Pizza Provocations
I know you don't need me to tell you that this new season of Master of None is a joy to watch, but I'm going to anyway. Each episode is a winsome delight that I'm trying to savor- full of all the feels, as a friend of mine said the other day. Already I'm inclined to go back to the first one, set in Modena, where Dev is living the dream of learning the art of pasta making with a nonna, and feasting his away around the countryside. Who wouldn't want to spend day after day deep in the meditation of folding endless little pockets of tortellini?
Despite my many, many culinary obsessions and autodidactic tendencies, for some reason I've shied away from tackling homemade pasta. Well, there was this one time, at college, when I shared a kind of efficiency apartment-style dorm room up where Comm Ave bends toward Allston with my buddy Melinda. It was the first time I'd really had my own kitchen, and the two of us were both eager to get our budding cook on.
I was seeing this guy, a pretty cool dude who played upright bass in a jazz trio around Boston, with a residency at the Wonder Bra (erm, Wonder Bar...) Anyway, I wanted to impress him so I invited him over to my DORM (promising already, n'est-ce pas?) for dinner. I spent all day prepping- handmade ravioli with wild mushrooms in a red wine sauce. I have always had a very sophisticated palate, you see. On paper, this had hit written all over it. On a plate, not so much. The rubbery pasta flopped open in the boiling water, loosing a cloud of murky mushroom paste. I'm pretty sure I used cooking wine for the sauce, because I was maybe 20 at the time? Long story short, we cut our losses and headed to the Wonder Bar for their famous warm chocolate chip cookies and white russians. The date was salvaged (though that's about the last time I drank a white russian) but my pasta-making aspirations were permanently sunk from that day forward. Allora!
Maybe until now? Has time really healed these wounds? Like walking all the way to the end of the diving board and looking down, I keep looking at the classic Imperio pasta maker on Amazon. Then, I'll open another tab and look at the KitchenAid pasta attachment. My sister uses hers all the time, to resounding success and with apparent ease. She's even made those ravioli with a perfect egg yolk inside! Still, I hesitate, and turn back. I mean, there's a fantastic local pasta maker, La Tua, or I can always head down to Padella. And do I really, really need another kitchen gadget?
As you might imagine, I'm pretty stocked to the teeth with an enviable amount of cooking kit and an unenviable lack of space in which to store it. Of course that doesn't stop me from continuing to add to a wishlist that today includes a Smoking Gun, a Joule or Anova sous vide immersion circulator, a Vitamix super-blender, another KitchenAid ice cream maker (my last one busted), a waffle iron, four calling birds, three french hens...you get the picture.
One investment that I think might make the cut will be this nifty backyard pizza oven. It's not too big, it goes outside, and PIZZAAAAAA!!! I've often said (at least when I've been asked) that my desert island food would be tomatoes. God I love tomatoes so much. But if it were more practical, I'd definitely choose pizza. I think it just seems improbable to expect a source of milk for mozzarella, olives for oil, wheat for flour, and ALSO tomatoes. Unless, I guess, I was marooned on Sicily.
Pizza, like pasta is something perhaps better made by the pros and eaten out rather than attempted in our limited home kitchens. Unlike my fear of pasta-making, I've tried a lot of different methods for homemade pizza, to varying degrees of success. For the most part, you can't really go terribly wrong with the meticulously researched and tested methods by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt over on Serious Eats. Homeboy is rigorous. I've done his pan pizza, in a cast iron skillet, and I even bought a Baking Steel (made in Massachusetts!) that I foolishly left behind in my last apartment. Both work well. I think what it comes down to though, is a manner of managing expectations. Yeah, sure. You're gonna make a tasty pizza pie. But there's no denying that the secret to awesomeness is hot hot heat. Which is why I'm intrigued by this plucky little oven.
Meanwhile, I will continue to harbor my bubbly, cheesy fantasies as I thumb through the new book, Pizza Camp from the chef of Philly's Pizzeria Beddia, named by Bon Appetit as the best in America. While London is full of many earthly delights, I get homesick for pizza. In fairness, I'll give a shoutout to my local, Yardsale Pizza, who gets pretty close. But not close enough to even hold a candle to my New York favorite, Lucali, or a close second at Roberta's. And let's not even talk about how much I miss a giant floppy quarter pie from Joe's in the Village, or a tipsy Friday night slice from Mario's, a few doors down from my old place on Dekalb. I even miss my neighborhood Boston slices from Captain Nemo's (back when it was down in Kenmore and you'd wolf down slices after a night on Lansdowne or at the Rat) or when you were nursing a hangover and only Same Old Place would come to the rescue.
My pizza nostalgia stretches even further back, to the Greek-owned pizza restaurants where I grew up in central Connecticut. I'll always treasure those Friday nights when our family would sit down over a pie and a pitcher of root beer at Cosmos and then head over for a stroll through Westfarms Mall before heading home in time to watch Dallas. Or the wrap parties at Town and Country, where we'd all gather, giddy and still in our stage makeup after a school production of Oklahoma! or Grease. And possibly my all-time favorite, Paradise Pizza, just down the street from my now-closed high school on the East side of New Britain, where we'd often have baked pasta dinners to celebrate family birthdays.
Pizza can also be polarizing. People get really fired up about the best style and the best place and what kind of tap water went into the dough. I'm not afraid to admit I've never bothered to hit up Frank Pepe's in New Haven, nor made the pilgrimage to L& B Spumoni Gardens. Sorry Santarpio's, maybe another time. Personally, I'm an equal opportunity pizza consumer. I'll get down on a long-fermented, wood-fired hipster pie but you won't find me turning my nose up at a frozen Celeste either. There's room for both of you.
Now let's talk Rome versus Naples. Know any pizzaiolo looking for a student?