Cooking Confidential

David glanced sidelong at me before tucking into his third piece of pizza: “I hope you remember how you made this pizza”, he wryly observed. He knows too well  my penchant for procrastination in this arena of culinary endeavor, as I carry the changes around in my head, fully intending to record them until some domestic disaster wipes them from my memory….

This started out as sandwich roll, evolved into a slightly more gussied up foccacia, and ended up as pizza. It’s very plain, compared to my usual production, which tends to be a meal on a bread frisbee, but absolutely satisfying.

Largish onion (any kind) slice thin

Garlic, crushed (6 cloves)

Parsley (about 1/2 a bunch well chopped)

Large can whole tomatoes

Olive oil (regular)

Grated cheeses– I always use a combination. Today I just wanted to use up various orphan chunks           wandering aimlessly about my refrigerator shelves– aged Provolone, some Jarlesberg(a mild   Swiss type), and excess of aged white cheddar, balance with a small chunk of Grana Parmesan.

Seasonings:

1/2 teaspoon whole fennel seed

2 bay leaves

fresh ground black pepper

crushed red chiles

3 heaping tablespoons of dried basil, crushed between your fingers as you drop it in

1 tablespoon brown sugar

salt to taste

Oven preheated to 475 degrees

I sauteed a large purple onion cut sliver-thin from pole to pole in olive oil into which I’d dropped about 1/2 a teaspoon whole fennel seed, several very brisk shakes of crushed red chiles and some grindings of black pepper before adding the onions. When the onions became tender and transluscent, I scraped them out onto a plate and set them aside.

Then, I chopped and mashed about 6 good-sized cloves of garlic. I’ve given away both of my garlic presses to my college student offspring, and I just can’t bring myself to spend any more money on garlic presses at this moment, so I accomplished this by sprinkling the finely chopped garlic with salt and scraping it across the cutting board with the side of my knife.

Now I poured some olive oil into the just used for onion pan, and sauteed the crushed garlic until it turned golden. Then I turned in the can of tomatoes, crushing them between my fingers as I did so.

To that I added the bay leaves, the basil, brown sugar, and only 1/2 the parsley, and in the immortal words of DNN, “let ‘er rip” on medium high heat until it was in imminent danger of spattering, at which moment, I partially covered it and turned the heat down a bit– the idea being to evaporate off the extra liquid, not scorch it to the bottom of the pan. Don’t wander off: stir it regularly, scraping thoroughly from the bottom of the pan, or you’ll be sorry!

At this point, I patted out my dough ( I had 3 rectangular/oval pizzas approximately 2 hands lengths long and 1 1/2 across) onto parchement paper lined cookie sheets) and left it to relax/rise.

Once the tomato mixture had cooked down quite a bit and was almost ready to turn off, I added the rest of the chopped parsey and let it burble for a couple minutes to soften it enough to release its flavor before turning it off. Then I stirred in the reserved onions, and set the pan aside while I turned my attention to patting out the dough ( home made or purchased, it doesn’t really matter) and grated the cheese– I suppose it was at least a pound for the three pizzas: we like ours well-cheesed.

I spread the tomato mixture on the dough, baked them until done– edges and bottoms (lift to take a peek)  nicely browned, removed from the oven to sprinkle generously with cheese, and slipped them back in again to melt the cheese to a bubbling goodness.

N.B. I never make one pizza– it’s great reheated for a subsequent meal, and freezes beautifully.