A Quickie, Figgy Pizza

Once again, because of the plethora of wonderful Summer produce flooding the little kitchen right now, there’s not much going on in the way of “planned”, “deliberate”, “well-thought-out” , menus happening right now.  Add to that, we had our first blast of real Summer weather in SoCal for the past week or so, and I haven’t been doing *air-quotes* COOKING as much as I’ve been doing *air-quotes* GRAZING.

Not that that’s a bad way to eat, especially when the fruit and veg are so spectacular, and when the blast furnace plus humidity means turning on any heat source in the kitchen is an exercise in self-abuse (noooooo air conditioning in the little house with the little kitchen, so sad am I).  Sorry, for a moment there, I just channeled Yoda....

Unfortunately, that don’t make for great fodder for a food blog.

But, I don’t want to leave all y’all in the lurch for too long without checking in, and sharing whatever I can.

So, here’s a quickie.  I made this last week with some of the bounty of figs from The Growing Experience.  It’s a pizza, yes, a pizza with figs.  WAIT, DON’T LEAVE.  Cast those doubts aside and just listen and think.  Figs are great with prosciutto.  *This* has prosciutto.  Figs are great with balsamic vinegar.  *This* has balsamic vinegar.  Figs are great with sharp cheese.  *This* has both Parmesan (sharp, for sure) and mozzarella for a creamy, mild background.  PLUS caramelized onions……plus rosemary.  What’s NOT to like.

It’s….trendy !  It’s….savory, yet, sweet !  It’s quick to make and you could totally cook it on your outdoor grill, and not even worry about heating up the oven (and therefore the kitchen).  Give it a try; you’ll be surprised about how much you like it.

Full confession time...

What once was lost, is now found, or the return of the prodigal pizza

One of the downsides of being an inveterate recipe collector is that I'm always captivated by the NEWEST, BESTEST, HOTTEST, TRENDIEST recipes.  And so, naturally, some of the old favorites fall by the wayside, cast away in search of The Next Best Thing.  That's too bad, really, because I have a huge stash of older recipes, both clipped from newspapers and magazines (back in the Old Times before the interwebs...), and also what I guess you'd call "vintage" cookbooks.  And some of those sources have some real gems, that deserve to be revisited.  Every so often, I'll have a thought (always a scary time for me...), and think, hey, I should make "that dish from XYZ again".  And I'll pull out the book, or the magazine, and realize that by the time I've found the recipe I was actually looking for, I've re-read the entire publication, and also found a bunch of other things that sound good and interesting.  And then I wonder, why don't I cook from this book any more?  Never do have a good answer, other than there's so much good stuff out there, it's simply impossible to get to it all.

So, I've been trying (trying being the operative word here) to remember to include some of the old favorites, or untried recipes from the neglected books and files, with the new ones I've found in my recent recipe forages, when I plan my menus.  And sometimes, I do get that thought about an old favorite, and rummage through the collection to resurrect it.

Which led, last weekend, to Asparagus Pizza...