Joy in the Process

As I mentioned before, I read a lot of blogs. And there are a lot of a blogs out there where every recipe and every photo is spectacular - but folks, this is not one of them. I hope that someday, every photo on this blog will be fantastic and every recipe will be to die for. For now, however, the truth is that my photos are not always going to be so great. I am not always going to have spectacular recipes to share. But that is not the point - and trust me, this is all for the BETTER!

The point is that I am sharing the process. I am sharing my successes and my failures in the hopes that I will better be able to learn from them and possibly help anyone who is reading along with me to do the same. Who knows, maybe I'll make a mistake before you have a chance to, and then be able to pass along something really fantastic that comes out of it. Maybe, this blog will end up being more about what NOT to do!

I can promise that there will be great stories, there will be lessons learned, I will be totally honest about the mistakes I've made and the process I've gone through - and sometimes there will even be fantastic photos and delicious food. And by God, there will be dancing.

Okay, maybe not so much with the dancing.

With that, I present to you the story of this past Pizza Sunday, complete with some really awful photos and food that turns out so-so.

How's that for a glowing review?

Mr. T and I love pizza. And I love my KitchenAid mixer. All of this love has brought about the advent of Pizza Sundays, where I make the pizza dough, T and I decide together what we want on it, and he puts the pizza together.

Recently, I discovered the really, really wonderful pizza dough recipe from The Pioneer Woman, so that has become a new staple for us. She reiterates that the dough is best if made at least 24 hours in advance, so Saturday saw me making the dough in preparation for our upcoming Pizza Sunday. Saturday also saw me making the fatal error of mixing in some whole wheat flour with the white flour.  

Oops.

The real error of my ways went unbeknownst to me until Sunday afternoon around 4:00 pm, when we were really hungry, the toppings for the pizza were ready, and Mr. T grabbed the dough from the fridge, and plunked it down on the cutting board. And when I say plunked, I mean PLUNKED. The thing weighed 30 pounds. At least.

So, in the spirit of learning from the process and carrying on through my mistakes, I made a new pizza dough and just accepted the fact that it would only have an hour to rise (did I mention we were really hungry?) and that would have to be okay. And it was.

The rest unfolded as such.

Mr. T and I decided that this week we would attempt a fried eggplant, ricotta, and arugula pizza. Yum.

I decided to make some homemade ricotta, which was super, super easy. I totally recommend making your own when you want something tasty and simple and impressive. The recipe I used was courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa (how could you go wrong?), and it is wonderful. I'll definitely be making more of that in my future.

After that, I moved on to preparing the eggplant. I decided on oven frying it to cut down on some of the fat. I sliced up a medium eggplant. Note: I really like the flesh of an eggplant - I just can never quite get over the bitter skin, so I also peeled mine. Call me crazy. And then do whatever you prefer.

Next, I whipped together three egg whites and a tablespoon of water until it was a little frothy. I mixed together a cup of bread crumbs, a 1/2 tblsp of grated parmesan cheese and 1 tsp of dried oregano on a plate. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

Each slice of eggplant got a little dip in the egg whites and a little roll in the breadcrumbs.

I put them in a 400 degree oven on a prepared baking sheet for about 15 minutes, pulled them out, flipped them over, and put them in for another 15 or so.

Somehow, I missed getting a picture of them as they came out all golden brown and fantastic looking. But trust me, they were. And they will be for you, too. And they will smell lovely.

An hour and a half and a new ball of dough later, Mr. T put some cornmeal down on a cookie sheet and spread out the dough. Since we've decided to be brave and enjoy the process, we were experimenting a little bit with this pie, so he put tomato sauce on one half and just drizzled olive oil on the other half.

Next came the fried eggplant slices, which I had cut into quarters.

And for the final mistake of this episode, when we went to put the ricotta on the pizza, I realized I had only made enough to make it over half. But if you hold on to your hat and keep reading, you'll see that this mistake was a happy one! We decided to put the homemade ricotta cheese on the half of the pizza with the olive oil, and shredded mozzarella on the half of the pizza with the tomato sauce (with a little overlap as you can see).



Wow. This photo is particularly awful. I promise I will work on this. 



The pizza went into the 400 degree oven.

After 12 minutes, we pulled it out, spread about two handfuls of arugula over the top, put it back into the oven, turned the oven off, and left the pizza in there for just a minute until the arugula wilted.

And this, ladies and gents, was what we ended up with.

And then we immediately cut into it... 

...and ate way, way too much. That's what happens when you have to wait for a second batch of dough to rise. You get very, very hungry. See how quickly he was cutting?!

And the verdict - definitely, definitely go with the tomato sauce, mozzarella, fried eggplant, and arugula combination on your next Pizza Sunday (You're already learning from my mistakes! The beauty of it!). The sweet of the sauce and the eggplant, along with the bite of the arugula and melted loveliness of the mozzarella cheese made for some really, really excellent pizza. So much so that T and I fought over the leftovers of this half of the pizza for lunch the next day.

See?! I told you there would sometimes be delicious food!

Maybe next time there will be dancing!