I tend to go out after work pretty regularly (this will go without saying as you get to know me). I also work frantic ten+ hour days occasionally. It's kind of a prerequisite for a startup company to encourage booziness among coworkers, and long hours from everyone. While Tasha is at the gym or cleaning her house or doing anything that someone with a good work/life balance enjoys: I am either drunk, getting drunk, or working. Sometimes all three at the same time.
But honestly, I love my job and wouldn't have it any other way.
That being said, there are plenty of nights when I come home tired and hungry, or drunk and hungry, or (you guessed it!) all three. Usually I will just cook some pasta or frozen raviolis, slather them in butter and cheap parmesan cheese, and nom it up before it even has a chance to cool. But sometimes, regardless of lack of sleep or blood alcohol content, I must cook something. Pizza is good for times like these.
I should probably disclose that I have never seen actual yeast outside of my days working at Beer Works, and am terrified of preparing any type of "dough" for stuff. This has resulted in a strong affinity for Boboli pizza crusts and quite a few burnt pizza fails in the past.
However, Boboli is like five bucks a pop and you have to be, like, sure you're eating pizza at some point that week when you shop. What if you roll in at nine PM all hungry and are like "WTF do I do with all these grape tomatoes I bought that are about to go bad?!"
You consult Betty Crocker, that's what you do.
I found this miracle product while grocery shopping last week, and was baffled I hadn't looked for something similar sooner. 99 cents and 1/2 a cup of water and I have pizza dough in my pantry at all times. BOOYAH.
I bought two of them immediately, and it's something I will definitely continue to try and have on-hand. The first pizza dough was used on Cinco de Mayo, when my boyfriend was shmammered by 7PM and still managed to kick me out of the kitchen for "doooooing it wrong!" and make a fantastic pizza with leftover carnitas and jack cheese.
Since Matty had already tested it out for me, I knew it was drunk-proof, and I was excited. Last night, realizing I was moderately intoxicated and had too much produce to deal with, I decided to make a pizza.
First, I gathered ingredients that I thought would make a pretty delectable pie:
- Aforementioned pizza dough mix
- Pricey marinara sauce I bought in a pinch at Sagarino's
- Grape tomatoes
- Mozzarella cheese
- Gorgonzola cheese
- Baby spinach
- Scallions
- Chives
- Salt, pepper, olive oil
I also had a lot of Syrah on hand but that did not touch the pizza (may have influenced, though).
First, I mixed up the dough. It calls for 1/2 a cup of hot water to "moisten" the dough. I distinctly recalled my boyfriend adding a lot more than a 1/2 cup of water and thinking he was a drunk fool and our pizza would be mush. Well, he may have been a drunk fool, but the pizza he had made was fantastic, so I wasn't wary to add more water. A half cup definitely does not sufficiently "moisten" the dough but makes a lot of clumps, so I added accordingly. I probably used about a cup of hot water all together.
It didn't create the most impressive ball-o-dough, but it was a ball. I let that sit for five minutes and chopped up some baby spinach, scallions, and fresh chives. I also measured out a cup of sauce and a cup of the cheeses combined (mostly mozz, with some of the gorgonzola thrown in because...well...I like cheese).
After the dough "rises" or "rests" or whatever for five minutes, you can supposedly "stretch" it onto your pizza pan using "floured fingers". I'm making this all sound very hypothetical as that is not at all the case. Your hands, and the dough ball, need to be totally covered in flour to handle this sticky mess and get it into anything resembling pizza dough. Luckily, drunk boyfriend already made this discovery a week ago, and I knew to have a lot of flour (probably half a cup) on hand. After that, I pressed the dough out onto a pizza pan, and topped with the marinara sauce and chopped grape tomatoes, the cheese, and then the toppings.
The final result was delicious.
As was the bottle of wine I finished.
Happy Monday to me!
