Cooking: Cristina Pizza

Last week I dined outdoors with a friend at Il Fornaio. She ordered the Cristina pizza and split her bottle of Pinot Noir with me. I insisted too that she take home the leftovers because I knew I could re-create it at home. It had been a while since I bought refrigerated pizza dough, but I took it out the night before to thaw and rise on my kitchen counter. I had also bought white button, crimini and Shitake mushrooms.

 

I sliced and sautéed the mushrooms with lots of chopped garlic and thyme in butter and olive oil, and because it was going to be the sauce base for the pizza, I added heavy whipping cream. I spread out the crust on a perforated pizza pan.

With no pizza oven to crank up to 700 degrees, I know to parbake my supermarket dough in my home oven which can only go as high as 480 degrees for 5 minutes or so, but next time I need to remember to parbake the crust longer.

While my pizza crust was prebaking, I set out the other ingredients of cheeses, prosciutto, and arugula.

Since I can't achieve that light and golden brown crust of an Italian pizzeria, I make up for it by heaping on the toppings. First a layer of the provolone cheese in my drawer after trimming off tiny moldy edges and then a layer of the creamy mushrooms and then more provolone and mushrooms and then sprinklings of grated Italian cheeses (mozzarella, provolone, fontina and parmesan). I popped the pizza into my oven to as hot as it can possibly get for maybe 12 minutes or more minutes or until the cheese is hot and bubbly and brown as you like it.

While my pizza was baking, I suddenly remembered that Il Fornaio also puts shaved Parmesan on top with the arugula after the pizza is baked. I then layered the whole package of cool prosciutto on top of the hot pizza.

 

Next came the layer of arugula.

I know hubs finds Parmesan a bit overwhelming, and so I reserved the shavings for my own slice.

Also I love fresh citrus squeezed on top of my food whether it be steak or tacos or posole or pizza. Hubs liked it too because I noticed he ate a second slice even though I’ve made this pizza before albeit without the mushrooms.

I also decided to finally make ambrosia salad, and I don't know why it's called salad when there aren't vegetables in and not even fresh fruit because I was using a can of mandarin oranges, a can of pineapple chunks, and Amarena cherries. I deviated from the usual recipe by omitting the sour cream (maybe to cut down on all the sugar from the Cool Whip?) and the marshmallows (I don’t dig their soft texture).

I would've loved to have included some bright green cubes of lime Jello, but opted instead for toasted pistachios. I do love toasted coconut chips instead of chewy and overly sweetened coconut flakes. I studied the package label of the Cool Whip. Who knew you could eat it like ice cream?

I thought my ambrosia was the perfect level of sweetness though I had wished I had added instead my bigger can of crushed pineapple.

I opened that can of crushed pineapple and put part of it into ambrosia, but ugh it was way too sweet. Although I hate to waste, I have no hesitation when it comes to dumping a failed dessert. This weekend’s aim is to make a pina colada of some sort.