Lucky Lab Leftovers

I'm eating leftover cold pizza for breakfast -- not quite for breakfast, but to hold me over til my late Sunday Brunch. This sliver, that I shaved from the HUGE slice is covered in 3 whole roasted garlic cloves, from from last-night's visit to the new Lucky Lab on Killingsworth! Good morning Garlic!

I met a friend at this Lucky Lab last night, not for pizza per se, but we (two harsh pizza critics) ended up ordering pizza. I had no expectations. I was famished after a Saturday of playing in the garden and swimming, so I was in no mood to be picky -- I was ready to eat a lot of food. Their pizza doesn't get any award by me, but it was yummy and FILLING. That's the take-home message: Lucky Lab pizza, with more cheese and toppings than crust. Must use fork. With a pint of their "Overlook Amber" (a tasty brew named for my neighborhood), I could only stomach one piece. If I were sensitive to dairy, (MAB) I wouldn't have made it through even the one.

Alas, I have a fondness for the Lucky Lab in my heart because I went there once a week, to their SW location, during my first year in law school. Why the Lucky Lab? Not sure, because the food was boring and the beer was just okay. And it was definitely not for the pizza. But we loved it. I'm bummed, though, that their newest location isn't yet covered with photos of the local Labradors! Come on Overlook, let's post our pups!

Here's my labrador mix: (Sky). She is not a pizza whore, but she would be if I let her.
(Photo by Evan)

The Urban Dictionary Defines Me

While I was gone, Urban Dictionary.com came up with this definition, and I like it:

Someone who does not ever get sick of pizza and not only eats it everyday but will do whatever it takes to tag along with someone who's getting pizza.

The word used in context:
"Hey whatcha been up to?" "Nothin much, just got back from Pizza Man." "O really? wanna hang out?" "yeah sure...annnnnd you think i can have some of that leftover Pizza Man?" "Sigh, yes you pizza whore."

A Whole Year without a Whore Post!

But I'm back! Stay tuned for a 2010 summer of good time pizza whoring.

To the Mothers!

Happy Mothers' Day! How's this for a holiday-appropriate post? Mothers Market is in Hood River, right where highways 84 and 35 cross. These mothers make up my favorite VEGAN pizza. (I must say that I've been a devout and happy vegan in my past but nowadays I'm not keen to expound on the virtues of vegan pizza as a true pizza whore -- because is it really pizza without cheese? -- but there are some pizza pies out there that are excellent and just happen to be vegan. These deserve special attention.) Mothers has a great little deli with soups, sandwiches and other delicious grub. Their pizza pie is not just a pizza without cheese -- it is its own delectable and substantial pie.

They make a nutty cream sauce on a not-very-doughy dough and top it with all kinds of roasted veggies and gomasu (a salt & sesame seed mix). I feel good eating this pizza, really good. The mothers are sweet Seventh Day Adventists women with long hair tied up in buns, wearing aprons. I want to hug them. Walk into their health food store and you feel the love. Good food is love. You must swing by for a slice on your way to Mt. Hood or on a Sunday afternoon just because the Hood River valley is a wonderful place to be. Thank you Mothers!

The Blind Onion

"It doesn't look very good," says Mavel when I show her the picture on the website, trying to sell it to her for dinner. Ah well, my friend, it doesn't need to look good because the onion is blind.

I'll give Mavel her point, this pizza is not a looker. The cheese looks too shiny and the "hand-rolled" crust doesn't do anything for me except remind me of a berry pie which is not what I crave when I open the pizza box. "Ah, but looks are deceiving," said the wise Blind Onion. This pie is scrumptious. Its dough raises it above other sighted pizzas. It might not matter what toppings you but on it because the highlight of this pizza is the generous topping of cheese and the dough, the thick-but-not-too-dense bagel dough.

I have a friend who used to sell art and she always told me that the way you know you found the right piece is if you can't stop thinking about it, if it pops into your mind at unexpected times. Two weeks after I met the Blind Onion for the first time, in a strip mall in the Couve, I could not keep him off my mind. I found the right piece. This is art for my mouth.

(I had, however, stopped thinking about the Blind Onion's window art: is that a blind dog eating a piece of the Blind Onion? I'm not sure, but according to The Blind Onion Story on their website, the Blind Onion was part of "America's first all sight-impaired" band back in the 1960s. Sadly, the band was ill-fated, according to the story, because it had an annoying habit of making the audience cry. Ha ha ha.)

Whoring with Ken (at Ken's Artisan)

Mary Alecia, the Pizza Gigalo's girlfriend, said to the Pizza Gigalo: "do you want to go keep Kristen company while she whores herself to Ken?"

Evan said "yes!" and pimped it with the best pizza of the evening, in my opinion: the 

black olive. These extra-special olives are the vegetarian version of anchovies: super salty flavorful deliciousness. He did double duty (like a true gigalo) and added some anchovies! 

Another local pizza connoisseur, (Thank you, Ms Crowe) tipped us to get a side of the fresh red chilies which also added an extra bang to the plain margharita. My choice, the margharita + arugula, gave me a bit too much aragula.

Here's Gus, starting his pizza-loving life with Ken's sourdough. I appreciated the olive oil more than the bread, which was a little too crusty for my taste. But the crust underneath the pizza was pretty perfect, I just didn't appreciate the actual crust part. As I gave Aaron the title of crust hater because his was piling up, Matt wondered if there was ever a pizza whose toppings went all the way to the edge. This is what I wished was going on here. I had given Aaron such a hard time about denying his crust, that I was embarrassed to see mine doing the same. Bummer. 

The pizza's interior was delicious and delicate: great sauce with sporadically placed fresh mozzarella. The irregularity of the topping locations started another great pizza discussion. Is the topic location designed so that each bite has a different ratio of flavors? I'm not sure how I feel about this. I believe the best pizza is that which achieves the perfect sauce/dough/cheese/topping balance, but this gives you a different balance in each bite. So we must assess the whole pie experience, rather than one bite at a time. Bottom line here: mine had too much arugula. "Better too much than too little," said Matt. Maybe. But I couldn't stomach rejecting the lovely green along with my crust, so I ate it. It left my whole pizza experience imbalanced.

So, I started looking into my friends' pizzas -- Matt raved about his sorporsatta, the super-spicy-pepperoni-like meat pizza. Apizza whore confession: in 27.5 years of pizza loving I'd never tried a pepperoni pizza. So, if I am now, after all these years, willing to try the meat, why not start with a kind-of-like-but-not pepperoni pizza. Spicy! Some heat and a lot of flavor. One bite was enough for me, but it was tasty! 

 I looked around the table -- Aaron had one piece of his sausage and fennel left. I pondered it for a moment. (Keep in mind, I'm a life-long vegetarian; mom said I was born that way.) Lemme try it! Wow. Hands down the best pizza on the table (it one upped the black olive). The fennel was caramelized and he'd added the chilies before the pie got cooked. Delicious, and powerful. Maybe it would have been too much for the entire pie because it was really rich, but I have vegetarian taste. For meat lovers, it would be spectacular!

Home-topped, with dough by Pastaworks

They should have taken a picture of me tossing the dough over the oven. The centrifugal force really does help even out the dough. It's not just for entertainment (except the time I almost dropped it). I learned to make pizza (and calzones) when I was a line cook at Cafe Bernardo in Sacramento. I learned on a great flat iron oven, but they never let us toss the dough. We rolled it, with a rolling pin; how sad. But they did teach me about my favorite toppings - caramelized onions, mozzarella, fresh spinach, fresh tomatoes, and kalamata olives. This is now the standard pie in Kristen's kitchen. It's the pie that mom ALWAYS requests when she comes to town.

Mom comes. I make pizza.

I love to make my own dough, but Pastaworks recently moved into the neighborhood and I'd heard they make a mean dough you can by raw & frozen. So on our way to a beach house for the weekend, we picked up two frozen balls of dough! While my mom and I quilted the afternoon away, we let the dough defrost in the window sill (yes, we were blessed with SUN at the Oregon coast!).

One pie got red sauce, the other got basil pesto. Mom always prefers the pesto. But the eight of us demolished the 2 pies. This was some damn good pizza. Evan and MaryAlecia brought arugula, which was the perfect frest topping on the hot pizza pie!

The crust: hip hip horay for the Pastaworks dough. It was way thicker than I'd ever make, but you could cut one ball in half for a thinner result. We used one ball per pizza. The dough was plush, with sufficient salt and oil. Tasty. It gets 5 stars from me for frozen dough!

The pans: the tomato pie got the pizza stone and the pesto got a cookie sheet. No one raved about the pizza stone, and I particularly dislike it. The dough gets too crispy. I knocked my finger on the bottom -- kinda like cardboard. I prefer the good old, standard-issue cookie sheet, dusted with cornmeal. Evan, THE PIZZA GIGALO (check us out, photo to the right) pointed out that the stone might give a more even cook, but I just don't know. Maybe in theory it would, but theory doesn't matter if I like the pizza in the cookie pan better. And, when it comes to the perfectly-cooked, homemade pizza dough, the hotter the oven, the better. Our rental oven went up to 500! Nice.