After Mr. Yeast became my friend and successfully baking some basic dishes, of course Pizza came to mind. Then I got the dough right. Since then pizza has been a regular in our home. I have tried different kinds ranging from you regular veggie, cheese, chocolate to even an Indian Paneer Tikka version. Pizza has always kept me curious of what you can do with it. A few months back hubby had to go to Canada on a business trip. He extended his trip by a couple of days and we decided to make a vacation out of it and we all went as a family. One evening in Ottawa city we were looking for a place for dinner... anything besides Indian. Don't get me wrong, Canada has some of the best Indian food, arguably better than you find here in the States, its just that we'd had it a couple of nights in a row already. As we walked around the quaint little marketplace, stopping by the entrance of every restaurant and reading the menu posted on the door (and rejecting them as they did not serve any vegetarian dishes besides maybe a salad) we found this pizza place. They had this mushroom truffle pizza. We asked the waitress if it had any meat in it and ordered it. They had it simply as a pizza with a spread of a mushroom pesto made in truffle oil (I made it slightly different as you'll see in this recipe). That was our first introduction to truffles and let me tell you if you have never had truffles, I bet it will change your list of the top few things you have ever eaten.
That pizza has since been stuck in my head. The other day I found this coveted little bottle of truffle oil in our local farmer's market. Hubby was like 'You sure you got the right thing, you can't have a five ounce bottle cost thirty five bucks!' Deep down I knew he was lucky I wasn't asking him to buy me the real truffles :) I haven't had the pleasure of having them but have heard a couple of them could cost you upwards of a grand! Anyway, the oil worked best for my budget and worked it sure did... a few drops of it changed the 'Mushroom pizza' to a 'Mushroom truffle pizza'. Can you not tell the difference just from the name!
He ate the pizza I made that evening. He hasn't complained about it since.
Read more »
love Italian food. Love eating it and love cooking it. Love the different layers, flavors complex yet simple, exotic yet rustic - flavors that have stood the test of time - just like Indian food. You can sense the rich culture and the legacy from the food. When there is a mention of Italian food the first thing that comes to mind is of course the ever-popular Pizza. You guessed it, I love Pizza... a lot. Regardless of crust or toppings - pan, hand-tossed, deep dish, Brooklyn style, thin-crust even the bread and bagel pizza :). A soft chewy bread loaded with veggies and other toppings with a generous helping of cheese! Just can't stop raving. Coming to the US, I had my first ever pizza at Pizza Hut a few years ago... and boy.. I was completely hooked :-) India - at the time - was still coming of age as far as Italian food was concerned so I'd had pizza a couple of times, but this was different. Ahh the good old days.. we used to order delivery, be total couch potatoes and sit in front of the TV for hours watching the 24 hour marathons of Law and Order.
