Barbecue Pizza

The Mad Scientist Recommends Barbecue Pizza and Coleslaw!

The Mad Scientist loved winter when we lived in Minneapolis.  His reasons were twofold, broomball and the fact that the cold weather kept drunk people from congregating on our street corner and starting fights.

Now that we live in North Carolina, he's not such a huge fan of the winter as it seems to imply just two things: rain and high heating costs.  We pay out the nose for electricity here in North Carolina, and it seems as though we have absolutely zero energy saving appliances in the house.  Since our HOA isn't too keen on us putting in Geothermal heating*, we've decided to keep our house at a crisp 64 degrees F.  *It is totally impractical for us to have geothermal heating in a town home, but its also expressly forbidden.

Both the Mad Scientist and I bundle up when we are indoors, and he has even taken to wearing his stocking cap (aka tobaggan according to the North Carolinians).  In and of itself, this isn't so bad, but it does make him feel cooped up and a certain disdain for winter that he's never felt before.  It's interesting for me to watch his reaction to the winter.  He spends a lot more time on the weather app on his phone, giving me constant updates about the state of the rain (he is not a farmer, so this should not matter), he's started drinking coffee in the morning, and his best compliment for food is, "this warms me to the bones...So Tasty!!!"

Do you know what compliment he gave to me tonight? That's right, he told me that the meal warmed him to the bones.  This would be great, but I fear that the ongoing rain is affecting him mentally because tonight's meal was barbecue pork pizza topped with coleslaw.  The tangy zip of the coleslaw marries deliciously with the sweet decadence of pulled pork and barbecue sauce and melty cheese on a pizza crust, but warms you to the bones?  I usually don't think of coleslaw as a particularly warming dish.

Nonetheless, this meal is delicious!  The barbecue pizza is hazily connected to a pizza chain called Mellow Mushroom.  I think its funny that the connection is hazy because Mellow Mushroom is unabashedly punny with smoking weed and tripping on LSD (doing drugs is illegal and not recommended, but joking about them is highly encouraged on this blog).  If my memory serves me correctly, I actually had a barbecue chicken pizza at Mellow Mushroom, but it wasn't topped with coleslaw.  Topping pizza with Salads is something that a few college friends did, and I followed suit with this recipe.

Barbecue Pizza with Coleslaw

Ingredients:
For the Coleslaw
1/4 head of cabbage thinly sliced
1/4 Red onion thinly sliced
1 Carrot shredded (use a vegetable peeler!)
14C of Mayo (or 1/4 cup if you prefer normal portions- Thanks everyone)
1T Mustard
2T White Vinegar
1T Sour Cream
Sugar to taste (I used 1 heaping Tablespoon)
Salt to taste

1.  Mix everything together and allow it to marinate for about 30 minutes while you prep the pizza.

For the Pizza:
2t Fast Acting Yeast
1C Warm Water
2.5C Flour (split)
2T Honey
2T Olive Oil
1T Garlic Powder

1/2C Pulled Pork
1/4C Barbecue Sauce
4 oz Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
3 oz Tomato Sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 425
2. Combine Yeast and warm water and mix to allow yeast to dissolve
3. Add Honey, oil, garlic powder and 2 cups of flour and mix thoroughly
4. Knead dough for 1-2 minutes then let it rest for 10 minutes
5. Press dough into pizza crust
6. Top with tomato sauce, barbecue sauce, pulled pork and cheese
7. Bake 15-18 minutes
8. Top with coleslaw and serve

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Homemade Pizza with Garlic Butter Crust

Before I met my future mother in law for the first time, I knew only two things about her.  She is a doctor, and she provided her son with delicious homemade preserves and homemade bread since his childhood on into his adulthood.  From those clues (as well as the extremely good looking and wonderful son she raised), I began to believe that she was some Florence Nightingale meets Betty Crocker wonder woman.  

On the drive to Duluth (from Minneapolis), I peppered Rob with questions about her to ensure my clothing was appropriate, my hostess gift was appropriate, and that his mom might like me. After nearly two and a half hours, Rob realized that I wondered how I stacked up against her, and he assured me that he neither expected me to bake pies or homemade bread, or to save the world one preventative check up at a time.  I think his exact words were, "I love you, and my parents are ecstatic that I found a woman who will go out on more than one date with me."

And they were ecstatic.  They were overwhelmingly kind, and my mother in law is a wonder woman, but not an a scary way.  In fact she's the definition of down home (down home wonder woman- just go with it).  I hope to raise my own son so well, that when he brings a woman to meet me, I don't have to question her character at all; I will know that he has picked well.

Anyhow, in hindsight, my intimidation was not merely ridiculous because of my wonderful MIL, but because none of my mother in law's domestic skills made it to my husband; he is happy to have any help he can get in that department.  For the four years in between the end of college and when we started dating, he ate spaghetti with jarred sauce and bagged meatballs every single Monday.  Frozen chicken nuggets with mixed veggies on Tuesday, and Jack's Pizza on Fridays. (In his defense, he kept an orderly condo and could make a mean homemade fudge).

While our weekday eating improved shortly after we got married, Jack's pizza remained our Friday night staple.  What could be better than Frozen pizza and a Redbox? Nothing, I thought, until we moved to Raleigh, and Jack's pizza was around $5 a pop (as opposed to the $2.50 we were used to in Minneapolis).  We tried Aldi brand pizza for a while, but it tasted meh.

Around this same time, I began crowdsourcing my dinner in earnest, and stumbled upon the blog Good Cheap Eats.  Jessica, the author of Good Cheap Eats has about 10 different pizza recipes on her blog, and I endeavor to try them all.  This recipe is adapted from her's, and the 1979 Betty Crocker Cookbook Pizza Dough recipe (not sure how Rob ended up with this cookbook, but its a treasure).

Homemade Pizza with Garlic Butter Crust

Ingredients:

2t Fast Acting Yeast

1C Warm Water

2.5C Flour (split)

2T Honey

2T Olive Oil

1T Garlic Powder

1/2T Dried Basil

4oz Shredded Mozzarella

2oz Parmesan

Peppers

Pepperoni

2T Butter

1/2T Garlic Powder

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425

2. Combine Yeast and warm water and allow yeast to dissolve

3. Add 2 Cups of flour, Honey, Olive Oil, Garlic Powder and Dried Basil and mix thoroughly.

4. Sprinkle 1/2 C Flour onto your pizza tray or pizza stone and knead the dough for one-two minutes.  Other bloggers recommend longer, but I am guessing they don't have a baby who always becomes fussy the second your hands get dirty.

5. Allow dough to rest about ten minutes.

6. Press Dough into a circle on your pan, with the outside puffier than the inside (shape it like a pizza)

7. Add sauce, meat, peppers, and both cheeses

8. Melt Butter and garlic powder together in the microwave and brush on the outside crust of the pizza

9. Bake for 18-20 minutes (until crust and cheese are both golden brown)

10. Enjoy with whatever B-list movie Redbox has to offer you (or upgrade to Netflix)

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