pizza, pizza

I went to see my friend Ariel's show on Bedford ave last week and it was wonderful as usual. As I did not have any ID on me, I was denied a beer at Rosemary's Greenpoint Tavern and just said "screw it, I'm going home to make pizza." I went across the street to Fornino and bought 2 large balls of uncooked dough, then walked a few blocks to the nearest grocery store and bought dandelion greens (finally in season again!), an onion, goat cheese, mozzarella, and some aged balsamic. Oh, also a sixer of Peroni....

I returned home to 28 Lawton to find two hungry-ish roommates about to watch Lost, so I figured I'd better get to cooking so we could have a fancy TV dinner. I made pizza with caramelized onions, dandelion greens, and goat cheese with a balsamic reduction. Here's a photo...

It was really good. The only problem was that, even though I put the dandelion greens on the top just at the very end of baking, some of them got a little too dried out and crispy in the heat. They still tasted good, but not as good as I knew they could have tasted. But I'm not one to be super hard on myself about cooking--there's no point! It's too fun! And there are infinite do-overs! Anyways, when I make pizza at home I like to bake it at 400 on an oiled cookie sheet. I also like to brush a bit of oil over the crust and salt it because....salt = yummy.

You know what else was yummy? The pizza I made a few days later! It was a white pizza with caramelized onions, mozzarella, and dandelion greens. Holy crap! I'm just sayin'....it was sorta insane. Pretty decadent, kinda perfect for a Friday night dinner kinda thing.

I made a bechamel sauce (equal parts flour + melted butter, whisk together over lowish heat in a saucepan, add scalded milk, whisk til it thickens) and put a bunch of parmiggiano reggiano in it, then spread that over the rolled-out dough, topped it with mozzarella, then added the onions. After the pizza was nearly cooked, I put the dandelion greens (tossed, this time, with a bit of oil to avoid the aforementioned crispiness problem) over top and let them wilt in the oven as the pizza finished baking. This photo doesn't really do it justice, but it evidences how great the pizza turned out since I didn't even have the wherewithal to, say, put it on a plate before photographing it.