“Rustic” Pizza

When I moved to the United States, I realized that Quebec pizza was fairly different from American pizza. First off, cheese pizza seems ridiculous to me. Why would you only put cheese?? The two biggest standards in Quebec are pepperoni & cheese, and all-dressed (green bell peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni & cheese). Also, most places in Quebec serve French fries with pizza. It totally threw me off when I moved here and *no* restaurant or delivery place offered fries to go with the pizza. What’s funny too is that our definition of pepperoni is different as well. Most places here have small and chewy pepperoni slices. I am used to thinner but larger slices (I guess we must use sandwich pepperoni?) so I’ve never really been into American pepperoni pizza.

And the content isn’t the only difference! The way to eat it is different as well. We have these wonderful objects called forks and knives. 😉 Growing up, whenever my brother and I would get to eat the pizza directly with our hands, we would call it “eating like a ninja turtle”. Because the only “people” we knew that ate it with their hands were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had to move here to realize that it was actually standard American procedure, not just reserved to ninja turtles! The things you learn when you travel! Haha!

Now, let’s get to the actual meal I prepared. In the past, when I made my own pizza (I grew up with a mom who was very proud of her homemade pizza so we ate it quite regularly), I always followed the standard list of ingredients. Pepperoni, cheese, green bell peppers and mushrooms. Nothing else would be accepted. In the last year or so though, I’ve started making pizzas with whatever I have in the fridge. The final taste is sometimes surprising (in good or bad ways, it depends) but it just end up being more fun. I’m still too lazy to make my own pizza crust from scratch although I am determined to make some soon. I usually buy a bag of prepared (but not cooked) pizza dough at Giant. It tastes great and the consistency is perfect. Recently, I bought some pizza dough mixture (dry ingredients and you just add water) at the Cheese Shop. It made enough for two pizza so I decided to freeze half of it. This is what I decided to use this weekend. Unfortunately, once thawed, the dough was very difficult to use. I didn’t get to make it into a nice pizza shape and it wasn’t as big as I expected it to be. That is why I called it “rustic” pizza. I just pretended I meant to make it that way. 🙂

As I mentioned, I like to put random things I find in the fridge on the pizza. This week’s pizza had pizza sauce, cooked Cajun Style Andouille Pork Sausage, tons of spinach, broccoli, asparagus, black beans, mozzarella, and fresh basil. I baked it in the oven at 450F for 30 minutes of so (until the cheese was nice and golden). There are no specific quantities, just eye-ball it and make it to your own taste. Also, if you don’t have pizza dough or don’t feel like making it from scratch, we’ve used tortillas several times in the past to make individual pizzas. It’s very tasty and there’s just less bread. I have yet to find something that really shouldn’t be on pizza. And just typing this made me think of what might next pizza might be…chicken, mango & tomatoes? I think so. Darn, now I want to make another pizza. I guess that’s my cue to get away from my laptop (and the kitchen), and go hit the gym instead. 😉

Have a lovely week everyone!