Professional Pizza Pie

I worked a prep shift today at the restaurant, my first as an employee rather than an extern. Didn't feel much different, except for the tiny wad of cash that was slipped to me before I left. Still, it is an important step -- I am no longer just an enthusiast. I am a pizza professional.

ADDENDA:
Went to dinner at a higher-end pizza joint in Brooklyn on Saturday night with the wifey. After spending a day there working a trail a while ago, it was interesting to check out the proceedings with my new perspective. Bottom line, there product is superior -- the crust is simply flavored exquisitely by their wood-burning oven -- light and pillowy, with nice spots of flavorful char. What I really didn't like is how they serve the pies -- on plates too small for the pie, uncut. The customer has to struggle with a steak knife while it shimmies along the lip of the plate, it's just silly.

SATURDAY:
BREAKFAST: noon, meatball sandwich on thin focaccia-like bread, string beans with preserved garlic, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Relaxed brunch out with B, woke up hungry but saved my appetite for this restaurant, Frankies, where we went the night before our wedding.

PM TASTING: 3pm, shallow spoonful of warm creme anglais
After the farmers market, baked 2 apple pies using the rest of the vodka pie crust dough in the freezer. Partially cooked mutsu apples with a bit of fresh cider, brown sugar, sea salt, cinnamon, and the scrapings of a vanilla bean. But what is apple pie but a vehicle for vanilla ice cream? So I leaned on my c-school experience and made a batch of creme anglaise, which can simply be chilled and poured over sweet baked products, but really, makes a killer french vanilla ice cream.

DINNER: 6:15pm, sausage pizza, roasted octopus, chocolate sorbet, almond cake and praline gelato, 1 glass wine, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING DRINK: 8:30pm, cup of New Castle beer, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5 At the Brooklyn Museum.

EVENING SNACK: 10:45pm, slice of apple pie, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5
Curious how it turned out.

SUNDAY:
BREAKFAST: 9:30am, good granola with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACKS: 12-3pm, 3 mini choco chip scones, water, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 4:30pm, 1 slice pizza with onion, mushroom, pecorino, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 8:30pm, fresh pasta with homemade tomato mushroom sauce, homemade french vanilla ice cream with 2 peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Funny, but this was totally a freezer-fishing meal. I made the pasta and sauce a month or so ago, zapped the sauce and boiled the pasta. The peanut butter cookies were made from a log of frozen dough from a few weeks ago, which I portioned on a scale and baked off, and the ice cream I made yesterday, and put it in the maker and placed in the freezer a few hours ago to set. Usually a freezer-fishing expedition would be a burrito or fish sticks...

Cooking with the Hungry Vegan Society

After yoga, I went to the HVS's house, who has been under the weather for a few days. We went to her local vegetable stand and got $12 worth of ingredients to make vegetable stock and blender soup. We featured sweet potato and parsnip, with a strong base of leek and ginger. We were limited, since we didn't have a real blender, and accidentally used a bit too much stock...but, overall, it came out pretty good. Instead of dairy, we used almond milk, which actually gave a nice nutty note to the proceedings; I might use it as a secret ingredient along with dairy in the future. It was nice to be able to cook with a friend, especially one who has been feeling crappy.

Went to a housewarming party c/o the new boyfriend of a close friend, a lot of young lawyerly types. My friend introduced me to a few people as a chef -- that's not quite true, as if anything I could call myself a cook -- a chef is boss of cooks, and I'm at the bottom rung. Still, everybody likes to talk about food and the fact that I cook professionally some how made me more legit in the eyes of these strangers. I think my self-perception just shifted a little.

ADDENDA:
I don't think I ate enough today, but the food was pretty limited at the party, and the only restaurants available in the slight ghetto-hood of the party was chinese and bad pizza. At home, I wasn't drunk enough to gorge on what was available.

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, raw cashews, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:45pm, frozen pizza, apple cider, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
The last of the pile of different frozen pies in my freezer.

PM SNICKLESNACK: 6pm, sweet potato parsnip soup, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING PARTY FEED: 8-11pm, a couple of salmon cucumber finger sandwiches, a few corn chips and guac, 6 Italian cookies, 2 beers, 1 martini, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

Pizza over Berlin, 1949

As I was housebound yesterday, I got some long-gestating reading done, in Peter Rheinhart's American Pie and especially Moveable Feasts, by Sarah Murray. This book is a series of essays about the history of food and transportation, and how the two overlay each other. Ilsa was brainstorming with me the other day about how to do something entrepreneurial with food , maybe make and deliver lunches to people in offices. In India, this has been a booming business since the 1850s of people who would pick up homemade food in metal canisters called tiffin, take the later trains into town, and deliver the homemade meals to the spouses. The trains were so crowded in the morning that anyone bringing lunch with them would be in danger of a big mess...thus, a whole industry of people taking the later trains just to deliver lunch evolved.

Most interesting was the list of staples that were delivered to the barricaded citizens of West Berlin via airdrop:

• Flour
• Cereal
• Fat
• Meat & Fish
• Dehydrated Potatoes
• Sugar
• Coffee
• Powdered Milk
• Whole Milk
• Fresh Yeast
• Dehydrated Vegetables
• Cheese
• Salt

Hmmm...flour, yeast, cheese, salt....that's almost a pizza!! The British wanted to also airlift soil so that urban farmers could grow their own stuff, as they had their own 'Dig for Victory!' campaign during WWII, but the Americans squashed it. Hrumph. They needed to grow tomatoes to finish up that pizza...

ADDENDA:
So it looks like I'll be working (for pay) at the restaurant on Sunday afternoons and Monday evening. I guess I'm now too legit, too legit to quit...

BREAKFAST: Noon, organic cheerios with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, fresh onion bagel with butter, black cherry soda, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, slug of apple cider, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7pm, shrimp curry with basil fried rice, water, 3 freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

Ill

Not well today. Stayed indoors, cancelled all plans. I think last night's Indian food might have done a number on me.

BREAKFAST: 10am, banana, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, rice and beans, organic sports drink, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7pm, 2 slices of shop pizza, whole wheat slice of bread with chocolate hazelnut spread, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

The Flavor of Dentistry

I had a permanent post and a temporary crown placed in mouth today. Between the molds taken of the tooth, local anesthetic, injected anesthetic, drilled and burning tooth matter, shavings of temporary enamel and the dentist's rubbery fingers, the flavor in my mouth was overwhelmingly nasty. And the mouthwash I got to rinse with wasn't so hot, either.

The day was spent mostly recovering and running around and about. Dinner was with B and 6 of some of my best friends and their significant others, a gathering for no particular reason other than we haven't seen each other in too long. We went to one of the non-gross Indian joints on 6th Street, but I can't help but think how much more fun and cheaper it would have been if I just invited everyone over and cooked up something interesting. But I think B appreciated not having a crowd of eaters in her living space for once!

BREAKFAST: 10am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla and raw cashews, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
I've missed the good yogurt. I wish salad was in season.

PM SNACK: 1pm, half pint of organic B&J's vanilla ice cream, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Not allowed to eat anything for an hour after the dentist, and felt it wasn't wise to eat anything too solid.

LUNCH: 4pm, pork lomein, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Hungry, needed something cheap and on the fly. Not the most ideal food before seeing Ilsa.

DINNER: 8pm, onion bahji, vegetable pakora, shrimp jalfrezi with jasmine rice, 1 beer, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

I tried to, but he was closed

B got me this book, and it's the first book in quite a while that from the moment I picked it up, I couldn't put it down until the last page -- not a typical response to a cook book, but this isn't just a cook book, more like a mash-up of cookbook, both memoir and screed of a very skewed but cool philosophy of food and life. Shopsin is a self-invented master cook and master of his small but soulful restaurant space; he personal cooked up a menu of over 900 items. He's famous for things like his pancakes, which he proudly states that he uses frozen Aunt Jemima pancake batter, because he used to make it from scratch...but this stuff is just as good so why bother?! He loves being a contrarian, something I can get with.

Some basic things I've extracted from culinary school he discovered for himself, and took that knowlege in very odd, creative directions. Part of the reason for his large menu, he claims, is that he doesn't measure anything, and no dish ever comes out the same twice -- he'd rather a customer order different things every time so he's not responsible for consistency.

In recent years he's moved operations to a stall in the Essex Market, which happens to be about a 10 minute walk from my front door. I zipped over there for lunch, but...he's closed Mondays, according to his website! Drat! He has 5 kids, now all adults, and wrote a lot about raising them in the restaurant. In the book, he also discussed why he had kids: it's an excuse to live your life a 2nd time with out the falseness of nostalgia.

ADDENDA
Weird, I'm losing weight, feel healthy and positive, and yet I'm worried that I'm eating way too many sweets lately. This morning I was 221.8 pounds, I don't think I've ever lost weight while not pro-actively trying to lose it. I'd say, baaaah, I'll probably gain it back in a week or something, but I'm seeing Ilsa tomorrow and don't want her to scold me for my fat-person way of thinking. My secret plan is to feed her lots of pumpkin pie until she weighs more than me.

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, organic cornflakes with good milk, banana, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:30, spring rolls, mashed taro treasure boxes, mock shrimp in rice paper, mini steamed rice in lotus leaf, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Since Shopsins was not available, made it to Chinatown for some vegetarian dim sum.

PM SNACK: 4:15pm, 2 homemade chocolate chip cookies, .25 bowl, hunge 4/5

PM SNACK: 6pm, boca burger on rye, small portion of rice and beans, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Got hungry waiting for B to show up.

DINNER: 7:45pm, hot italian sausage cooked in homemade kraut and cider, 1 homemade chocolate chip cookie with ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 2/5
Sauteed onion and apple before searing the sausage. Still, didn't enjoy it that much because just wasn't hungry enough.