Potpourri Pizza (A Lobster's Recipe)

Or did he hyphenate it? Might have been Pot-Pourri. It was the name of my Dad's pizza joint, late 1960s, small town Kansas. Dad's not a natural business-type to begin with, but people didn't treat pizza as a staple at that time, not in the Midwest. They'd say 'I love your pizza, but I can't eat pizza every day.'

The last six months of its 18-month span, he started opening for lunch and offering sandwiches. That made him profitable, but too little, to late. That's right, it's hard to conceive of for an X-er such as myself, and whatever you call the subsequent waves of people even younger than me, it must be impossible. I can at least remember when there was no internet, not even a primitive precursor to it. But then, I can remember oggling covert copies of Playboy when Miss October was born. But in 1968, maybe in New York City you'd find pizza parlors that were open for lunch, but not in Baldwin, KS, population 1200 when Baker was in session, 800 when school was out.

And Dad did not cater particularly to the college crowd. He saw them as obnoxious (indubitably they were that), and avoided anything that would make his pizza parlor a hang-out for them. It would ruin his business, in his mind at the time. Not knowing that he was alienating the most profitable customer base he could have had.

But Dad still makes pizza, generally once a year, as a birthday treat for me. Great preparations are made: he makes an enormous batch of dough, gets his sauce going, lines up everything from Italian Sausage to anchovies, gets out his pans and pizza stone.

He makes some and people also top their own. I made a gem this year. I skipped the red sauce altogether, it's something I normally go light on anyway. So aside from the crust and mozzarella, I topped it with:

Anchovies
Smoked Oysters
Sliced Banana Peppers
Crushed Red Pepper
Sliced Roma Tomatoes
Black Olives
Italian Sausage
More Crushed Red Pepper
Red Bell Pepper

This was one of the best damned pizzas I've ever eaten. The smoked oysters are something I stumbled on a few birthdays back. Since high school I've loved anchovies on pizza, so why not smoked oysters as well?

Dad had shrimp on hand too, and one of the pizzas was half shrimp, and I kicked msyelf after for not going with shrimp instead of the Italian sausage, as I then would have had the perfect seafood pizza. Maybe next year, and maybe clams to boot. White clam pizza is always a treat...