It is the second Sunday of January. Mehdi and Zineb came over and they wanted us to try some tuna pizza. Yes, you heard that correctly. Pizza with tuna. We are talking canned tuna here–not sushi tuna. When Mehdi first asked me where to get a good tuna pizza around here I thought he was trying to punk me. Apparently this is a popular pizza in Europe. I would have never known. I am more of a bacon and trucks kind of guy.

They brought over some ingredients with them:

On the far left is some fresh mozzarella. Then some parmesan, dry cured olives, pre-shredded blend of provolone and asiago, homemade pizza sauce, canned tuna, pre-shredded mozzarella, and pepperoni. I was responsible for making the dough and stretching it out. Mehdi took care of the rest.

We always have to start with a cheese pizza. Here is Chef Mehdi putting down some parmesan on the pizza crust:

After adding the four cheese blend it looked like this:

I stretched it a little too thin towards the center. In the oven some cheese lava punched through the crust and formed a small rock island on the pizza stone. It was a little messy but the overall pizza came out good enough:

I am not a fan of pre-shredded cheese as it normally doesn’t melt properly but this cheese from Whole Foods worked very well as you can see in the photograph above. The taste of the cheese blend was great and I liked the pizza sauce that Mehdi made. Terri even said it was better than my sauce. I guess I need to work on that some more.

Next up was the main event:

Let it be known for the record that I hate canned tuna. It smells like cat food and I don’t want to eat cat food. Opened up it looks worse:

Mehdi tried to assure me that a tuna pizza is considered a “safe” pizza in the same way that a pepperoni pizza is here. Dressed up and ready to go:

About four minutes into the bake I could really smell the tuna. I was expecting our townhouse to be overrun by cats at any moment. The smell subsided and had gone away when it was done baking:

Some of the olives went on a few slices for Zineb and Mehdi. Terri and I tried the olives but they were way to salty for our palette. Mehdi knew it was going to be a hard sell to get me to try this pizza so he recommended some of this:

After a drink I was able to build up the courage:

And it wasn’t bad. It didn’t have a fishy tuna taste. It wasn’t bland like chicken. But it wasn’t overpowering. I thought it was going to be completely gross and that I was going to gag after a bite but that didn’t happen. I could have eaten the entire slice if I wanted to. Terri enjoyed it and finished her slice. I once thought that tuna pizza was a crazy thing but now I understand that it could work. Given a choice of going to the dentist or eating a tuna pizza, I’ll take the tuna pizza.

Next up is a pepperoni pizza:

We put the pepperoni in the microwave for fifteen seconds to leach out some of the juice. Out of the oven it looked like this:

I love those slightly blackened edges on the pepperoni and took those slices. Terri and Zineb took a break from eating pizza to pose for this photograph:

I made six dough balls and reserved two for later so that left one dough ball left. Terri requested some cheese sticks so I pulled out the rolling pin and launched this into the oven:

And came out with these:

A successful pizza day. I tried tuna pizza and I’m around to tell the tale.