Za.

If I'm being honest, as a Jersey gal who now lives in NYC, I never thought I would give a damn about pizza in Chicago.  That all changed, however, when Toph got to making pizza this lollapalooza weekend. On Thursday he made the best home made pizza I've ever had (and let's not forget not only where I grew up, but also that I've been privy to hardcore Italians for a long while who had their own back yard pizza ovens, so I'm really saying something here), with a yet-to-be-named, insanely delicious tomato/onion sauce, fresh mozzarella, arugula and cherry tomato (above).

This launched me on a za kick all weekend , and after a day-drinking fueled pork belly challenge was proposed only for us to discover Whole Foods was sold out of it, our competitive energy catapulted us forward into a pizza challenge.

I talked some seriously intimidation-fueled smack while we gathered our ingredients, even telling him to walk away as I spoke with the produce guy, cheese guy, and meat guy (I wanted to be a real competitor and contender here, dudes).

We got a whole grain dough from the pizza counter to split, put the pizza stone in the oven and cranked it to 450 (you want to heat the stone in the oven to crisp up the crust).  Toph has a $10 from target that works great, I'm holding out for a fancy Williams-Sonoma one because I like to use my employee discount to a point that is borderline offensive (don't act like you wouldn't do that same thing).

Toph landed on his childhood nostalgia flavors of sweet sausage, mixed mushrooms and onion, sautéed them up together and put them over his tomato/onion sauce with a mixture of fresh and grated mozzarella.  I'd tell you more of what he did if I could but I was too busy on my side of apartment kitchen stadium, where this was happening:

As you can see, I went a bit more high brow because I knew it was the only way I could compete with the likes of him. A mixture of fresh and grated mozzarella went down on my dough with crumbled Gorgonzola, a touch of heavy cream, and sliced fresh fig. That went in the oven for 8 minutes (at which point in time I proceeded to sit, like a child, indian style in front of the oven staring at it like it was an episode of Jamie at Home -- see below evidence, courtesy of Toph who thought I was ridiculous). I pulled it out before the last couple of minutes in order to lay a mild prosciutto on it, this allowed that flavor to meld into the others rather than crisp up, which creates a pronounced salty flavor that overwhelms my palette. Once I pulled it out for good I put a healthy dose of arugula, and a drizzle of balsamic glaze and honey to finish.

He complained of his not being salty enough and the dough being undercooked, but as I'm never going to complain about sausage, mushroom and onion combined with cheese and carbs, I was happy with it. Mine, however, was mustered from the most genius depths of the culinary corners of my mind, and managed to have a great balance of salty, sweet, tangy and creamy that I was smitten with.  I suppose he was to because I won the contest. This is likely the first and last time I will reign supreme in apartment kitchen stadium, so best believe I'm taking it to the bank.