Pizza Time!

Anyone who knows Gabe knows his pizza's are amazing creations.  Having worked at a pizza restaurant before, the best part of seeing Gabe make a pizza - at least for me - is watching him toss the dough up in the air!  It twirls, it whirls, it's beautiful!  Unfortunately I didn't get to take a picture of that but I did capture the process.  Originally I had suggested a veggie pizza with red onion, red bell pepper, and some goat cheese.  Of course that was the bare bones and Gabe took it to a whole other level, even making his own sauce.

Here's a picture of the beginning stages (notice how organized he is!):

The sauce was made up of the following ingredients:  Red onion, olive oil, butter, fresh basil, bayleaf, kosher salt, sundried tomato, and dried oregano.

Gabe also decided to add eggplant, mozarella cheese, and sundried tomatoes to the pizza. Using some of the leftover eggplant, he fried and then breaded it with some leftover cousous and pine nuts from the veggie burgers.  (The mixture was ground up in a food processor to resemble bread crumbs).

The breaded eggplant was the perfect pairing with this veggie pizza.  The texture was crunchy and yet not oily so that you were left craving more.

Final touches included freshly chopped basil on top of the pizza which added flavor, texture, and color.  Now, I realize that the last 3 posts have been geared toward vegetarian meals and by no means is that the purpose of this blog, but the way Gabe prepares food you wouldn't even miss meat in these dishes!  The sundried tomatoes on top of the pizza added a chewy, meat like texture and could have been mistaken for sausage.

Fear not meat lovers, the next post will review his Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo in honor of Anthony Bordain's No Reservations final season episode, "Cajun Country."

_Peace and Love