Photograph courtesy of Michele Humes
This dish was developed by Karol Lu, as part of the second-annual Ramen-Off competition at the Brooklyn Kitchen, where she won the judges' award for most creative ramen dish. You can read more about it on Slice. The recipe, after the jump.
Left: Sara's Daring Bakers entry from The Kitchen Pantry. Right: Chara of Food Life tosses dough.
Daring Bakers is sort of an online happening. Hundreds and hundreds of bloggers participate. Each month, one blogger or a group of bloggers "hosts" a recipe and acts as a hub for the participants. Then, all the bakers who fancy themselves daring make the recipe, tweaking it, adding their own spin and personality, etc. They then post their results on the specified due date. This month's challenge was pizza. Awesome. It was hosted by Rosa's Yummy Yums.
This past Wednesday was the turn-in date, and I've been having fun the last few days watching results as people complete the project and post to their blogs. The seed recipe was Peter Reinhart's Neapolitan pizza dough, which I've had good luck with myself.
Brownie of Blondie and Brownie tipped me to this awesome event. Here's her entry, which combines street cart food (chicken tikka) with pizza:
There were other nontrad pies, like this Thai pizza from Kevin of Closet Cooking:
And, of course, there were some awesome-looking traditional pies. Here's one I thought looked beautiful—a mushroom and black olive pie by Hello, Baker!:
Jamie Oliver may sound English, but deep down he's really Italian—take, for example, his new chain of Jamie's Italian restaurants slowly spreading their way through England, from Oxford to Bath and beyond. In his book Jamie's Italy, he offers these crisp, petite pizzas as the Italian street food answer to papadum (very popular in the UK)—fried as the "first-ever pizzas were."
Embellished only with buffalo mozzarella, plum tomato sauce, and torn strips of basil, anointed in the fryer and thereafter with a drizzle of golden oil, it's perhaps their simple old-fashionedness that renders them so fresh and modern.
According to the California Pizza Kitchen Family Cookbook, this recipe is "pumpkin pie on a pizza crust." This little jack-o-lantern gives a new life to the phrase "pizza pie," and from one pizza and pie lover to another, why not? Cute for kids, playful for adults. It’s time for some face on your pie, instead of a pie in your face. And now you have the recipe to the famous CPK honey-wheat crust.
Not exactly pizza, but this recipe for Pizza Buns sounds kinda good. I love buns, and I love pizza. Maybe these would come in handy for Thanksgiving.
After getting an email about this recipe from Mark H. (aka Famdoc in the comments), I took the liberty of translating it from the French. If you're fluent in française, do click to the original, as my translation may be a bit shaky. ;)
In place of the oregano, Mark recommends using a handful of various fresh herbs from the garden (or market): basil, thyme, oregano and rosemary.
For the dough:
30 g yeast
300 g flour
15 cl milk
10 cl olive oil
A pinch of salt
For the toppings:
1 kg cherry tomatoes
10 g dried oregano
5 cl olive oil
Basil, to taste
100 g Niçoise olives
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1. Dissolve yeast in a little warmed milk. In a large bowl, mix the yeast with the flour, 15 cl milk, the olive oil, and the salt. When the dough becomes flexible, spread it out it in an oiled pan about 30 centimeters (12 inches) in diameter.
2. Let rise 2 hours at room temperature. Preheat oven to 210°C (410°F). Wash, équeutez???, wipe, and cut tomatoes in half.
3. Lay out tomatoes in a rosette on the dough. Salt and pepper the tomatoes, and sprinkle the oregano over. Then give it a nice pour of olive oil. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool a bit, and serve after adding the olives and basil.
Pizza may have originated in Italy but by now it's also an American classic, from Chicago's deep dish pies to New York's thin-and-foldable slices. What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with a backyard grilled pizza party?
Grilling pizza is incredibly easy, and yields outstanding results. The crust becomes crisp, bubbly, and charred; the vegetables caramelize; and the cheese melts and retains a bit of smoky flavor. While making your own dough is certainly an option, store-bought fresh or frozen dough works just fine, and when it comes to toppings the only limit is your imagination.
Today's Cook the Book recipe, excerpted from Grill Every Day by Diane Morgan, is for Grilled Sweet Onion, Thyme, and White Farmhouse Cheddar Pizza. Pair it with a tomato salad and blueberry pie to round out the holiday colors!
In addition to excerpting a recipe each day this week, we're giving away five copies of Grill Every Day. Enter to win here.
I'm not the biggest fan of the whole wheat crust, but I know a lotta folks are. If you've been looking for a recipe to make your own wheaty crust, look no further, homeslices: Whole Wheat Pizza Crust Recipe.
Last week came the moment I’ve been anxiously anticipating for a while now: my obstetrician told me I’ve started gaining weight a little too quickly. My long walks and yoga are no match for the amount of dessert I’ve been eating and bread I’ve been baking, and I had to sit there feeling foolishly self-indulgent while she advised me to cut back on carbs and focus on lean protein and vegetables. Which I have been—I’ve just been following the fish and broccoli up with ice cream, cookies, or thick slabs of bread and butter.
At least it’s an exciting time of year to start ramping up vegetable consumption. I remembered Patricia Wells’s whole-wheat pizza crust and resolved to bring it back into the rotation, topped with whatever I bring home from the Greenmarket and can’t figure out how to use. This is a thin, delicate crust: it doesn’t do well with pools of tomato sauce and gobs of cheese but is a nice match for sautéed vegetables with just a sprinkling of cheese, or herbs, or tomato rounds, when those come along. Since my usual crust uses 3 or 4 cups of flour to make the same amount of pizza, I don't feel so bad about the cup and a half of flour called for here.
Mark Bittman (aka "The Minimalist") suggests a novel way of preparing pizza in today's New York Times: pan-frying it.
Take pizza dough and shape it—small disks are best—then fry it in enough olive oil to crisp the bottom. Then flip it.
If the toppings are hot (as, for example, tomato sauce might be) or the quantities small (a bit of grated cheese, rather than a pile), all you need to do from this point is drop them on top, then brown the bottom of the second side.
For more heavily topped pizzas, Mr. Bittman says you'll have to put a lid on it to heat things up and melt them down.
Sorta gives new meaning to "personal pan pizza," don't it?
Here's the recipe. And here's a video of Bittman in action.
We're probably crazy for doing this, but we're mirroring Jeff Varasano's Famous Pizza Recipe while his site is temporarily offline due to traffic from Boing Boing, Fark, and everybody under the sun today. Here's the link. Let's hope our server doesn't crash!
Hasta la pizza!
I don't even know what to say about this recipe. Just reading through it makes my head spin. Software engineer Jeff Varasano (above) has been trying for six years to craft a pizza along the lines of Patsy's in East Harlem. As of August 22, he claims to have done so:
This pizza is modeled after Patsy's on 117th street in NYC. I have been working on this for SIX years, but FINALLY I can report that I have achieved my goal. Many people have tried my pie and swear it is not only the best pizza they've ever had, but a clone of the original Patsy's recipe. This pie is incredibly light and perfectly charred. It took just 2 minutes and 10 seconds to bake at 825F....Reproducing this was no easy feat. It's been a bit of an obsession. I've had a lot of failed experiments. It's only now, in the past 6 months that I can honestly say that the recipe is fully accurate and reproducible. The final breakthrough came in Jan 2005 when I finally got a handle on the proper mixing equipment and procedure. But do not think that following this will be easy. It's not. It will still take practice. A few others have confirmed that by following these steps they too have come to near perfection. This may be the most detailed, accurate and complete recipe on the net for making a true Pizza Napoletana.
To get your oven to 825°, you'll need to do a little hacking. On his own oven, Mr. Varasano cut off the lock that engages during the self-clean cycle so he can still open the door when the unit heats to superhigh temps.
Patsy's Pizza Recipe [think2020.com/jv/recipe.htm; via Perlow]
UPDATE: Full recipe now here [think2020.com/jv/pizza.htm]
UPDATE 2: Mr. Varasano's server has stumbled under the load of Boing Boing and Fark readers. Slice is now mirroring his page: http://sliceny.com/jvpizza.php
As you might know, I've been on jury duty. That ended yesterday around 4:30 p.m. when we came to a verdict (guilty on four of the six counts).
While we argued in the jury room, I recalled a quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck: "Those who love sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made." Which in turn led me to think, "Mmmm ... sausage," and then to "Mmmm ... sausage on pizza." But the quote (and the week's legal proceedings) spurred me to deeper reflection on both the law and sausage—specifically: "How hard would it be to make sausage at home?"
If you don't want to make sausage links, which require casings, then it appears to be as easy as coming to agreement on the felon-in-possession-of-a-firearm charge that we considered as jurors.* Even if you do want to stuff casings with your sausage mixture (Heh. That kinda sounds dirty), it only takes a few relatively affordable tools and some time.
Here's a recipe for Italian fennel sausage, as adapted (for pizza) from one found on InMamasKitchen.com:
HOMEMADE ITALIAN SAUSAGE
Makes about 5 pounds2 tablespoons salt
3 teaspoons fennel seed
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon crushed hot pepper
1 teaspoon caraway seed
3 teaspoons coriander
5 pounds coarse ground pork butt
1 cup dry red wine
3 cloves garlic, crushed1. Grind together (preferably in a mortar and pestle) salt, fennel, sugar, hot pepper, caraway, and coriander.
2. In a large bowl, sprinkle herbs over ground pork. Add wine and crushed garlic. Mix well by hand or with the paddle attachment of an electric mixer. Continue until evenly distributed. Be sure to mix well in this step.
3. Cover and place in refrigerator at least 3 hours, to allow flavors to meld.
4. <Test after 3 hours by taking a small portion and sautéing in small pan.
5. Apply to uncooked pizza(s) as chunks (chunk size is by your preference, but smaller chunks will cook faster). Alternatively, for links, you can run meat mixture through a sausage stuffer and into casings. Any extra can be frozen in portions for later use.
For my own reference later, and for yours, I'm going to list some sausage-making links ...
FURTHER READING
SausageMaker.com should have everything you need to get started—casings, prickers, seasonings, what have you. As of this posting, there's a sale (regularly $70, now $50) on three-pound-capacity stuffers, too!
This Sausage-Stuffer Attachment for Kitchen Aid stand mixers might be an option of you've already got a Kitchen Aid. (About $15.) Don't have a Kitchen Aid? Consider getting one. They're great for making pizza dough.
Homemade Italian Sausage Recipe [In Mama's Kitchen]
Another recipe, this one for Italian Fennel Pork Sausage. Notable for its inclusion of Asiago cheese in the mix. Mmm ... cheese.
Related reading: Hot Dogs at Home [Bite by Byte]
WORDS BY CLAIRE L. .::. PIZZA PHOTOS BY DAN DICKINSON .::. Your Queens correspondent lived for a spell in Paris, and during her last two weeks there, she discovered an amazing restaurant chain called Flam's. Specializing in Flammenküche, a pizzalike Alsatian specialty, Flam's had a rather un-Parisian policy: It was all you-can-eat. Though other all-you-can-eat restaurants do exist in Paris, the only people I ever saw going into them were shady busloads of confused tourists, and they were darkly lit buffets, not unlike New York City's weird Midtown delis full of steamer tables.
The classic Flammenküche, also known as tarte flambée, has a thin crust topped with fromage blanc, lardons, and onions. Like any good chain, Flam's offers a bunch of salty and sweet variations as well. At Flam's you can order Flammenküche individually or you can pay a set price and have as many savory and sweet pies as you want. It was awesome.
Anyway. I was unable to remember the name of this amazing food after I ate it ("flukeykook" was as close as I came to recalling it) and sadly moped around New York upon my return, occasionally muttering about this amazing pizzalike food. After I posted about this mystery food on the Martha Stewart cooking bulletin boards, a representative from the French Culinary Institute kindly posted André Soltner's very own recipe with helpful hints for tarte flambée. (Click through the jump for recipes, including the Lutèce variation.) But still. I’m lazy, and though I was grateful for Mr. Soltner's recipe, I wanted a Flam's of my own in New York!
I never did find a Flam's (and sadly, Lutèce closed its doors before I had a chance to celebrate there à la Chloe Sevigny in The Last Days of Disco), but I did find 718.
Located in the awesome borough of Queens, 718 offers a number of different types of tartes flambée. [The one pictured above is a tuna tarte flambée. The photos I took of the classic tarte flambée were too dark, so I used Mr. Dickinson's photo. You get the general idea. Claire L. did not try this kind; she prefers the classic version. —Ed.] Though it does not have the all-you-can-eat menu of Flam's (boo), the classic tarte flambée is quite good. It's a tad heavy on the lardons for my taste, but overall, mighty delicious. Their tarte is pretty big, so you might want to consider sharing it as well as another appetizer. Unfortunately, they don’t offer any of the sweet variations that Flam’s does, but it’s still worth a visit. 718 is owned by a native Alsatian, Raphaël Sutter, so he would probably be horrified to hear his restaurant compared to Flam's. Like if we compared a real pizzeria to Domino's. But hey, what are you gonna do?
718 also has fancier aspirations than a lot of the neighborhood's surrounding restaurants, with mood lighting, nicely upholstered banquettes, and dramatically sculpted plates. That doesn’t mean the restaurant has not succumbed to a wacky Astorian tradition though—belly-dancing during dinner.
718
Location: 35-01 Ditmars Blvd., Astoria NY
Phone: 718-204-5553
Website: 718restaurant.com
Of Crust and Clams: These littleneck clams will find their way onto a pizza made at home by Andrew Feinberg, co-owner and chef at Franny's. Photograph by Mike Nagle for the New York Times
For those of you clammering for a good crust recipe, maybe you should try this one, which is adapted from Andrew Feinberg's. Mr. Feinberg is co-owner and chef at Franny's, the Prospect Heights pizzeria that rocketed to popularity after opening little more than a year ago.
In an article today in the New York Times's Dining section, Mr. Feinberg recounts his struggles with the dough before getting it right. And how right it is, we at Slice say.
"When we first opened Andrew didn't know what he was doing," she said, stirring her coffee. "He'd roll out the dough with a rolling pin before he figured out how to stretch it. I'm surprised anyone came back after that first week."For Mr. Feinberg, the steepest part of the curve was learning how to make the dough consistent. Sometimes it stretched into perfectly thin disks that erupted with charred puffy bubbles when baked in the searing brick oven. And sometimes it didn't, tearing and bouncing back when he tried to pull it out into a circle. After much trial and error and help from Harold McGee's food science tome, "On Food and Cooking," Mr. Feinberg learned how to navigate myriad pitfalls....
... The short version: over-knead it, and the gluten breaks down, meaning that the dough won't stretch out nicely. Under-knead, and the gluten doesn't develop, so the dough won't stretch out nicely. Start pulling the dough when it's too cold, and it won't stretch out nicely. Start when it's too warm, and it will stick to your hands and the counter and won't stretch out nicely.
At Franny's he overcame the pitfalls and developed a recipe that calls for a minimum of yeast and a slow overnight rise to develop a savory, deep flavor.
For those of you interested, the recipe follows after the jump. But as with many works of art—and good food certainly is a work of art—you might have all the ingredients and the method laid out before you, but good luck duplicating the original.
From scratch: Slinging slices at home involves, no surprise, making sauce (top left) and kneading dough (top right). A mixer (above) makes the work of combining dough ingredients much easier.
Baking stone: Absorbs and retains heat. Its porous surface wicks away moisture from the dough, making a for a crisp crust.
Pizza peel: The wooden paddle used to transfer the pie to and from the baking stone. One is sufficient, but having two makes things much easier.
Large mixing bowl: Roomy enough to allow dough to double in size.
Stand mixer: Dough can be mixed and kneaded by hand, but a nice Kitchen Aid makes things much, much easier.
Pizza cutter: You can use a sharp chef's knife in a pinch.
Kitchen scale: To divide dough evenly. Or just eyeball it.
Thermometer: Water for dough should be 110°. If no thermometer, water should be hot to the touch, but not so hot that you can't keep your hand under it.
Splatter screen: Minimizes mess from bubbling sauce.
Potato masher: Use it to break up tomatoes in pot. Or just pulverize them with your hands before adding to pot.
The leaves of the city's trees have, by now, gone from green to brilliant autumnal hues to the compost pile, and the heat of summer is but a memory. While beach bums and baseball fans mourn the passing of the season, this reporter rejoices. That's because it's now cold enough outside for me to fire up my oven inside. And that means pizza.
My apartment is just too small for me to even think about turning on the oven when it's above 50 degrees outside. This recent cold weather, which seems poised to stay for the season, gave me the perfect excuse last night to drop in the pizza stone, heat the oven, and continue my years-long quest for the perfect at-home pie.
Saturday was the umpteenth-annual Garfield-Place-Between-Fourth-and-Fifth-Avenues Block Party in Park Slope. This stretch is home to Slice HQ, so we were out on the street, grill on the sidewalk, dishing up some delectable pies. Slice editors Adam K., E-Rock, and Seltzerboy were on hand—in addition to some friends who stopped by.
We reported last week on our experiments with grilled pizza, saying they had been mixed. Saturday's pies, however, were more hit than miss, as guest Tien Mao can verify.
I made two batches of dough in the morning, which gave us seven doughballs (one batch split into quarters and one into thirds). Wanting to keep things simple, I grabbed a zesty stick of pepperoni from Rocco at the pork store just around the corner, along with freshly made fresh mozzarella (he said he'd made it not more than two hours prior) and some pecorino romano. Our friend Janelle brought some little portobello mushrooms and a red pepper. We roasted both vegetables on the grill along with hamburger "appetizers."
Here are some photos:
Slice & Co. hang out on the sidewalk (left), just a few doors up from Al Capone's boyhood home ("Scarface" grew up on the street). To make grilled pizza, roll out the dough to no thinner than 1/8 inch (right).
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