Pizza Pilgrimage

Last week we made our annual pizza pilgrimage. Every pizza I make aspires to the perfection of George Schenck's "American Flatbread." Not the frozen ones at supermarket in his signature black and white boxes -- though those are good too -- but ones like I sampled last week (pictured above) fresh from his modified Quebec style oven (pictured below) in the Mad River Valley of Vermont.

On our visit last week, we sampled the veggie special:

Look at that thing! You can almost taste the smoky overtones of the wood grilled ratatouille "sauce" mingling at the back of your mouth with the clean flavor of the fennel -- interrupted for a second by a soft creaminess that is the ricotta salata. Sometimes, all is right with the world -- even if just for a fleeting moment.