I slayed another demon in the kitchen and on the grill last night. My wife and I travel to Croatia every year and love the truffle pizzas they serve in Istria and especially ones they serve in the little Slovenian coastal town of Piran. As a matter of fact, we stop in this town each year to get one of the pizzas before we hit the beach.
Last night, I felt like I was in Piran. We had tried to make this pizza once before and made a decent pizza but it didn’t match the flavor we were trying to achieve. The problem was in the sauce. We never had a good pizza sauce before. We tried combinations of puree’s, tomato paste and all sorts of spices and we never got what we wanted. It was always too acidic, too heavy.
I recently found a recipe online that said to use peeled canned tomatos, chop them up, add salt and pepper and a little olive oil and let them simmer down. It makes a perfect pizza sauce. It adds just the right moisture quotient to the pizza and a little zip of flavor but only to compliment the main ingredient that you want to stand out. If I’m making a margherita pizza, I add some fresh basil right at the end.
Cheese was another hurdle in making this pizza. This time, we used a combination of grated edam and fresh mozzarella. It worked perfectly. As the cheese melted and the mozzarella started to give off water, I just “drained” the pizza on the grill by lifting up one side.
The final touch was to sprinkle a few drops of white truffle oil on the pizza right before serving. Perfection.
Grilled Truffle Pizza
Hmm. Lots of food posts. Making me hungry. My initial thought after reading this one was- oh, yeah? Well my wife and I travel to Gulf Shores, Alabama every year (aka the Redneck Riveria), and the TCBY down there makes the BEST frozen yogurt you’ll find. And if deep fried seafood (actually deep fried anything) is your thing, that is your place–pretty much every restaurant down there specializes in that.
Kinda the same as your truffle pizza from Croatia.
Have I established my red-state, flyover country bona fides? Excuse me while I go clean my guns.
Seriously though- your last two posts are making me hungry.
Yeah, I know I’m getting close to Obama and arugula with some of these. But as I recall, the BBQ crab on the Redneck Riviera ain’t nothing to sneeze at. Nor is regular ‘ol BBQ anywhere in Texas. Truffles just happen to be a bit more plentiful over here.
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