I hope y’all like alliterations…and pizza…and food adventures.
Of course you do. You’re a think fruitful reader after all.
I’m hoping to do a few more of these “Fruitful Friday Fun” posts in the future because we all need to take a little adventure and enjoy some fun on Fridays.
The Backstory
So, here’s the story. A few months ago, I watched an episode of Jamie & Jimmy’s Food Fight Club on Netflix, and I watched Jimmy create a DIY pizza oven out of a large flower pot.
Now, don’t you think for a second that I went out and DIY-ed my own outdoor pizza oven. But what I lack in DIY skills, I have in Google-ing, online shopping skills. That led me to this sweet outdoor terracotta pizza oven at World Market. And it was even blue and shaped like a fish mouth.
And so what we call “Pizza Fish” was born. Thankfully, it has nothing to do with fish on pizza, just pizza cooked in a fish’s mouth.
Time to cook the pizza
PIzza Fish stayed in his little box in the garage for a few months until we had ample time to dedicate to his unwrapping and using.
And then the October Sunday night finally came. It was in the 50s or so, which meant it was a nice night to be around a fire. I’m very grateful that my husband is handy with making fires because he did that part and I handled the rolling out of the dough (Whole Foods for us) and organizing the toppings.
I had made some caramelized red onions and bought goat cheese in preparation.
My sister-in-law was staying with us, so I thought it would be nice to let her make and cook her pizza first. Big mistake! When trying out a new cooking method for the first time, you should use yourself as the guinea pig.
We very haphazardly inched her pizza into the hot oven (after burning small wood pieces for about 15 minutes and pushing them back). Of course, I put cornmeal on the pizza paddle, but it did not help enough. Oh and the pizza paddle was too big to fit in the fish mouth (insert emoji hitting their face with their hand).
Adjusting and finally eating
So we adjusted our cooking method and decided it was too hard to turn a pizza straight on the stone in Pizza Fish. Enter my crepe pan. It was the perfect pan to throw on smaller halves or quarters of pizza and then place right by the fire and rotate as needed.
Although my sister-in-law was a total champ and ate the edible parts of her “guinea pig” pizza, we got the hang of it with pieces and mine and my husband’s pizza and enjoyed as the night cooled and darkened. Yet, the fire was ever warm and present. Well, we had to blow on it and add wood as needed (thankfully my husband knew when to do that).
Here’s what I learned
- Caramelized onions, goat cheese and pesto are bomb on pizza.
- Caramelized onions are so easy and I should make them more often.
- Open fire is really awesome. I’ve never been a grill master, but I really got into the fast-cooking and flavor of the open flame. Against the backdrop of the blue-black sky, seeing the bubbling and hearing the sizzling of the cheesy pizza was so satisfying.
- Dessert pizza is always a good move. We did apples and brown sugar for ours.
- As they say: If you fail once, try try again. How would anyone learn to use a Pizza Fish otherwise?