Content with little, I can piddle here/ With Broccoli and Mutton, round the year

I place broccoli as pizza topping in the column of strikes against NYC. I encounter broccoli on pizza most frequently in NYC and crankily imagine that haggard New Yorkers consider it to be the healthy option when scarfing down a coupla slices at one of the city's innumerable mediocre pizzerias. This may be neither fair nor rational; so be it.

I am, however, pleased with the pizza I topped last night with peppery ricotta cheese, garlic, and broccoli greens. The greens come from the farmer who rocked my summer with her amazing sorrel. Sadly, I won't have a chance to inquire more about them (or acquire more of them) because I will miss this Saturday's market. So, I'm not sure if there was anything particularly special about these broccoli greens. I do know that most broccoli greens never make it to market: people don't realize how delectable they are and most farmers feed them to cattle, etc.



I used Hazan's very simple pizza dough recipe, which worked wonderfully. Bradford recommends the Chez Panisse recipe, or simply their technique of beginning the dough with a sponge of rye flour in order to infuse the crust with nuttiness. With a new baking stone in the house, I'm more than game.


I topped a second pizza with caramelized onions, anchovies, and dollops of goat cheese. This is Kenneth's favorite.



I didn't go for a true pissaladière and add olives, because olives appeared in last night's salad, as did yellow doll watermelon, mint, and red onions in a lime vinaigrette. This salad is best with cubes of salty feta, but I thought we were having enough cheese for the evening.



For dessert, we had blueberry sorbet, which disappointed us a little. I'm without a proper blender just now, and the food processor didn't adequately pulverize the blueberry skins. Also, I was just sad that I hadn't opted for blueberry ice cream instead of sorbet. Sampling it again this afternoon, though, I think it may not be half bad...