Gravy On A Pizza?

That's what some call Sauce on a pizza or pasta in New York . 

Many years ago, back in New York, I took a class on Journalism. I thought that I would make a great writer. As you probably have noticed, I didn't become a great writer. But, one thing that I did learn from that class was how to create a good, if not a great headline. I've never forgotten that lesson in class.

The school that I was attending put out a school Paper every week called "The Campus Realm", so the professor decided that we should all write a headline that would capture the reader from the start and make them want to read the rest of the article, and it had to be of great interest and importance to the students. He gave us a fictitious scenario to write about, that Timothy Leary, the man who experimented with LSD had died and that the entire faculty was attending the funeral. Of course he had not died at that time, but this was the scenario he gave us. He was trying to teach us the importance of a headline. He gave us fifteen minutes to create greatness.

I have to admit that it was a challenge. Needless to say that we all failed to write the great headline. Oh, there were some good ones like; LSD Gone Forever, or Timothy Leary, Above and Beyond, Timothy Leary on High...and many more. When we were all done reading our headlines, the professor said that they were all good but not great. He stood up and went to the blackboard, and as he wrote a headline in very large letters he said; "The one headline that would be of interest to all students was";

Headline: 

"NO SCHOOL TODAY"

 Faculty attending funeral for Timothy Leary

When you buy a pizza from your favorite place (or cheapest) guaranteed the sauce comes out of a #10 can marked, “Pizza Sauce.” It has all the excitement and individuality of a cold bowl of oatmeal. Further, I can guarantee that your pizza sauce experience is summed up in these three words, “Sauce is sauce". If you tasted one sauce you tasted them all. Wrong!

I lived in New York in the early 1960’s. Pizza was sold almost everywhere, (uptown, downtown) even from a vendor tucked away behind a sliding glass window in a building along the sidewalk. New York has the most pizzerias per capita than any other city in the United States, or maybe, even the world.

So, what is the perfect pizza sauce? How do you make the “Perfect Pizza Sauce”? That great New York Pizza Sauce that everyone talks about?  Let’s first talk about the tomatoes themselves. Many people, especially the chefs on the cooking channels talk about using San Marzano tomatoes only. These are tomatoes that are grown only in the San Marzano Valley in Italy. This valley has rich volcanic soil. I haven’t been too impressed with the San Marzano’s lately. But I still use them every once in a while. So what tomatoes should you use? It’s up to you. Just stay away from the prepared tomato sauce in jars unless you like chemicals and salt and preservatives. I am going to show you how to make a great and easy no cook New York pizza sauce, one that’s healthier for you and tastes great.

One thing I learned about pizza sauce in New York was that the old places, the ones that were established in the fifties and sixties, some of which are still there like Johnny's pizza in Mt Vernon or Patsy’s on 1^st. These were established seventy, eighty years ago. The reason that they are still there is because they make a great pie (pizza). They serve a tomato sauce on their pizzas that have character. What I mean is that it isn't thin or really thick either. It looks and tastes like sweet and fresh tomatoes all ground up. It is delicious. So, lets get started…

Pick up a can of whole peeled plum tomatoes, your choice. For this recipe I’m using my favorite Tomatoes, “Nina” Italian Peeled Plum Tomatoes in a 35 ounce can. These are picked and processed in Italy and imported to the United States. I get them at Central Market in Mill Creek Washington. Beware of marketing scams like Italian Style instead of Italian. Italian style doesn't mean anything. I could grow tomatoes in Poland and call them Italian Style. It’s subjective. Cento has now come out with "Italian Style" on their label. Without knowing I picked up a can to make sauce. The only can I could find was Cento Italian Style Tomatoes. When I opened the can, water spilled everywhere. I was expecting tomatoes in puree.

When I contacted them, I complained that the tomatoes were not plum tomatoes and that they were full of seeds and were packed in water and not in tomato puree as they usually had done in the past. I was told that these tomatoes were grown in California and not in Italy, but that they were Italian Style. Don't get me wrong, there are some great tomatoes grown in California but they are not what I was led to believe, Italian Style. what the hell does that mean? 

(Note): Beware of marketing gimmicks. There is a brand out there calling themselves “San Marzano Brand”, which are grown in California. They put the word “brand” so small that you can barely read it. So, be sure of what you are buying. Always buy whole peeled plum tomatoes. Here is a hint; when you pick up a can of Whole Plum Tomatoes in Puree, shake the can. If it sounds like a lot of liquid, choose another brand. Maybe one that doesn't say; "Italian Style".

DON’T MAKE A SAUCE. That means don’t cook it. The tomatoes will cook on the pizza in the oven. If you cook your sauce first, it’s going to cook again on the pizza turning it brown and…not good. Look at how overcooked some sauces are. Remember that during the canning process, the tomatoes are heated once before sealing, then if you cook the sauce, that’s heating #2, and then when you cook the pizza that’s #3. The best places don’t do this. This is one step that will save you a lot of time. Lets get started...

Open the can of Tomatoes in Puree and pour them into a bowl

Next comes pizza sauce therapy. Crush the tomatoes completely by hand. This is a good time to 'Meditate'. If you like large chunks of tomatoes then don't crush them to much. But for a good sauce, crush them really well. You'll find this is relaxing and a great muscle builder. 

Some people use an Immersion mixer. If you like a smoother sauce, go ahead, just don't get carried away. But do this before you start adding everything else. Here is a picture of an Immersion Mixer in case you've never used one.

Next, dice up two medium to large size garlic cloves and put them in the sauce.

 Add 1/2 to 3/4 Tablespoons of Oregano and Basil. Add more or less your call.

 Cut up four Basil Leaves either small chop or julieinned and add them to the sauce.

 Add 1/4 to 1/2 Tablespoon of Chili Pepper Flakes. Your choice.

 Next, add 1 teaspoon of Salt and 1 teaspoon Black Pepper.

 Next add a good handful of Parmesan Cheese

Now add 3 Tablespoons of good Extra Virgin Olive Oil. 

 This is what your bowl of sauce should look like.

 Stir together all of the ingredients until completely blended.

 TA DA! Pizza Sauce.

 Cover and place into the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. Take it out and bring to room temperature before building your pizza. If the sauce is cold, the top of the dough is much colder than the bottom and you can end up with a thin layer of dough near the sauce that is gummier and less cooked than the rest of the dough. Also, when you spread the sauce on the pie, put a little less in the center because the liquid tends to pool there. 

Some people like to add sugar to the sauce because some like a sweeter sauce. If you want to, go ahead just start out with a small amount of sugar, stir well and taste. Then adjust accordingly. Some add sugar because it cuts down on the acidity of the tomatoes. Your choice, but I will tell you that I don't add sugar to my sauce. If you use good tomatoes you won't need the sugar because Italian Tomatoes are sweet, not like the tomatoes that you may be used too.

Remember, when it comes to Pizza Sauce...less is more.

                                                                                          Don Joseph Clementi      

                                                                                                      10/2012

Cast Iron Skillet Pizza

What kind of pizza leaves a thirty five year impression? Let me describe it to you. The crust is slightly charred. It has a crisp outer layer, but inside it's airy and light. The toppings aren't piled high but evenly distributed and are perfectly balanced. It's sweet, salty, full flavored but not greasy. The tomatoes burst with flavor. Each bite makes you hungrier for the next. The quote above is from Jeff Varasano. His Pizzeria was voted 'Best Pizza in Atlanta' for 2012.
                                                                                                             

My grandmother and grandfather both came from Palermo Sicily so I was raised in an ethnic Italian home. At the time, my mother had Multiple Sclerosis and needed family and hospital care so I lived with my grandparents because my mother would come home to their house on the weekends. All of the family would gather there every Sunday to eat dinner, visit with mom and prepare the food.

Grandma would cook small ten inch pizzas in an old stove that was in the cellar. She would make ten or twenty pies for everybody to eat while they cooked the dinner. These pies weren't fancy by any means. Just simple food. A crust with homemade crushed canned tomatoes that she canned herself, and some Parmesan cheese. That's it. Simple. But a taste that I will never forget or will ever be able to duplicate no matter how hard I try. But, I'm getting closer. Mom passed away shortly thereafter and the family sort of moved on.  Sunday dinners happened less and less and after Grandma passed away, dinners were no more.

I was sixteen when I got my first job in New York hauling flower sacks down to the basement of Patsy's Pizzeria on 1st Avenue. I guess that I fell in love with pizza then. If you ever go to New York, you have got to have a pizza at Patsy's. One of the best in the city. Over the years I've worked in many pizzerias and even owned one. So I guess that you could say that pizza has been a part of my life for over fifty years.

I retired from "Al & Tony's Pizzeria" my restaurant on Vashon Island Washington. Vashon Island sits in the Puget Sound off the coast of Seattle. When I moved to Vashon, there wasn't any pizza on the island. You had to go and take a ferry ride to Seattle to buy one, or get a frozen one at the Thriftway. So, I opened the only pizzeria on the island. By the time that I retired, you could get pizza everywhere on the island...even at the Shell station. Go figure. Now I stay home and enjoy home life with my wonderful wife and cook all kinds of food, especially pizza..

Now, after you retire, and after you've been making pizzas for so many years, you get used to the "Old Pizza Pan" ways of making pizzas, so you go out to a commercial restaurant supply house and buy a few good pans and a pizza peel, a pizza knife and and every essential pizza making equipment that you could think of, and before you know it, you've spent a few hundred dollars and you leave there with enough equipment to open another pizzeria. At least you didn't buy the wood fire pizza oven...Old habits are hard to lose.

Every Wednesday night is pizza night at our house. It's been that way for years. I guess I've made every style of pizza that you could think of and I have to admit, they're getting better each time. But, tonight I decided to try something different...no, not a different type of pizza but a different way of baking the pie. I'm using a cast iron skillet. I had never tried this in all the years of making pizza, so this night is a first. As this is my first attempt at a food blog, please try to overlook any mistakes because I swear that I will get better.

I set my oven at 500 degrees and let it come up to temp. On most electric ovens, the electronics won't let you go above 500 degrees, which is about 300 degrees short of what is needed to cook a good and fast pizza. Try baking cookies at 75 degrees instead of 375 and see how it goes. High heat is needed to quickly char the crust before it has a chance to dry out and turn it into a biscuit. So set your oven as high as you can. Still, 500 degrees is hot enough for home cooking.

As I got ready to start the pizza, I saw all of the pizza equipment that was sitting in the pantry ready to come out and take over. Throwing a blanket over all of my fancy food equipment that I purchased, I took out my cast iron skillet. I can't tell you the guilt that I felt.

I oiled the pan with olive oil and sprinkled a bit of corn meal in to the pan, just to make sure that the pizza wouldn't stick.

I prepared the dough and got it ready to put it into the skillet. 

I placed the dough into the skillet and pushed it out to conform to the pan.

After the dough was in the pan, I turned a burner on the stove top to medium high. On my stove which is electric, that's a #7 on the knob. For a gas stove use whatever you feel will work.

Now here is my first screw up, I was supposed to use a fork to punch holes in the dough before I put the sauce on, so that the dough wouldn't get all bubbly while pre-cooking on the burner. The reason for cooking the dough first on the stove top, is that it cooks the bottom of the crust partially and sets the crust. Just remember to poke the dough before you put the sauce on and put it on the burner. 

Here's the photo of the raw dough with sauce on it while it is being poked. I was trying to Fix my screw up.

I set the skillet on the burner to cook the bottom of the crust. I found that about 5 minutes was plenty of time to get it done.

Earlier I had partially pre-cooked the sausage, which I had removed from the casings,along with peppers and onions and two cloves of chopped garlic, and set it aside so that they were ready to add to the pizza. While the pizza was cooking on the stove top, I got my toppings ready. The dough didn't bubble with the sauce on it while it was cooking on the stove. Thank you Pizza God...

Once the crust was done on the stove top, I added some mozzarella cheese

Then the toppings

and more cheese

At this point I added some oregano and basil, but you don't see it because the photo was too blurry to add. I placed the skillet into the 500 degree oven, which you won't see either because the photo didn't turn out. (I promise that I will take better photos in the future. I promise to take better photos in the future). I cooked the pie for fifteen minutes and pulled it out when it was done. Oh, and remember to use hot pads when taking the skillet out of the oven, or you will be dancing around in the kitchen screaming and waving your hands in the air while trying to catch your pizza and teaching everyone present your new vocabulary...

Here's what it looked like when I first took it out of the oven. (notice the hot pads)?

Here is a shot of the pizza from a different angle...see, already I'm learning.

The pizza slid easily out of the pan and onto the cutting board. As you can see, the bottom of the crust was perfectly done. Notice the char...

Growing up in New York I was a die hard thin crust pizza eater. I would take the slice and fold it in my hand and eat it like a New Yorker... (if you didn't fold, they knew that you were from Kansas) I thought everyone made thin crust and folded their slice,until Grandma showed me what a Sicilian pizza looked and tasted like. It had a thicker crust with a home made crushed tomato sauce. Since that day, all of my pies have a thick and airy crust, which is slightly charred, and has a crisp outer layer, but inside it's airy and light. It's sweet, salty, full flavored but not greasy, and I make my own hand crushed tomato sauce.

The end result

I'm glad that I didn't buy the wood fire pizza oven.

If you haven't tried this way of making pizza, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. One more thing, a cast iron skillet is a must to have for all kinds of food. Make sure that it's seasoned and food will not stick to it. You can buy them new, or check out garage sales. You will be amazed at the results. 

Anyone care to buy unused pizza equipment...?

                                                                                              Don Joseph Clementi, Pizzaiolo