Pizza delivery!

Pizza. Oh yes pizza. From Violetta's and Joey's on Long Island - two of my favorite pizza joints as a child - to Joe's on Carmine Street, THE Famous Ray's, Golden Pizza ... then Two Boots. Of course my favorite village pizza as a child was John's pizza where my uncle used to take me. Pictures of Frank Sinatra and a few other talented mobsters, pre-Sopranos covered thewalls with their nervous signatures. The City fascinated me the most when I had no sense of proximity. Lincoln Center may have well been right next to FAO Schwarz, which could have been next to John's. It all made sense one day when I moved just a couple of blocks away from John's to what will always remain my favorite neighborhood.

But wait. We were talking about pizza right?

Last night I tried a variation on Mark Bittman's fried pizza. Please see the video along with that link too. Bittman, a.k.a. The Minimalist has one of my favorite cooking shows found on the front page of nytimes.com. It doesn't appear everyday and I'm not sure of it's frequency, but it's worth me looking in to. I'll let ya know. The videos are always in the 4-6 minute range.

Anyway I took some pizza dough that I prepared. Take a little dry active yeast in a bowl with a little flour, sugar, salt and olive oil..lukewarm water, let it activate over a few minutes until it puffs a bit. Then throw in a couple of cups of flour, a pinch more salt and let it sit til it rises a bit. Pound that, knead it and make a round circle. Let it sit for a couple of minutes. Not too long. We're not making a loaf of bread you know.

What I did differently was I let it get crispy on both sides in a pan with a bit of olive oil, then I put the topping on and threw it in the oven for the last bit. Some tomato sauce, jalapenos, aneheims, and habanero, fresh garlic and mozzarella cheese. Oh my god..the gas in the end, but it's worth it.



And voila! The only unfortunate thing in this process is that I forgot to take a picture with the good camera in the end. I got so caught up in the process and I was so hungry that I only snapped a shot with my iSight camera from my computer. But just imagine the flavors, colors of the green jalapeno, the yellow aneheim, and the red habanero, the neutral garlic, all over the red sauce and trapped between melted mozzarella. Then came the fresh basil leaves, which were placed over it all...oh...wow. So, so, so good.