Pizza

There's little I enjoy more in the world of cookery than making either bread or neapolitan pizza at home.  On Thursday, I started some pizza dough following Jim Lahey's no knead recipe,which is here.   

To be honest, the only difference between his recipe and the one I've commonly used is the long, warm, rising time and the proportion (or ratio, if we're channeling Michael Ruhlman) of water to flour.  Of course, aside from that, how's the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Those are the building blocks of true breads and doughs (i.e., ones that aren't littered with seeds and grains and nuts and raisins). 

The resulting dough is extremely difficult to handle (as Lahey himself says).  It is wet, and shaggy, like a ciabatta left to soak in a light mist.   But it produces some amazing flavor - really amazing flavor.  And yes, as the menu as Co., Lahey's pizzeria, says, "our pies are not always round."

Now if I could only get my oven and stone above 550.  

UPDATE: Yes, the picture stinks.  Blackberry, and it's rotated.  I'll fix it later.

UPDATE 2: Cheese is buffalo mozzarella.  Sauce is canned italian cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil.  None of it cooked. 

Cooking method - on a baking stone in an oven cranked up to the max for an hour prior to baking.  You are trying to duplicate a 900 degree Italian pizza oven, or at least get as close as possible.

The debate

Beyond all the anti-Cheney fear mongering, the debate between the President and former Vice President Cheney is actually very good substantively. One wishes, perhaps, that it had happened earlier.

Per Se

I have a one sided feud with Ezra Klein as it relates to food (see here and here and here and here) which can be summed up with the observation that I think he understands nothing about food or cooking or agriculture or anything at all related to eating. Underneath it all, I suspect it is my jealousy that his (I'm sure deserved) platform in political writing lets him babble nonsensically about food.

Anyway, the latest episode is here, wherein I comment on Klein's ridiculous "review" of Per Se.

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I think people’s problem with this review is not that Per Se can’t be criticized or that it can’t have an off night or whatever. Of course, a $275 meal is to be held to the highest standards, and you are free to dislike a Per Se meal.

The problem with this review is that its criticisms aren’t particularly credible. Sentences like the following, for example, do not build confidence: “My cheese course came with cold potatoes and haricot verts that tasted like something you pick up at Whole Foods and bring to a picnic”.
Well, no. There may well have been something to criticize about that dish, but that the garnishes tasted like something from Whole Foods is probably not it. It is no good to say in response that that’s how it tasted *to you*. If so, then you are either wrong, or someone had snuck me into Per Se to cook that night.

Or how about this sentence: “One of my tablemates complained that my dessert tasted like a car air freshener (I didn’t think it quite that bad — but I thought it bad)”. Again – really? That’s just not a plausible description of a Per Se dessert. It’s like someone writing that cutting taxing (sic) always produces more tax revenue and then being puzzled when people disagree.

Sietsema about Frank Bruni

I asked Tom Sietsema about Frank Bruni in a web chat. I think he's said this before, but here's the exchange in any case:

NYC: As we New Yorkers quiver gelatinously in anticipation of the new New York Times critic, do you have any valedictory words for or about Frank Bruni?

Tom Sietsema: I'm friends with Frank. He's just as funny/clever/smart in person as he is in print, and I'll miss reading his food prose. On the other hand, I can't wait to see what he has in store for us in the Times' Sunday Magazine.

Credit Card Woes

I noticed this article explaining that credit card companies may start squeezing good customers (good, meaning customers who don't use a lot of credit and who pay their bills) in order to recoup profits they're losing by being more fair to everyone else.

I understand the impulse, but this is an extremely stupid idea. Note to credit card company people - those good customers, who have cash for all their purchases but just use credit cards because it is in fact a good deal? Umm, they'll pay with a debit card.

Co.

I took a quick lunchtime trip to Company, Jim Lahey's (of Sullivan Street Bakery) pizza restaurant. I sat at the bar and had a sad little cup of water, as I am busy at work and could not afford to impair myself, and ordered the classic Margarita - tomatoes, basil, buffalo mozzarella.

The pizza is terrific, and like most people I liked the restaurant (Bruni, for example). Most important, the dough is fantastic. But if put to the question, I'd say that Motorino in Brooklyn is better, or at least I enjoyed the pizza more. What I can't tell is whether that's because Motorino has a more generous spirit (Co.'s pizzas are so small as to be a little off-putting) or because I prefered the puffier Williamsburg product, but that's my initial impression.

One pizza is not enough for lunch, although that is what I had. $14 with tax pushes the limits of acceptability.

The essential problem

This video bloggingheads discussion (between, I should note, a clear leftist and a center rightist) essentially sums up the distinction between Europe and the United States economically.

In short, in the position I am in now, I'd rather live in Europe and enjoy my leisure. But only in America would I have been given the opportunity to get where I am now.

I know that some parts of the left try to take issue with the second part of that equation by arguing that social mobility is better in Europe. I'm sure you can engineer some metric that shows what you want on social mobility. But whatever that metric shows is of little practical relevance to me. The question is simple - would a middle eastern immigrant of my skills rather compete to get into Harvard Law School or ENA, in France? Where would you rather open a jewelry store? Where would you rather be the first in your family to go to college? The answer is America, without doubt.

Yes, there is a group of people for whom France or Europe is always the answer. People in what I guess we can call the lower middle class, who have no ambition or ability or desire to do more. I'd rather be a middle manager in a French bureaucracy than a middle manager in an American corporation. But that doesn't a good society make.