Home-made "Over the top" alla David Pizza

This food entry has been sitting on my draft compartment far too long. I have delayed it long enough vis a vis my promise of posting it as soon as the pizza came out of the oven. I was overtaken by dishes I cooked and baked too many.

Anyway, This is my atypical pizza - I seldom eat meat, so I seldom cook meat dishes as well. On the other hand, this pizza is right up in David's alley - As men love their meat, and thrive on them, it came as no surprise that my little boy loves anything with meat on it as well. Although my little boy has managed to have a change of heart quite recently and succinctly announced that he doesn't loike meat anymore. How good is that?! :)

This is the pizza that brought out the little boy in my husband. I was relegated as his assistant while he dominated my kitchen dolling up the pizza base I made. While my little boy was fussy, giddy and thought the world of his pizza, I was calm and quietly doing my bit.  But a strange thing happened,  after wolfing down the pizzas during our pizza night and a whole pizza for the following day's lunch, he has lost interest and said, "baby, your pizzas are way better than mine, so we are not going to buy any pizza anymore and can you make all of them instead?".

To this, I answered my sweet smile and my solemn yes. This just goes to show my place in the world - kitchen.

The kitchen is my domain. :)

Warming: Do not overload your pizza base with so many toppings and cheese, as this will make your pizza soggy. Trust me I am talking from experience. LESS IS MORE.

Pizza 1 recipe, please click here.

Pizza2 recipe, please click here.

Egg in a cup

Note: For non-pork eaters, use pastirma or cured beef

It is in my humble opinion that Australia has the best bacon in the world; crispy, only a tad salty and tastes how real bacon should. Australia uses the loin in the middle of the back of the pig which is a lean meaty cut of bacon, with less fat compared to other cuts.  This recipe is a fitting celebration of that.

My little boy treated me like I was the food goddess when I served him this dish the first time one morning. Lol! It  was as if I have moved the famed El Bulli restaurant into our humble abode. When in fact this dish is simply about thinking outside the box or shall I say, pun included, thinking inside a cup.

Enjoy!

*Adapted from http://cafefernando.com

Serves 2

Ingredients

5-6 slices of pastirma (or bacon or ham)

1 tbsp + 1 tsp olive oil

1 large tomato

2 eggs, separated

2 tbsp grated cheese

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Preheat your oven to 350F.

To prepare the three minute tomato sauce, peel the tomato and squeeze to remove juice and seeds (if you do this in a bowl, you can use the juice and seeds later in a salad). Chop the tomato finely and cook with 1 tbsp of olive oil for about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and put aside.

Take a muffin tin (if you don’t have one, you can use soufflé cups instead) and oil the cups with 1 tsp of olive oil, place the slices of pastirma inside, leaving a quarter inch overhang from the edge of the cup (be careful not to leave any gaps between or beneath the slices, though). Cook in the oven until crispy, for about 3 minutes.

Take the muffin tin out of the oven, add one teaspoon of tomato sauce on the bottom and place the egg whites on the top. Cook until the whites are slightly stiff (the upper part should still be somewhat transparent, again 2-3 minutes at most).

Take the muffin tin out of the oven again, add one more teaspoon of tomato sauce and place the egg yolks very carefully in the middle. At this point, I recommend to use the lower shelf of the oven (egg yolks cook very quickly and the tops get wrinkled with direct heat). Cook until the egg yolks gently wobble when you shake the muffin cups, for about 5 minutes.

Sprinkle grated cheese on the top and serve hot.