PIZZA, PIZZA

Last night we had to be quick about things. We needed to run across the street at 8:00 for a screening of a Bruce Springsteen concert movie my friend at Columbia was organizing, so food needed to come out of the kitchen with the quickness.

When I asked Meena what she wanted for dinner, she got very specific very quickly and identified one item - barbecue chicken pizza.

Normally we'd do the whole pizzetta method, but Meena found some whole-wheat pizza dough at Whole Foods and thought she'd give it a whirl.

The rest of the list included:
- chicken breast
- flat leaf italian parsley
- red onion
- gouda
- barbecue sauce
- mozzarella
- roasted poblano pepper
- salt
- black pepper

This one was a success on two accounts - timing and taste. We made it to the show with 2 minutes to spare and the pizza was actually very good. The whole-wheat crust tasted like whole-wheat crust, but that's not really a bad thing. I think the important thing I'll have to remember is double up on the sauce when using this stuff. It's just so dry and dense that you really need to hit it with some sauce if you want it to stay moist. When I worked at Puccini's, I remember the burnout "cooks" telling me minimal sauce was the key to great pizza. For the most part, that bit of advice has served me well. Whole-wheat crust is just a different beast.

To quote the great G.I. Joe ... knowing is half the battle.