pizza duo

I work with a couple of Jersey people.

And that mostly means I get to hear a lot about the do's and dont's of pizza.

Mostly margherita pizza.

Moistly from Moiz.

Between Tina and the basil plant that lives at work now, I knew I'd have to attempt a margherita pizza that would win over an Italian-at-heart-east-coaster eventually. And then as if it wasn't cute enough that childhood friends married high school sweethearts who were also bffs, I had to find out that Moiz and Nick basically have the same birthday. Three days apart is basically the same.
PIZZA DUO.
Sourdough pizza duo.
From Molly Yeh's pizza crust recipe with 50g starter subbed in.

As a side note, we had a gallon of recently expired milk that creamed a bit at work, and no one wanted to add it to their coffee. So naturally I carried it home to make two batches of ricotta. One vinegar curdled. One lemon juice curdled. For the pizza. Mainly because I didn't have rennet to make mozz.

Eat immediately because the stuff didn't really last.

The most important part though was the tomato sauce. A simple tomato basil garlic onion sauce that Moiz could drink.

I got a "legit" from Moiz, which was deemed a high compliment... until he used it to describe something else not one minute later.

Whatever I made for Nick was going to have to have Sichuan peppercorns or coconut. In the midst of coming up with a citrusy peppercorny dessert when I switched gears to pizza, I was reminded of the time I made the most delicious and fragrant wings.

With a spice mix that can go on basically anything. Like mushrooms. Because whenever we order pizza at work, it's covered in shredded mushrooms... or jalepenos now that it's established that two of us don't like mushrooms. But I like mushrooms. So I went with mushrooms.

So Nick gets a Xi'an spiced parmesan white sauce pizza with mushrooms sauteed with more spice and generously covered in cilantro. Partitioned into 'just cilantro for Monica' and 'just white sauce for Laura' sections because work lunches mean you also know what people are not obsessed with. Anyways, this was basically an intense umami bomb. And I will make it again. The next time I'm binge watching reruns on a Friday night.

And that wraps up the June birthdays.