Why is there mustard on my hamburger?

I know what you are saying “hamburgers are not New York food, so what on earth could this post be about.”.   Well, for as long as I remember I have wanted to know why everywhere in America (perhaps the world) except the New York City metropolitan area puts mustard (and ketchup) on hamburgers, but in New York it is just straight ketchup.

As a child I just assumed you only put ketchup on a hamburger.  Years of eating at our local Burger King and McDonalds had taught me just that.  I was first alerted to the issue of mustard on a hamburger at the ripe old age of 10 or 11.  In those days I attended sleep away camp during the summer in the Catskill mountains about an 1-2 hours from my house.  For those of you who attended sleep away camp, you know as I do ,that the food is one step above animal feed.  Made even worse by the fact that it’s usually served and prepared by kids who are to old to be campers and to lame to find something better to do over the summer .  So when an opportunity for outside food arises one must take advantage of the situation.  In my case I was lucky enough to have a friend with an older sister at our camp.  One day she returned from an outing with McDonalds for us.  You can only imagine our excitement!  However the first bite of our hamburgers instantly led to disappointment and then vomiting, for low and behold there was mustard on our hamburgers.  I remember thinking to myself, “how is this possible.  Who in their right mind puts mustard on their hamburger”.   

Anyway, years went by and as I got older I began to travel the country only to discover that my mustard laden hamburger was not unique to upstate New York.  In fact in every city I have lived in or traveled to I discovered they put mustard on hamburgers.  After years of having to throw my hamburger in the garbage due to my general distaste of mustard on a hamburger I finally learned to order a hamburger “with ketchup only”.   So with all that said, it is clear that the Ketchup only hamburger is a unique staple of the New York City metropolitan area and hence it falls by my definition into the category of New York food or New York cuisine.

To find out a little more about why New York dresses their hamburgers with ketchup only, I decided to try and contact Burger King and McDonalds.  Burger King unfortunately offers no way to email the company (sad isn’t it)   I wrote them a hand written letter but I don’t expect a response in the near future.   McDonalds does have email contacts posted and I sent them a mail asking my question.  The response I got back although appreciated is mind numbingly obvious and I was hoping to get a more detail on the history of this food pairing.  The response to my letter is below.  Hopefully someone who reads this post can answer my question better.   Why is there mustard on my hamburger?

Hello Jason:

Thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald's. We truly appreciate customer feedback and welcome this opportunity to share some information with you.

Approximately 85 percent of McDonald's restaurants are owned and operated by independent businesspeople. As independent owners, McDonald's franchise owners have the authority to make certain operating decisions as they relate to their McDonald's restaurant operations. Because of regional preference mustard in not added to the hamburgers in the New York area, please feel free to ask for mustard when you order a hamburger.

Again, thank you for contacting McDonald's. We hope to have the opportunity of serving you again soon under the Golden Arches.

Kayla
McDonald's Customer Response Center

Grandma Bea’s New York Chopped Liver

As we approach  Thanksgiving day I have been agonizing over how I could do a relevant New York food post.  Finally it occurred to me that my grandmother always made one dish on Thanksgiving that is fairly unique to New York kosher deli’s and not something you find at most other Thanksgiving gathering.  That dish is chopped liver.

Before I share, I will tell you that this recipe is almost sacred in my family.  I only publicly divulge it here because I have accepted the fact that there is a pretty small market for chopped liver and this recipe, however good, will not make anybody in my family a millionaire.  That said, in honor of my Grandma Bee who is no longer with us and the Thanksgiving holiday I present to you Grandma Bea’s Famous New York Chopped Liver.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Ingredient list:

• 1 pound of chicken liver
• 3 hard boiled eggs
• 1 large  (or 2 small) onions chopped
• 1/4 olive oil
• Kosher salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)

In a frying pan sauté onions with olive oil until they are translucent.  At the same time bring a pot of water to a boil (enough to cover the chicken livers).   Add salt and the chicken livers and cook until the livers are no longer red (approximately 10 minutes).  Place cooked livers, sautéed onions, hard boiled eggs, salt and pepper in a food processor and mix together until you reach your desired consistency.

#1 New York Pizza in Snohomish, WA

#1 New York Pizza is one of those places I have wanted to try for ages now. I found it via an internet search over a year ago but never had the time to drive 30 minutes north east of Seattle (i.e. middle of nowhere) to try a slice of pizza. Lo and behold today I found myself with a free hour and I figured I would make the drive.

The user reviews for #1 New York Pizza are promising. Out of the 10 reviews I could find only one user who had a negative comment and almost all the reviewers claimed to be from the New York area. However the one negative reviewer did seem to give the best description which made me a little nervous because this wouldn’t be the first time that supposed ex-pat New Yorkers have raved about a restaurant that in the end did not live up to the hype.

Now when I said #1 New York Pizza was in the middle of nowhere I was not joking. If you blink while driving you will pass this place. It is a tiny shop located off Highway 9 in Snohomish, Washington. The owners claim to be New Yorkers and the second one of the owners opens their mouth, any questions about their authenticity can be thrown out the window. I was lucky to meet the woman of this Husband and Wife owned restaurant and if I didn’t know any better I would think I was talking to Doris Roberts' character in Everybody Loves Raymond (Marie Barone). Sure enough, Relita, the woman I met in the restaurant and her husband Tony are “off the boat” from Queens, NY. She knew enough about New York that when I mentioned my hometown she began to utter the word “upstate” but I quickly cut her off because I find that comment borderline offensive! Regardless of the quality of the food I can tell you that the second I stepped foot in this place and talked with the owner I felt at home.

After meeting Relita I wanted so very badly to love the food at #1 New York Pizza but in the end I have mixed results for you. The pizza is sold by the pie or by the slice which is certainly a good start. Plus they have no tolerance for off-the-wall toppings (that’s right Hawaiian pizza lovers … you will not get pineapple on your pizza here). However the slices I ordered really just didn’t live up to the name of this establishment. The dough had the right thickness but it was dense and bread-like. With what I know about pizza making my honest impression is that they don’t let their dough rise long enough. The sauce and cheese were ok and there were some remnants of New York pizza flavor hidden in my slice but overall it fell way short of my expectations.

The Cannoli I ordered was an entirely different story. When I ordered my Cannoli, Relita pulled out an empty fresh Cannoli shell. This is always a good sign. Relita also informed me that they order Polly-O ricotta cheese for the filling which is a common ricotta cheese back east. Finally to top it off they candy their own fruit. I was notably impressed with my first bite into the Cannoli. The shell was fresh and crispy and the filling was creamy with just the right amount of powdered sugar added. Overall this might be one of the best Cannoli’s I have had in the state of Washington.

So #1 New York Pizza is really a mixed bag. If you are looking for a little New York attitude and a fine Cannoli by all means make the drive. However if it is New York pizza you seek I think you might be better off saving the gas money and the environment and stay home and follow my New York pizza recipe listed in a previous post. I will also add there were many other items on the menu I wish I had a chance to try including a Sicilian pizza and a meatball parmesan hero. I am not sure if I will ever make it back to #1 New York Pizza but if you are ever in town tell Relita I say hi!

#1 New York Pizza

17809 State Rte 9 SE Ste 1

Snohomish, WA 98296-6302

Gastropolis – A New Book About New York City Food

I was doing one of my typical morning searches for all things New York food related and stumbled across a new book titled Gastropolis: Food and New York City (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History).  This book provides a historical perspective on New York cuisine.   I can’t tell you how excited I was to see another book touching on this topic.  After all to date the only similar book I’m aware of is Arthur Schwartz’s book Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Legendary Recipes.  Anyway the book is currently available for pre-order from Amazon.com.  I ordered my copy today. 

Here is a little more detail about the book from the Columbia university Press website:

“.. An irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage, Gastropolis explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food. Beginning with the origins of cuisine combinations, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book describes the nature of food and drink before the arrival of Europeans in 1624 and offers a history of early farming practices. Essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals. They share spice-scented recollections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and colorful vignettes of the avant-garde chefs, entrepreneurs, and patrons who continue to influence the way New Yorkers eat. …”

Fore a little more information check out the following Q&A session with the authors published in the New York Times.

• Answers About New York Food History: Part 1
• Answers About New York Food History: Part 2
• Answers About New York Food History: Part 3

Abbondanza Pizzeria in West Seattle

My visit to Abbondanza epitomizes many of the reasons why I write this bl0g. After all how many people love New York food enough to drag their wives all the way across town, on one of the rare occasions they get out of the house, to a pizza place? Or perhaps the real question I should be asking is how many wives would actually go!

I found Abbondanza after doing one of my semi-regular searches for New York food establishments. When I read some of the reviews for Abbondanza I was thoroughly excited. Several reviewers claimed this was some of the best New York style pizza in the northwest. When we arrived at the restaurant there was a crowd standing outside the door which is always a good sign. However we quickly discovered we had landed at Abbondanza on a night where the restaurant was having what appeared to be a private event. That said the host was very kind and had us wait at the Starbucks next door. He regularly came in to tell people their table was ready which by all accounts is pretty great customer service.

Once we were finally seated I was again excited, this time by the sight of the menu. Along with a list of various pizzas were some classic sandwiches and a few desserts I was eager to try, specifically the Cannoli. We ordered two pizzas, a Margherita and a "Alla Salsiccia". When the pizzas arrived they both looked terrific. The Margherita pizza was really just a plain cheese pizza. Beyond not using fresh mozzarella the pizza was supposed to come with basil but there was none on our pizza. Perhaps they were out of basil due to the large crowd. Regardless it was a small enough oversight that I was willing to look past it. The "Alla Salsiccia" pizza was loaded with toppings which was nice to see.

Unfortunately the flavor of the pizza did not live up to the hype I had conjured up in my head. The crust on the pizzas was actually pretty good. The crust was chewy and had a decent char on the bottom. However the sauce and cheese on the Margherita pizza were fairly bland and both lacked any real depth of flavor. Also there was way too much cheese on this pizza for me. As I indicated above the "Alla Salsiccia" pizza was loaded with toppings which was good on one hand, but on the other it had a tremendous amount of grease which made the dough soggy. Overall I can see why people think this is New York pizza. The thinness and texture of the dough certainly put it in the ballpark of New York pizza, but they certainly didn't hit it out of the park.

After our pizza I ordered a Cannoli, perhaps one of my favorite Italian pastries that are common in New York. To be completely honest the Cannoli looked great but it was not very good. The filling was ok but it had more of a cottage cheese texture instead of the creamy texture of most ricotta creams I grew up with. The worst part of the Cannoli was that they committed a faux pas by pre-filling the Cannoli which made the Cannoli shell little more then a soggy mush. If you are looking for a Cannoli I certainly wouldn't send you here. Perhaps had I gone earlier in the evening or a day when they first make them it would have been better.

For those that don't already know Abbondanza means abundance in Italian. What I will say about this restaurant, is that there is an abundance of customer service and an abundance of effort put into making their pizzas. Perhaps had we visited on a less crowded evening the quality would be even better. I really wanted to love Abbondanza, but in this New Yorker's mind they fell a little short of New York pizza and Cannoli gold.

Topolino's Offends Me as a New Yorker

Any expatriate New Yorker who lives in the Seattle area has probably had someone recommend Topolino's for New York Pizza. I understand why, it is on one of the busiest through streets in downtown Bellevue and the sign says "The True Taste of Brooklyn". However I am here to tell you that your friends have led you astray and that perhaps the sign is really trying to imply that it is the "True Taste" of Brooklyn, Ohio.

I have previously eaten at Topolino's and I was disappointed back then but I thought I should give it a try again before I go writing a disparaging blog post. The good news is that Topolino's looks and feels a lot like a New York Pizza place. It is a small restaurant with a counter and a few tables and chairs. It is nothing fancy and reminds me somewhat of the the nondescript pizza places I grew up going to. However that is where the similarities with New York pizza end.

On my most recent visit I ordered a small plain cheese pizza so I could evaluate the quality of the food. When I opened the box I was severely disappointed because it didn't even look like New York pizza. The outer crust had almost no rise to it and there was way to much oregano on the pizza. As for the taste, well, that was even more disappointing. The dough tasted like dense, stale bread, the sauce was overpowered by the flavor of Oregano and the cheese was bland. As I sit and look on other sites like Yelp or Citysearch I am actually blown away that anybody would call this New York pizza.

So as I stated in the title Topolino's offends me. It offends me as a pizza lover because the pizza is awful and it offends me as a New Yorker because they actually go as far as having a sign saying this is the "true taste of Brooklyn". So if you are thinking about going to Topolino's to find New York pizza, In the words of my Brooklyn comrades, FUH-GET ABOUT IT.

A Simple New York Pizza Recipe

I am fairly certain I swore in a previous post that I would never list a New York Pizza recipe on this site.  Mostly because it has been covered on countless blogs and web sites. But low and behold I made a great tasting pizza the other night and I thought it would be shameful to not share this fairly simple recipe with the world. 

This recipe covers a lot of ground that has been covered by others but simplifies the overall process.  I think you will find it can deliver tremendous results.

The Dough

The dough recipe simply follows Peter Reinhardt's recipe from his book The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.  You can find a legally reprinted copy of the recipe on the 101cookbooks.com blog posted here.  I have only a few points to add to the recipe:

• Follow the instructions regarding ingredient temperature religiously (i.e. refrigerate your flour and use ice cold water).
• Use the weight measurements and NOT the volume measurements (except in the case below).  I have found they give very different results. (Note that after you have made the dough a few times you will learn what it looks like and you can revert to the volume measurements for simplicity sake and adjust flour and water amounts as necessary till the the dough looks and feels as it should.
• Unless you have an incredibly accurate scale use volume measurements for salt and yeast.
• If using any olive oil at all use at most about an 1/8th a cup
• If using Sea Salt or Kosher salt be mindful of how much you use because you can quite easily kill the yeast if you use to much salt.
• Use high-gluten flour.
• Let you dough rise in the refrigerator for 2 days ( 1 day will work but 2 days seems to be the optimum time).

The Sauce

Pizza sauce is actually so simple but yet many people including myself tend to overcomplicate it.  At it's core a pizza sauce should be uncooked tomato pulp.  Here is the recipe that works for me (note this recipe makes enough sauce for two or three small 12-inch pizzas.  You can double the recipe as needed)

• 1 can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes ( I am currently using San Marzano Cento Organic Italian Peeled Tomatoes, DOP Certified)
• Purchase any Italian Tomato Press
• Pick the tomatoes out of the can (not the juice) and repeatedly run them through the press until you squeezed out all the pulp and juice and only have seeds in your waste bowl.
• Strain the tomato pulp and water until you are left with nothing but tomato pulp
• Add a teaspoon of Italian seasoning (or use fresh herbs)
• Add a pinch of sea salt and pepper
• optional: add a little garlic powder

That's it!

The Cheese

Very little effort is required for the cheese portion of this recipe.  All you need to do is buy the right ingredients.  I have been using the cheese blend listed below.

• Buffalo mozzarella (can be purchased at Costco here in Seattle)
• Whole Milk mozzarella (don't use part skim)
• Shredded Parmesan cheese (from a block)

Don't overdo the cheese.  New York style pizza does NOT have a blanket of cheese on it.

How to make it and bake it

For all the various components people have claimed are necessary to make a great New York pizza I have come to the conclusion that above all the main thing needed is high even heat.  So to bake your pizza properly (assuming you don't have a pizza oven)  you need two things:

• A pizza stone
• A gas grill that will fit the pizza stone (I use a Weber Spirit E-310)

Let the grill heat up for a good hour.  The thermometer on the front of the grill should be close to the max 600 degree mark.  I promise this technique will make a great tasting crust and deliver a great char on the bottom of the pizza.

To make your pizza first follow Peter Reinhardt's instructions on taking the dough out a couple hours prior to making the pizza.  To stretch the dough flour your peel (don't use corn meal ... no self respecting New York pizza place uses corn meal).  Place your finished dough on the peel and push down creating a flat disk.  Then slowly stretch the dough by pulling your hands apart and turning.  Repeat this movement till the dough is very thin.

Once your dough is stretched, top it with sauce and cheese.  Place the uncooked pizza pie on the pizza stone and close the grill.  Depending on how long you preheated the grill the pizza should cook in 3 - 6 minutes.  I recommend you turn the pizza once.

Caveats

Although the grill works great, it still has it's limitations.  In general I find that unlike my oven which has to much top heat (i.e. the cheese cooks before the dough), I find the grill is a little heavy on bottom heat.  So although the pizza cooks through I am not a 100% happy with the dough color I get on the top of the pizza.  That said I think this is the best you can do without owning a pizza oven or following Jeff Varasano's methods of altering your home oven (and probably violating your insurance policy).

Final thoughts

This recipe is actually really easy if you have the right tools.  It is a bit time consuming but not difficult from a recipe perspective.  There are countless other recipes on the web ranging from incredibly simple to Jeff Varasano's dissertation on pizza making.  I promise this recipe will deliver equal or greater results than most of the recipes out there in a reasonable amount of time.  You just might never need to search for a New York Pizza ever again.

Chinese Spareribs in Bellevue, WA

Whenever I think of New York Chinese food a few dishes and condiments come to mind. Specifically chop suey, lo mein, wonton soup, duck sauce, fried wonton crisps, and best of all spareribs. However for some unknown reason if you try to find this food in the other parts of the country the typical Chinese restaurant employee looks at you like you just left the nut house. Granted this speaks to the true authenticity of theses dishes ( in relation to China) but I don't care about authentic Chinese food. I only care about authentic New York Chinese Food. Now you can imagine the overall sense of joy I felt when during a random web search I uncovered a review of a Chinese restaurant in Bellevue, WA called Best Wok that supposedly had Spareribs!

So what does one do when your wife says she wants Chinese food for dinner and you know a place that has spareribs that is 20 minutes away. Simple you lie and tell her it is just as close as the other Chinese restaurant and drive really fast!

I ordered several things from Best Wok to get an overall sense of their food. On the menu for the evening was wonton soup, spareribs, orange chicken, and roast pork fried rice. The wonton soup was close to New York style but not exactly on target. The soup tasted good and had loads of roast pork but the wontons where not typical New York Wontons. While the filling was good, they use the thinner wonton wrappers while most New York Chinese Food establishments use the thicker wonton wrappers which I prefer. One thing they did not have was fried wonton crisps to use in your soup like crackers. That tasty addition seems to evade me no matter where I live. The spareribs had the right flavor and appear to be cooked in the right sauce however the ribs themselves where larger than I am used to and seems a bit fattier. I am not expert in cuts of pork ribs but either the ribs I grew up with were not true spareribs or the ribs from best wok were a different cut. Either way I was just delighted to have ribs that came even close to the flavor I love. As for the the orange chicken to be completely honest it was a bit soggy for me. Perhaps that was just because of the 20 minute drive in each direction I had to make to get it. The roast pork fried rice was good but was on the salty side.

Net-net the food at Best Wok was pretty good. Best of all it is as close to a Chinese sparerib I have been able to find in all of Washington. So if you are expat New Yorker living in the Seattle area looking for the New York style Chinese food I recommend you give Best Wok a try.

Best Wok Menu

Do You Remember Linden's Cookies?

The other day I was sitting in front of the candy machine at work looking for a a tasty snack. I decided on a cookie and purchased a "GRANDMA'S" brand Chocolate Chip cookie. As I was munching on my cookies at my desk it occurred to me how crappy these cookies were and I slowly drifted off down memory lane to a time when a prepackaged bag of cookies tasted great. But what were those cookies? Then I remembered ... they were Linden's cookies!

Anybody who grew up in New York or even the tri-state area knows what Linden's cookies are. They are a hard chocolate chip cookie that come 3 per a pack. They were sold in probably every school cafeteria in the New York metropolitan area. The last time I had Linden's cookies was on a Jet Blue flight about 4 years ago (prior to that my last Linden's cookie was probably in High School). Unfortunately Jet Blue no longer offers Linden's cookies as an option. So if anybody with any authority from Jet Blue Airlines is reading this please consider adding Linden's cookies back as a snack option on your flights.

Now it turns out that Linden's cookies are unavailable on the west coast. Or at least I was unable to find them. So what does one do when they can't buy Linden's cookies locally. Simple you just go on line to the Linden's Cookies web site and order them! You can have a box of 18 chocolate chip packages delivered straight to your door for $18 plus $6.95 for shipping and handling. That works out to about $1.50 a pack which isn't unreasonable considering my crappy "GRANDMA'S" cookies cost me almost $1.

When my cookies first arrived I was so excited. The brown and white package looked exactly as I remembered. However the first thing I noticed when I opened the package was the cookies seemed infinitely smaller than I recalled. But my wife reminded me that I had probably grown quite a bit since I regularly ate these cookies. "Besides" she said "size doesn't matter!" After that comment I was left with that uncomfortable feeling that she was lying to me and perhaps these cookies would not be as good as they once were.

Low and behold my first bite was heavenly. Maybe the cookies are smaller or maybe not but they still tasted amazing. Each bite was like a trip down memory lane. So next time you are standing in front of a candy machine looking for a cookie, turn around and head straight back to your desk and order yourself a box of Linden's Cookies and take a trip down memory lane.

Lindens' Cookies

Linden's Cookies, Inc.
25 Brenner Drive, Congers, NY 10920
Tel: 1-800-660-5051 Fax: 845-268-5055
Email: info@lindencookies.com

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 3)

Hopefully by now you have read the other two segments on making New York pizza.  We have covered everything from some simple not well known basics (i.e. using high gluten flour)  to a very complicated recipe from Jeff Varasano.  And if you are anything like me you have tried all of these techniques in varying combinations and had some great pizzas and some bad ones.

So this final post on the subject is really about introducing consistency into your pizza recipe so you can turn out a great New York pie over and over again.  After reading all these resources it is easy to see that baking is as much a science as it is an art.   When one is dealing with Art and Science it is best to learn from a master.  Who better to turn to then the master baker himself Peter Reinhart.

The Perfect recipe | Instant Yeast | Consistency

After years of making pizzas using the previously mentioned resources I stumbled across Peter Reinhart's book titled The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. Peter Reinhart is a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and a professional baker.  In his book is a very detailed recipe for pizza dough that gets really specific on some of the techniques we have discussed.  Even better when you try this recipe you will get amazingly consistent results.  I won't reprint the recipe here but it has been reprinted on other blogs.  If you want to see a scaled back version of the recipe check out Heidi Swanson's 101 cookbooks blog.

The first thing I took away from Peter's book was what yeast to use.  Until I read Peter's book I was stuck between using Active Dry Yeast or Using a Sourdough yeast culture as described in Jeff's recipe.   I always got inconsistent results with ADY and I found Jeff's Sourdough technique to be immensely time consuming (note if you are interested in trying the sourdough technique you can read Ed Wood's Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker's Handbook).  Peter's recipe was the first I had seen exclusively calling for instant yeast.   I have found instant yeast much easier to use and my dough appears to come out much better.   Much like high gluten flour, instant yeast is hard to come by in your typical supermarket.  I purchased mine from our local Cash and Carry. 

The next great part of Peter's recipe is the wetness of the dough.  Peter describes what the dough should look and feel like better than any recipe I have read.  This is really helpful since a lot of baking involves just knowing what the dough should feel like.  In addition the weights and volume measurements he provides give truly consistent results.

Finally Peter gives very precise instructions on rise times and locations.  I think this is the most critical and important component of this recipe.   Until I read Peter's recipe I was all over the map with my rise times and where I allowed the dough to rise.  Dominic's book calls for a 2 hour rise prior to refrigeration where Jeff's recipe has a completely different solution.   If I follow Peter's recipe to the "T" my dough comes out perfect almost every time.  Even better the dough is VERY easy to work with!

Closing thoughts

If  you decided to embark on the quest to make a great New York pizza I hope these past few posts help you along the way.  To recap some of the key points in these posts:

• Try and find high gluten flour it will help you make dough that stretches with out breaking
• Let your dough rise for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator  (I prefer3 days)
• Your dough should be fairly wet with a hydration level of around 60% or higher
• Make your sauce from uncooked San Marzano tomatoes
• High Heat is critical to a successful pizza
• Consider using instant yeast

Until next time happy New York pizza making!

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 2)

In our last post we reviewed Dominick A. Deangelis' book The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes.   If you read the book you will quickly learn that Dominic is an engineer by training and his book is peppered with some of the science behind pizza making.  Well being an engineer and being obsessed with making pizza must have some correlation because not only do I also have an engineering background but so does the author of our next resource Jeff Varasano.

Jeff Varasano originally posted his multi-page dissertation titled Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe in 2006.  It has since become one of the most referenced resources for making New York Pizza on the web.     The rest of this post discusses some of the highlights of Jeff's recipe/dissertation.

00 Flour | Wet Dough | SAN MARZANO TOMATOES | High Heat

One of the first things Jeff discusses in his document is that you don't need high gluten flour to create a great pizza.  Jeff discusses some other options including using 00 flour which is a super fine Italian flour.  This was news to me since before I read Jeff's article I assumed you would fail with anything other than high gluten flour.  Jeff provides additional methods on how to knead the dough to develop the gluten even with lower protein flour.  00 flour is usually only available in Italian import stores.  I buy my 00 flour from DeLaurenti Specialty Food and Wine in Seattle's Pike Place Market

The next eye opener for me was the amount of water in Jeff's recipe which results in a very wet dough.  This was very different from my older recipes which were much drier. Jeff suggests hydration levels of over 60% (in baker's percents) compared to the 50% in my older recipes.   This really made  a huge difference in my pizzas both in flavor and my ability to work the dough.

Another little tidbit which I already knew but is quintessential for any pizza maker is that a good pizza sauce is really just crushed uncooked tomatoes.  And specifically the best pizza sauces use imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes.  The reason for using uncooked tomatoes is that the oven is so hot that the tomatoes cook while on the pizza in the oven.  If you precook the sauce you are basically cooking the sauce twice.  This flies in the face of most peoples first instinct which is to make a cooked tomato sauce.  Like the 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes are sometimes difficult to come by but I have found them in most high-end supermarkets including Whole Foods.  In the summers I actually grow my own tomatoes and make a sauce using the Velox Tomato Press / Tomato Strainer.

Last but not least Jeff describes the need for VERY high heat.  I don't think I appreciated how critical this was to success until I read Jeff's article and tried using a high heat oven myself.  The difference in your pizza will be dramatic.  Now if you follow Jeff's suggestion you will be breaking the lock off your oven door and running it on cleaning cycle (not a good idea).  If you want an alternative check out Kiko Denzer's book titled Build Your Own Earth Oven, 3rd Edition: A Low-Cost Wood-Fired Mud Oven; Simple Sourdough Bread; Perfect Loaves.  I cooked my first "high heat" pizza in one of these home built ovens and it was fantastic.  I plan on building one in my own yard.

There are lots of other great tidbits in Jeff's article.  I highly suggest you read this dissertation on pizza making if you want to make a great New York pizza pie.  Here is the link one last time for everybody.

Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe

In the next post we will discuss the final reference that opened my eyes to pizza making and some closing thoughts.

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 1)

Ok I just called the few people who read my blog stupid. In the marketing and PR world the only person who would be called stupid would be me!

But seriously folks what does one do after they have identified the New York food they crave and discovered there are no restaurants in their area that fulfill this craving. Well you do the very next best thing which is try to make it yourself.

Now I will be the first to tell you that it is very difficult to make food at home that tastes like what you can find at a restaurant. Reasons abound, but the biggest are equipment, ingredients, temperature control, and last but not least LOT'S of salt and butter. I believe it was Anthony Bourdain in his book Kitchen Confidential who enlightens us to how butter and salt are key to restaurant food! All that said I still think with a bit of effort one can come pretty close to restaurant style in their house.

What I want to talk briefly about is making New York pizza at home. Now before you all go expecting a thirty page dissertation on pizza making I will just say this subject has been covered and recovered by countless people in countless books, blogs, and papers. So I will just cover some of the highlights and link to my favorite recipes and sources of information. This started as one post but as I started writing I quickly discovered it would be better if I broke it into parts.

High Gluten flour refrigerated Rise Even Heat

The first time I tried to make a New York pizza I actually tried to fly dough home from my favorite place in New York. That didn't work and I will leave it at that!

After that debacle I searched Amazon.com for a book on the subject of pizza making and came across a little gem called The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes by Dominick A. Deangelis. When it was finally delivered to my house I was amazed to see a tiny book that looks like it was printed at Kinkos! But in true keeping with the age old saying "never judge a book by its cover" this book had some VERY valuable information.

The first thing this book teaches you is that the secret to why Pizza dough stretches as it does is because of gluten. Gluten is a composite of proteins that gives bread and pizza dough it's elasticity. Hence if you want your pizza dough to stretch without breaking you need a lot of gluten. Since gluten is a function of protein a high protein flour can be key to developing gluten. Hence this book explains that many pizza places use high gluten flour (In a later post we will discuss other ways to develop gluten without high protein flour). So if you are taking your first stab at pizza making I HIGHLY suggest you go find yourself some high gluten flour.

Now the problem is that high gluten flour is very hard to find. I have searched every supermarket far and wide and have yet to find it. In my early days I actually purchased my high gluten flour from a bakery/cheese shop on Divisadaro in San Francisco. This isn't something they actually sold and I think they just gave it to me at cost. But once I really got going I wanted a more steady supply and they only place I could find was the local Cash and Carry. The great thing is they actually sell high gluten flour. The downside is it comes in very large fifty pound bags! Another option is to order it online from companies like King Arthur, however be prepared to pay more for shipping than you paid for the flour.

The next great "a ha" moment in this book is that you should slowly (as long as 3 days) let your dough rise in the refrigerator (sometimes called retarded rise). By letting the dough rise in the refrigerator you slow the fermentation process down. This allows the flavors to better develop and totally changes the texture of the end product. If you want chewy pliable New York Pizza dough a refrigerated rise is a must.

Finally there is the notion of having even heat distribution. Basically when you cook a pizza you want all parts of it to cook at an equal temperature otherwise the bottom might burn before the cheese melts or vice versa. You also want all sides of the pizza to cook evenly. Throw a thermometer in any home oven and you will discover temperatures vary widely within the oven. Hence a pizza stone is critical since it helps distribute the heat evenly below the pizza.

That is it for part 1. In my next post I will move to Jeff Varasano's "dissertation" on New York pizza making and discuss cooking with very high temperatures, higher water content, and using imported 00 flour.

Tat's East Coast Delicatessen in Seattle

Probably the easiest way to locate New York food in your area is to find restaurants who use New York vernacular that is descriptive of New York in the title. For example you might find a restaurant called New York Pizza or Gotham Subs. You know what I am talking about. I am sure just like me you have veered off a highway going ninety miles an hour just because you saw a sign for some sort of New York food. And that my friends is what led me straight to Tat's East Coast Delicatessen.

Now lets focus for a second on the particular vernacular used in this case ... "East Coast". Now anybody who is from New York knows that "East Coast" in general is used to describe a place that is like New York, perhaps close to New York and whose foods are similar, but yet is not New York. These "East Coast" places like Philadelphia and Boston have some great food of their own and they have some foods that are about as close to New York style as you can get but when push comes to shove they are really just distant cousins or faraway suburb of New York. And so it goes without saying the "East Coast" title always raises a slight red flag.

So now that I offended a good deal of people (like any good New Yorker should) lets get back to the task at hand. Tat's Deli is owned an operated by two gentleman who grew up in Philadelphia and New Jersey (i.e "East Coast") who missed their hometown foods. So they decided to open up a restaurant that would serve their favorite foods in Seattle.

The word Delicatessen is a little misleading in that Tat's is really more of sub shop. Somewhere between a local pizza place serving Chicken Parmesan subs and an Italian or Kosher Deli offering sandwiches with various cold cuts. Their real claim to fame are their cheese steaks. Now I love a great cheese steak but cheese steaks are a Philadelphia thing so I will leave the cheese steak review for the guy who writes the phillyfoodanywhere blog!

I was here to try the classic New York favorite a chicken Parmesan sandwich. I have quite a few things to say about this sandwich so lets take the bullet list approach

What I loved:

• When I asked if the chicken was breaded the person taking my order gave me the "are you crazy" look and said "of course".
• When I asked if there was going to be lettuce, tomatoes, mayo or any other non-authentic ingredient on my sandwich he gave me the "are you crazy" look and said "of course NOT".
• The bread was excellent and when I got my sandwich the bread was toasted but still chewy just the way it is supposed to be.

What was ok or not so good:

• I found the sauce to be somewhat flavorless.
• The chicken was fairly soggy (I will add that to this day I have no idea how somebody makes one of these sandwiched and keeps the chicken cutlets crispy ... but some are able to).
• The chicken looked and tasted like some of those frozen breaded chicken cutlets.

So to sum it up I think this Chicken Parmesan sandwich was a solid B+. The essence of the sandwich was there but I think they could execute a little better on some of the fundamental components of the sandwich. All that said I would say for sure this is the best Chicken Parmesan sandwich I have found to date in the Seattle area so I encourage you to give it a try.

As for the rest of the menu, there looks like there are some interesting and tasty meals to be had . Like I said earlier this isn't a true delicatessen in the sense that you can go have any sandwich you desire created but they do have a bunch of great sounding sandwiches on the menu. options that I hope to try one day include Tat's Italian, Hot Pastrami, and the Reuben. I will let you know when I have given them a try. In the mean time you can find more information about Tat's East Coast Delicatessen below.

Tat's East Coat Delicatessen Menu

Wired Magazine Talks About New York Pizza

There is a great article in Wired magazine titled "Why New York City's Iconic Pizza Is So Tough to Replicate".

I wonder if Joe Brown the author of the article has tried Giovanni's in Sunnyvale which we reviewed on this site back in December.

Anyway it is an interesting article and it discusses several reasons why New York pizza is so hard to recreate. The one factor I had never heard of before is that the oven over time is able impart flavor. Who knew an oven could do that! So head over to Wired and read the article

Giovanni's Pizza - New York Pizza in Sunnyvale, California (San Francisco area)

So you just moved to a new town and your first call of duty is to find a good slice of pizza. You search the web for local places that claim to have New York pizza, you read reviews, and finally you pick a location. You get in your car and drive with misguided hopes that your taste buds will soon be delighted by the flavors of a good slice of pizza. Yet when you arrive and start to eat the all to familiar feeling of disappointment sets in.

If you are anything like me this has happened to you countless times. But every once in a while you stumble across a gem. Perhaps you weren't even really looking this time and just walked into the first place you passed that said pizza. I can still remember the first time that happened to me and it was at Giovanni's pizza in Sunnyvale, California.

The first time I visited Giovanni's I was living and working in the south San Francisco bay area. Giovanni's was located in a nondescript shopping mall on Lawrence expressway not too far from where I worked. I wasn't really looking for great pizza that day, just something to eat. When I walked in Giovanni's the first thing that struck me was the amount of people waiting for lunch. Apparently I had stumbled on a very popular lunch place for the computer geek crowd of silicon valley. There were a few give away's early on that I had found a gem. You could buy a slice, they had all the heroes (subs) I grew up with including my favorite chicken parmesan hero, they had a baker's pride oven (a standard of most New York pizza places) and finally was a newspaper clipping on the wall that indicated the the owner also had locations in the New York suburbs.

When I finally tasted my first slice I was blown away because for the first time in my life I tasted pizza outside of New York that actually tasted like New York pizza. I am not going to tell you it was the best pizza I ever had but this restaurant performed something I had never seen. It created a slice of pizza that would hold it's own against any New York location. In follow-up visits I was equally impressed with their chicken parmesan sub and Sicilian slices (another type of pizza found mostly in New York). Best of all Giovanni's had the atmosphere of a New York pizza place. It is the type of place you could go in everyday and get a slice. The guys behind the counter know your name and you always feel welcome.

Purely from a sociological point of view there are some interesting things I have noticed about Giovanni's and the Silicon Valley crowd. During weekday lunch this is probably one of the busiest restaurants in the bay area. The restaurant is large, occupying what was once two store fronts, and you will still wait to be seated. Yet if you go to Giovanni's at any other time (e.g. any night or weekend) you will find almost nobody there. I find this to be an interesting conundrum for the potential success of New York food elsewhere in the country or world. On one hand the sheer numbers of people eating lunch at this place indicate it is a huge success and that people obviously like the food and the style with which it is served (i.e. the slice). However the fact that you can hear crickets in the evening indicates there is something about the cultures of other parts of this country that prevent people from going to a place like this at other times. I am not sure why that is but is a cause of concern for me since this could impact the number of restaurants who can open a New York food establishment outside New York and survive.

Anyway the real reason I am writing about Giovanni's is that I had the chance to go back to the Bay area this past weekend and went to visit my old haunt with two buddies who grew up with me in New York. Things have not changed at all. The place is still packed on weekday lunches and empty on weekends. The food is still awesome. Even my friends who like me are a skeptical bunch were pretty blown away by how good the slices were. And I indulged myself in a chicken parmesan that made my taste buds tingle

So if you find yourself anywhere in San Francisco or the general bay area and you are looking for a good slice of pizza or a chicken parmesan hero I implore you to make the drive to Giovanni's. It will be the best move you will ever make. And if it seems like a far drive for you I will leave you with this fact. At least once a month for several years I made the approximately 30 mile drive from San Francisco to Giovanni's just to get a slice and chicken parmesan. That is how good it is. For more information check out the maps and links below

Giovanni's on Citysearch