Honeymoon pizza

Last summer Bob and I got married. We had a party about two months after the real wedding so my mom and stepdad could come and celebrate with us. After the party, which by the way was amazing, we went to Vancouver Island for a few days to go sightseeing. Sort of a small honeymoon with parents, lol! Don’t worry, we will go to Italy this summer and enjoy the delicious food and each others company for a couple of weeks.

This brings me to the connection between Vancouver Island and Italy. We went to this wonderful Italian restaurant in Victoria and I ordered pizza. This was a very special pizza for me to order because it hardly had any meat on, and I really enjoy meat on my pizzas. Anyways, this pizza had figs and almonds as the main topping and tasted just wonderful. I made the mistake of ordering a sharing platter of selected cheeses, cured meats, olives and other tasty treats as the appetizer for the four of us. After making our way through the platter and when the main course came out, I was already half full. I was really looking forward to tasting this pizza and it was love at first bite. Heavenly pizza!!

I struggled trying to finish my pizza, with a little help from my friends, or in this case my husband, mom and stepdad. I managed to eat everything except for one last slice. There was no point in taking it to go since we didn’t have a fridge at the hotel we stayed at. So in my eager to not spill any food I started to pick off the toppings and eat those slowly while taking some deep breaths. It was hard work, but I made it through to the other end.

This pizza has truly broadened my view on pizza toppings. So I decided to re-create it once we came home.

Always when we make pizzas, we make enough dough for 4-6 pizzas and freeze the rolled out dough so they are ready to pop in the oven with the desired topping of the day.

For the pizza re-creation I used a few slices of Serrano ham, sliced fresh figs, whole almonds lightly toasted on a dry pan, red peppers, sprigs of fresh oregano and thyme and goat cheese to finish it off. After it was baked I added a few leaves of basil.

There are obviously as many variations of this pizza as your creative mind can come up with, but I have to say that this is the one for me. Done deal!

We enjoyed my re-creation pizza on a warm summer evening on the patio with a glass of white wine, imagining that we were in Italy, which we soon will be!!

-Ayoe