There really is a pizza recipe in this post. It's Friday, and you're at Farm Fresh Feasts, right?
I've always liked to play with my food and try new things, I guess
my daughter gets it from me. A while ago we got part of a cow, including the tongue and tail. I made beef tongue tacos with the tongue and, while they were
interesting, the real star of that meal was the salsa verde.
Oh salsa verde, [I lamented] where were you when I was cluelessly trying to coax something edible out of my CSA farm share tomatillos?? Ah well, at least now I knew what to do with the tomatillos! Sorry, food bank, I'm keeping them this time--have a jar of peanut butter and a couple cans of tuna instead.
Last season I had the happy coincidence of
my local grocery store roasting fresh Hatch chilies at the same time that the farm share blessed us with tomatillos (something Aubrey of
Homegrown & Healthy commented on--produce that is in season at the same time generally pairs well together). I quickly canned a batch of salsa verde using the Ball canning book recipe. I wasn't quite sure what all I would make with it--we really didn't want to experience tongue again, though I wish cattle had 4 tails each because ox tail rocks. Try Elise's
Oxtail Stew recipe, and you'll see what I mean.
When I thought about the idea of
taking some leftover pork steak home from my in-laws, I lay awake dreaming up this pizza. I figured the pork would go nicely with the salsa verde. I just wasn't sure what type of cheese would be best. So the pork sat in the freezer and the salsa verde sat in the pantry and both patiently waited until this week. My family has recently become enamored of fresh mozzarella on pizza, like
this or
this or
this. I love to get perfectly edible food marked down, so I've added a pass by the fancy cheese area when I'm making
twice daily occasional milk runs. If there are no marked down balls of fresh mozzarella, I make a mental note when the balls on display are due to be sold by, and try and swing by the day before when they'll have the magic stickers. Did you know you could freeze marked down fresh mozzarella, thaw and slice it, and use it on a pizza? Now you do.
It was during one such pass that the marked down sticker on this cheese caught my eye. It wasn't quite shaped like mozzarella, but it looked and felt similar. I whooped(!) because I felt like I'd scored getting mozzarella marked down. The cheese monger (a brilliant lady--she can even pronounce the name of this cheese without sounding like Ben Stiller's character trying to say Brett Favre's name in the movie
There's Something About Mary or Ellen Degeneres' character reading in
Finding Nemo) told me that the cheese I was whooping about was in fact not mozzarella and started to describe it's characteristics to me. Here's what the Murray's Cheese Oaxaca label says:
"Resembles mozzarella in terms of style and make process, but flavor-wise, Oaxaca cheese deserves its own dance floor. Of Mexican heritage but made in Waterloo, Wisconsin by our friends The Crave Brothers, it's pure white and semi-hard, with sting cheesy texture and a salty milky zing. It's best used for the melted implementation in its country of origin: nachos, tacos, or quesadillas, or as a substitute for queso blanco in cooking."
We agreed this pizza would go perfectly with this cheese. If you don't have access to Oaxaca and are too shy to ask for it because you're afraid you'll mispronounce it, I think queso blanco, shredded Mexican blend, or fresh mozzarella would do fine.
The last comment I need to make before getting to the recipe is this: next time I won't make this pizza the way I did. I'll make it the way I wrote it up here. I think it would be better to toss the cooked meat on at the end,
like in this pizza, not in the beginning. What can I say? I was making 4 different pizzas, 2 to deliver to a friend, and I was way distracted. On Friday nights I put the 'as it's happening' pizzas up on
my Facebook page so you can see how crazed I
sometimes frequently get in the kitchen.
