Last weekend Ken and I drove down to Lake Oswego, slightly south of Portland, to visit my aunt and uncle, Lore and Bob. (Lore is my mom's cousin. I believe Lore is my cousin once removed, and her kids are my second cousins. I messed that up in the last blog post, but have since gone back and corrected the error.)
Lore informed me that we were to have a three-way pizza competition with the four of us and her son, my second cousin, and his wife, my second cousin-in-law. Ken was very excited when he heard this, and thought we were sure to win.
"I don't know, Ken. Brett and his friends had pretty crazy, high stakes pizza competitions when he lived in Berkeley. They included quail eggs, exotic seafood, and anything you would never really put on pizza. He's been competing for years."
I had heard incredible things about these Berkeley pizza competitions, and I knew we didn't stand a chance against Brett. Ken and I have made only about 5 pizzas together, and most of them were barbecue chicken.
"Want to do steak and blue cheese pizza?" I suggested. Everyone loves meat pizzas, and throwing on deliciously cooked meat can disguise inexpertly cooked pizza dough.
"Let's do Kielbasa!" Ken decided, clearly still as infatuated with Leavenworth as I am. It was a good idea, too, because it's creative and it couples well with beer, another master of disguise.
We kept our pizza theme a secret, banning Lore and Bob from spying on us in the grocery store. We picked up an onion and smoked mozzarella and decided to experiment with Alfredo sauce and Dijon mustard as our base. For the kielbasa, a helpful grocery store clerk guided us to a locally sourced sausage from a place called Olympic Provisions.
"Locally sourced?" we said, "that's perfect for our Portland family!" I had been acquainted with the northwest's love for homegrown since college, and ever since Portlandia came into being, the whole US has become aware. Portlanders go crazy for birds, bicycles, and locally sourced nonsense.
The competition was on.
Lore, Bob, Ken and I set to work on our pizzas. Lore and Bob used traditional ingredients of high caliber: crumbled sausage, home-made tomato sauce with a delicious bouquet of spices, oven-roasted peppers and carefully sliced olives. Ken and I slowly revealed our intentions, and went so far as to "pretzel" the crust with coarse salt and egg-glaze. We tried to braid the crust but didn't have enough dough.
Brett and Gillian came late and borrowed ingredients from Lore and Bob, but used their own meat and added banana peppers for some spice that the other two pizzas lacked.
Our pizza came out first. It was bit floppy and flat, but interesting and effective and declared a "contender" by pizza masters Brett and Gillian. A contender?!? That was much more than I could have hoped for, especially with our experimental sauce.
Next we sampled Bob and Lore's creation, over which Gillian oohed and awed, impressed with their fresh, local toppings.
Finally, Brett and Gillian's, the first-seed pizza, was extracted from the oven. And it was amazing. It was baked to perfection (was that because the oven had been on longer?), piled high with ingredients, and had a delightful banana pepper-zing. Both taste and texture were remarkable.
Then came the voting.
Brett voted first, and chose ours due to its creativity. Sweet! We could win. I voted for Brett and Gillian's. It really was the best pizza. Lore and Bob also voted for Brett and Gillian's. It turns out that Brett had turned the oven up higher without our knowledge, consequently baking his pizza into a well-structured masterpiece. Ken voted for ours. It was down to Gillian...for whom would she cast her vote? She found the peppers on her own pizza too spicy and was waffling between Lore and Bob, who desperately wanted a vote, and our kielbasa sensation. Gillian loved Lore and Bob's fresh, local ingredients. I tried to sway her by arguing that while the individual ingredients were wonderful, they were not cohesive. They hadn't united in the oven. She loved our smoked mozzarella, but still, Gillian was leaning toward the fresh, local produce.
"Wait!" I said, recalling the origins of our meat. "Our kilebasa is local! It's from Olympic... something."
"Olympic Provisions?" asked Lore.
"Yes!" I said, remembering the full name.
"Olympic Provisions!" exclaimed Gillian, immediately deciding her vote. "That place is amazing! It's in Portland!"
We had won! Well, tied. But that was quite the victory for us, considering how experienced Brett and Gillian are. Ken and Ashley, underdogs, had tied the pizza competition against reining champions and had learned the secret to any contest in the great northwest: Go local.
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