An invitation to dinner and a grilling experiment

My friend, Photogirl, emailed me asking me to dinner. A home cooked dinner. How could I refuse?

Her white elephant party a few years ago introduced me to the wonderful combination of seasoned asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. And then there was the homemade popcorn that look just as long, perhaps even less than the microwaved kind. Yeah, she’s that type of cook that I only aspire to be. So the invitation for dinner at her house was a no brainer. But there was only one restriction I placed on her: make it simple. Her reply was pizza. Little did I guess that she was planning on grilling the pizzas.

Assembling the pizzas was simple. Whole wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe’s split in half to create two pies with ingredients of choice. Both pizzas had pesto sauce, sauteed mushrooms and a variety of cheeses. The only difference was the meat option which was a chicken sausage on one and pepperoni on the other.

But how to grill: With foil? Without? We opted for without on a medium flame on her much coveted gas grill and decided to guess on the cooking time. Time lapsed as we got caught up on details each other lives until the smell of pizza alerted us back outside.

The underside of one the pizzas was slightly scorched while the other pizza fared better with the exception the dough puffing up a bit in one area. The toppings themselves melded together due to the heat. But it was edible with the crust being crisp and cracky – just the way I like my crust- with the exception of the burned areas.

Lesson learned for next time: decrease the heat and then completely turn off to allow for the heat to bake the dough. Maybe include a pizza stone somewhere in the cooking process. Plus more wine and Jane Austen movies.