The Pies That Bind Us

Growing up in the Green household, Friday night was pizza night.  Case closed.  Friday is that superb night of the week when you've just finished five hellish days and nights of school and/or work, but you don't yet feel the pressure to go out and have "fun" like on dumb ol' Saturdays.  You can feel justified in ordering a greasy pizza, downing some soda, and sitting on the couch with your loved ones (or your cat).  Friday is the best night of the week, always has been, always will be.  From the childhood days, I mostly remember ordering thin crust half cheese/half pepperoni pizzas from Pizza Hut (I'm not sure if this was what we ordered most frequently, but it was my favorite, so it's stuck in my brain vault) and drinking a whole lot of Pepsi (I don't drink soda anymore, but Pepsi will always hold a special place in my heart).  I also remember a few nights, in my teenage years when my mom, Tony, and I decided to make our own pizzas.  We would pop some ingredients in the bread machine and an hour or so later, crank the oven up to its hottest and each add our own favorite ingredients.  At the time, I'm sure I stuck mainly to cheese, red sauce, and pepperoni while my mom tried more adventurous fare, and Tony, I'm guessing, put cut up hot dogs and ketchup on his.  But whatever we chose, it was amazingly delicious at the time and so satisfying to have created our own pies.  So this Sunday (it's the new Friday), Tony and I attempted to recreate that magical pizza-rific time from days gone by.  Here's how the phone conversation went:


Karen:  Hey, dude.  So how about we just make a pizza tonight?
Tony:  Ooooh, dude.  I'm kinda hung over and that sounds awesome.
Karen:  Dude!  Me too!  That's totally why I suggested it.
Tony:  Awesome.


Yup, just like when we were kids.


Ah yes, I remember waiting for the doorbell that would signal the arrival of our pizza.  I would rush downstairs (or upstairs if I was working in the subterranean cryogenics lab that evening), making sure I was the first to intercept the pie, because who knows what might happen if I let Karen or Dad handle it.  Idiots.  I would grab the cash placed on a nearby table, throw it in the face of the delivery dude and grab the warm pizza box and metal platter of freshly baked cookies.  That taste is still fresh in my mind: dunking a gooey chocolate chip cookie into warm marinara sauce.  I’m so glad DiGiorno has recently released it’s ode to the grand American tradition of delivering pizza and cookies to your doorstep.

It's not delivery, it's DiGorno trying to convince you that pizza and cookies are a natural combination. 

Karen and I did happen to make pizza and cookies, though.  If you're an avid follower (read: real friend), you may recall that we had planned to make cookies on empanada night, a recipe for South American style alfajores, a sandwich cookie with dulce de leche in the middle.  This plan was dashed by the realization that making dulce de leche is similar to making diamonds, in that it requires three hours and constant stirring.  While these cookies would have worked better thematically with empanada night, screw it.  Pizza and cookies sounds great.


All right, Tony's been throwing around the phrase dulce de leche as if everyone just automatically knows what that is.  Well, we don't, Tony!  We don't know what it is.  We don't all speak Spanish!  Is it caramel?  It looks like caramel.  Why don't you just call it caramel?!?  As it turns out, dulce de leche is what happens when you take a can of sweetened condensed milk (not to be confused with evaporated milk) and heat it up for a while, allowing the sugars to caramelize (although it's still not caramel).  What you get is a thick sauce that is basically sugar.  It's thick sugar sauce.  That's it.  Many of the recipes out there on the interweb will tell you to stick the still-sealed can into some water and heat it for about 8 hours with the disclaimer that you may or may not explode your kitchen that way.  I chose the non-explosion route of pouring the contents of the can into a double boiler and stirring it ever so often for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.  Works like a charm.  The condensed milk will go from a snot-like consistency of this color:

To a slightly more viscous substance that looks like this:

Now just set that guy aside and let it cool a bit before the cookie spreadin' begins.  And stop dipping your finger in it!  I saw that!


Oh come on, Karen, have some faith in our readers.  Even someone that doesn't speak Spanish can figure out that dulce de leche means "sweet of milk," and from there, the rest is obvious.  


All right, so pizza dough.  I have tried many a dough recipe in an attempt to get something akin to what they serve at them fancy wood-fired pizza establishments we all love so much.  So far I have come up with . . . flattened bread.  I mean, the pizza crusts have not been bad, it's just that there's a difference between light, fluffy, crumbly bread and the chewy, crispy, slightly denser baked good that we know as pizza crust.  So I decided to try yet another recipe and in my search for "thin crust pizza dough" I came across this gem on several different cooking blogs: White Wine Pizza Dough.  A pizza dough with wine already in it!?  Sold.  I mean, a couple food bloggers can't be wrong.


I'm glad I tried it because this recipe is definitely as close as I've come to matching professional pizza dough.  It has a whole lotta flavor and that nice crispness on the outside, but not so much as to be crunchy.  And the best part is that a crust this thin means that your pizza will only take like 8 minutes to cook.  Eight minutes!  Pretty great.  Plus I got to use my rolling pin, the love of my life.  Don't ever leave me, rolling pin.

I always like to brush the outside of my dough with olive oil.  I'm not really sure what this adds.  Maybe it makes the cheese stick better whilst sprinkling?  I dunno, but I like it.
  
While Karen wrestled with the dough and pondered the finer points of a flaky crust, I pursued a task more within the limits of my hung-over capacity: I threw a bunch of onions in a hot pan and lied down on the floor.  Actually, I first browned the onions, then added a hearty fourth cup of balsamic vinegar, turned the heat down and let them cook nice and slow.  Don't be overprotective and stir these too often, just let them live their lives; they'll make the right choices.  And if they don't, if maybe they sometimes drink too much and turn out kinda crusty and dried out and dim witted the next day, you'll still love them.  Right, mom?  

Here's me forgetting whether I measure out a fourth cup before or after pouring it into the onions.

In lieu of a sauce, these onions, which turned out delicious, acted as the moist base for our pizza.  And acting as the salty meat layer of our pizza was some delicious prosciutto, courtesy of Trader Joe's:

We set out with pancetta in mind, fixin' to saute it up and then toss it on the pizza, but couldn't find any.  Prosciutto turned out even better though because it required only chopping and was just as salty, which is what my body was craving.  This might also explain why I went from lightly salting the alfajores (to bring out the caramel taste, don'tcha know) to rolling them in salt and finally to chasing each cookie with a mouthful of salt.

While Tony was shriveling up like an earthworm in Arizona, the pizza assembly had begun.  

Layer of gooey onion first,  followed by the prosciutto.  We figured we didn't want that to be on top or it might get too crispy on the edges, so this way it would be all covered in protective cheese.  But not just any cheese, my friends, oh no.  It was Trader Joe's crumbled blue cheese.  Of all the blue cheeses I have had in my life, TJ's patented fromage stands out as the creamiest, tastiest, and fairly priced-iest blue cheese yet.  If you haven't tried it, it's a must.

Come on, would this face lie to you?  Or seduce your aged, wealthy grandmother with a flamenco dance, and then abscond with your sizable inheritance?  Surely not.

And NO, we are not soulless corporate blogging pawns paid by Trader Joe's to peddle their products.  And YES, we would love to be!  So if you're reading, Joe, hit us up. 

So Trader Joe's blue cheese it is, followed by some parmesan I had lying around that needed usin', then sprinkle on a bit of fresh thyme and you get this:

Arguably my artsiest food photo to date.  Thank you, I'm very proud of it, but not as proud as I am of how awesome this pizza was.  It's basically just the saltiest ingredients we could find all piled onto that delicious crust and damn if it wasn't a good combo.  From here we cranked up the oven to 500 degrees and, like I said, the pizza will only take about 8 minutes.  Just keep an eye on it and when the crust is golden brown it's time to take it out.  The finishing touch would of course be a massive pile of arugula just like they do it in Italy where people are better than us.

As if that wasn't enough greens for ya, I actually came up with my own kale salad concoction for the meal.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the first ever original recipe here on Family Füd:

Karen's Tony-Approved "Holy Crap That's Good" Kale Salad (aka Karen's Kale Salad)

1 bunch kale

Juice of 1 large lemon

1/4 olive oil, plus extra for drizzling

1 tablespoon chopped rosemary

2 cloves garlic, minced

parmesan cheese

croutons

salt and pepper

Rinse and chop your kale, removing stems, place in a large bowl.  Drizzle kale with olive oil and half of your lemon juice (about 3 tablespoons) and massage until it begins to wilt, about 2 minutes.  Set aside.  In small bowl add the rest of the lemon juice, garlic, and rosemary and muddle.  (It helps if you have an actual muddler, which is a good investment because it's also useful for making mojitos.  Hey, Tony, why haven't we made mojitos yet?) ANSWER: we prefer alcohol that comes pre-muddled and ready to ingest, such as wine, beer and moonshine. Add salt and pepper, a few shakes, or pinches or whatever, and drizzle in olive oil while whisking.  I sort of estimated the amount of olive oil, it may not take a whole fourth cup.  I would err on the side of less because you can always add more afterward.  Pour dressing over the kale and toss to coat.  Next grate your parmesan cheese over the salad.  I just kept grating and tossing until my kale was sufficiently coated, then add croutons.  You'll get something that looks like this:

Wow!  A Family Füd milestone, indeed!  And can you believe it was Karen?  Making a kale salad?  Instead of me?  Even though I'm the one that introduced her to kale and I'm the one that really loves it and I'm the one that should have a recipe DAMN IT!

Bitterness and plans for revenge aside, this salad is great.  It's got strong but balanced flavors and great textural components.  I tried to make it myself the next day and mine didn't turn out as well.  Not that I cared.  I didn't want it to taste good.  I'm so beyond taste.  Karen doesn't get that.  

After the pizza came out and was smothered in arugula, I decided to further confuse its identity by putting toasted pecans on it, just like it was a salad.  "Now toss yourself!"  I yelled as it wept and wished it was more like the other pizzas.  I'm glad it wasn't though because it was amazing.  Saltiness and creaminess and tartness and bitterness and it all works wonderfully.  My only qualm is that the pecans didn't add much.  I've since become intrigued by the notion of candying the pecans, as the sugar glaze bolsters their crunch-factor and the sweetness would compliment the multitude of other flavors on the pizza.  Then again, it might just taste like crap and this pizza tastes wicked good already.

 

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about the pecans.  I guess because they added nothing memorable to the meal . . . kind of like Tony.  Ooohhh, snap!  Actually I'm gonna eat those rotten words because Tony came up with the entire concept of this pizza, not to mention he introduced me to alfajores.  Remember those cookies we'd been planning on making for over a week?  Yeah, it took me that long to get their name right.  "Hey, are we still gonna make them alfa-jury cookies this weekend?  Alfa-whore-hays?  Them Alfonso Ribeiro cookies?"  Haha, that's the actor who played Carlton on Fresh Prince, for those of you who missed all the funny in that last sentence. 

Again, can you believe the above doofus fell ass-backwards into a pile of ingredients and clambered out with a semi-palatable salad stuck to her?  

Back to the cookies.  Karen and I make no attempt to hide the vastness of our ignorance, so I wasn't shocked to find that the alfajor originated not in South America, as I had assumed, but in the Arab world.  The following is a very ignorant retelling of the cookie's history which I culled from a too-long Wikipedia article: 

The Arabs brought this sweet with them when they conquered Spain, presumably offering the treat as a "Hey, sorry we burned down all your stuff" peace offering.  The Spaniards fiddled with the recipe, adding their own touch, no doubt trying to add some canned fish to the recipe as they are wont to do.  Early versions of the pastry were cylindrical cookies rolled in fruit preserves and various nuts and spices.  Then the Spaniards decided they'd like to conquer some people themselves and since Americans were probably already busy cleaning their triple barrel muskets and inventing the horse-drawn Hummer carriage, Spain played it easy and conquered South America.  So, the Spaniards offered the South Americans a plate full of totally not disease-infected cookies (got 'em again!)  Everyone loved them and the countries throughout the region did some more fiddling until they finally got it right and sandwiched dulce de leche between two shortbread-type cookies.  Fast forward forty years or so, and I find what is undoubtedly a highly authentic South American version on the Martha Stewart website.  The only change we made was to substitute heavy whipping cream for the milk, because it's all Karen had (because only a p**** would use milk in their cereal).  I theorize that this change made the cookies extra moist.  Karen amended this hypothesis with a very smug "DUH."  Also, as mentioned earlier, we sprinkled some sea salt on the filling of each cookie. 

Yeah, I don't want to sound too smug here, but I think we totally improved this Martha Stewart recipe.  She may have anal retentive disorder and knowledge of the dark arts, but we've got Tony yelling, "Put salt on that!"  So, yeah, delicious cookies.  So good, in fact, I almost forgot that there is still no chocolate in our desserts!  I know, I know, I promised you (and myself) a ridiculous, chocolate, heart-stopping dessert.  Well, just you wait until next week, folks.  You will not be disappointed . . . 

In summation:  

Pizza is the perfect, hard-to-mess-up, brings-people-together food to make at home.  

Alfajores: Not just for Arabs, Spaniards, and South Americans anymore!  

And Tony's sodium levels are such that his body literally acts as a sponge now.  He's more like a "Grow a Tony" than he is human.  I'd like to put him in a kiddie pool and see if he expands to four times his original size.

Good ol' Pissporter!  I can't believe we forgot about you!  A humble German white wine, I recall it being sweet and . . . that's it.  It couldn't compete with the other taste bud pleasers here, but Karen and I had a ton of fun yelling 'PISSPORTER!' every time we drank it.  Go on, pronounce the name with a Minnesotan accent.  You won't regret it!  I wish more Americans in the medical profession would take after Doctor Beckermann and make alcohol with funny names.  

Don't get me wrong, the alfajores were delicious, but in my passionate pursuit of perfection (hey, I like the way that sounds), I couldn't help but consider how to improve them.  Too much cookie, not enough filling.  If only the components could be reversed, a cookie sandwiched between two sheets of dulce de leche!  No, no.  It can't be done.  I would like to try a more crisp and flat cookie next time, for the added textural aspect as well as the filling ratio improvement.  At FüdCorp, I'm always seeking to improve filling ratio while maximizing textural contrast.  

That's it for this week folks.  I hope you enjoyed our trip down memory lane, through both the annals of childhood pizza ordering and alfajor history.  The pizza has changed, from hot dogs and ketchup to blue cheese and prosciutto, and the cookies from not really existing to shortbread and dulce de leche, but the joy of sharing great food with friends and family remains the same.  If it gets people enjoying food together who normally wouldn't, then maybe DiGiorno and Tollhouse should be commended for their Pizza and Cookies Memory Surrogacy Campaign.   

P.S. Look for FüdCorp's new Taquitos and Snow Cone meal pack in the frozen food section of your local grocer.  Beat the heat and eat some meat with Taquitos and Snow Cone!  Just like when you were kids!