Marjoram; The New Basil?

Marjoram. Photo from Bon Appetit. Click photo for link to Bon Appetit.

(UPDATE 2/2/2010): Talk about timing. Iggies new pizza of the month for February, Cigliegina, uses marjoram as an ingredient. Yum!

If you are familiar with my pizza tastes, then you know I don’t give a damn about the rules, dare I say restrictions, imposed by groups like the VPN. However, when it comes time to make pizzas in my house, the VPN does mention, “all types of pizza are agreeable to basil leaves.” You’re damn straight on that! In fact, life without basil would be very sad indeed.

Enter Nick Lessins, pizzamaker and owner (along with Lydia Esparza) of Chicago’s much talked about pizzeria, Great Lake. While reading articles about Great Lake, I thought the mention that marjoram was used on top of some of the pizzas was interesting. I filed that info away in the cobweb laden attic that is my head and there it lay for a while.

Cruising Whole Foods looking at what fresh herbs could help cure my winter time blues over the lack of herbal goodness in the “backyard” brought me face-to-face with a pack of marjoram leaves, which I scooped up and got onto a homemade pizza within hours.

The result? Marjoram is awesome on pizza. I very much like it on a Bianca instead of basil and plan to use it on a few pizzas to give a nice switch from the basil which usually adorns nearly every pizza I make. To me at least, Basil and Marjoram are very similar to two of my long-time favorite American pale ales, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Anchor Liberty Ale. The Sierra Nevada product is very much the citrusy-grapefruity “male”  to the more “feminine”, floral Anchor Liberty Ale. Marjoram plays more of a feminine counter to basil, delivering, as Mrs. Blogger pointed out, a “perfumed” note to the pizzas it’s cooked on.

It’s a tad sweet, a little mintish perhaps with maybe even a bit of pine-resiny notes and it adds a nice brightness to the pizzas. Basil will always be king on my pizzas, but perhaps a queen has been found in the blogger kitchen. Try adding some fresh marjoram on your home made pizzas immediately after they come out of the oven and lemme know what you think.