Pizza

Some photos from last night's pizza. Tasty, but there are still many areas for improvement. There are still many things that I am learning.  

Pizza Margherita.

 Italian sausage (somehow got it for free, along with another sausage, from the butcher at Whole Foods).

Assortment of toppings.

Dairy free/vegan pizza.

Peach, caramelized onion, goat and mozzarella cheeses.

Pizza crust bottom-view. 

Wood-fired Pizza in the Virginia Backcountry

Front-view

My friends and I tend to cook well when backpacking in the mountains. I don't understand buying all that expensive freeze-dried stuff anyways. This weekend we drove out to the Mount Rogers Wilderness/Grayson Highlands State Park to do some backpacking. We set up camp at an incredible campsite in a grassy open area at about 5000 feet above sea level.

We constructed a "stone-hearth oven" prior to building the fire. After building up a good pile of coals and "pre-heating" the oven, we cooked out first pizza. We used pita that we cut in half as the pizza crust. Due to the way the oven was assembled, we were able to achieve high heat from below and above the pizza which was ideal.
I highly recommend trying this next time y'all are in the backcountry as there is nothing better than freshly cooked pies on the mountain top.

Improvised peel.

View from the back of the oven with sliding rock "doors" open.

Old photos

Here are some miscellaneous photos of some food/dishes I have made over the past year:

First time cooking pizza on the Big Green Egg. Having grilled pizza on the BGE twice now, I have achieved maximum temperatures of around 675 F, more than 100 degrees hotter than my kitchen oven.

Hickory smoked salmon (on the BGE) with grilled vegetables (onion, red bell pepper and scallions) and romesco sauce (poblano pepper, tomato, garlic, parsley, cilantro, toasted almonds, toast, extra virgin olive oil, and red wine vinegar).

Red pepper parmesan risotto.

Pan-seared North Carolina flounder with a gazpacho garnish (red and yellow bell pepper, cucumber and blanched zucchini skin).

Sautéed asparagus.

Grilled bruschetta with homegrown heirloom tomatoes.

Kaiser rolls