Comfort for a Comfort Foodie.

Oh Pizza. I often have to travel to Italy for work and in a past life this would have been heaven on earth for my gluttonous gluten self. However, now I am confined to the ‘secondi’ portion of the menu and the old staples of vegetables and meat. This isn’t to say Italians don’t do these well, in fact I am quiet lucky they prefer to cook almost exclusively with olive oil as opposed to butter, but these just don’t hold a candle to a margherita pizza. It could be asked what about Pasta? To this I say, try the Quinoa kind, it is hands down the best substitute I have found and satisfies this craving quite well.

It is the Pizza that has been so elusive. The chewiness of the crust paired with the structure of the slice, and well, the utter melted deliciousness of the cheese. Unfortunately there is no good substitute for cheese, however there are few that come close and I prefer this one. I think the one thing the removal of cheese has done is made me come to appreciate the importance of the other ingredients. For starters, the perfect red sauce is your base, the fresh herbs your structure, and within this you can layer as you wish. The key here is fresh. There are no good substitutes to fresh veggies and herbs, these are what really matter and until now I was oblivious to this fact.

The last, and arguable most important piece is the crust. Now, the perfect replacement has remained elusive, and I will update as I experiment on Sean, but for now Whole Foods has a great gluten free option. And, on a recent ‘Indian Summer’ evening, we went about allying those gluten desires.

My favorite pizza happens to be Pesto, and for this I always start from scratch. Fresh basil is the most vital part, and from this base it is fun to experiment with novel ingredients. For this round I looked to a current appetence of mine: cashews. Cashews blend into a smoother and creamy paste than pine nuts, thus I had the idea they might help make up for the exclusion of cheese. From here I shaved a bit of lemon, added the necessary olive oil and garlic while spicing with salt and pepper as I blended these together. The smell of freshly ground garlic and basil started to fill the kitchen and I knew it was going to be a good night for epicureans. From here I went on to simmer freshly peeled and pureed tomatoes with garlic and red wine as my second base. And, if you are going to do pizza you might as well go for broke, so I created a third base of sautéed garden fresh cherry tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar with caramelized onions.

To each crust I added my sauce; for the pesto I layered multi colored heirloom tomatoes with my ‘mozzarella’ of choice and topped this with a couple extra leaves of basil, as if the pesto wasn’t enough. For the tomato sauce I added fresh bell peppers, red onion, and porcini mushrooms to create a hearty vegetarian. Lastly, for the sautéed tomatoes I kept it simple by just adding my ‘mozzarella’ of choice and fresh basil so the sweetness of the tomatoes could shine.

Although it would be a stretch to equate these to a traditional ‘comfort food pizza’, slices drowned in cheese and grease- soggy in all their gluten glory and yet so gloriously satisfying; they are and were a new comfort for me. Awash in the heat and aroma of baking red sauce, cooking garlic and basil, and the satisfying pull of ‘cheese’ in your first steaming bite, these were my comforts. New comforts, novel ones, fresh ones; and hell these were some tastey pizzas.

I cooked under the assumption I would be saving some of these for lunch the following day as an easy shortcut past the ‘cafeteria’, but alas when you get two gluttons around pizza it is guaranteed not to last. It is nights like these that make me forget the old life and appreciate the simplicity of my new way of eating, consuming, and living. Make it simple, we do.