idea for pizza making

Last night my friend and his parents came to Roberta's while I was working. My friend is a vegan and his parents are vegetarians. So I tried my hand at a non-meat, non-dairy pie for them and came up with one with tomato sauce, garlic, red onions, Brussels sprouts, red pepper flakes and oregano.

At about 11 I had my dinner break and and made the same pie minus the onions . Then something pretty cool happened. I started to add gorgonzola to each slice I had. The strong flavor of the gorgonzola mixed incredible well with the bitter, slightly burnt flavor of the brussel sprouts. Then to top it off, the pepper flakes curbed both the gorg and the sprouts before they became overwhelmingly dominant- ending each bite with a spicy kick. Despite putting two ladles of sauce on the pie, I couldn't taste the tomato at all!

That gave me an idea for a new approach towards making pies. I'm very meat and cheese centric when it comes to developing new types of pizza. I'll think of a spicy soppressata or a creamy burrata and use that as the jumping off point for the rest of the pie. Maybe I'll add some olives to the salami or some onions to the burrata and then try to think of another ingredient that compliments the first two flavors well- building the pie outward from there. I start with the cheese or meat because they are generally the most distinguished ingredients.

But what if you started with a vegetable as the center of your pie first and only added other ingredients (including cheese and meat) that were complimentary to it? This is what I did last night when I made the pie for my friend and his parents. I thought of brussels sprouts first, and only afterwards, did I think of the gorgonzola. I think this approach will yield some interesting new vegetarian (and non vegetarian) pies. I'm excited to try it.

I'm also very excited about the brussels sprouts, gorg, and pepper flake combo. I think it has a lot of potential to create an intensely delicious pie.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.