Eating In: Pizza Margarita con salami

Sometimes dinner's just eh. Sometimes it's pretty good and you think, hey, we should make this again. And sometimes you hit it right out of the park. Last night's Pizza Margarita con salami was one of the latter; throughout the meal we kept commenting on how good everything tasted.

I'd made a Trader Joe's run earlier in the day to pick up the kinds of things we eat when Ed's parents are here from Michigan: cheese, more cheese, summer sausage, salami, oh, why not get another cheese, smoked oysters, sardines, crackers and yes, cheese. But I also grabbed one of the pre-made pizza doughs (actually, I got two--one herb, one plain). I'd never bought it before but I figured if it could save me the hassle of making my own dough and letting it rise, etc, then I'm game. Plus, we had a beautiful tomato left from our trip to Fall City Farms, and tons of basil in the pots on our deck. It was obviously time for pizza Margarita!

I decided to use the plain crust and save the herbed one for making foccacia later this week. So for the pizza, I started out by making a garlic-basil-rosemary-olive oil pesto-like sauce in my mortar and pestle (you could easily just chop the herbs, crush the garlic and add olive oil, but hell, how often do you get to dust off the ol' mortar-n-pestle you just had to buy?)



I rubbed the dough with the sauce all the way to the edges and sprinkled it with salt and pepper.

Then I started borrowing from the SLDWVS (aka the Scheff Labor Day Weekend Visit Stash). I thin-sliced some smoked mozzarella and Romano and scattered these on the pesto. Next I sliced the heirloom tomato and added them to the pie.

And then I noticed the Chianti salami, a crucial part of the SLDWVS. Could I spare a little for the sake of our pizza? What if we're out on the deck enjoying some wine and nibbling and we run out of salami waaayyy before we run out of cheese? Well, shit, you've gotta take a chance now and then. Plus, I didn't need very much--only a 2" piece or so. I went for it. I sliced it up and then tore the pieces and scattered it around the pizza. Ah, perfection. A little fresh basil torn over the top, a little more Romano and into the oven.



Ten or 12 minutes later we had a beauty.


A quick salad of greens, cherry tomatoes from our garden and some cucumbers from the Farmers Market and we were good to go. Thanks Trader Joe's!