenched the barbecue pizza. (Yes, I also thought it was better to add the wine while cooking but I'm not the expert here.)

There was a stunned silence around the table as everyone tried to fathom what had happened but the moment was short-lived and soon we were all brave enough to try it.

You wouldn't even believe me if I told you, but it was actually really tasty. The wine brought balance to all the flavor int the pizza. It probably paired with the cheese or something.

So, there you have it. Wine and food paired perfectly.

No Pizza Party

I just thought I would pop in here and let you know that Sara had a meeting last night and, thus, we did not have pizza night. It might still happen this week depending on our schedules.

Check back again!

Coconut Creme [Pizza] Pie

Monday night differed from the norm in which the pizza really didn't take center stage. Instead, Todd had five gorgeous steaks that needed to be cooked - I know, right, how unfortunate for us! "Let them eat [steak]!"

However, Sara in all her brilliance, didn't let a good pizza opportunity go to waste. I know what you're thinking, but no, we didn't use the steak on pizza nor did we make a veggie pizza instead of starch and salad. We've threatened for weeks to do this and here was our chance - a dessert pizza!

For dinner we would have the lovely steaks pictured above accompanied by baked potatoes, bread rolls with melted cheese on top, and a lovely baby spinach salad with a sugar, white vinegar and olive oil dressing which is absolutely to die for. 

Then for dessert we would have pizza. Sara was quite ingenious with her toppings. She used coconut creme filling as the base followed by chunks of pineapple, sliced peaches, chopped blackberries (no, those are not olives) and finished with coconut.

Seeing as we were using the grill for steaks, we thought it best to bake the pizza in the oven this time so that the continual opening and closing of the grill to check the steaks would not interfere with the baking of the pizza. Sara turned the oven to 425°F and baked the pizza on a pizza stone for 25 minutes.

In the meantime, we feasted on delectable steaks. Todd brought some red wine that paired excellently with the meal and, although I would love to give you the lowdown on the wine, it is not my forte. So, when Todd sends me the information I will post it on here or maybe he can comment on the post with more on the wine. I just know that it tasted amazing!

Critique on the dinner: not enough salad! Not that I needed anymore; I was so stuffed because you just don't let food like that go to waste.

Finally, the pizza was ready to come out of the oven and boy, was that a beauty. As you can see, the coconut toasted beautifully on the top. Now, I can imagine that you would think this would be sickly sweet, but actually the salty crust balanced that out very nicely.

In fact, the men all thought that we should sprinkle some brown sugar over the pizza just to sweeten it a bit. Me? I had other ideas. Whipped cream, baby. This is what I call a dessert pizza!