Pizza and Pet Therapy

Diversionary tactics of some sort were called for in the midst of the tension and uncertainty that shrouded the locked-down Wesleyan campus the day after the shooting that took the life of a fellow student. Sarah J.’s father, Andy, renowned in our family as the “Camp Counselor,” announced he was arriving to provide the sorely needed diversion. As a man who would happily consume pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, Andy declared that our mission was to find the best pizza in Connecticut!

As we prepared for the mission, Sarah W. placed a quick call to a friend in the French Quarter, because doesn’t everyone call New Orleans to get the name of the best pizza joint in Connecticut??!! Sarah’s source is a Wesleyan alum, so he knows his pizza and declared that we should head to Frank Pepe’s in New Haven. Eight adults, a sizable body pillow (hey, we only had seven seats) and one large wet dog piled into our well loved mini-van and we stealthily drove off campus under overcast skies toward Rt. 91. Otherwise known as “R” “T” 91 by Nicole, Andy’s trusty GPS guide with the sultry Australian accent, who led us more or less directly to our destination. (Those narrow one way streets are a bit tricky in the Little Italy ethnic enclave of New Haven.)

As we parked (somewhat illegally?) in the lot for Sally’s Apizzeria, Avi’s eyes lit up and I could tell he was entertaining thoughts of dining at Sally’s instead. Apparently there’s a never ending debate over who makes the best pizza – Sally’s or Pepe’s – but our taste of Sally’s would have to wait for another day. As it turns out, Sally’s is open for dinner only so we trooped to the opposite end of Wooster Street to devour Frank Pepe’s legendary “tomato pies.” We were fortunate to walk right in and sit right down. No lines, no waiting, which is not typical of your usual Pepe’s experience. A sign of the economic times or just three o’clock on an overcast Thursday afternoon??

A word of caution: don’t go to Pepe’s if you think you’d enjoy a salad, bread, pasta or any conceivable dish other than pizza. Frank Pepe’s sells pizza. Period. But as Sarah J.’s Dad is fond of saying, “You’re good at what you do a lot,” and Pepe’s “tomato pies” are worth the trip!

Our waitress informed us that a large pie serves three to four. Our party of eight decided to play it safe and up the ante. We ordered three large pies – a white clam pie that is Pepe’s signature dish, a plain cheese pie for the pizza purists at the table, and a half veggie special (onion, spinach, broccoli, pepper, mushroom) with half meat overload (bacon, sausage, pepperoni, salami) for the ultimate contradictory mix on a single pie.

The people who devoured the pies (l to r): Avi, Maggie, Katherine, Andy, Sarah J., Emily, Sarah W. and Dorothy (the photographer and guest blogger).

My personal favorite was the white clam pie - just crust, olive oil, oregano, grated cheese, chopped garlic, and fresh clams. Turns out that the clams are shucked on the premises and they are as fresh as it gets. The crust was amazing! Crispy with blackened bits from the intense heat of the coal-fired oven, yet chewy and neither too thick nor too thin.

Running a close second in my book was the plain cheese pizza, which is ordinarily my pizza of choice. Other hungry diners in our cozy booth groaned in ecstasy as they devoured blisteringly hot slices weighed down with so many toppings that keeping them all on the crust prior to getting a bite into one’s mouth was a serious challenge. But sometimes you just have to let a little cheese slide and step right back into the ring!

In the end, our waitress knew her stuff and we walked out of Pepe’s with three boxes of leftover slices and a few cheesy crusts for Roxie, who was waiting patiently for us in the car. Perfect, actually, since everyone was able to go home with supper or a late night snack already prepared!

With very full bellies, our Camp Counselor declared it was time to carry out the pet therapy portion of our mission. Nicole guided us across town to the Yale campus, where we thought we would easily find a park to walk off some of our pizza coma and toss the Frisbee for Roxie. In the end, we didn’t locate the elusive park before the raindrops began to dominate the scene, but we did manage to provide Roxie with a romp and the opportunity to pee on the Yale campus!

Mission accomplished!

Machu Picchu Matza Pizza Part 2

One of my favorite and least favorite things about Passover is kosher for Passover (K for P) food made to resemble non-K for P food (things like K for P cake, matzaroni and cheese, potato egg noodles etc.). On the one hand, there are so many K for P options that don't pretend to be something they're not - and that we would happily eat during the rest of the year - that it seems unnecessary to make these often mediocre Passover substitutes. These foods also feel like a cop out. Sure, they're still kosher for passover, but the purpose of the laws forcing us to eat unleavened products (and limiting the cooking and preparing time for wheat) seems lost when we find ways to eat wheat-based cookies on Passover.

On the other hand, it's always fun to figure out new things to do with matza farfelle, matza meal, matza cake meal, and all those other things that are basically matza ground down to different degrees. Passover forces us to think and be more creative when we cook since our ingredient options are limited (especially for Ashkenazi Jews). Its also fun to see how versatile matza can be, and non-Jews always love seeing the crazy concoctions we come up with.


Last night for dinner I made one of my favorites - Matza Pizza. But not the take-a-slice-of-matza-and-slather-on-some-KforP-tomato-sauce-and-Mozzarella kind. I find this variety to be somewhat digusting.


To make this matza pizza, you'll need:
-around 12 sheets matza broken into pieces, or a big can or 2 of matza farfalle (the coarsest of the ground matzas)
-5 or 6 eggs
-tomato sauce ( please God not the prepackaged K for P stuff!!)
-vegetables
-cheese- preferably mozzarella, but during passover just use what you can get.
- olive oil
- salt and pepper

Take your ground matza and soak it it water for around 5 minutes. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Drain the matza, and add the eggs, along with a bit of salt and a dash of olive oil. Mix it all together; the matza should be completely covered in egg, but there should not be a lot of liquid pooling at the bottom of the bowl. Press the mixture into a greased baking sheet, pushing some up on the edges of the pan for a crust. Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.


Now, you may be asking yourself "what should I use for sauce since the K for P ones are so gross?" The answer is make your own!! Another thing that I like about Passover is that we learn how many prepackaged food products, even the ones that we would never expect have some kind chametz in them. This gives us a great oppotunity to make them from scratch. Not only will they taste better than the K for P varieties, but they'll probably be better than the stuff you have the rest of the year. So take a minute to go to allrecipes.com or a similar site and find yourself a tomato sauce recipe. They can be really simple, and who knows, maybe you'll be converted to making fresh sauces during the rest of the year as well.

After the crust has baked for ten minutes, drizzle a little olive oil on the crust, and put on your toppings. ( I usually precook my vegetables for a bit, but its up to you) Place the pizza back in the oven, and bake for another 10 minutes or so, until the cheese has melted and has started to brown.



And the ever popular close up shot



We also made this exact replica of Machu Picchu out of matza pizza with leftover batter



Here are the people who ate it


Read the previous entry for a more scholarly discussion of Machu Picchu Matza Pizza


EDIT: So for lunch yesterday I cut into the Machu Picchu Matza Pizza


Which kind of reminded me of this


- A cross section of skin under a microscope

Machu Picchu Matza Pizza (MPMP)

Feelings On:
Sarah W - tomatoes, matza, mountainous, Christmas, cheese, tasty,

Aliza - Machu Pichu Matza Pizza
I wanna eat you, I wanna eat ya
Eggs as glue and tomatoes will feed ya
My belly is full don't you know that I need ya


Avi - The interesting thing about MPMP is kind of like a return to slavery as well as a departure from it because it is using matza which is what the Jews ate when they were leaving Egypt and slavery and they stopped building and we are using it to create more buildings (aka the matza machu picchu) Aliza comments: :"will the Master's tools ever dismantle the Master's house?" (Audrey Lorde) Josh: an ax is an ax, why does it matter. Sarah: if the metaphor doesn't work then you can't use it as a metaphor. Are the tools only useable by the master or can they be used by anyone. Hmmm....very sophisticated for a post-dinner conversation on Matza.

David - MPMP Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. For the Incan Jew at heart. It makes great art.

Kara: I think that the creation of a blog about MPMP as a dinnertime activity is the best thing about small schools.

Josh - A brilliant reimagining of a "traditional American" food. Yumzz.

Ruby - The truth that we were originally talking about doing a spinach pesto sauce which would have been grass on the mountains. When I saw Avi pour the tomato sauce go on to it I saw it as the blood of the people who were colonized.

Sarah - It was amazing how pizza-y this MPMP really was.

Mismatched dinner, or why menu planning is extremely difficult for me

Tonight, Kait turns 21. To celebrate, I made her Ina Garten's pumpkin roulade with ginger buttercream. Weshop didn't have mascarpone, so I substituted by mixing cream cheese, heavy cream, and butter. It's not going to fool anyone, but it's still pretty good. For dinner we made pizza margherita. The courses didn't exactly match... After dinner I briefly read Ina Garten's tips on menu planning "I don't have to think about it, I just know it will be delicious", and it dawned on me that we inhabit completely different taste-universes.
I was reared on a particular set of flavors that doesn't seem to apply to the food I cook now. A lot of cooks emphasize putting together dishes and flavors that go together (like lamb and mint, pork and apple), and I never understood what they meant. I think a lot of it has to do with cultural differences--because I didn't grow up eating lamb with mint, I never understood why people think lamb and mint match. In my mind, lamb and cumin is the more natural pairing. Same thing with pork and apple. When I think pork, I think cabbage. I love lamb and mint, and I really like pork and apple. However, a lot of people take those combinations for granted. Ina Garten says that certain foods just have a "natural affinity" for one another. I think she's just a little ethnocentric. Ina, it would be so much more useful if you could explain why you think certain foods just go togehter, instead of just telling me to do it intuitively. My intuition is completely different from yours. Afterall, this is the girl that wanted Jamaican beef patties with sushi for the reception after my opera, which was orchestrated for western instruments and gamelan, and featured a paper mache dinosaur painted like a De Kooning.

Anyway, I really liked the pumpkin roulade. Although the cream cheese really just made it into carrot cake with pumpkin. The only tricky part was inverting the cake from the pan, but I managed. It also doesn't look too professional, but I blame our lack of space (I assembled the cake on a chair because we didn't have counter space), and the fact that we don't have a fine sieve for confectioner's sugar.