Pizzacato Mozzaforte *Girlfriend Showing Off Edt3*

In which our hero wakes up to discover that today’s news was full of yesterday’s flavour

My date started the night before as I rummaged around the large chest freezer looking to see what kind of flours my mother had on tap. A promising bag offered floury goodness, and a few moments later, I was heading back to the kitchen with a bowl of flour. Add salt and yeast and swish to mix. Some water and a minute of mixing and it’s a shaggy dough. Put it in a bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap. Elapsed time, two minutes. Plus the 5 minutes of finding the damn bowl and the flour.

(A small twisted part of me wanted to write a little something welcoming my baby pizza dough to the world and expressing my excitement at getting to make use of it the next day. Could even use one of those baby-timeline things. Nocturne.. well, lets just say that Nocturne reminded me that I’m lucky she puts up with me. No post. Thank her.)

The actual date was a remote dinner-and-a-movie. So I left work a little early to hit the grocery store for ingredients for dinner. And here’s where I forgot that even a high-end chain store is more likely to be populated with a generic employee than someone with any expertise. What I wanted was buffalo mozzarella. The girl behind the counter had no idea what that was, but was certain they didn’t have it at the counter. Okay. “Can you suggest a substitute?” “I don’t really know.”

Two things. 1) There were tubs of buffalo mozzarella in whey in one of the other coolers. 2) Bocconcini *IS* a mozzarella, generally fresh, so had *I* remembered that, or the person working the cheese counter known that, I would have been good.

(Actually a third thing. Going back the next day to try the Bocconcini, that’s again displayed in containers of whey, the girl put rounds in a container for me, without adding any whey. If I wasn’t using it right away (A-whey), I would have asked her to fix that, but when I did use it, some of the whey had drained out of the cheese, so clearly this matters)

Anyway, I finished at the store and headed over to take a spot at the theatre to watch 21 Jump Street, with Channing Tatum (I think that’s his name) and Jonah Hill. I like Jonah Hill. I think he’s a very talented guy. But like Seth Rogan, and Will Ferrel, he’s got a dynamic range that I hate more than I like, and his presence in a movie is more of a red flag for me enjoying it than anything else. So my expectations were low. Also, this is a retread of a concept from my childhood. And there have been a lot of those, and almost every time they’ve been turning them into comedies. And many many of these have just been pointless, so again, the reboot/revisit/reimagining is a red flag for me. So my expectations were low.

Sadly, this is movie has been out a while, so Nocturne and I could only find showings as close as half-an-hour apart. This is the biggest time difference we’ve had, seeing movies in tandem, and it’s long enough to be disruptive. I couldn’t see/hear her reactions, which is part of the normal suck, but worse, we couldn’t really text each other to at least share the moments because I didn’t want to give away scenes she wouldn’t be getting to for another 20 minutes.

Even so, when we were both out of the theatre, as we talked on the phone and headed home, we both found we’d been pleasantly surprised by the movie being funnier and better than we’d expected. And in a cheerful mood, we started making our meals.

I tried hand stretching the dough round, and ended up thinning a hole in one spot. Great analogy for what a retina does in a near sighted eye. Not so good for a pizza. The second attempt, I rolled it out, and it turned out pretty good.

Next, tomato sauce. I was trying to follow a particular cook, with the no-knead dough and he takes the view that tomato sauce should be basic, just tasty tomatoes and not much else. So I used a San Marzano tomato sauce only because I didn’t feel like skinning the tomatoes myself and we’re off.

Next, buffalo mozzarella. I’ve never worked with this stuff before and it was an experience. It’s a really soft cheese that comes in a ball. Unlike, say, the brick of cheddar I usually would nom on, the outside is actually a skin, and the insides are like a thicker, coarser cottage cheese. But tearing it up and putting on the pizza was the fun kind of messy.

Last, (I did say this was going to be simple), some slices of jalapeno pepper. I cut out the seeds and pith.

Oh wait, no. Last was chopping up some garlic and sprinkling it on. How did I forget this because at one point, as I was tasting the various bits I was working with, I put raw garlic in my mouth and discovered I don’t like it nearly so much as toasted garlic. Or at all. Or later that night when I brush my teeth twice to try to clear the taste from my mouth. Or the next morning where I brush twice again before I feel like the garlic sensation is really gone. Ugh.

The recipe has… an oddity here. Their oven was heated to 550, but they have a pizza stone preheated in there too. I suspect that the stone then essentially pan-fries the dough which is how the whole thing could *possibly* be done in 3-4 minutes. I mean, it doesn’t seem entirely crazy, given how fast you can cook flour cakes of various sorts in a skillet.

But I don’t have a peel, and I don’t have a pizza stone. So I don’t have a direct cooking surface. On the other hand, the pizza stone also provides general heat moderation, so I can at least provide that since I’ve got a whole bunch of cast iron skilletry. I cleaned them all, just so I wouldn’t get smoke as something unnoticed or left over oil cooked off.

Anyway, one rack high as it could go. Second rack one below it, and loaded up with all the iron to give as much support as I could give it. Oven to 450 to pre-heat and then 400 to cook. In retrospect, without a stone it was too hot, so next time probably 300-350. Took around 30 minutes to look done-ish, and what came out was remarkable.

Sadly, time differences killed us here too, but curiously our positions had switched. Even though she finished her movie, by the time I was ready to put my pizza in the oven, Nocturne was taking hers out. And by the time I was ready to eat, her dishes were drying.

But even so, we were cooking together, talking about life and ingredients and recipes and the movie and it was wonderful. And we try to spend time with each other, but it’s been a while since we had a time like this. Good movie, good eats, good company.

Good date.

*Girlfriend Showing Off Edit*

“You should show them my pizza, it was better than yours!”

Which is true, her slice looks like it was made by a professional. But I didn’t want to distract from the elegant artisanal ruggedness of my manly-man rustic pizza.

At least that’swhat I tell myself as I wish I was having this:

*Girlfriend Discovering Girlfriend Showing Off Edit Edit*

“I can’t believe you called that edit that, you punk!”

“You should add ‘rustic’ to yours. ‘My Manly Man Rustic Pizza'”

“Mine really was better than yours.”

*Girlfriend Correcting Girlfriend Discovering Girlfriend Showing Off Edit Edit Edit*

“Why do you have selective hearing? I said, If they were sitting next to each other, I’d pick mine over yours. But yours probably would be better if it had more cheese.

“And *then* I said ‘Mine really was better than yours.'”

“It’s like you were born to cause trouble. And the sad thing is, you really like that about yourself!”