Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is probably the one day I don't like to eat out. There's nothing romantic about sitting inches away from other diners and being forced to order from a fixed price, fixed menu. So this year, I decided to stay in with my valentine and make pizza. Real pizza. From scratch. Ok, it wasn't completely from scratch. I bought raw dough from a pizza shop. Making the dough myself would have been a lot of effort just for a couple pizzas. Aside from the dough, I made the tomato sauce from scratch and prepared the toppings.

As always, things are more fun in competition. I didn't quite realize how big these pizzas were but we each made an enormous pie.

I rolled the dough out in cornmeal and topped half my pizza with caramelized shallots, ricotta, parmigiano, mozzarella and fresh basil. The other side was topped with ricotta, parmigiano, mozzarella, white cheddar, spicy salame and fresh basil.


The competing pizza was topped with basil, mozzarella, parmigiano, portobello mushrooms, fresh garlic, spicy salame and more basil. With the oven set to 500 degrees, the pizzas cooked in 10 minutes. My pizza wasn't as thin as I like but it was pretty delicious. I liked my white cheddar/spicy salame side the best. So I guess I won. :)

Making pizza was much easier than I thought and way more fun than I expected. Dessert was some chocolate and macaroons from my favorite chocolate shop: La Maison du Chocolat. It was a wonderful evening--spending the day of love doing what I love.