CD That's Me

I am now 5 days into my “extended week” end-of-the-summer vacation. And not much has changed. In fact Walshy is over, Mike is in the kitchen being drink mix master extraordinaire, Grover is on Walshy’s lap, the music is playing throughout the house and outside and I am barefoot in the kitchen. Tonight however, I am here on the computer as opposed to whipping up dinner. 5 days in and it is the first night I have not cooked for either a gaggle of people or just the two of us in my newly named Cape Cod Pizza Kitchen.

The weekend was absolutely gorgeous. We spent Saturday at the beach and did not feel like showering or getting dressed for dinner. I had just flipped through one of my favorite cookbooks (Barefoot Contessa Parties!) and decided I wanted to make grilled pizzas.

I have never made my own dough and do not own a pizza wheel, pizza peel or pizza stone. Or dry yeast for that matter. So bikini still on, I headed to my second most frequented place in the area Williams Sonoma (Starbucks scoring number one slot) for a pizza peel and then to the grocery store for the dry yeast and all my toppings.

The recipe told me to put all the ingredients into the electric mixer with a dough hook. Oopsie. Do not own either of those. Don’t even know what a dough hook is or what it looks like. Who knows maybe I do have one floating around. I do however own a very old Betty Crocker hand mixer and two good hands. So I hand mixed and then kneaded away. My whole wheat flour dough turned out just fine. And bonus this dough only needs to rise for a half an hour. I made 3 balls and then rolled them out. Cornmeal (had to purchase that too) on the pizza peel is key here. Throw your circle of dough down on top of the cornmeal and grill for about 2 minutes. Now the fun begins.

You can basically add any toppings you wish or whatever is hanging out in your fridge. We made 3 pizzas that night. 1. Tomato (I made my own sauce), ricotta, chicken saugage (I cooked it before) and basil. 2. Tomato, mozzarella and basil (classico) and 3. Red and yellow peppers, sliced prosciutto and goat cheese. Add your toppings and then fire them up on the grill again until your cheese starts to melt. All delish!

So delish that we are going to do it all again this coming weekend for a houseful. This time I plan on making 6 to 8 pizzas. And for dessert . . . cupcakes for my cousin Susie’s birthday and Wide Eyed Vinny’s! Stay tuned for that explanation in my next post.

Cape Cod Pizza Party!