Hello my little Thugs and Thugettes…Or chefs with Bad Manners.*

It’s been a while.

I decided to crank my oven and make the most creative pizza my kitchen could muster…So I grabbed my Thug Kitchen cookbook (the Party one) to hunt for recipes. It did not disappoint, I found recipes for not one but THREE pizzas! I felt like I’d just hit the pizza jack pot until I saw one of the recipes demanded tempeh, which my sweet little fuckers, isn’t available where I live. So the Buffalo Pizza will have to wait for another day.

Fresh Tomato and Pesto Pizza & Shaved Asparagus Pizza

I’d made the roasted garlic earlier while I made their stuffed mushrooms (a story for another day) so I jammed that in the blender to make the roasted garlic white sauce for both the pizzas. I threw in the other ingredients and hit BLEND, which was good timing because my son walked into the kitchen at that very same moment asking for the iPad, and I pretended I couldn’t hear him over the noise. So he went and got a reading book out instead. I patted myself on the back for good parenting and went on my merry way, cooking and living happily ever after.

Did that really happen? I hear you asking incredulously.

No, of course not. He just persisted and got louder and louder until eventually there was no more blending to be done and I had to stop before I broke the blender’s motor, and was forced to deal with his request. (Can you tell I’m not a huge fan of too much screen time?)

Whatever. Once the blending was done, I threw that shizzel in the saucepan like the Thugs instructed, and started to gently heat it up while whisking it every few minutes.

You know what happened though, right?
Well obviously I walked away and started multitasking, and the whisking “every few minutes” turned into neglected bubbling angry frenzy which I could smell from the other room and came running in to see if I’d fucked it all up. The short answer is yes. I’d fucked it up, but it could still be saved. I threw what wasn’t burnt and blackened at the bottom of the saucepan in another saucepan and kept going. Moral of the story: Stir mother fuckers. Stir like you have burnt shit in the past and leant a lesson.

So, I decided to my son was having far too much fun for his own good watching YouTube unsupervised so I lured him into the kitchen promising him bananas and a good time. Neither were had, but he helped any way.

He was assigned the job of peeling (or shaving?) the asparagus. Can I just say I have never ever heard of shaved asparagus pizza, and though anything shaved sounds a little dirty in my mind, it was actually really cool. My son grabbed the potato peeler (or in this case asparagus peeler) and went to town on its ass.

We weren’t sure just how far down you were meant to shave those asparagus bastards, but this is what it looked like when we got as close to peeling our fingers as we could. So we stopped. I love asparagus, but I love my son’s fingers more – even though they probably wonder up his nose when I’m not looking. I remember there was a lot of nose-picking going on in my childhood – I imagine that’s the same for most kids, but what do I know? It’s not like I’m a parenting coach or anything.

So here’s where I detoured from the recipe – DON’T JUDGE ME, you don’t know why yet.

I decided to get pre-made pizza dough. Yes, Thugs I feel you shaking your heads in disgusted dismay at how I brutalise and bastardise your recipes. I had a good reason this time! My son has a wheat intolerance, so no normal flour for him. Fuck me if I know how to make gluten-free pizza dough from scratch, so I decided to buy pre-made. AND….while I was there I got pre-made pizza dough for me and my hubby, because you know what? I’M A MOTHER. If you look up the word busy in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of all the mothers in the world in there. And you know what else? They look fucking tired. On edge. Like they need a cocktail.

So yes, I fucking didn’t make the dough from scratch. I also didn’t just dump my family at the curb at McDonalds, so I still consider this a parenting win.

Onwards!

I cleaned out the blender and made the pesto.

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This stuff smells amazing. Like basil viagra.

I sliced up a tomato, handing my son some slices as we went, because he was trying to get back to the world of iPads. I started smearing sauces on all the pizza bases, and I tell you it was glorious. Each recipe makes two pizzas, so we had normal and gluten free versions of each. Unfortunately, because I’d been trying to keep my kid in the kitchen by feeding him tomato we ran out of tomato slices to cover the whole pizza. Oh well, fuck it. I tried to spread them out a little so it didn’t look quite so naked, and then I moved on.

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The asparagus pizza looked overcrowded but the Thugs (aka Bad Mannered Chefs) had said that those bastards would shit would shrink down and to trust. So I did.

While these guys were in the oven I also made the Miso Cabbage Slaw from the 101:Fast as Fuck cookbook. I had to work fast and nearly sliced my finger…It’s okay I said ‘nearly’.

My son set the table for a TV dinner night and found Beast Master on Netflix, and I pulled the pizzas out of the oven.

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Just look at those golden fuckers.

They came out PERFECT.

I’m sure they’d have been even better had I made dough from scratch, because that always tastes better…but they were DAMN fine. The asparagus one was like I died and went to heaven. I’d never in my wildest dreams have thought of slapping asparagus on a pizza. Whoever thought of shaving asparagus and then tossing it on a pizza base was clearly on something, but whatever it was, it struck them with genius. And the creaminess of the roasted garlic sauce….oh my GAWD, words can’t even begin to describe how good it was. I am sitting here a week later salivating just remembering it.

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The pesto one was fucking awesome too, and I never thought I’d get my kid to eat basil and garlic, but somehow it slid down easily with no complaints. (until the next day when he saw a slice of it in his lunch box. Somehow a cold slice of pesto pizza in the cold light of day just wasn’t what he was hoping for. I think he was hoping that the little pizza fairies would tag along to school and magically heat it up for him for lunch.)(BAH!)

If you haven’t tried this recipe yet you NEED. IT. IN. YOUR. LIFE. ASAP.
Like yesterday.

The slaw worked really well as a side dish too. I wouldn’t have thought of adding miso to a slaw but it totally worked. Those Bad Mannered chefs really know what they’re doing and I CAN’T WAIT for their new cookbook to come out!

I’ll leave you with this picture of bubble crust weirdness.

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P.S. I’m not sure why, but the Shaved Asparagus Pizza goes really well with the Nirvana album ‘Nevermind’. Also both these pizzas are good the next day if you’re lucky enough to have left overs.

* In case you hadn’t heard, Thug Kitchen have changed their name to Bad Manners. Don’t take my word for it. See it with your own eyes HERE.