Guest Chef 2

On Friday night The Bride's best friend came over, bringing along Cody, her twelve-year-old son.  He wanted to make grilled pizzas, so I took the opportunity to complete my last grilled pizza recipe, the Arugula Pizza on page 337.  That night was a mess, so I don't have the picture of the ingredients.  Cody wanted to help, so he became my second guest chef.  I took the responsibility of getting the dough started while the other three shopped for toppings.  The only addition I made to the dough was a teaspoon of dried Italian herbs, just for grins and giggles.  Once the shoppers came home, Cody and I set about preparing the toppings.  For my pizza, I had Cody begin by measuring out the necessary ingredients for the arugula pesto that would serve as the "sauce" under the toppings.

Yes, that is a rather large knife right next to him.  I am always available for babysitting!  The next thing Cody got to do was the use the immersion blender to make the pesto.  He liked this part.

While Cody worked on cooking the Italian sausage for the other pizzas, I grilled up some veggies.  Melissa (The Bride's friend) wanted bacon and onion, so I cooked the bacon and used the bacon grease on the onions instead of olive oil.  My pizza needed bell peppers, so I blackened the skin on them so that the skin would peel away and the sweet pepper flesh would be revealed.  Here they are, fresh off the grill:

Next Cody rolled out the dough, grilled them to a nice golden brown (I'm getting the hang of grilled pizza on the Weber), and we brought them inside to begin putting on the toppings.  Cody put down the pizza sauce, and then began putting on a rather ample amount of meat onto his pizza. 

While his was on the grill, I began making my pizza.  I began with the grilled dough.

I then laid in the "pesto" that Cody had turned into more of a puree with the immersion blender.  :)

I then placed the grilled peppers and mushrooms.  Then it was off to the grill with it all, and after a few minutes I was able to bring it back in and begin the second round of toppings.

Fresh off the grill, I added the cheese, more fresh arugula, and tomatoes.  I was finally ready to eat my own pizza, after cooking for everyone else!

 

All in all, this was good.  In fact, I'll venture to say that if you ever have to eat a veggie pizza, this is the way to do it.  It was fresh, flavorful, and well-balanced.  I then made myself a second pizza, much in the style of Cody's.