Out-Chef Chef Boyardee!

How can anything tasty fit in those itty-bitty things? I almost never order filled pastas at restaurants. Growing up eating dim sum and xiao long bao I’m used to a large ratio of filling to wrapper. Comparing shiu mai to a dinky tortellini is like comparing…something really juicy and delicious and pork-filled to something that isn’t. A menu item like Asiago pumpkin ravioli always sounds yummy and flavorful, but inevitably it just tastes like a wad of pasta because of a paucity of filling and too-thick pasta. Mozza gets it right The exceptions – like Mozza Osteria’s Fresh Ricotta & Egg Raviolo, whose filling includes an entire oozy egg yolk – are reminders that the problem with most filled pastas is in the execution, not the concept. So when I make ravioli, I don’t mess around. I don’t make them obscenely large or overstuffed but I don’t want people to say, “Uh, I think I can taste the mushrooms.” Fillings-wise, I’ll occasionally do the ricotta-based ravioli. It’s ricotta, some Parmesan, a pinch of nutmeg, sometimes parsley, and then whatever sexy foodstuff I have in mind: minced mushrooms, roasted butternut squash, chopped prosciutto, ground meat, etc. But I’m more inclined to fill it with just the sexy foodstuff. I’m a big fan of braised meats in ravioli, like shredded short ribs, or I’ll do seafood. Last night, it was crab. I’ve steamed and shelled my Dungeness crabs before, but it’s a huge pain in the ass. I have to drive a ways to get the live ones, then I have to go through the ordeal of cooking the poor little things and then it takes me a good hour to shell two crabs. It’s so much easier to walk down the street to Trader Joe’s, grab a one pound can of Chicken of the Sea claw meat and pop it open. Plus, it costs less than half as much and tastes almost as good. Blue swimming crab ain’t no Dungeness and its sustainability is in question, but we can't all be Alice frickin' Waters. I forked up the crab, added some green onions, red pepper, lemon zest and a little egg white, which probably isn’t necessary but I had it leftover from the salad dressing. And that’s it. I suppose it really doesn’t matter how you season it so long as the crab is good. Some sort of vegetable is helpful to add texture.Make sure it's the refrigerated kind I’ve retreated to my Asian roots and used gyoza wrappers for my ravioli many times but last night I was feeling show-offy and brought out my pasta roller. I had that thing for a couple years before I actually used it. It seemed like such a messy headache. But it’s actually a pretty easy and forgiving process. And my mess factor was greatly reduced once I got a pastry scraper. If you don’t have one, you should get one. Remember Steve Buscemi’s leg in Fargo? I’m no pasta expert and there are probably a thousand better instructions for making it but here’s how I do it. The basic ratio is 3 large eggs for every two cups of flour. You make a little well in the flour, crack your eggs in it, mix it with a fork while doing a mad dash to keep egg goo from dripping out the well and onto the floor. Eventually, you get a doughy ball that you start kneading to incorporate the rest of the flour. It’ll be hard and rough looking but that’s fine.Cut it in fourths (with your trusty pastry scraper) and start feeding it one of the fourths into your pasta machine (set at 1, the widest setting). It’ll come out ugly, but after you fold it and re-feed it, it will knead into something smooth and manageable. At that point, you feed the pasta through the machine a successively higher numbers on your pasta machine. By the end, you should have a long, wafer thin ribbon of pasta. For once, not cut with a dog food can Time is of the essence as the pasta will dry out and crack within a few minutes so you should have your filling close at hand. I use a pastry ring whose diameter is half the width of the pasta sheet but I’ve also used empty soup cans, dog food cans or whatever works. I lay out a strip of the pasta, put out spoonfuls of filling on the bottom half, using the pastry ring to space them apart. Then I wet the pasta around the filling with water (not egg wash) and fold the top half over. Press to seal the ravioli and cut ‘em out with the pastry ring. At this point, I take each one to check the seal and ensure there’s no air in the ravioli. Air pockets are bad. Then I layer the ravioli with parchment paper and store them in the freezer to keep them from getting mushy. If you store them for longer than a couple hours, make sure they're in an airtight container or they'll dry out and crack. Two cups of flour should make around 60-70 ravioli, which should match a one pound can of crab. Let them eat kibble I rarely sauce ravioli with marinara because tomatoes are pretty dominating. Browned butter is delicious but in small doses. I usually stick with broths or cream sauces so that the flavors in the filling can stand out. For the crab ravioli, I sautéed some shallots, added some cream and saffron, cut it with a little white wine, and cooked it until it turned yellow and fancy. I suppose you could strain it but I think the orange saffron strands are cool looking plus it lets everyone know that you used the real thing. Note the exquisite and rare saffron stamens Boiling the ravioli is a critical step. Once you put them in boiling water, you want to make sure it doesn’t boil violently or your ravioli will rip. A slow bubble works just fine. It should only take a couple minutes and then you plate, sauce and garnish. Or...open a can of this.

To Toss or Not to Toss: Pizza - Part 2

If you made it through my first epic-length entry on pizza making, bravo. What can I say? I’m passionate about the ‘za. I will try to be more succinct here and in future postings. And I promise to never again use the term, "‘za."

So when I left off, I had made a bunch of dough blobs. Feel free to skip that step. It’s a bit of a production that is often hard to justify when you can just go to Trader Joe’s (or wherever) and get a sack of ready-made pizza dough for a buck and change. I will say that the premade stuff yields a harder, denser crust, but it’s oh-so-convenient. Especially when your backyard abuts the Trader Joe’s parking lot (as mine does).

Handling your dough – that’s a not a euphemism for something naughty – is not an easy skill to acquire. For me, it entailed a lot of pizzeria stalking. At Pizzeria Mozza, they have a guy whose only duty is to prep crusts for the toppings guy and I spent many a lunch at the bar parked right in front of his station watching his every move. “Hey, Joe. The creepy dude who stares at you all the time is back.” Honest Abe, my eyes were on the dough the entire time.

But seriously, watching pizza guys is a great way to learn the technique. I’ve also spent meals watching them roll out pizzas at Terroni where they do this weird finger pressing thing that gets the dough super thin, at Bollini's where they use a super fat copper rolling pin to get them to the DOC specifications, and at Lucifer’s where they toss wads of dough in a machine that spits out perfect round crusts. They all make good pizzas but I prefer the hand-tossed crusts that are thin in the middle and a little puffy and doughy on the outside. My experience is that rolling pins squish out the air bubbles in the dough, making a crisper, stiffer and more uniform pizza, so if that’s your thing, by all means do it that way. It’s way easier.

I have to confess that my preference for the tossed crust has less to do with taste and more because it’s so much fun to throw pizza dough into the air. Haven’t you seen that commercial?

The basic idea is to punch the center of your dough down relatively flat while keeping it fat on the rim.

My apologies for the blurry photos

I first squish down a ring with my thumbs

Then I flatten the middle part

When it gets big enough, you drape the dough on your knuckles, slowly working and stretching the outside rim to make it wider while rotating the dough after every pull to keep things even. The dough should feel loose and elastic as you stretch it to a size that’s tossable. I don’t really know what the tossing does – maybe it helps retain a round shape – but it’s really, really cool.

I'm not yet ready to join the U.S. pizza throwing team. Sometimes my dough will get lopsided where I’ll have to dangle and shake it like a bed sheet to even it out. The goal is to work it until it’s fairly translucent in the center part, so whatever it takes to get there, right? A 200 gram lump of dough should make a nice, thin 10-12 inch pizza. Little holes can be fixed at the end with a finger pinch. But if your dough is correct, it should be surprisingly elastic and strong.

Ta-da!

If things do go south and your dough is tearing or lumpy and you want to start over again, I’d advise against it. If you re-wad everything, it won’t be as elastic and even the second time through and you’ll have worse problems. At that point it’s better to bring out the rolling pin and fix your mistakes with it. Or use the rolling pin to start with and quit being such a showoff. Or you can just screw it all and call Domino’s.

Next up: Toppings

The Best Show on TV

I’m currently waiting for my fourth meal of Thanksgiving leftovers to heat up in the toaster oven (Monday’s turkey tetrazzini, leftovers of leftovers) and I’m sipping on a dreadful zinfandel, a tart and bitter 2005 Beaulieu Vineyard (but I’m still drinking it). It’s about as far away as you can get from what I saw this morning on After Hours with Daniel, the best show on television these days. Sadly, the show is available only on the cable HD network, Mojo, but you can get the first season on DVD at Netflix.

The concept is: celebrity chef, Daniel Boulud, visits the kitchen of a snazzy restaurant and cooks a late night meal with the chef there for a star-studded guest list. It’s not a cooking show nor is it a true reality show. It’s more like a gustatory fantasy that encompasses all the best parts of eating: the preparation, the presentation and the company. It’s also a chance to see the best chefs in America “let their hair down” and really cook the things that they love and then talk about it. The first season combed the restaurants of Manhattan (WD-50, Daniel, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Blue Ribbon Sushi, Maremma, Cru, BLT Prime, and Aquavit) and the second season delves into the blossoming LA scene.

In today’s episode, Daniel cooked with Nancy Silverton at Pizzeria Mozza and I just about died from empathic ecstasy. I should first mention that Pizzeria Mozza, a joint venture with Silverton, Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich, is one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles. The pizza can be doughy around the edges, but otherwise it’s a fantastic thin crust pizza with lovely burnt bits. I happen to love extra crust to chew on and their toppings are unique. Pizza with wild nettles and finnochiona, pizza with squash blossoms and burrata, a pizzete with chanterelles, scallions and guanciale, etc. They change from season to season. But it’s the vegetable antipasti that are truly stunning. Brussels sprouts, broccoli rabe, cauliflower – they’re prepared simply in a way that’s transcendent. So Silverton brought all these dishes out while Daniel roasted a home-cured ham and a pork shoulder made from milk-fed Quebecois pigs. And for 30 minutes, the world disappeared.

To paraphrase celebrity guest, Phil Rosenthal, “A good meal is like a little vacation.” It’s so true. Each of my visits to Pizzeria Mozza has been a (semi-pricey, but not obscenely so) hourlong getaway from the mundanities of daily life. A perfect pizza al funghi with a little quartino of Soave will do more for the soul than any spa treatment or weekend getaway. But top it off with pork product from Daniel Boulud and you’re talking Fantasy Island-level vacation.

And this is what makes After Hours so good. You get to see the work of good chefs augmented by the presence of one of the world’s greatest chefs making the food that they love to eat. Daniel will make something like roasted pineapple stuffed with hand made pineapple ice cream and then declare apologetically that it's a dish too simple to serve at any of his restaurants. And it’s also interesting to see the difference between West Coast and East Coast chefs (represent!). The Manhattan chefs kind of do their things: Marcus Samuelsson makes his Swedish meatballs and Wylie Dufresne does his weird molecular gastronomy stuff. But in L.A., lesser known chefs like Ben Ford and Michael Cimarusti pull out all the stops to try to impress and challenge Chef Daniel.

The irony is that in the first episode, Daniel says that he is excited to come to L.A. to learn how to “cook simple.” He makes rustic foods like stuffed tripe or head cheese, while the upstarts serve Australian lobster sashimi and mojito spheres. Veterans like Nancy Silverton and Joachim Splichal tend to cook more confidently, while young guns like Sang Yoon and Quinn Hatfield seem like they have something to prove, which is great. Either way, the food looks fantastic and exciting. It’s a great time to be an L.A. diner.