Pizza geekfest

Volunteered at the Astor Center today on a pretty excellent pizza class from this guy, really impressive. First a short walking tour of some classic food supply shops on Grand Street, Little Italy, then to the kitchen where we made dough and banged out a series of pizzas. It was wonderful to talk to and relate to a guy who has similar passion for pizza as myself, but clearly knows much more, has much more experience, and can cook pizza much better.

Since his class was geared toward home cooking, we used a fresh rather than aged dough, in ovens running between 500-600 on stones. He demonstrated a straight-ahead marg similar in style to L's, then a white pie redolent in rosemary and potato, similar to R's at the Prospect Heights restaurant. At the end of class, he demonstrated a dessert pie which at first had me doubting -- he was using tallegio, a cheese that I love, but the only pie with it I had was at Otto, and it was just not working. But Mark's application of the cheese was nice and light, and he matched it with a little bit of thinly sliced pear, honey, and truffle oil. Oh my, this guy knows what he's doing.

I talked with him a bit, we both confessed our love for Stouffer's french bread pizza, he's very much a Totonno's guy (like L) and our feelings on various pizza topics like Franny's price-point, the recent pizza trend, our shared passion for Pepe's clam pie. He does a pizza roundtable in his home for his friends, I could only hope to someday be invited -- a pizza-geek's wet dream.

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, organic chex with organic dead milk, 1 chocolate chip cookie, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH 11am-4pm, taste of different cheeses and salamis, various tiny wedges of many pizzas, taste of 5 wine paring, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER; 7pm, bulgogi, dumplings, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, a couple of spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream