Cooking with Braddy: Lebanese Pizza

As a child, I was always a picky eater. I hated just about everything that didn't end in "-aroni," as were the rest of my siblings. My mother was always very restricted in what she could make during the week, because anything more exotic than a cheeseburger would be left cold on the plate.

Several years ago, just after I returned from serving a mission in the Czech Republic, my parents took me out to a steak house. I ordered my dinner with mushrooms and onions. My mother about fainted - she'd never seen me eat mushrooms and onions before.

Every now and again, I get the desire to try something that I've never had before or, in rare cases, something I've always hated. Yesterday, it was tomatoes.

Oh, I eat things with tomatoes in them. I don't mind tomato sauce. But something about raw tomatoes has always set my stomach on edge.

So I found this recipe for Lebanese Pizza in my favorite cookbook (or, at least, the one I use the most). It looked fantastic - a tortilla topped with an oil and spice mix, mozzarella cheese, and mint leaves. But it's topped with little cherry tomatoes, and I didn't want to try to make any dish that would trigger my gag reflex.

At length, I decided I wasn't going to let my gag reflex boss me around, so I gave it a go.

The final result - a colorful and surprisingly mild dish that comes together pretty quickly. All told, the pizza took maybe twenty minutes to assemble and cook, and most of that time was spent measuring out the spices. Plus it left me with enough of the oil mix to spread on a few more tortillas for quick meals in the coming weeks.

You'll be happy to know that I ate the whole thing, tomatoes and all. But I'll probably still look for an alternative topping in the future.