Brussels Sprouts Pizza, Butternut Squash Pizza, and Cluster-F*ck Pizza Parties

Both pizzas, before going in.

The Story

On Friday, we decided to throw a last-minute Saturday night dinner party. Our friends were eager to attend, especially when we promised amazing and seasonally appropriate fare (and booze!), but on Saturday afternoon, we experienced first-hand the major downside of having insanely intelligent and successful friends: weekend work. BOO.

With half of our friends bowing out last minute or expressing uncertainty as to when they could arrive, we revised our menu and settled on pizza with fall ingredients as well as a salted caramel apple tart. However, the food was not the cluster-f*ck portion of the evening....

While I was doing the prep work, Jungle Cat J set out to buy alcohol, flowers, and clean the apartment. Beverages and beautiful arrangements were successfully acquired, and when J set upon the last task, cleaning, some issues...... ummmmm, arose?

Expecting visitors, the commode chose to stop flushing or draining. J waited patiently, then decided an intervention was needed. She set out to purchase a plunger, and returned exasperated, with a very small bag:

K: Plunger?

J: They didn't have any.

K: So.......

J: I bought lipstick and playing cards!

In my mom's words: "lipstick will make the toilet look pretty." 

However, believing our guests might want to use the toilet and not just look at it, we called her landlord. He sent help within the hour, and when the plumber went to address the issue, J, ever the consummate hostess, offered him refreshments:

J: We have fresh rosemary shortbread!

Plumber (kneeling on the floor): Uh......

K: Did you really just offer cookies to someone with their hands in your toilet?

J: I am being polite!

Toilet crisis averted, pizzas and tart prepared, we were ready for our dinner party..... of three. In the end, only our friend "Better Schmidt" could make it for dinner. However, in our experience, two things will fix any entertaining disaster: sparkling wine and tequila! 

We decided lambrusco was the perfect accompaniment to our whimsical and semi-Italian meal, and set upon finishing a bottle.... before our guest arrived. After we ate the pizzas, we engaged in a game of "Drunk Jenga" (regular Jenga, but with inappropriate questions scrawled on the blocks that must be answered or addressed after being pulled out). K, understanding that J's nerves were frazzled, made a rule that J had to do a shot of tequila every time she made a negative comment.

By the time our other friends, 'Tammiest" and "Pilgrim Bill," arrived for dessert, J had made significant progress in the bottle of tequila, and offered to make cocktails... of straight alcohol. After everyone had thoroughly enjoyed the pizza, the tart, and some scotch, we set off for Union Pool, where more tequila, some silly string, birthday party-ing, and some jungle cat prey-stalking occurred.....

The Food

STEP ONE: Make dessert. We used the Smitten Kitchen recipe for "apple mosaic tart with salted caramel", and even my relatively unskilled hands could turn out something delicious and visually appealing when we followed the recipe:

We doubled the salted caramel recipe, and increased the salt content of the caramel, but we stayed pretty faithful to the SK recipe.

STEP TWO: Make pizza dough. For the pizza, we used my stand-by pizza dough recipe from Epicurious. Start preparing the dough at least two hours in advance.

STEP THREE: Prepare the toppings. We made four different pizzas, two inspired by this roasted butternut squash pizza recipe from The Kitchn, and two inspired by a Brussels sprouts and crescenza cheese pizza that was part of our Friday night dinner at Cookshop. 

For the toppings, I started by peeling, dicing, and roasting 1/2 inch cubes of butternut squash tossed lightly with olive oil, salt and pepper, and simultaneously roasted 1/2 inch slices of Brussels sprouts also tossed in olive oil, salt and paper. I roasted both at 400 degrees F for approximately 40 minutes, stirring once 20 minutes through.

While the vegetables were roasting, I fried some bacon (about 12 slices), and then used the bacon fat to quickly fry approximately 8 cloves of diced garlic. 

STEP FOUR: Stretch dough, top, and bake. When the dough had finished rising, I oiled baking sheets, stretched the dough into rough rounds, and topped all with some of the fried garlic and a bit of the bacon fat (mmmm, bacon). For the butternut pizzas, I thinly sliced and smeared brie on top of the dough, then liberally tossed on the roasted cubes of butternut squash, crumbled bacon on, and then shook some fresh grated pecorino romano on top of everything. For the Brussels sprouts pizzas, I tossed on the roasted slices of Brussels sprouts, then generously crumbled goat cheese on top, then added crumbled bacon and finished with more fresh grated pecorino romano.

I baked the pizzas (two at a time) at 500 degrees F. Because we could only fit one sheet per rack, I baked for 7 minutes, then switched the top and bottom pizzas and baked for another 6-7 mins to ensure that both would have crisp bottoms:

Finished butternut squash pizza.

Finished Brussels sprouts pizza.

Both of the pizzas were pretty successful (although next time I might put some tomato sauce on the Brussels sprouts one), and the apple tart, served warm with vanilla ice cream, was excellent. 

The End (of what we can appropriately put online)!