From the Bar and Kitchen – Pizza break

A pizza break to get away from the stultifying theist nonsense and give my poor eyes a rest.  

This weekend’s meal and a movie is homemade pizza and “The Spirit”. 

The movie, “The Spirit” is from 2008.  It was a riff on what made Sin City popular, stylized graphics, hyperviolence and a distinctly noir feel.  My husband loves Sin City, I find it just a little too damn depressing. I will admit that I do love the SC storyline with Dwight and the hookers in “The Big Fat Kill”.  

The Spirit is played much more tongue in cheek, with Samuel L. Jackson having a grand time chewing the scenery as a supervillian counter to the superhero, Gabriel Macht, a nice looking fellow who can play the noir tough guy who can’t die.  Stana Katic, as Morgenstern the smart rookie cop with the BFG, is grand fun.  And it has a very sweet cat in it (who perishes, alas), so of course I like it. The hero does do a good job in avenging the kitty.

On the menu is homemade pizza.  I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour. It was good, crunchy, but more Chef Boyardee pizza kit and not so much foldable slice (the next recipe I’m going to try) as I like. I may have to get some bread (high-gluten) flour so I can get the appropriate stretch and windowpane.  I so do want a wood fired brick oven out in my garden.

The sauce is canned, I must admit.  Both the husband and I like Don Pepinos. It’s simple and basic.  And I like the rather retro can design.  I’m a gal who likes a lot of sauce, so about 2/3 of the can goes on the ‘za. 

For an approximately 14” pizza (as big as my wood peel would handle – get a cheap one at a restaurant supply place), I used two cups of shredded mozzarella.  On top of this, I shook some grated parmesan, about a half cup finely chopped parcooked (nuked for 20 seconds) onions, and sliced pepperoni. 

Everything was constructed on the wood peel and popped into a 475 degree F oven on my pizza stone.  About 20 minutes later, time to eat!

With this, we had a very nice bottle of Bogle 2010 cabernet sauvignon. Well, we had at least half the bottle.  I managed to spill half of it and made a dramatic mess.  The very dark but clear wine (a candle shines with a crimson hue through it) has a very strong blackberry / black raspberry scent and taste, reminding me intensely of my grandmother’s pies that she made from the many quarts of berries my grandfather picked on the hill behind their house.  The tannins are well-behaved and balanced by the acid.  Definitely one for us to get again.

 We also picked up an odd port wine this time, Croft Pink Port (website annoyingly launches with sound, kill it with the speaker icon lower right). It is truly *pink*.  The flavor is very reminiscent of grenadine and cotton candy with a hint of cassis overlying the classic port taste. I think it would be a good ingredient in a summer sangria. 

Finally, we found some homemade red wine that we made about 8 months ago and bottled.  It’s from the recipe here, and this is not quite so “fresh”. It’s actually pretty good, tasting like a Chianti but still smelling like the concord grapes it came from.

Eat well!