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Archive for ultimate_pizza

Ultimate Pizza New Years 2012

Jan07

Every few months, and particularly at New Years, we do another round of our Ultimate Homemade Pizzas. If you’re curious about how these components are made look here, otherwise just enjoy the food porn.


This is about half of the arrayed toppings required to make the full range of Ultimate Pizza. It’s not an efficient process.


We open with a little champagne, as it is New Years. The Brut is round and generous in its candied apricots, honey and roasted nuts. The wine offers good length but not as much complexity or personality as I had hoped. 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay.


The first pizza off the line. Traditional fresh tomato sauce, a variety of cheeses including the homemade Crescenza that I made a few days earlier. There are also figs, cilantro, and mushrooms.

The pizza gained a few ingredients between the first photo and baking, including some Marcona almonds and broccoli (pre-sautéed).

One of the most difficult things in custom pizza making is “the transfer.” You have to get the pizza from the kitchen to the oven and back again. If you get it into the oven (here a pizza stone on the gas Viking) without making a mess, it will come off easily. Some keys are using a LOT of flour and cornmeal to “lube” up the surfaces and dry the dough, and also not letting the toppings get too close to the edges.


The finished pizza.


My go-to sweet white. Incorporating fruit principally from Wehlener Nonnenberg, Graacher Himmelreich, and Bernkasteler Johannisbrunnchen, the generic Prum 2011 Riesling Kabinett displays an archetypal Mosel Riesling nose of fresh apple, lemon, and clover allied to faintly cheesy, leesy youthful “stink”; and comes to the palate bright and zippy, with hints of wet stone, and prominent cyanic piquancy of apple pit invigoratingly extending its mouthwateringly juicy, if tart and relatively simple finish.


This is the base for my creme fraiche salmon pizza, which you can find detailed here.


We start in on the red. Parker 94, “The spectacular Bonnes Mares jumps from the glass with aromas of blackberries, cherries, flowers and minerals. It is a massively concentrated, powerful, full-bodied wine packed with stones, wild cherries, red currants, and touches of iron, tar and chocolate for additional complexity. Highly structured and with an exceptionally long finish, it should be cellared for 7-9 years and will hold through 2012. This note is the result of tastings I did in Burgundy in Washington, D.C. in April. The wine was tasted from cask, not bottle. Pinot Noir, a fragile varietal, reacts poorly to fining, filtration, and careless bottling techniques, I recommend caution when considering buying a red burgundy based on cask samples. I called it as I tasted it, and hope the bottled wine reflects the quality of the samples I was provided.”

After this there were 5-6 reds that the hectic evening didn’t allow me to photo, most of the Italian.


Here is one of my favorites, my tikka masala pizza. The sauce is tikka masala sauce, then with corn, red onions, feta, mozz balls, almonds, figs.


Here at the station.


My mom’s more classic margarita.


And my newest creation, extremely successful, the “Afghan Special.” The first layer (after a little olive oil) is mint yogurt, then the green is a cilantro pesto-like Afghan sauce, then the red is sweet pepper jelly. The white blobs are ricotta and feta. This was a superb pizza.


A almond pesto based vegie pizza.


And on the right my wife’s favorite, margarita with mushrooms, corn, almonds, and figs.


An awesome artisinal tomato-basil-pesto based pizza. Exotic fresh mushrooms, aged parm, gorgonzola dulce, some other fresh cheeses.


There was a little too much olive oil and it drooled a little, but no biggy. Still delicious.


p

A mushroom pizza.


And another tikka masala pizza, this time with extra mushrooms and cilantro pesto.


After baking.


And with burrata on top, because burrata makes everything better. It really does.


A big veggie and other pizza. It’s important to sauté your veggies before they go on the pizza as the time in the oven is too fast to really cook them.


After baking it looks like Pacman.


And a white pizza, with various cheeses. Those white blocks are my homemade one.


Baked.


And with more burrata and balsamic glaze. Yum!


A mushroom and tomato pizza. I got really interesting mushrooms from the mushroom vendor at the Pacific Palisades Farmer’s market this time, so we have a lot of shroom pizzas.


Baked.


And the final pizza, a pesto, goat cheese, veggie, which we forgot on the grill for an extra 2 minutes, resulting in this extra crispy style. Actually, still quite good.


For dessert, being as it was New Years, I pulled out the seriously big gun. Parker 99, “An extraordinary effort, Yquem’s 1990 is a rich and fabulously superb, sweet wine. This wine also possesses lots of elegance and finesse. The wine’s medium gold color is accompanied by an exceptionally sweet nose of honeyed tropical fruits, peaches, coconut, and apricots. High quality, subtle toasty oak is well-integrated. The wine is massive on the palate, with layers of intensely ripe botrytis-tinged, exceptionally sweet fruit. Surprisingly well-integrated acidity, and a seamless, full-bodied power and richness have created a wine of remarkable harmony and purity. Certainly it is one of the richest Yquems I have ever tasted, with 50-100 years of potential longevity. An awesome Yquem!”


Homemade piebald brownies.


Some Costco cake that despite having about fifty billion ingredients actually tasted decent. It will survive nuclear war.


Viktor Bennes pastries.


And mini Bundt cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes. Chocolate and marble.


Red velvet and lemon.


Then to ring in 2013, Le Grande Dame 1990. Parker 95, “I highly recommend the Veuve Clicquot 1990 La Grande Dame. It is exquisitely rich and accessible, yet bursting with potential.”

Happy New Year!

And for more Ultimate Pizza, check out here.

Related posts:

  1. Ultimate Pizza – New Years
  2. Ultimate Pizza 2012
  3. Ultimate Pizza – The Birthday
  4. Ultimate Pizza – Day 3
  5. Ultimate Pizza – The Comeback
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Bonnes Mares, Cheese, Cooking, Dessert, Food, New Year, Pinot noir, Pizza, ultimate_pizza, Viking, Wine

Ultimate Pizza – The Comeback

Oct06

After long hiatus, Ultimate Pizza is back (click the think for posts on the components). We’ve brewed up a new batch of dough, and called up some friends and family.

For those of you who don’t know, Ultimate Pizza is our super homemade pizza where we make everything from scratch. In the past I’ve written separate articles detailing elements such as the Dough, Sauce, Pesto, and Toppings.


Every dough batch is different. For more on making it, see here. After three days cold fermenting in the fridge this batch had a weird spiderwebby quality and was very sticky. But that wasn’t anything a little dusting of flour didn’t solve. And baked, it tasted great as always.


This 1997 Barolo served as a good opener, warming up the palette.


The first pizza on the block. Starts with basic totally fresh raw tomato sauce made with Santa Monica Farmer’s Market Marzano tomatoes and mozzarella.


Then some parmesan, basil.


Mushrooms.


Figs, marcona almonds.


And after baking. They aren’t always pretty, but they are good!


I “found” this 1966 Chateau Lafite-Rothchild in my cellar and figured it wasn’t getting any better.

Parker says: “Except for the 1966 and 1870 vintages of Lafite-Rothschild, these wines were poured on virgin territory on my palate. Isn’t it ironic that the most disappointing wine (forgetting the spoiled 1875 Lafite-Rothschild, which had frightful levels of volatile acidity) was the youngest wine, the 1966 Lafite. With a light to medium ruby/garnet color, this wine exhibited a classy, weedy, herbal, Cabernet-dominated nose, soft, washed-out flavors, and little body and length. It is also beginning to dry out. I suppose if one were to taste a 30-year old Cabernet from Monterey County, California, it might reveal similar characteristics. The 1966 Lafite-Rothschild has consistently been a major disappointment from what is an irregular, but very good vintage.”

But we had good luck with this bottle, and it was actually rather wonderful.


The next pizza. Fairly similar, but no sauce.


Finished with balsamic glaze.


Then a cheesier mushroom one.


Finished.

Then my special salmon pizza, which I do just with olive oil and rosemary (picked from the garden).


Then add a mixture of creme fraiche (detail on that here), dill, and chives, plus capers and onions.


And lox. Yum!


The 2004 il Cocco riserva. Only one barrel made!


Another fairly normal pizza, with figs and mushrooms.


My “famous” tikka masala pizza. Masala sauce instead of tomato. Corn, cilantro, goat cheese, mozzarella balls, morel mushrooms, almonds, scallions.


Cooked. This is an amazing (and strong flavored) pizza.


Mirella (one of our frequent pizza chefs) likes to make unique pizzas. This “Lebanese Pizza” began with her homemade muhammara sauce, which is a Lebanese sauce made from peppers, walnuts, olive oil and various other things. She baked it fairly simple.


Then added amazing fresh burrata on top and fresh mint. This was also fantastic.


Another tomato sauce based pizza, with parmesan, figs, goat cheese (a slightly aged chevre from an artisan California dairy), marcona almonds, scallions.


Baked.

And as the last pizza of the evening, my Formaggio Maximus. Olive oil, a little pesto. Fresh chanterelle and lobster mushrooms. Corn, figs, almonds, a little basil, and nearly every type of cheese I have: parmesan, mozzarella, pecorino, goat, and gorgonzola dulce.


Baked.

Then key to the FM is a big blog of burrata and an olive oil and balsamic drizzle.


Dessert time. A giant raspberry macaroon.


And a sinful red velvet, chocolate, and cream-cheese icing cake. Oh the suffering. The worst thing about this cake is that half was left over and I personally ate all of it over the next four days.


The next day for lunch we whipped up a few more pizzas. Here another variant of my tikka masala pizza.


On the stone.


And finished. I do so love this pizza.


Then a green pesto and salad pizza. The greens are arugala tossed with black pepper and fresh meyer lemon juice.


Baked.


Two buns in the oven.


An even greener pizza.


Which we left in about 1 minute too long.


And my special “tuna salad” pizza. Tomato sauce, fresh chunk Italian tuna, parmesan, pecorino, capers, red onions, and arugala salad.


Baked.

That sure was a good amount of pizza!

For more Ultimate Pizza posts, click here.

Related posts:

  1. Ultimate Pizza – The Sauce
  2. Ultimate Pizza – Day 2
  3. Ultimate Pizza in Review
  4. Ultimate Pizza – The Birthday
  5. Ultimate Pizza – Day 3
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Barolo, Bordeaux wine, Cabernet Sauvignon, California, Château Lafite Rothschild, Dessert, Dough, Lafite-Rothschild, Pizza, pizza sauce, San Marzano Tomato, Santa Monica California, ultimate_pizza, Wine

Ultimate Pizza in Review

Jan09

Since I have so many Ultimate Pizza posts I wanted to gather their links together into a single page. But I solemnly promise this is the last pizza post for a good while — at least until I prepare another batch of them!

In summary, every couple of months we make homemade pizzas. Like many things at my household, we take this to the extreme in a quest to reach the Ultimate level of quality. Hence Ultimate Pizza. This pizzas are really good (and a lot of work), and to do them justice required quite a number of articles. I broke them down on individual topics.

Ultimate Pizza – The Dough
Ultimate Pizza – The Pesto
Ultimate Pizza – The Sauce
Ultimate Pizza – The Toppings
Ultimate Pizza – New Years (pizza itself)
Ultimate Pizza – Day 2 (more pizza)
Ultimate Pizza – Day 3 (and even more)
Ultimate Pizza – The Birthday (the second coming)
Ultimate Pizza – The Comeback (the third coming)
Ultimate Pizza 2012
Ultimate Pizza – New Years 2012
Ultimate Pizza – New Years 2014
Between Ultimate Pizza there is Burrata

If you still want to see more food after this, check out the FOOD INDEX which links to all my food related posts.

Also I throw in here a survey of random pizza photos from past pizza nights:

IMG_1785











IMG_9840

Related posts:

  1. Ultimate Pizza – Day 3
  2. Ultimate Pizza – The Sauce
  3. Ultimate Pizza – Day 2
  4. Ultimate Pizza – The Pesto
  5. Ultimate Pizza – New Years
By: agavin
Comments (18)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Burrata, Cook, Food, Home, New Year, Olive oil, Pesto, Pizza, side dishes, Tomato sauce, ultimate_pizza, vegetarian
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