Taste Buds: Burgh Wedge

I went to college and lived in Pittsburgh for 7 years. During that time I worked a wide variety of jobs one of which was a brief stint as a pizza delivery girl which I am not going to get into now because that is a completely different story. ANYWAYS, because I was in college and because I was POOR as college students generally are I made it a point to eat as much free food at work as I could. I love pizza but you can imagine how the boredom can set in after eating it for three months straight. And there was no way I was going to stop eating the free food, as far as I was concerned it was a work perk.

Regardless we, meaning the cooks and I, got pretty imaginative about creating various meals out of the pizza ingredients we had. Now I cannot take full credit for this recipe because in fact I am not sure WHO thought it up at that Pizza Outlet but the resulting pizza sandwich we called the Burge Wedge became a favourite. With a pizza dough bread and gooey cheese, hot meat and crisp salad this is just a melt in your mouth kinda meal. Now that I don’t have a pizza store and several cooks to make this for me I have had to modify it slightly for home making but eating this brings back a flood of memories.

Even as I type it makes me hungry.

RECIPE: BURGH WEDGE INGREDIENTS 2 oz mozzarella 3 slices Delano ham 1/3 Trader Joes pizza dough 1/8 head lettuce 1 small tomato 1/8 purple onion 3 tablespoons Hellman’s mayonnaise DIRECTIONS 1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. If you have a pizza stone make sure that is in the oven before you preheat. 2. Lay out dough to reset for 20 minutes on a sprinkled work surface. After the dough is done setting spread it out in a rough oblong shape. Lay out meat on one half and then sprinkle cheese over entire thing. 3. Bake for 20 minutes until the crust is done and the cheese is gooey. 4. Mix sliced lettuce, chopped onion, sliced tomato and mayonnaise in a large bowl. 5. Take pizza crust out of oven, put lettuce mixture on top of meat half, fold over other side of dough to form a folded over half circle, cut in half and serve.