French bread pizza!
…’cuz I’m even too lazy for store-bought bread dough!
No, I really wanted to make “real” pizza with actual dough, but New Seasons was out! What is this, Communist Russia? I want pizza in fifteen minutes, dammit! So I did the closest thing to phoning it in (besides a frozen pizza – who the fuck do you think I am, anyway?): French bread pizza.
Didn’t you love French bread pizza day when you were a kid? I was a public school kid on the free lunch program, and French bread pizza day was truly the apex of my wee existence. Better, even, than chickenwiches with ranch sauce and tater tots. With chocolate milk. Thank you, tax payers, for all the delicious lunches I enjoyed as a kid. Because of you, I am afforded the luxury of waxing poetic about extinct vegetable varieties and why duck fat makes my proverbial dick hard. Like a proper, productive member of society.
But I digress. Oh, how I digress.
An artesanal loaf of garlic Romano bread was a fine stand-in for pizza crust. It was the kind of bread with perfect, crispity exterior and whole, roasted cloves of garlic studding the gossamer interior (not the dental crown-shattering, palate-scraping baguette). I sauteed some pork sausage with juicy fennel seed straight off the plant (not dry yet, very anetholic-sweet and green), chili flake and garlic. Then in the unctuous pork fat I browned some onion, poblano and summer squash, chopped cherry peppers and Swiss chard. Onto the halved and sauced loaf of good bread, a handful of mozz and pepper jack and into the oven it went until the cheese was melted.
Perfect Project Runway dinner. Also, tonight was the new season of Top Design! Between those shows (and Gossip Girl and Heroes and America’s Next Top Model), I don’t know how anyone can expect a girl to find time to cook and blog.