The Great Pizza Cook Off

The mister and I are huge fans of cooking shows of any kind.  We dutifully tune in to Top Chef every week and enjoy the occassional episode of Chopped.  I think it's our undying love of good food, and the passion that these "cheftestants" put into every meal they create.  plus, it's just plain fun to critique their choices and roll our eyes anytime one of the chefs gets too cocky - a sure sign they will be given the boot 40 minutes later.  Anyways, after our lovely weekend of nesting and enjoying home we wanted to cook in our kitchen after a very looooong dry spell of mostly frozen meals and carry out.  what better way to re-awaken our kitchen that with a cook-off Top Chef style?

Here are the rules.  This round (there will be many more of these to come) was all about pizza.  We each had twenty minutes to run around Whole Foods to gather our ingredients.  Originally we said we had $20 to spend, but we both went over by a couple dollars (we'll get better at this in time).  At home we split the kitchen table in half with some masking tape and laid out our ingredients.

And then with 45 minutes on the clock we imagined Padma saying, "Your time begins...NOW!"  And we were off.  First, tossing and rolling out the pizza dough.  oil on the pan for me.  a buttered pan for the mister.  things got hectic there at the end.

voting worked this way.  5 points for taste.  5 points for presentation.  5 points for creativity.  and up to 5 points deducted for time (1 pt per minute over the allotted 45).

the results?

chris took 2nd place with his bacon, corn and crispy onion pizza.  he had a bit of a timing issue (no surprise there) and lost a good chunk of points.

and, me, the non-cook won with my balsamic fig, prosciutto and gorgonzola pizza topped with arugula salad!  yippee!!