Homemade pizza with Black Mission figs, blue cheese and sautéed onions

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Sureena sent me an email on Monday, something to the effect that she had some Black Mission figs from the farmers market that needed eating and wouldn’t a pizza with them as the star be fun.  I like just about any excuse to make/eat pizza, and a sort of Iron Chef type challenge couldn’t be resisted, so we made a date.  I’ve had pizza with figs a few times at the Rose Pistola in North Beach, so I decided to copy their approach.  I also had a stack of pepperoni slices from the last time I made pizza so I planned to make a pepperoni and onion pie.

Interesting pie: Black Mission figs, sauteed red onions and blue and mozzarella cheeses with olive oil as sauce.

Spicy pie: Pepperoni and white onion with a cooked pizza sauce. This was the grand finale.  A bit heavier on the toppings than the usual up scale pie, but I was going to be feeding 3 with 2 pies, so it needed to be so. Continue reading →

Rotten City PIzza – Calabrian slice

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My shop is right around the corner from Emeryville’s Rotten City Pizza -a hole in the wall at Hollis and 66th.  They do whole pies but I go for the slices, which seem slightly expensive at $3.95, but the quality of ingredients and interesting combo’s minimize any complaining about this once you get one and start eating.  I went on Friday for lunch and had only one slice (I usually get two) because I was going to Pixar’s in-house music festival ‘Pixarpalooza’ where there would be all kinds of free deliciousness to sample.  I got the Calabrian which features housemade Italian style sausage, Gaeta olives, Calabrian chili’s and roasted fennel seeds.

I started eating before I remembered I should take a picture.  This was a pretty spicy slice.  They do a Sicilian crust which is fairly thin and crunchy.  Their sauce is tangy and delicious.

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Homemade pizza with corn, shallots, onions and fresh oregano

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At about 2:30 pm on Sunday I decided it was going to be a pizza night.  I had most of what I needed on hand to make some interesting pies and a quick trip to Whole Foods would get the rest.  My dough recipe takes about 3 hours so I started there.  As I was making the dough I came up with my menu for 3 pies, all would be red sauce and mozzarella based.

Interesting pie: Corn, shallots, fresh oregano and yellow onions

Spicy pie: Pepperoni, red jalapeno, Crimini mushrooms and yellow onions

Sweet pie: Sungold cherry tomatoes, Crimini mushrooms and yellow onions

Detail from the spicy pie.  Despite a lack of real heat, I got some decent browning on the top.  Pepperoni is uncured local stuff and red jalapeno’s are from my garden.

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Cotogna – pizza with Burrata, squash blossoms, lime & capers

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Some days you get lucky and an invite comes to a restaurant you’ve heard of vaguely, by reputation, but not by the name given.  So it was on my first visit to San Francisco’s Cotogna, less-expensive sister to Chef Michael Tusk’s Quince -which I’ve heard praised many a time, but never had occasion to visit.  Oh yeah, this place -supposed to have really good pizza I thought.  Lucky me, since I just started a pizza blog.

The restaurant is supposed to be hard to get into, but for late lunch on a Friday we (2) sat immediately.  Cotogna follows the ‘everyone divides the tips up at the end of the shift’ policy that usually encourages teamwork resulting in a universally helpful staff.  Our service was impeccable.  The menu is centered on a wood burning oven -a bit like Oakland’s Camino, but with a more approachable menu.   Decor is of-the-moment with a sophistication born of simplicity, functionality and quality materials.  Reclaimed wood, raw brick and blackened iron figure prominently.  Tableware included plates from local hero’s Heath Ceramics.

Oh yeah, you’re here for the pizza right?

And here it is!  Dough is of the ‘crispy on the outside/chewy on what inside there is’ school with some nice caramelization.  Size is appropriate for family style sharing with other dishes -as we did.

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Pizza – an introduction of sorts

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Pizza is a pretty broad term these days.  I can get two of them delivered from a national chain a few blocks from my house for less than $20.  They will be good in all the ways stuff that isn’t very good for you usually is: salty, rich and fatty, and above all filling.  For the same $20 I can go to one of several upscale restaurants and get a ‘chef’s vision’ type pizza, with carefully tuned dough, obscure toppings and maybe some cheese. On the fringes are things like Indian pizza and Taco Bell’s Mexican pizza.  I suppose one could develop a taxonomy and follow branches of family trees back to the genesis of the thing if that was their passion.  I’m just going to ramble a bit and find myself trying to end paragraphs cohesively.

Delicious, nutritious and unconventional… Summer Squash pizza from my local hip, mostly pizza joint Boot and Shoe Service.  There are a lot of people who would a) not recognize this as pizza; b) think it a bit bland because it’s not a processed food salt bomb and c) feel cheated because it is $15 but wouldn’t feed a family of four.  Yes, all their Pizza’s come with a baby bottle of milk.

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