Our Friday pizza-and-a-movie nights are still going strong after nearly three years. We do skip them occasionally, but when we do, the weekend feels a bit off.
A friend teased me recently that I wouldn't meet her for a drink until quite late on a Friday night because I had to stay home to eat pizza and watch a movie with my kids first. My reaction was, "You know you're a good friend or I wouldn't have come at all!" After a long week, I often have trouble making it to the final credits.
And I'm not the only one. I have been surprised to see how many times the kids have passed up other invitations in order to stay home and eat pizza with their parents.
Ok, ok, for the kids, it may be more about getting to watch TV, which they don't otherwise get to do much.
Whatever. I'll take it.
As the kids are getting closer to teenagerdom (and it's definintely starting to feel like a -dom), I realize that we have to shift the fun activities that we do together as a family. We need to grow with our kids if we want them to continue to enjoy spending time with us. So it's less Top Chef and more Disney tween shows. Sigh.
No matter. The evenings are still a way to hang on to some of the family time that is so dear to me.
The type of pizza we make varies, but this has become my favorite pizza lately. I remember seeing eggs on pizzas in Italy, but I don't see them much here. My favorite way to cook it is so that the yolk stays a bit runny. It takes a bit of watching to accomplish that, but even even if the egg goes too far and becomes hard cooked, it is delicious.
I usually add smoked mozzarella to get a bacon-and-egg-flavor thing going, but if you eat bacon, you could also toss a bit on for a true breakfast pizza.
2009: Spaghetti and V-Balls
2010: Homemade Butter
2011: Simple Crusty Peasant Wheat Bread
The recipe is for a single thin-crust pizza, but it takes 2 or 3 of these to serve our family of 5.
Makes 1 pizza (serves 2)
20 minutes preparation time, plus a few hours for the dough to rise
1 batch semolina pizza crust
1 cup tomato sauce*
3 ounces smoked mozzarella, sliced
3 eggs
Prepare the pizza crust and set it aside to rise.
About 40 minutes before you plan to serve the pizza, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven and let it heat in the oven for at least 30 minutes while you roll out the dough, prepare the sauce, and prepare the toppings.
Roll out the dough thinly. Remove the pizza stone from the oven and sprinkle it with cornmeal or semolina flour. Transfer the dough to the stone. Working quickly so that the stone doesn't get too cool, spread the sauce evenly across the dough. With the back of the spoon, carve out three indentations for the eggs by pushing the sauce to create a low ridge around the edges. Sprinkle the cheese on top but don't put any in the indented spots.
Put the pizza back into the oven for about 5 minutes. Remove the pizza and stone and crack an egg into each of the indentations that you created. If any egg leaks out, dam the leak with a piece of mozzarella or a spoon of sauce. Holding the stone very flat so that the egg doesn't slosh out, return the stone to the oven.
Cook until the white is firm but the yolk is still runny, about 5 more minutes. Serve -- and consume -- immediately!
* To make a basic pizza sauce, saute a couple of roughly sliced garlic cloves in olive oil for about 30 seconds, add a 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato paste, and a few chopped leaves of fresh oregano, and let the pot simmer until sauce thickens, about half an hour.
This looks scrumptious, but I don't dare make it myself. So we'll be down next Friday. :)
Posted by: Anna | May 09, 2012 at 11:42 AM
Come on down!
Posted by: Margy | May 09, 2012 at 02:00 PM