Tonight, I made anchovy pizza. It also had sauce, mushrooms, turkey pepperoni, and cheese (both mozzarella and parmesan). It had a wonderful crust (I gotta toot my own horn on this one--and Anne Burrell's, who taught me to dissolve my yeast with warm water and a little sugar for a few minutes before ever letting it hit the flour). But, of course, it had anchovies. Which made things a little harder.I took it better this time than last time. Ian wasn't home when I topped it, so I actually had to touch the anchovies myself. Using a fork just wouldn't get them properly laid out on the pizza, so I had to use my fingers. It was a greasy, slimy, smelly experience, but I survived it. Actually, it wasn't that bad.
Eating it wasn't that bad, either, but it definitely wasn't great. Anchovies are just SO SALTY. Ugh! As I ate, I thought back to that first attempt at anchovy pizza, where I smeared some anchovy paste onto flatbread before topping it with other pizza things. That was delicious. Magnificent, actually. Because the anchovy was SPREAD OUT. But when you top a pizza with them, you leave the fillets whole. Well, next time, I'm chopping them up. I'm mixing them with the sauce. Not only will it be more aesthetically pleasing, but then I won't get a giant hit of anchovy on my tongue, when I just want its essence in the background. As seems to be the theme of this blog, it's all about balance.
The only trouble: if someone serves me anchovy pizza somewhere in my future, knowing that I'm supposed to like everything, those fillets will probably be whole. And I'll have to eat them like that. Which, as I proved tonight, is not impossible. But it makes me think I should get used to the more traditional anchovy pizza, too. But who's going to serve me anchovy pizza? Some friend I haven't met yet, I would imagine.
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