In the Name of Science

The following stunts were performed by untrained amateurs. Do not attempt at home.

Strange ideas manifest themselves in my head. Sometimes I act upon them. If the following idea enters your head, do not act upon. Seriously.

My neighbors grill all the time and it makes me really hungry. I have a little grill on my back porch. I rarely use it. Last year I was dying to try grilled pizza. I did. It was good. I also wanted to grill all sorts of fruit. I didn’t.

It’s a new year, so I bought a new bag of charcoal a week ago and have been waiting to use it. Somehow the grilling of pizza and fruit came together, seemingly brilliantly, in my head. My idea was to grill a pizza with fruit toppings. This would not be a dessert, but, you know, a pizza!

I soaked strawberries in balsamic vinegar and sugar, and coated pineapple and bananas in a lime and honey mixture. I stuck these on improvised skewers made from chopsticks and grilled them. (I don’t always think things through thoroughly).

I then grilled two small rounds of pizza dough and put a pomegranate glaze on the pizza as a “sauce”. The lesson from last year was that pizza dough cooks quickly over the grill. You must cook one side, then flip to cook the other side. Pizza cooks so quickly that you must pre-cook the toppings and add the toppings and the cheese to the first cooked side as the second side cooks.

I experimented with different cheese toppings on the fruit pizza. I used Brie and cream cheese initially. The Brie melted beautifully. The cream cheese remained in little clumps. The cream cheese was too sweet. I removed the cream cheese from a piece of pizza and added some cheddar, since I had it in the fridge. My conclusion is that the sharper and stronger the cheese the better.

My conclusion overall is that I had a stupid idea.

There’s a reason that I couldn’t find a non-dessert fruit pizza when I googled it. This was too sweet and would have evoked a gag reflex if I weren’t a freak. Oh yeah, I ate it!

I was imagining crackers, fruit, and cheese, but in the form of pizza. Not so. Stick to crackers and cheese or a savory pizza with pineapple.

Let’s just say that I have an excellent imagination. Commit me now!