Quickie

The pizza and beer party was a success! Huzzah!

As much as I love and love to hate Alton Brown, his pizza dough recipe is excellent. Watching the Good Eats episode of it made me want to pull out his hair in a fit of anti-OCD rage. But then... he's kind of adorable. And he cooks. Nothing is sexier than a man who cooks. Especially a man who cooks well. Yet, on the other hand, he has too many gadgets. And a man who has too many gadgets... you can't help but wonder, does he need an excess of gadgets to do everything else? But then you get curious, and then you want to find out.

And so my periodic Alton celebrity pseudo-crush goes.

But back to the party! Of course, Danny and I made far too much food. We discovered that pureed tomatoes poured into sauteed garlic and onion with basil, oregano, hot pepper flakes, black pepper, salt, and sugar simmered until it reduces makes an excellent marinara. And we have like a gallon of it. However, when you make your own pizza dough and you keep the marinara super tangy and flavorful, the pizza tastes clean, fresh, and oddly healthy. We followed Alton's recipe for dough (we used bread flour, which achieved a very real-pizzaria chewiness), my own concoction for sauce (see above), and Trader Joe's shredded mozzarella. We cooked them at the highest heat Danny's oven would go, 550 F. We actually achieved crispy crust! At home!

The best part was the whole thing was super cheap. Because the party was on a Friday, I didn't have time to do the meringues, so we chopped up fruit and broke up one of those pound plus 70-something % chocolate bars from Trader Joe's and put the pieces in a bowl. We got zero complaints. And our beer aged really well. We cleaned out our bottles just in time to bottle our new batch, a Belgian wit beer spiced with coriander and curacao peel.

This new batch (some of which adorns the ceiling in Danny's kitchen) smells and tastes wonderful. We had to try some as we bottled. It was green and the flavors hadn't melded yet, but the promise was definitely there. The coriander and orange peel was lovely with the hops. Even at that stage, you can taste how it will be an incredibly refreshing beverage in a few more weeks, ice-cold in a glass with a slice of orange on the rim.

Awwww yeahhhh. ;)