Category Archives: Food

Desperately seeking pizza

13 Replies

Do you make your own pizza crusts? Are you happy with your creations?

If so, I need your help!

Seeking suggestionsWhen we were in Auckland last month, we spent several nights enjoying the thin crust pizza at a little restaurant right downstairs in the building where we were staying. It was described as European style pizza. Minimal crust, minimal toppings. Wonderful tastes all around.

I was home writing yesterday, and somewhere in the middle of an edit decided that I would make another attempt to produce a thin pizza crust.

At the end of the afternoon I checked a couple of recipes, decided that their ingredient list was similar to the dough I used to make. So without much hesitation, I mixed up the yeast, flour, and water, kneaded until smooth, and set it aside while we got some toppings together and the oven heated to blast furnace, or as close as our regular home oven gets to that.

The next problem I ran into was a failure of my conceptual plan. I had a little blog of dough, and began to flatten and spread it by hand into a thin, vaguely round or oblong shape. It was going okay until I thought ahead. How in the heck do you spread some toppings, even minimal toppings, onto a very thin crust and then manage to transfer the whole thing to a blazing hot pizza stone that’s been in the oven in high heat for 30 minutes? No way.

So at that point I had to come up with an alternative. The only thing I could think of was to dig out a couple of old pizza pans that were stuck in a corner downstairs, wash them off, sprinke with a good layer of corn meal to keep the dough from sticking, and try again at shaping the crust by hand. The pan would serve as the vehicle for the crust, but it meant the crust couldn’t go directly onto the hot stone.

A necessary compromise.

So in went the test pizza. Toppings included just a simple tomato sauce, mushrooms, sliced olives, and anchovies, then a light layer of cheese.

In the oven for a total of about 10 minutes.

It came out looking and smelling good. I thought it was a success.

But then came the problem. The crust was thin, but nothing close to what we had in Auckland. And, unfortunately, the crust wasn’t yummy. Actually, it didn’t taste good. In fact, it didn’t taste much at all. It was relatively thin, and it had gotten crisp. But it failed when hitting the taste buds.

With that Auckland pizza, you would look for little bits of broken crust and pop them into your mouth as a treat. With this pizza, you put up with the crust as a way to get the toppings into your mouth, not as a good taste on its own. A very different experience.

So…what’s the trick to a thin and great tasting pizza crust? There don’t seem to be too many variables on the taste front. The choice of flour, perhaps? I used a mix of white and wheat flour. Maybe a mistake. Does a thin crust require white flour alone? Or maybe it needs a little something sweet in it? A touch of honey, perhaps? If you let it sit in the refrigerator overnight, will that improve the taste?

I just went back and reread Ernest Murphy’s classic “Pizza Essay,” first posted here back in 2005.

Perhaps I should have done this before last night’s experiment.

Here’s one of Murphy’s hints:

In all these pizzas, I first of all roll or pat out the dough and paint the entire surface, right to the edge, with olive oil before anything else goes on. The oil is essential to the flavor, color and texture of the crust and also keeps wet ingredients from soaking it. I apply oil with a brush or the back of a tablespoon.

What SF has done to modernize access to restaurant inspection ratings

4 Replies

Here’s a great idea highlighted by an article on CityLab.com, formerly known as The Atlantic Cities (“3 Cities Using Open Data in Creative Ways to Solve Problems“).

In San Francisco, they’ve managed to partner with Yelp. The cooperative arrangement has allowed them to make government restaurant inspection reports and ratings available online as part of Yelp’s restaurant reviews.

So when you Yelp a restaurant, you get its inspection rating along with the usual business information and customer reviews.

Hawaii now has restaurant inspections and public ratings, but we’re still in the “printed notice taped on the window” version of low-tech. Those ratings aren’t even available online yet.

The San Francisco project was reportedly part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities, which aims to help cities make better and more productive use of open data.

CityLab.com is worth bookmarking. And pay special attention to the “City Fixer” section, featuring “Solutions for an Urbanizing World.”

CityLab is dedicated to the people who are creating the cities of the future—and those who want to live there. Through sharp analysis, original reporting, and visual storytelling, our coverage focuses on the biggest ideas and most pressing issues facing the world’s metro areas and neighborhoods.

Any interest in vintage American dishes?

2 Replies

[Update #3: All of these dishes have now been spoken for.]

We’re thinning the herd from our collection of vintage American dishes from that period just before and after WWII, before the influx of cheap Japanese dishware put the American pottery companies out of business.

Great colors and designs. I doubt they are microwave safe, since almost all predate the microwave era.

Most of these are collected over the years from thrift shops and rummage sales, a piece or two at a time.

Now we’re cutting down to only a few sets, letting others go, including some favorites.

Free to good homes.

For example, there’s a set of these Metlox Poppytrail plates, made in California.

There are four or five 10″ plates, four 7-1/2″ plates, and four smaller salad plates, 6-1/4″.

Any interest?

Any interest?

[Update #1: The Russel Wright’s have been spoken for.] There’s also a stack of Russel Wright plates and a couple of bowls, various sizes and colors. May be a few other odds and ends.

Any interest?

[Update #2: This set of Vernon Kiln items has also been claimed.] And a box with quite a number of Vernon Kiln plates and bowls in their “Organdie” pattern, and at least one other pattern that uses slightly different colors. If you’re interested, I can do a count.

Any interest?

Consumer Reports on supermarket chains

5 Replies

The latest issue of Consumer Reports includes an article reviewing supermarket chains, and the results are interesting.

Wegmans ranked highest overall, as well as highest in freshness of its produce and meats, cleanliness, bakeries, and second in “cheapest for organics” behind Trader Joe’s.

We’ve shopped in Wegmans and Trader Joe’s while on the mainland, and both are real treats. We relate to both as “destinations,” places that draw you in, not just places to get necessary shopping done.

Unfortunately, the family-owned Wegmans chain is only in the Northeast, while Trader Joes has resisted the urge to tap into the island market.

But on the positive side, Costo ranked at #8 among the 68 stores reviewed, despite a so-so rating for its produce section.

Whole Foods ranked at #15, with high marks for produce, meats & country, store prepared food, and cleanliness.

Sam’s Club didn’t fare as well, ranking #47 out of 68, and not ranked any better than average in any category while getting the worst marks for “staff courtesy.”

But that was a lot better than Safeway, one of Hawaii’s largest chains, which ranked #58 out of 68, with average marks in all categories except meats & country, where it got a half-black, less than average rating.

Of course, CR did’t rate local chains. I suspect that some individual stores in the local chains would do quite well compared to those big mainland chains, but overall, perhaps not as well.