Category: Back to Basics

Grilled Pizza, a Revelation

Grilled Pizza

Pizza is one of the few things that I “let” J make for dinner. He’s a pro with the dough – something I have no patience for.

This post is a bit of a cheat because I didn’t do any of the tough work on this dish… I just helped. Also, this isn’t a recipe post. It’s more of a “results of our experiment” post. Hahahaha.

In any case, here it is:

Grilled Pizza

On the grill!

For this experiment, we decided to stick to one of our usual combinations of sauce and toppings, just to keep it simple. J made his usual dough. For the sauce, I took full advantage of the wealth of fresh basil we have right now and made a lightly tomatoey basil sauce with lots of olive oil. For toppings, we used mushrooms, green peppers, thinly sliced smoked sausage and buffalo mozzarella.

A couple of tips that we collected from various sources and took to heart:

  • oil the grill well
  • cook your toppings first!

The second tip was the one that made lightbulbs go off for me. I had never heard it before, but it made total sense. On the BBQ (especially a little propane one, like ours), the bottom will cook before the top. Unless you want your crust to burn, you need to cook your veggies and other toppings that need to be cooked. I sautéed the mushrooms and green peppers to release the liquids, and J lightly pan fried the sausage slices to release some of the fat.

The dough goes on the BBQ first, to grill the bottom before any toppings or sauce go on. Once the bottom is cooked nicely, flip the dough and add the toppings to the cooked side. You want to cook it long enough to get a nice crust with grill marks, and to melt the cheese. Since the veggies were already cooked, we don’t have to worry about them!

Grilled Pizza

Ready to eat!

The Verdict

Seriously, J was over the moon. It was so delicious, and he was so proud of himself for finding a way to make pizza in the summer. We kicked ourselves for waiting this long to try it. Do it. You will not regret it!

The one thing that I want to improve for next time is a way to keep the pizza warm after it’s done cooking. We took it right off the grill, and it did cool off while we were eating. It wasn’t terrible, but I think we can do better. Maybe if we took it off the grill long enough to cut a couple of pieces and let the grill cool a little, we could return it to the grill to keep warm. Hm.

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Back to Basics: How to cook dried Chick Peas

Dried Chickpeas

Cooking chick peas (garbanzo beans) from dried is easier than I thought! The trick is in the soaking – you need to soak them for at least 24 hours before cooking. I actually soak them for 2 days, and have such great results that I keep doing it that way.

One thing to keep in mind is that they expand quite a bit – my first try was with 2 cups of dried chick peas, which yielded about 6 cups of cooked chick peas. Yikes! These days, I do 1 cup at a time.

  1. In a large bowl, add 4 cups of cool water to 1 cup of dried chick peas.
  2. Put the bowl in the fridge for at least 24 hours to soak, changing the water every day.
  3. Every once in a while, stir the chick peas around a bit.
  4. To cook, boil a large pot of water. Add the chick peas, and return to the boil. Lower the heat, and simmer for about 40 minutes – but test to get the perfect texture!

The “Back to Basics” series is a collection of simple instructions, to be used as a reference for preparing some of the ingredients in the pantry. Mostly, it’s just a way for me to keep track of some of this info because I never remember the simple stuff!