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Yes. I ate the prop. Someone had to...

There’s a quote that gets repeated a lot lately: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result each time.”

This has been attributed variously, but inconclusively, to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, or (my favorite) a fictionalized version of Albert Einstein in a mystery novel.

But what is it if you expect the same result each time? Persistence? Practice? The triumph of hope over experience? (Oscar Wilde said that about second marriages…or was it Samuel Johnson? Or was it Oscar Wilde quoting Samuel Johnson?)

Issues of repetition are on my mind because every Sunday night I bake pizza. I’ve been doing this for so many years that I’ve lost track. No big surprise here:  growing up, Sunday was pizza night in our house. But ours came from Tony’s Italian Villa. In those days the normal answer to the question, “Do you bake your own pizza?” would have been, “What’s the matter? Is Tony’s closed today?”

Tony’s Italian Villa is indeed closed today and forevermore. This will not be one of those stories harkening back to childhood to reminisce about the best pizza I ever had. I suspect that the truth is that Tony’s pie was probably nothing better than run-of-the-mill Boston-style thin crust pizza.

If there is any insanity in my tale, it is that I live in New York. It is an understatement that there are a lot of places to find pizza in New York. But many of them are the “slice-o-pie” places that reheat already baked pizza.  That’s not for me.

I’ll take the pies that are being hand-crafted to order in coal or wood fired ovens that are so hot the pizza bakes in one or two minutes. The good news is that those places do exist here in New York.

I suppose you could call me a pizza snob, and I’ll cop to that label–but with reservations. The reservations are: 1) I don’t insist on brick oven pizza, and 2) I have a very open mind about what goes on top of a pizza.

By baking my own pizza am I harboring illusions of recreating the best that New York or Naples has to offer in my itty-bitty apartment kitchen? No. I’m home Sunday night baking pizza because it is fun, and the pizza tastes good.

That’s the “Reader’s Digest” answer.

The long answer is much more complicated. There’s something about working with the pizza dough that I find intensely gratifying. If you’ve never worked with yeast dough you’ve missed out on one of the great basic, accessible, pleasures of cooking. You communicate with the dough, and the dough lets you know in very specific terms what’s on its mind. I’ll never be a dog or horse whisperer, but I am a dough whisperer.

In spite of the fact that we’ve all seen pizza bakers punch, slap, and spin dough into shape, yeast dough actually requires a bit more respect. Dough can be somewhat stubborn, yes, but when that happens, just walk away, not unlike how you’d treat an obstreperous child. Return in five to ten minutes, the dough will have gotten a good cry out of its system and will be bright, springy, and willing to yield to your wishes. Treat it with respect, and above all, listen to it patiently.

(Yes, I’m talking about pizza dough like it’s a living thing. Who says it’s not? Yeast is, after all, a living, breathing organism.)

Let’s talk ingredients. I like to use Italian type “00” flour. “00” refers to its powdery grind, not its protein content or gluten level, and I find that it produces a crust with enough crunch and chew to make me do the happy food dance. But any good quality bread flour will also give the gift of great crust; use that happily if you can’t find type “00.”

There’s no need to learn how to spin the dough; you’ll have better control over its shape and thickness if you work the dough on your countertop, pouncing on it with your fingertips. Not to mention the fact that spinning the dough in a tiny apartment kitchen like mine will leave a snowy dusting of flour over your entire apartment. (Trust me on that one.)

Skip the pizza stones and bricks, unless you enjoy setting off your smoke alarm. Ditto the big wooden pizza peels. Messy.

I use a pizza pan. You may have seen these: they are a 16-inch round metal pan with several hundred holes punched in the bottom. I think the holes deliver the dry heat of your oven to the crust better than a pizza stone, and will give your crust a crunch that will have you running to the mirror to make sure all the teeth are still in your mouth.

Sauce? No need to grow your own tomatoes. A simple sauce with a little texture, the merest touch of sweetness, and just a breath of tomato tartness is all you need. I use a canned sauce by a small company named Don Pepino which I like as much for what’s in the can as I do for what’s on the can: a retro cartoon of a chef who looks like he could be Chef Boyardee’s slightly demented brother (In its defense, the sauce only has five ingredients, and sugar is not one of them.)

Feel free to use a simple smear of San Marzano crushed tomatoes instead. Just add a bit of salt and pepper.

Cheese? What kind of mood are you in? My standby is Asiago that I grate with an old fashioned box grater. It is zingier but less stringy than the usual mozzarella.  I know that you’re not supposed to use cheddar on pizza, but skip the tomato sauce, caress the crust with some very thin slices of Pear peppered with a complex cheddar and you’re in another world.

In the summer Pissaladière is an easy treat that will earn you some new friends. Just top the crust with some lovingly caramelized onions, cross hatch with really good anchovies (soaked to leach out their overpowering saltiness,) stud with briny black olives, and you’ll be welcome at any Provencal table.

How about clam pie? This New Haven native is simply the crust dusted with parmesan, some freshly shucked clams, and enough garlic to give the clams some mellow companionship.

Is it persistence? Is it practice? Every Sunday night I pull the pizza out of the oven and look at it for a moment, thinking, “Wow! I made that!”

Try it. Click here for my recipe.

Ines Rosales Seville Orange Sweet Olive Oil Tortas

She was sitting off in the corner, but the minute I walked in the joint, well, there she was. There was no mistaking: she wasn’t from here. Then she started calling my name, daring me to take her home.  So I did.

Apologies to fans of James M. Cain and film noir. Obviously in a blog called “Butter. Flour. Eggs.” I’m writing about food and should conduct myself as such. But I am trying to illustrate what happens to me when I trawl the aisles of the grocery store and see something new: it’s like an itch and I never seem to get by without scratching it.

So it was when I recently discovered Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas. I fought the itch for a while but then broke down and tried them.

On paper, we are an unlikely match, but here’s the lesson: sometimes food teaches you something about yourself.

You can see what they look like in the picture. They look like a tortilla or flatbread, but they’re not. They are toasty, hard, and crunchy like a cracker, but they’re not a cracker. They’re sweet, but not like a cookie.

They’re tortas, and I will just have to expand my food vocabulary to include this new (to me) category.

Why are we an unlikely match? Well the tortas have a pronounced anise flavor, and frankly, I sometimes find anise to be a bit cloying. Happily I discovered this is not anise flavor that runs around your mouth shouting, “LICORICE!” with every bite; this is anise used as an aromatic note, more like a perfume than a flavor.

The sweetness is in the form of a sprinkling of large-crystal sugar, some of which has relaxed into a glaze. All in all, an assortment of subtle flavors and textures that conspire to pull up a chair and enjoy a coffee with me.

Something that I never thought I’d like has become a new obsession, and while I enjoy munching on the tortas straight from their evocative wax paper (they are made and wrapped by hand,) part of the fun has been figuring out some simple but compelling pairings for my delicious new friends.

I started by finding out that they are from Andalusia, a part of Spain influenced by Muslim and Sephardic Jewish traditions. I would call that culturally diverse.

But in an attempt to stay with the Spanish theme, I thought I’d like to try them with some shavings of Iberian ham. Good luck finding it, and when you do, be prepared to pay anywhere from $50 to $95 per pound. (Let’s just say Iberian ham has a long back story which I will perhaps try to delve into in a future posting.)

Unable to find my second choice, Serrano Ham, I used a good prosciutto, going on the assumption that the torta could assume the role usually played by melon. While the torta is not as subtle as melon, the sweetness and anise perfume provide a pronounced counterpoint to the mellow saltiness of the prosciutto, while adding something to the mix that the melon can never bring: a hearty crunch.

A shaving of a sharp cheese would be a welcome, if somewhat conflicting, companion, and the tortas would be a welcome addition to any antipasto.

Recently I discovered two new varieties of the tortas, Seville orange, and Savory Rosemary and Thyme.

The Savory Rosemary and Thyme tortas are more familiar to all of us: no sugar, slightly salty, with the herbs adding an almost tart aftershock to the crunch. Perfect with a broth-based soup (mmmm…the cooler weather is on its way.)

The Seville orange tortas may be the best of all. They are not overtly orange flavored. Like the anise flavored torta, the flavor is more whispered than spoken. You’ll think these were made to be combined with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream. Let the ice cream warm to the point where it begins to slobber in self pity, but fear not: the torta will more than make up for the ice cream’s lack of backbone with a disciplined crackle. You’ll never look at one of those Coldstone Creamery sugar cone bowls the same way again. Eat this, and you’ve graduated to the grown-up’s table.

I’ve learned that’s where I belong now.

Methi Roti

To my rather plebian New England-raised palate, Indian food has always seemed “other-worldly.” Indian food always seems to have the volume turned up a notch: it doesn’t just smell good, it advertises. Each fragrance is like a free sample—the culinary equivalent of the little scratch and sniff perfume samples they put in magazines. Which is not to say that I’m comparing Indian food to that area of Macy’s you have to hold your breath to walk through to get to the Seventh Avenue side—quite the opposite. The aromas of Indian food always seem to doing some olfactory ballet to lure you to the table.

Now departing from that for a moment, let me tell you about a woman I worked with many years ago when I was a waiter. One Saturday night she grabbed a couple of tortillas and, wrapping them in a piece of foil, shrugged, “I’m having eggs for breakfast tomorrow.”

Huh?

She explained that being from Southern California she always ate her eggs with salsa, wrapped in tortillas. At the risk of sounding sheltered or provincial I admit that at the time that was “other-worldly” to me. (I was young. I didn’t live in New York. OKAY??)

Naturally I tried and fell in love with “Huevos en Tortillas con Salsa.”  

Now I live in New York City, and after many years of working with many Indian folks, Indian food has moved closer to the center of my culinary radar.

What initially prompted this was an office Christmas lunch. Being a rather diverse crowd, we needed a place that was vegetarian and kosher. No big deal in New York. A Kosher Indian restaurant was chosen. Again, in New York, no biggie.  Walk up and down Lexington Avenue in the high 20’s and take your pick.

I approach new food with the same unabashed glee that used to make me drool at Detroit’s newest when I was a kid and my dad would take me to the Auto Show (I was car crazy as a kid) so I was, of course, in heaven. Everything was new and different and spiced to singe but not overwhelm.

I asked the Indians in the crowd what they thought. The consensus was that the food was very nice, but nothing great. I pushed the point a bit. I really wanted to understand what would have put the meal over the proverbial edge. I asked one coworker to explain, hoping he would impart the knowledge, the subtlety, and the cultural insight that would forever enable me to discern good Indian food from truly amazing Indian food.

“It was a little mild. We like our food with a little more heat.”

I have a dirty little secret to reveal here: I don’t like spicy food. It doesn’t matter if it is chili or curry. If food is too spicy I don’t taste anything. It’s just hot. Wasabi on my sushi? Pass. Red pepper flakes on my pizza? Pass. Chili in my chocolate? Pass.

You New Yorkers are thinking, “Your tongue was numbed as a child by too many cups of creamy chowder.” So be it. I’ll own up to having a somewhat unrefined palate, but what it lacks in refinement it more than makes up for in enthusiasm.

My Indian coworkers are very tolerant about my sad little palate, and even more so when I ask about their home cooked lunches. “No,” they explain, “these aren’t Cheerios in milk, they’re chickpeas in yogurt.” You get the gist.

So I’m afraid they’d shudder and perhaps cry if I revealed my latest discovery: Methi Roti, the fragrant Indian flat bread. They are heavily infused with fenugreek leaves, and warmly aggressive in flavor and fragrance.

With a wink at my California-bred former co-worker, I have found they make an amazing jacket for a gently scrambled egg or two along with some chopped tomato. Salsa is not needed here, as the Methi Roti supply all the heat and spice needed along with a satisfying graininess. Who needs toast?

If, unlike me, you need things with a bit more heat, try a dash or two of a good spicy curry powder in the eggs.

I can also recommend Methi Roti’s more buttoned-down brother, Chapati. Both are fine blistered over the flame of your stovetop. Dip them in yogurt mixed with some mint leaves and cooked chickpeas and you’ve got an appetizer.

And who knows? Maybe Methi Roti and Chapati may go mainstream. Hey, when I was a kid bagels were considered ethnic food.

(Sidebar about fenugreek: it is often used to make artificial maple flavor (no, the Methi Roti do not have any maple flavor.) In fact, there was a mystery recently here in the New York area: a mysterious maple syrup-like smell would suddenly waft over the city and areas of New Jersey, and then disappear. Turns out it was caused by a factory in New Jersey that was—you guessed it—processing fenugreek into artificial maple flavor.)