Until recently, the barbecue has always been my husband’s domain. He enjoyed sitting out on the deck with a beer, pretending to be hard at work at the grill, and I enjoyed fooling him into actually helping with dinner.  Also, to be completely honest, I was a little scared of lighting the thing. Gas scares me.

This arrangement worked out alright for a while, but problem that I kept running into with Tony in charge of the barbecue is that I had to work around “Tony-time.” Say, for example, he tells me he’ll start the barbecue in 10 minutes. 10 minutes to Tony inevitably turns into 30 minutes, because he gets distracted by other tasks like working on his car or playing Scrabble on his iphone. This “Tony-time” phenomenon also applies to showers. A “quick” shower to Tony can often be around 45 minutes.

Anyway, one day when I was waiting around for Tony to start the grill, it dawned on me: why don’t I just start it myself?? And so I did. Nothing blew up, and I managed to make a pretty tasty grilled dinner.

Now that I’m no longer intimidated by the barbecue, I’ve been getting a little more adventurous. I had been wanting to try grilling pizza for a long time, so I finally did it. I wasn’t sure how raw pizza dough would behave on a hot grill. Wouldn’t it stick? What kind of texture would it have? Well, I was pleasantly surprised. It did not stick at all, and it was wonderfully crispy on the outside while staying soft and airy on the inside.

I started off with Pioneer Woman’s recipe for pizza dough. It’s easy, it’s relatively quick, and it’s delicious.

I took handfuls of dough and stretched them into something roughly resembling a circle. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, I like them very imperfect.

I tested one on the grill…

I closed the lid for about 3 minutes to let the dough cook, then flipped it onto a plate…

I put toppings on the grilled side. This particular evening, I made a simple vegetarian pizza, with tomato sauce, spinach, red peppers, mushrooms, red onions, and mozzarella cheese.

I placed it back on the barbecue and closed the lid to cook the underside of the pizza dough until it was crispy.

THE WHINE CRITICS

 

Cole seems to love to use this non-committal gesture lately. I asked him to explain to me why he didn’t give it a thumbs up, and he pointed out the darkened part of the pizza crust and said, “That’s why. It’s this burnt part that I don’t like.” I would argue that it’s more “charred” than “burnt” but I didn’t think I’d win that argument with a 6 year-old.

Bennett gave it one thumb up, although he doesn’t look completely happy about the meal in this photo. I think it was because I also served them grilled zucchini with pizza toppings and it didn’t go over very well.

I admit, I didn’t like it either. I think I may have cooked it on the grill for too long, so it was a little mushy, and I hate mushy zucchini. Actually, I don’t even like properly cooked zucchini that much either, unless it’s concealed by other flavours and textures. The pizza toppings didn’t conceal it enough for me. But if you really like zucchini and you cook it better than I do, then grilled pizza zucchini may be a great idea to try. It’s a nice low-carb alternative to pizza too.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve grilled on the barbecue?