Sept 15-18 Stinky Sock Pizza

Sept 15     Wing night with The Neighbours
Sept 16     Rescued restaurant ribs from wing night and more corn chowder
Sept 17     Pizza with vidalia marmalade, blue cheese and arugula
Sept 18


I made this awesome vidalia onion marmalade this week spent the first few days eating it with blue cheese on crackers, but it wasn't until Saturday that I finally fashioned a dish to showcase it. Pizza was the perfect vehicle for this jammy, sweet onion condiment. It was either that or a nice panini with porchetta and arugula and the onion jam but I wanted pizza and I didn't want to deal with a pork roast so pizza was the final call. I whipped up some yummy little pies with garlic olive oil, rosemary, the jam, some mushrooms and yellow zucchini and a bit of arugula topped with some sharp blue cheese.

It was perfection. The sweet onion jam with the peppery bite of the arugula and that nice hit of sharpness from the blue cheese. Hank didn't love this as much as I did (he doesn't share his mother's love of what the boys call "stinky sock" cheeses) but I appreciate the fact that he humours me and he tries everything I cook for him. I, on the other hand, could eat this often. I shouldn't but I could.



Stinky Sock Pizza

pizza dough (I had enough for three small pizzas in the freezer)
olive oil
2 garlic cloves
a sprig of rosemary
half dozen brown mushrooms
1 yellow zucchini
1 tbls butter
about 2 tbls crumbled blue cheese per pizza (more or less to taste of course)
a bunch of well washed and drained arugula
2 tbls vidalia onion marmalade
kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 500F and put your rack with a pizza stone on the next to lowest level.

Heat some olive oil gently in a pot over med low heat with the garlic and the rosemary in it. Let it sit and steep while you get everything ready, at least 20 minutes or more.

slice your mushrooms and melt the butter in a small sauté pan over med heat until it foams. Add the mushrooms and a pinch of kosher salt and let them cook until they are nicely browned and soft. set aside.

slice your zucchini into thin slices, lengthwise. If you have a grill pan, heat it over med heat until it's nice and hot and then brush it with a bit of the olive oil. If you don't have a grill pan, then just pan fry the slices until they are cooked, turning once. I like to do them on the grill pan because they get pretty marks. Set them aside


Roll your pizza dough out until it's quite thin (i like my crust very thin and crispy but it's your call) on a floured counter top. I transfer my dough onto the pizza paddle that I have sprinkled some cornmeal on and dress the pizza on that.
Heat up your onion marmalade in the microwave for about 15 seconds to soften it up for easy spreading. Brush your dough with the garlic olive oil and then add your onion marmalade and spread that around as evenly as you can. Next sprinkle on some mushrooms and lay on some zucchini. Add a nice mound of arugula and sprinkle the blue cheese all over the top of that.

Slide your pizza from your paddle on the pizza stone and quickly shut the door. Cook the pizza for about 12 to 15 minutes until the topping is bubbling and the edges of the crust brown up nicely.