Cooking For Two beats 200

unless of course it's a sweet catering gig. Back in the day, in my restaurant life, it was a toss-up which holiday I hated more, Valentines or Mother's Day. You see, I worked at smaller, fine-dining places with even smaller staffs. It was usually just me
and an assistant chef or cook to bust out 150-250 dinners, everybody wanting that narrow, cherished time-slot between 7-9pm. It was a slam-fest to say the least. A sweat-induced evening full of flying pans, flaming grease & alcohol, impatient servers and cursing dishwashers. On top of that there were Knife cuts, grease burns, oven rack burns and throbbing foot & leg pain to finish off the night. Sounds quite exciting doesn't it. I have to admit every once and a while I'll reminisce on those wacky holiday meals and miss that feeling of accomplishment gained after preparing food for that many people...then the sound of that dupe machine(servers order ticket) rattling away snaps that thought out of me right quick.
Anyway, cooking on Valentines Day is a lot more easy going these days. Usually just a quiet meal with my sweetie.This year, I think it's gonna be pizza. I know, that doesn't sound that romantic but, we both love it. Now I'm not talking about your favorite roof-signed, college student delivered tomato pie, I mean homemade. See  pizza is a passion for me, a work in progress so to speak, kinda like a lot of my favorite foods. Yes I love to play with toppings, different cheese blends, tweaking the sauce. That's all fun, but what really does it for me is the crust. This is the foundation, where it all begins and what I believe can make or break a pizza. Now I've been making my own dough for as long as I've been cooking but, this last year I have been working with a no-knead recipe/technique made popular by Jim Lahey, a bakery/restaurant owner in NYC.
The recipe is quite easy but takes some time to develop.

You need to have some advanced planning but, the flavor
& texture of this dough is one of the best tasting pizza crusts  I have
ever made and it makes a very good loaf of bread as well but that's
another post. This recipe will make make four 12-14" pies. I usually follow it to the letter but, lately I have been drifting slightly a bit & after the initial 12-18 hour rise, I will transfer dough to a floured surface, divide it into my 4 balls and knead it just a little to make it less wet & sticky and thus easier to work with. I will then cover it with a towel or plastic and give it another 3-4 hours to rest/rise before I start to create. As for toppings this time. Well, it is the lovers holiday, so I made my valentine's favorite, Plain and bacon/onion. For me, it was a smoked sausage with potatoes and fresh oregano. This was a last minute choice due to the fact that I didn't find any fresh

clams which was my first choice. Oh well, the potato and sausage was fantastic which I will definitely do again. As to how they were cooked well, I went with the oven apposed to the grill (my favorite way to do pizza) because I wanted to try a new technique(always tweaking) of placing my stone on the top shelf and cranking the broiler setting to high. Surely I was sceptical for this is totally opposite of my normal procedure of cranking the bake setting to 550 degrees(highest it will go) and placing the stone on the lowest shelf. The thinking is that I will get a crispy crust and not burn the top. So, how'd they turn out? very nice. Yes they did burn on the highest shelf. So after I moved it down one level, that worked well. And the best thing was that they cooked in about 4 minutes, the quickest I have ever baked pizza. Then there was the crust, it was crispy but with a soft, airy inside very similar to Indian Naan without the tandoor oven. All in all, a good meal, the Black Chocolate Stout went especially  well with the sausage & potato pie.
With the mercury predicted to hit in the 60's tomorrow, looks like I will be getting back to that grilled pizza sooner than I thought.