Cedar Writes

Eat This While You Read That: Clair Kiernan

—

by

Cedar Sanderson
in , ,
Pin

When I originally got the dish and title from Clair, I planned to have this post appear close to Halloween. Well, I overshot a little. But zombies are in season year-round, right?

gone with zombiesAnd then when I tell you that even the resident curmudgeon read this book and pronounced it a bit of good, light fun, worth reading, you’ll understand that I took that to be something special. He usually  goes for the tongue-in-cheek irreverent type of humor, but zombies? And furthermore, the dish Clair gave me… well, this is a fun read and recipe for a night at home. Meat-lover’s pizza! and a book on zombies!

This is when the Jr. Mad Scientist got involved. While she highly approves of pizza, she’s not keen on tomatoes. Mama, can you make it with no pizza sauce? Maybe with something like that great garlic sauce we got at that one place? Sure…

So I made toum.

You can find the recipe for Toum here. I have to say that we’re loving that stuff, but we love garlic. If your family is not as garlicky-loving as ours, you may want to opt for simply using olive oil. Or pizza sauce.

Pizza, at the heart of it, is flat bread with stuff on it. In this case, we used italian sausage, pepperoni, and bacon. With cheese, lots of cheese. Pizza isn’t a recipe as much as it is a stylistic choice. What do you want on yours? Go ahead and put it on there… Oh. I just started with my French bread dough for the crust.

Making Pizza-3
Starting with breadsticks. I made a batch of white bread dough and cut off roughly 1/3 of it to be the breadsticks.
Making Pizza-4
Brush the breadstick dough liberally with toum.
Making Pizza-5
I grated Parmesan cheese on tom of the dough and toum. I  cut the dough with a pizza slicer into one-inch wide strips,  then set it aside to rise again for about 20 minutes before it went in the oven at 400 deg F for 12 minutes. Check at 10 and remove when golden brown.
Making Pizza-6
I rolled out the rest of the dough into a circle, brushed it with toum, and started sprinkling meat on it.
Making Pizza-7
I added the cheese – a blend of mozzarella, paremesan, and asiago – and then put on the pepperoni.
Making Pizza-8
Oh, I should point out that before the meat went on, the dough was put on a cookie sheet. Our baking stone wasn’t big enough for this pie. I sprinkled cornmeal on the pan to prevent sticking.
Making Pizza-10
So: you can make your crust as thick or as thin as you like. Mine is fairly thin, partly because I only let it rise for about 20 minutes after putting toppings on. Also, this didn’t come out greasy!
Making Pizza-11
Yummy, garlicky and of course, meaty. Satisfying finger food.

 

Pin

Related posts:

Eat this While you Read That: James Young Butter PieEat This While You Read That: Rob Howell Chorizo con PolloEat This While You Read That: Jason Cordova Hot beef sandwichEat This While You Read That: Lars Walker

Comments

5 responses to “Eat This While You Read That: Clair Kiernan”

  1. Reality Observer Avatar
    Reality Observer

    OK, you lost me there… What the heck is “tourn” for cooking?

    I’m not quite willing to “liberally brush” my pizza crust with Medieval English Shirrifs…

    1. Cedar Sanderson Avatar
      Cedar Sanderson

      It’s a lebanese garlic sauce… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toum

      1. Reality Observer Avatar
        Reality Observer

        AH! Font problem! I was reading it as “t” “o” “u” “R” “N”.

        For some reason, I wasn’t connecting it with “toumya,” which is what I call it. I make it, actually, though not the variant with mint. Not with a mortar and pestle, either, I’m lazy and use the food processor. Probably not as good as hand crushing, but there are only so many hours.

        1. Reality Observer Avatar
          Reality Observer

          And, for some reason, I’ve never tried it on pizza; I’ll have to do that next time. (Chicken is what I do use it on, occasionally on a vegetable dish.)

        2. Cedar Sanderson Avatar
          Cedar Sanderson

          I think when I make it again I’ll try to get the consistency thicker. The article I’d read showed it liquid, and then later I realized it’s supposed to be thicker. Tasty, though!