New Year, new pizza

This pizza has to start the day before. By taking the baby bella mushrooms and hot Italian turkey sausage out of the freezer. Look at the internal shapes, like rock formations.

The crust can come out of the freezer the day of.  Misfits organic crust, not my own make, but very good anyway.

So today seemed like a good day, a snowstorm in the offing, to make a pizza.

First cooking the mushrooms in butter and olive oil, until the liquid is almost absorbed and they smell lovely. 

Then removing the mushrooms and putting the chunked up sausage meat to brown in the same pan, so mushroom flavor adds to the hot sausage spice.

I wouldn't call this cooking, so much as assembly. Two views of Mt. Stovetop.

The base is  spritzed olive oil, then basil tomato pesto, which was accidentally packed into my Misfits box recently and is working out well. Maybe it was a sideways form of marketing.

Then a quarter of a fresh beefsteak tomato, and the mushrooms and sausage, I could have made two pizzas with this amount of topping, and Parmesan and cheddar cheese strewn about. I don't like too much cheese on pizza. Just enough to know it's there.

If you want fresh herbs, you have to do it yourself. Here's the pot of curry leaves in the living room, a gift of neighbor Amitha.

And the Thai basil plant in the kitchen. 

I've been growing this from saved seed for several years, since a friend, Lakshmi,  moved away and gave me her plant.

Curry leaves, despite the name, are not spicy. They have a lovely pungent flavor depth, and I replaced bay leaves with them years ago. Indian vegetarian friends use them a lot for flavor. You can freeze them.

Thai basil has a licorice type of flavor. A bit like fennel.  So a few curry leaves and basil leaves torn and tossed on.

And this all worked out nicely. 

One slice was plenty for lunch. 

Three more for future meals.

And now for an afternoon of tea and Angela Thirkell, The Old Bank House.

No snow yet.