Pizza -- seems like an easy first one to go with, but what the hell? It was there. And who among us, except for the criminally insane, does not love pizza? Let's look at its many virtues:
- It's a quick and easy meal. Pizza doesn't need side dishes or salads. It can be all four food groups in one hand-held delivery mechanism.
- It's a great social food. There's nothing quite like a pizza shared amongst friends.
- It's got near universal appeal. Because of the sheer variety of toppings possible, there's bound to be a pizza for everyone.
- It's cheap. Split an extra-large pizza between a few friends and your out-of-pocket expense is going to be pretty low for a great meal.
I have some friends who don't like a lot of the things I like on pizza though, and that can be a downfall. Some folks just want pepperoni on their pies, but I like to get a little eclectic when choosing toppings. Pizzeria Bubamara will stuff the crust with cherries, and while most people will shy away from such a thing, I find it to be quite tasty. I realize that's pretty out there, but some folks don't even like anything green on their pizza. I ordered a pizza with broccoli on it once and my friend sarcastically commented, "Great moss, Archie!"
Some pizza quotes:
- Marge: Now be good for Grampa while we're at the parent-teacher meeting. We'll bring back dinner.
Lisa: What are we gonna have?
Homer: Well, that depends on what your teachers say. If you've been good, pizza. If you've been bad... uh... let's see... poison.
Lisa: What if one of us has been good and one of us has been bad?
Bart: Poison pizza.
Homer: Oh, no. I'm not making two stops. - “Pizza is a lot like sex. When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good.”
- "You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.” -- Yogi Berra
- “Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.” -- Dave Berry
2 comments:
To me the most sublime pizza is the white clam pizza at Pepe's in New Haven. If I had remembered to send you that pizza on Valentine's Day, it would have been one of these...
Here are some words to help you understand what I'm talking about...
At Pepe's, the greatest (and original) of the pizzerias on New Haven’s Wooster Street, you walk into a room with an open kitchen in back where white-aproned pizza men enact a ritual originated by Frank Pepe more than seventy years ago: bombs of dough are flattened on a marble table, clouds of spice are strewn in an instant, and long wooden bakers' peels are used to inject pizzas deep into the coal-fired oven. It is a hypnotic scene, untouched by time or fashion.
Crust is what makes a Pepe’s pizza outstanding. It is Neapolitan style -- thin but not brittle, with a real bready flavor. Cooked at high temperature on the brick floor of the ancient oven, it is dark around its burnished gold edge, and there is a good chew to every bite. The pizza men aren’t too fussy about scraping the oven floor, so it is likely the pizza’s underside will be speckled with burnt grains of semolina and maybe even blotched by an oil spill where another pizza leaked, all of which give the mottled oval a kind of reckless sex appeal that no tidy pie could ever match.
The great, little-known irony of Pepe's is that Frank Pepe, New Haven pizza's Zeus, was allergic to mozzarella ... and to tomatoes! His favorite pizza was olive oil and oregano on bare crust, dotted with little bits of anchovy. To this day, Pepe's premier pizza is made without mozzarella or tomato sauce. It is called a white clam pie, and it is nothing but crust strewn with freshly-shucked littleneck clams, olive oil, garlic, oregano, and a dash of grated Parmesan. Without a mozzarella mantle, the dough develops wicked resilience, its mottled surface frosted gold with grated cheese. Mozzarella with onion (but no tomatoes, and perhaps a bit of garlic added) is another long-time favorite, as are the more traditional sloppy configurations with tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and sausage. Broccoli and spinach recently have been added to the kitchen’s repertoire; they are well suited to a white pie with mozzarella and garlic. But if you are coming to Pepe's for the first time, try the white clam pie. It's roadfood heaven.
To read the entire review please visit the site of the equally sublime Jane and Michael Stern of "RoadFood" fame. They really know how to share the love...
Pepe's notwithstanding, I'm pretty curious about that cherry pizza too...where did you get that, again?
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