Southern Hospitality: Host a Pizza Party

For those of you who don't know me well, I am a full-fledged pizza junkie. I'm no snob, either—I don't care whether it's Pizzeria Mozza or Papa John's. Heck, I even like pepperoni bagel bites and hot pockets supreme. I've got no shame! But I personally think the best pizzas the ones that come straight from my own kitchen.

Walt has recently joined in on the action, so we've hosted a few pizza parties with our "most favorite" friends. (Read: people we are comfortable putting straight to work.) We've since become pretty knowledgeable on the subject and created some mighty fine flavors along the way. In fact, grilling pizzas is now our favorite reason to entertain!

Here are a few of my best PIZZA PARTY tips to help you throw your own:

1. Tools - Having the right equipment is half the battle. Arm yourself with a pizza stone, pizza peel, oven mitts, and cutting wheel. Dixie Caviar (highly!) recommends these:

Lodge Pro-Logic Pizza Pan: This is the mother of all pizza stones, and it's made by one of my favorite Southern companies. The cast iron surface gets piping hot and retains its heat, meaning a perfectly crisp crust every time.

Epicurean Pizza Peel: A peel is crucial to sliding pizzas off of counter tops and onto the stone. I fought getting one for the longest time, and after a single use couldn't believe I ever lived without it.

Silicone Quilted Oven Mitts: High temperatures are essential to good pizza, which equals extra protection if you are anything like me. I've road-tested a lot of oven mitts over the years, and these are my clear favorite.

OXO Pizza Wheel: A pizza wheel is good for a lot more than slicing pizza—I use mine for other things likes cutting doughs and pastries, and seem to find a new use for it almost every day.

Vintage Wood Paddle Board: Okay, this isn't really an essential, but it sure makes pizza—among other things—look pretty nice when served.

2. The menu - A pizza party shouldn't mean a lot of fuss. Have your guests contribute to the meal, whether it's an appetizer, salad fixings, or a bottle of wine. And just a word to the wise: be prepared for a big ol' mess. No matter how hard we try, Walt and I always manage to use up every pot, pan, and dish that we own. We have learned to accept this and you should too. Here's what to serve:

Drinks: Beer + pizza equals good times ahead. I highly recommend offering anything from 21st Amendment, a San Francisco microbrewery that is bringing back the can. (Fun fact: did you know that cans keep beer fresher AND are better for the environment? 21st Amendment does!) Stock Hell or High Watermelon wheat ale for the ladies and Back in Black IPA for the lads. Then let the games begin!

Appetizers: Since you are about to eat your weight in carbohydrates, keep the snacks to a minimum. Think spiced nuts, salumi, green goddess dip, bread sticks, and crudités. Now is not the time to fill up on junk food.

The pizza: When it comes time for the main event, delegate a few tasks to make the whole process easier. Assign friends to make cocktails, prep ingredients, or roll out the dough. Always prep any toppings in advance and group the bowls together on a sheet pan for each individual pizza—once things start moving there will be no time for hunting down the mozzarella. We typically make one large pizza at a time so that everyone can chow down together while another pizza cooks. Feel free to make mini pizzas though, and allow each guest to assemble his or her own ultimate pie.

The dough: When feeding a crowd, I'm a huge advocate of buying pre-made dough from your local grocery store: one ball for every two adults plus a couple more. If it is just a small group of two-four people, I'll go ahead and make a batch from scratch. I use a modified version of Frank Stitt's recipe, which tastes amazing and comes together in a snap. (I promise to post it here soon.)

The sauce: No need to purchase overpriced "pizza sauce." Just buy a large can of whole San Marzanos, and chop the tomatoes with kitchen shears directly in the can. Don't be afraid to think outside the box: prepared pesto and garlic-infused olive oil are also great choices for your pizza.

The essentials:  No matter what flavors of pizza you plan on creating, there are a few ingredients you always need: shredded, low-moisture mozzarella (from the bag), fresh mozzarella for slicing, good-quality Parmesan to grate, and torn basil leaves. Don't forget to be generous with red pepper flakes, kosher salt, and ground black pepper.

Sides: Pizza doesn't really need a side per se, but a peppery arugula salad tossed with a lemon vinaigrette will take you pretty far. The greens add a nice dose of color to your plate and you can even throw 'em on your pizza if you're feeling crazy.

Desserts: A meal isn't finished until you sample something sweet, and in this case the dessert should be quick and easy. Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars + bourbon went over well at our last party, but strawberry sorbet or homemade chocolate chip cookies would be just as good I'm sure.

3. The flavors - We are always creating new ingredient combinations around here, with some more successful than others. Just let your imagination go wild. You never really know what is going to knock it out of the park. (Umm, SpaghettiO's with Meatballs pizza? Who knew!) Here are a few of our tried-and-true's:

The classic: Tomato sauce + pancetta + mozzarella + parmesan + red pepper flakes The Italian: Tomato sauce + chopped meatballs + mozzarella + parmesan + basil The Spicy Italian: Tomato sauce + spicy sausage + bell peppers + onions + mozzarella The Southern Q: Barbecue sauce + chicken + red onions + gouda + mozzarella The Garden: Olive oil + garlic + yellow squash + zucchini + goat cheese + parmesan The Cobb: Olive oil + garlic + corn + cherry tomatoes + goat cheese + parmesan

All this talk about pizza has given me a major craving—good thing Mellow Mushroom is just around the corner. Hopefully I've inspired you, too, to get outside and host a pizza party! It is such a great way to spend your summer nights, and it definitely beats delivery. Getting the hang of the assembly + production line can be a little tricky, but practice does indeed make perfect. And what better thing in this world is there to practice other than eating pizza? I can't think of much.

Image sources: Row 1 -  Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart Row 2 - Green Wedding Shoes, Southern Living, Real Simple Row 3 - Bon Appetit, Sunset, Ellen Silverman via SB Chic

Spotlight On: Pinterest

This is the second post in a series about my personal methods of recipe organization. Check out the first post, Spotlight On: Eat Your Books, for more of my tips and tricks.

Hi, my name is Nealey and I am a hoarder. A magazine hoarder, that is. I can write that openly because I really, really hope it is a thing of the past.

It irks me to the core to get rid of a magazine. What if I lose some single, mind-altering tip or recipe that otherwise could have changed my life forever? Or what if the publishing industry dies out completely, leaving any crisp and unstained copies of, gasp, paper—à la Gourmet—as the foodie equivalent to a mint condition Babe Ruth baseball card. Okay, now I'm just talking crazy, but you get the picture: I like my magazines where I can see them.

But once I started cohabiting with a certain fellow named Walter, something (meaning me) had to give. Take, for instance, our cross-country move, when I tried to shove three bulging boxes of various food and lifestyle magazines into an already overpacked U-Haul. Despite shedding my best "tears of despair," only seven years of Martha Stewart Weddings and my treasured Domino collection made the cut.

Unfortunately moving to a new city, however far away, didn't release me from my freakish tendencies, and so the vicious cycle continued. As quickly as the forwarded subscriptions began to arrive did the new magazine piles begin to creep into every spare corner of our home. (To be perfectly honest, the stacks really just got banished to the bottomless pit otherwise known as the guestroom. It's where words, among other things, go to die.) For a few too many months, the only solution was to just shut the damn door.

Completely fed up with my mess—and possibly hopped up on too much caffeine—I finally said enough is enough and took back the reins to the paper monster. One hour became one Saturday, which in turn became one of many Saturdays. I ruthlessly tore out page after page deemed worthy of salvation and sent the rest straight to the curb. I took few prisoners and left no survivors. But that was only the beginning. Upon finding myself with hundreds (Thousands! Millions!) of magazine tear sheets, mainly piles of recipes, I needed a new plan of attack. Which brings me to my infamous 3-ring binders.

This next part started out innocently enough. Armed with a mega-pack of plastic sheet protectors, I began to organize all the recipes by course. In fact, I was so proud of my little organizational feat that I actually felt the need to keep the progress going (which never happens despite my good intentions). I was diligent about ripping tear sheets out while reading a magazine; the leftovers were immediately discarded. The trouble with my system, however, was that one 3-ring binder turned into two, and two turned into three, and then well, you get the picture.

It was fun to occasionally page through my "homemade" cookbooks, but I still wasn't utilizing the recipes like I should. You know, actually cooking from them. Which brings us to Pinterest, my light at the end of the (hoarding) tunnel. Of course everybody and their mother has discovered this visually-stimulating virtual time warp, so I'm not here to tell you what you already know. I just want to explain how I am using Pinterest to save me from myself. Because there is an actual point to this story, I swear.

In a serious attempt at procrastination one morning, a light bulb went off in my head: what if I upload all of my tear sheets to Pinterest, ridding me of a paper trail forever? I was already pinning interesting recipes I stumbled across online, so this couldn't be much different. I created boards labeled by coarse that paralleled the binder categories I already created. And then I got to work. It has been a labor of love, and I'm not finished yet, but every few days I try to carve out an hour or two to get through the piles.

I must say that since I started this undertaking I have been referring to my boards on a daily basis, which is a major improvement from how I was utilizing the 3-ring binders. To me, this makes the project totally worth the major time investment. And I love that my followers can see what recipes I think look interesting—because at the end of the day, why should I "hoard" them all? (Hee hee.)

Of course with Pinterest being such a new phenomenon, I am not ready to throw the tear sheets out completely. I have filed them (by category, of course) in an accordion folder tucked in a cabinet far from my view. The goal is to never have to refer to them again, but what can I say? I like the security of knowing they are there, just in case.

Please advise—This ‘Spotlight On’ featuring Pinterest is based entirely on my personal opinion. I did not receive any compensation for this post and am fairly certain they have no idea who I am.

Spotlight On: Eat Your Books

I've been wanting to talk about recipe organization here on Dixie Caviar for a long time. With hundreds of recipe sources available to home cooks these days across various media outlets—think newspapers, cookbooks, food magazines, websites, and cooking blogs— managing all the madness can be quite daunting. There's nothing worse than remembering a recipe you want to make, only to have no idea where in the world you "stored" it. Is it in a pile of tear sheets on your desk, dog-eared in a magazine bound for the recycling bin, bookmarked online in an obscurely-titled folder, or saved in one of your many virtual recipe boxes? Oh, the drama.

As a food writer and recipe developer, I am constantly looking for my next stroke of genius and always on the hunt for delicious inspiration. Effectively managing my culinary research is of utmost importance. I know that every person is different, but in the next few "Spotlight On" posts I want to share the systems that work for me. My methods stretch across a number of mediums, and all combined might seem a little "cray-cray", but hopefully each will give a little organizational insight to other type-A freaks like me.

For the first post in my recipe organization series, I'd like to put a spotlight on the fabulous website, EAT YOUR BOOKS.

I currently have 150+ cookbooks in my collection and—thanks to an obsessive-compulsive Amazon addition—it continues to grow by the day. I love nothing more than pouring through each and every page of my newly-acquired treasures. Unfortunately after one or two passes, most get crammed into an already over-capacitated shelf, never to be looked at again.

But then I discovered Eat Your Books, a website that works as a virtual index to all of your printed recipes. Eat Your Books has thousands of popular cookbooks in its system already, and that number is growing every day. To get started, it's as easy as creating an account and filling your online "bookshelf" with the cookbook titles from your collection. Immediately all of those recipes hiding in your attic are now living at your fingertips, just begging to be used. It is worth mentioning that Eat Your Books is NOT a recipe sight, meaning you have to use the, gasp, physical cookbook in order to view the recipes. But hey, isn't thumbing through those beautiful pages half the fun? (Side note: I know this paragraph just started sounding like a bad late-night infomercial, but it's just how I feel, I swear.)

Now any time I want to look up a recipe for say, Penne alla Vodka, I can enter the title into my database and a list of all my cookbooks containing a recipe match will pop up. (My newest habit is to sit Indian style, with the cookbooks spread on the floor around me, as I compare and contrast each recipe in search of the very best one.) I used to start all of my recipe research online, using my cookbooks only as an occasional reference. Now I start recipe development with Eat Your Books. My bank account can rest easy now that I'm getting an actual return from all those Amazon investments.

Just yesterday I was having trouble choosing a healthy side dish to bring to a Mother's Day potluck. Needing a little encouragement, I used the nifty 'Filter By' feature to narrow down my index to only reflect spring and summer side dishes. I scrolled through the hundreds of recipes that popped up and ended up choosing a delicious-sounding Asian coleslaw from the Williams-Sonoma cookbook Cooking at Home. The recipe was a huge success and a perfect complement to the host's grilled burgers.

Eat Your Books does charge a small fee ($2.50 per month or $25 per year), but it is worth every penny. They add new features all the time, including the ability to index magazines, websites, and food blogs. While I have other methods I use for managing those types of recipes (which I'll be sharing soon), I am sure these additional services are invaluable to most subscribers. So if you have a lot of cookbooks that you aren't getting enough mileage out of, check out Eat Your Books. Even if you don't have tons, I'd say the website is still probably worth it for its ever-expanding online bookmarking capabilities.

So what about you? Do you use cookbooks on a regular basis or the internet as your predominant recipe resource?

Please advise—This 'Spotlight On' featuring Eat Your Books is based entirely on my personal opinion. I did not receive any compensation for this post and am fairly certain they have no idea who I am.