Grilled Brunch Pizza

My friend Matthew snarls when he says the word “brunch.” He dislikes—and I know he’s not alone here—what brunch has come to represent, which is many things, including: overpriced, dressed up hangover food for a certain breed of New Yorker who probably shares my demographic. Another thing that I think Matthew takes issue with is how brunch sucks the wind right out of one of your two precious weekend days. (I should add that I’ve never known someone to time-manage as he does; I confuse his afternoon checklist for my monthly one; hell, I don’t even do checklists.) On this point, I’ve been agreeing a lot lately. I am reluctant to watch my day pass by through mimosa goggles, and in my mind, at least, the minutia of my chores consume me more than they ever used to. Furthermore, I can’t even drink before sundown without having to nap for the rest of the day.

Probably anyone who’s ever been a waiter knows the specific breed of asshole that appears during the brunch shift. I shouldn’t call them assholes, because I have certainly been one of them before. They roll their eyeballs back in their head and flop their forearms on the table in exhaustion when you take their drink order—Omigod, coffee. And/or they act all scandalous—they lower their lids and confer with their dining companions in stage-whispered sex voices—when deciding to go through with bloody marys. And then, because this is brunch, the check comes to $12 per person and they’ve occupied their tables for 1.5 hours and still want more coffee. But what it comes down to is that I’m complaining. Brunch is simply more work than any other shift for a server, with all the damn beverages and bread baskets and requisite fits of entitlement whenever either run empty, and comes with significantly less pay. So. I hate brunch, too.

But stripped of its associations, it’s worth reminding oneself that brunch is nothing more than the midpoint between breakfast and lunch, and when one isn't all a-clutter with weekend chores and happy to spend a few hours in the kitchen, it can be a nice way to make for a two-meal day. This was the thinking behind the “Brunch Pizza” I made this weekend at my Dad’s house. I used this crust, substituting a cup of whole-wheat flour for some of the all-purpose stuff, and based the toppings on this recipe, nixing the bacon in favor of olives. On a second pizza I cracked the eggs over a bed of crispy hash browns, which was placed on top of a thin layer of mozzarella; this latter one was the winner. Then I cooked them on a hot grill because it was nice outside and I had access to a grill.

(This is a good time to announce that I’ve just signed up book number two: Vegetarian Entrees Every Which Way: Building Blocks and Over 80 Recipes for Everyday Main Dishes All Through the Year. Yup. It’ll be a very different kind of challenge from Veggie Burgers—a welcome one, in fact, and in many ways more interesting for me to develop since it will represent the food I eat most nights; also, while I do love veggie burgers, it’ll be some time before I care to eat them for 8 meals a week again—due out at some point next Spring or early Summer. I’m going to need help. Please email me if you want to try out recipes.)

But there were some problems with the Grilled Brunch Pizza. First of all, grilling—and I mean grilling, not barbecuing, as many a Southerner has corrected me (barbecue is the thing you eat and not a verb, as in, “Let’s y’all eat some barbecue, y’all”)—is something I am hugely not adept at. I’ve never had one, and growing up I didn’t pay the grill any attention because it belonged in the domain of garages and tool sheds and football—“man stuff.” So I botched this pizza up a little. I should have known that the grill would get too hot and burn the crust before the eggs would cook completely, even though I put high heat on one side, and low heat on the other, and cooked the pizza over the low-heat side where it wouldn’t be directly over the flame. (A helpful tip: go easy on the toppings if you’re cooking your pizza on a grill. You only want it in there as long as it takes for cheese to melt.) Also—and this is something I know to do, but the Food52 recipe seemed to garner such acclaim I was strong-armed into following the instructions exactly—when I was making the crust, I dumped all the flour in at once, rather than starting with half to two-thirds of what’s called for and then working more in as needed. The resulting crust simply had too much flour in it and none of those desirable pizza traits, like being both crisp and pliant. It was one-dimensional and boring, and broke off like a Linzer cookie (part of the problem was that it was on the brill for too long). Thankfully, there is potential here, but next time I’ll have to do it in my oven, and maybe as a vegetarian dinner entree.