tommy:eats

Neapolitan: style pizza

 

 

Margherita

I just want to take a moment to note that you can make great Neapolitan style pizza at home, if you listen to me.  Don't listen to other people.  They have no idea what they're talking about.

That is all.

 

2011: Tasty reasons to be thankful

We here at t:e headquarters are very thankful for everything at Chengdu 23.  Even the dopey flowers.

2011 wasn't a terribly active year in t:e posts, but make no mistake, food was eaten, spirits were stirred, and finds were found. 

Looking back at the past year, here are some things that the t:e army of editors is very thankful for...

Pizza: Carbonara

Pizza Carbonara

I was tooling around the recently awesome Asbury Park not too long ago, when I noticed a piece of plywood with a restaurant opening announcement crudely painted on the thing.  Normally this would immediately turn me off.  But the sign did make claims of "Neopolitan Pizza".  Misspellings on menus and signs are another thing that generally turns me off.  But given I knew what they meant, and they planned on serving my favorite style of pizza, I let all of this slide.

"Porta the Door" finally opens?  Hey Porta, the door finally opens?  Who is Porta?  Is this a party or a restaurant.  What is this.  I'm confused.  Asbury Park is weird.

I put it on my list of places to investigate, assuming the name was "Porta the Door".  At that point, however, there was nothing on the internet about this place.  Fast forward a few months, and the place is open, and they've got their Facebook presence and even sorted out a website.  Porta National Park, it's called.  Or maybe it's called Porta Pizza.  Either way, it's getting some good reviews, and their pizza carbonara is getting some specific attention on blogs and from yelpers and what have you.

I've made plenty of pizze with egg and guanciale, but never really considered them to be "carbonara."  I just never really went for the carbonara thing whole hog. But since the combination of egg, guanciale, black pepper, Parmiagno-reggiano, red pepper flake and parsley really appeals to me, and Porta's version is getting some good reviews, I figured I'd treat a pizza just as I would the pasta dish and give it a whirl myself.  At this point I hope you've realized that I'm not posting about Porta's pizza, but rather my own. 

Homemade Pizza Company: Ridgewood, NJ - UPDATED

UPDATE:  Please find an update below in red.

New Jersey is overrun with mediocre pizza. --Look at my sad life.  One sentence in and I'm already annoyed-- You know the pizza I'm talking about:  the popular stuff. Just this morning we passed Puzo's in Ridgewood and the missus asked "how can that place still be in business."  The answer, which I grumpily mumbled (it was early and pre-coffee, which means I was even more grumpy than usual) is simple:  it's a crappy pizza place, and people flock to mediocrity.  They demand it.  Why be challenged when it's easier and more comforting to be spoon fed familiarity?   

I skip just about all pizza in this area, expect for A Mano, Ah'Pizz, Nellie's, and Pizza Town. These are exceptional in their class.  Other than those handful of places and a few other notables, I make pizza at home.  Lots pizza.  Almost every week. Have been for several years.  Dats a lot of pie, and a lot of mistakes.  Successes, occasionally. 

Along side of those crappy places comes a pizza place that is hoping to stand out.

Homemade Pizza Company, a small chain which opened an outpost in the old Cheese Shop spot on Ridgewood Ave in Ridgewood, seems to be fitting into a niche that it may very well be creating:  quality ingredients on a pizza that you bake at home.  I suspect this approach will appeal to some folks who find it a novetly, or appreciate the convenience of buying a raw pizza and baking it at home, but who don't want to be bothered to doing it all themselves. Especially if the perception (or reality) of "quality" speaks to them.  

Sliders: at home

A recent episode of Food Network's Food Feuds got me thinking about sliders again.  During this episode, they pitted Hackensack's White Manna against Jersey City's White Mana (not related).  

When I say "sliders," I'm talking about a specific style of burger, and not simply a "small burger."  A slider is a thin patty of beef, cooked with onions on a flat top, and served on a small, steamed bun.  Yes, that sounds a like like White Castle.  But it also sounds like a bunch of joints throughout New Jersey which have been making this style of burger for longer than I've been alive. 

Watching this Food Feuds episode will make any meat eater hungry, and certainly got me going.  Three minutes into the show I determined that the next day would be committed to sliders.  Using the clips in the show as a guide, I was off and running.  Trust me, this isn't challenging stuff.

And here's what I did...

Weekend: pizza

Margherita

There's generally a good amount of cooking going on at t:e operations headquarters.  There's also usually no reason to share any of these dishes, as they are simple and not earth-shattering in the least.  But taking a page from the some other blogs that I read, I see no reason to not post a little something here and there, when something looks decent, or tastes good, or might get some of you out to the store and in the kitchen.

Weekend pizza, with mozzarella di bufula from Fairway in Paramus. 

I don't know of many sources in New Jersey for mozzarella di bufula, so Fairway is a Godsend.  They do fly this stuff in from Campania, so check the expiration dates.  The last few batches I had were luscious and creamy, like eating warm ice cream.  Worth every penny, especially if you're making Neapolitan-style pizza.

I aim for a Neapolitan-style pizza.  A Margherita, in this case.  There's nothing more than uncooked pureed canned tomatoes, mozzarella di bufula, salt, basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano and EVOO on this sourdough pizza.

This pie was cooked in about 3 minutes 30 seconds, using two standard electric ovens, using the broiler in the second oven to finish it off.  The stones were heated for well over an hour, and were at about 680 degrees.

Hawthorne Farmers' Market: Heirloom tomatoes

 

We stumbled upon the Hawthorne Farmers' Market today.  Did a quick fly by and took a look at their stuff.  Saw some heirloom tomatoes from a farm whose name I forget (but I'll be finding out next Sunday).  Ho, ly, shit.

Westwood Prime Meats: Westwood, NJ

I've been telling anyone who will listen.  I've been running through the streets.  Shouting on corners.   It's as if it's 1988, and I'm going on about Nine Inch Nails at frat parties whilst being ignored by the ladies who loved Cool J.  Or 1994, singing the phrases of D Generation at Newark's Studio 1, screaming over some horrible metal band's attempt at art.  Or 1997, rambling on about Belle and Sebastian at bars in Hoboken, as backward-baseball cap-wearing dudes put another dollar into the jukebox to play Seven Mary Three for the 10th time in a row. 

But it's 2010, and I have an internet connection and a blog (I forgot for a while), so damn it, my words will be heard!  Read!

Sal Petruso, the proprietor and butcher at Westwood Prime Meats, is doing things the right way.  And you can all be beneficiaries...if you would just tear yourself away from the supermarket for a few minutes.

Abma's Farm: Wyckoff, NJ

 

If you're like me, you call it Amba's Farm.  For some reason it's tough to get my head (and mouth) around "Abma".  But, it's Abma's Farm.  Somewhat related, I realized only this weekend that the word is "Valedictorian", and not "Valevictorian".  Thankfully I don't claim to be very bright, although my class rank was in fact 17 out of over 200.  But spelling/grammar/English wasn't my strong suit, as anyone who reads the drivel on this blog can attest to.

But on to what I do know about...

I visited Abma's Farm a few times a few years ago, and mentioned it here and there on this blog.  Others have been mentioning it as well, so I thought I'd give it some more exposure.

Abma's grows and raises a lot of its stuff.  For that reason alone, you should support them.  I don't know of too many family owned farms around our parts these days.  And that's yet another reason to support them.

In the spirit of the lowest common denominator bloggers that pepper the internet, I'm going to simply post a bunch of pictures, while pretending I've said something substantive and interesting.  And here ya go (please note that I resisted the urge to blur out 80% of each shot under the deranged impression that you should only be able to see "the important part"):

Guanciale: burger

I'm constantly looking for ways to improve burgers. It goes without saying that the first step is to buy beef and grind it yourself. But, 'round here, the ratios and cuts are constantly being tweaked, and sometimes 86'd altogether.  In general, I'll end up with a blends which include hanger, and likely some chuck, but maybe some rib, skirt on occasion, and possibly some flap, hell I've ground up a porterhouse on occasion. And when I see the 'point' of the brisket (the fatty piece that sits atop the largely useless 'flat', which is what you generally see at the store) in the case at Fairway, you can bet that's going in. It has soooo much beautiful soft fat, and great beefy flavor.

Along with fat, the other element that I look for is the beautiful but elusive dry-aged flavor. That minerally, funky flavor that you can only get from dry-aged beef (for which I am a sucker).The burger at Peter Luger has notes of these flavors, and for good reason: they're using scraps of their dry-aged steak.  I had very good results with my own dry-aged burger, but as much as I love very good results, I can't bring myself to spend 20 dollars on a hamburger at home (although for somre reason I'd have no problem spending that much at a restaurant, and this makes little sense). A little lamb in the mix helps, but let's face it, lamb isn't terribly funky or gamey.  A bit, but not much.

With the brisket point not always available, I'm often left trying to come up with ways of getting more fat into the burger. There's the butter-in-the-middle-of-the-patty trick, which is quite easy and produces good results. There's the ground-up-bacon-in-the-meat trick. Good results, but it does add a bacony flavor which may or may not be what I'm going for at the time.

And then I got to thinking about that bacon. It's nice and fatty, but the smoky flavor isn't necessarily a good thing. If there were only some sort of funky, fatty part of an animal that I could introduce into the mix. And then it hit me: guanciale.