Pizza, pizza!

Well, my friend Nishaant is back from India and he's in town, so another mutual friend Will and his boyfriend Fred plus my bf Zack and I decided to make a vegetarian pizza feast for him last night. Will and Fred were in charge of drinks, the pizza dough and the dessert while Zack and I were solely in charge of the tomato sauce and toppings.

When Zack and I arrived at Will's place, I don't think anyone expected this night to be an ambitious culinary challenge. I had planned FIVE different pizzas, each one with its own distinct flavors and characteristics. Here's the menu:

• Mixed herbs and cheeses (fresh rosemary, fresh basil, fresh thyme and minced garlinc on top of a soft bed of grated fontina and parmesan cheeses)
• Roasted pepper and goat cheese (roasted red bell peppers and caramelized onions topped off with chunks of soft goat cheese)
• Eggplant, mushroom and sun-dried tomato (oven-roasted eggplants, sauted portabella mushroom and red onions, and sun-dried tomatoes on top of mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce)
• Asparagus and black olives (oven-roasted asparagus and sliced black olives on top of mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce)
• Margherita (fresh tomatoes and fresh basil on top of fresh mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce and topped off with parmesan cheese)

I even decided to make the tomato sauce from scratch (a variation of Mario Batali's recipe from his most recent book Molto Italiano). It's really simple to make but Fred and I were also trying to prep for the five pizzas at the same time. Meanwhile, Will and Zack made a trip to the grocery store for some last-minute necessities like a cheese grater, EVOO (as Rachel Ray would say) and extra Boboli pizza crusts and picked up Nishaant from the Metra station. We had eggplants and asparagus in the oven, mushrooms and onions in a pan, the bell peppers directly on top of the burner plus the tomato sauce simmering away. Finally, Will and Zack come back with Nishaant.

While Will was making us rum and cokes with a really dark and rich rum from the Bahamas, Fred was grating the cheeses and I was chopping up the fresh herbs and garlic. Zack pitched in by forming the pizza dough into a crust. His was really thin so I used it for the mixed herb and cheeses pizza. This couldn't have worked out better, because it tasted like a crunchy fociaccia and was a perfect appetizer. My personal favorite is the roasted pepper and goat cheese pizza because you get chunks of goat cheese that have a golden brown crunch on the outside and is warm and soft on the inside. The next two pizzas were pretty good too, but everyone was getting full. I also have to add that the Boboli crusts weren't nearly as tasty as the pizza dough made from scratch. It's a lot of work but worth it for feasts like this. I guess making five whole pizzas for five is an unbelievably large amount of food, but it's always better to have leftovers than to have anyone go hungry or unsatiated. I'd say I took care of that. It was a hectic but successful night of good eats and good company.