Thinking about dinner today, my initial plan was another round of pizza research. However, eating another pizza didn't sound that fun, so when someone mentioned crepes, I thought, "yeah! I haven't made those since we shifted house in April."
Made a mental list for the grocery store and then thought, "gee, I am not too enthusiastic about more chocolate/strawberry and ham/cheese crepes." Then Ling's mom said something about having nice seafood crepes in Paris my interest was piqued. Then I decided a nice carmelized apple would do for dessert. I ended up doing 4x more than I expected when I woke up today. Thanks Julia Child.....
For the seafood crepe, I didn't really have a recipe, so I picked around and decided a savory crepe filled with some seafood and a bechamel sauce, baked, would do. I bought the only seafood I like: some fresh crab leg and scallops. No stinky prawns or lobster.
Bechamel sauce requires a roux and a nice white vegetable stock I had to prepare first. I made the typical crepe batter, but unfortunately forgot I should double the recipe. I really wanted to avoid turning my seafood into either disintegrated pulp or hard rubber bullets so I checked around different cooking methods and figured that gently poaching the seafood in a stock made of vermouth and some root/stalk vegetables with herbs would do the most nimble job. I was right. This time I didn't foul the roux and the bechamel sauce came out perfectly. Everything was already vaguely warm when I rolled the crepes and so I only baked them in the oven for 10-15 minutes at relatively low 190C. Really nice result.
Dessert was essentially a stack of dessert crepes layered with homemade apple-sauce and almond slivers, then baked in the oven. I prepared too much apple and not enough crepe batter, so I ended up with fewer, but thicker layers. It was still quite good. I used a medley of apples for the rough sauce, red delicious, gala, and granny smith and kept the consistency fairly chunky. I think on a re-do, I'd make more crepes, thinner, and with thinner layers of apple.
One ridiculous thing I didn't realize until the last moment was that the dessert is meant to be served with flaming rum on top to carmelized the sugar topping. The apple sauce is already infused with rum and creme, so the flavor matches, but I innocently made this dessert that turned out to be something of a tacky show-off thing. The recipe called for a half-cup of burning rum, which is too much, as I had a little gutter trough of rum burning for two minutes before i realized it was carbonizing bits of the crepes and blew it out. Ling, who doesn't drink, kept coughing as she had drew the quarter of the stack that was most rum-soaked.
On the side, still giddy from an extraordinarily effective barrista training course in Sydney, and with a larder full of really beautiful fresh beans, I made myself a double ristretto and Ling and her mom each a mocha, which they are quite fond of now. Now that my milk frothing skills are presentable, I poured it nicely such that a layer of melted cocoa layed on top of the creamy milk. Looked pro! (Used ghiradelli hot chocolate powder this time. This morning I tried to make her one, but foolishly used Hershey's cocoa powder, which just takes like baking chocolate, as there is no sugar in it. Yuck!)
One of the cafes we enjoyed in Sydney was Bertoni Casalinga. They manage to do something that I have always found absolutely, inexcusably appalling: reheat pizza.
I detest how disgusting NYC 'pizzarias' oven-reheat their cold slices of shit. But the people at Bertoni do it different: they start out with fundamentally good pizza (thick , fluffy crust, beautiful rich sauce, and high quality meat toppings) which they heat up in a large electric sandwich grill. It really comes out nicely.
I came home (prematurely) early last week after being the first off my table at a poker game at the "Crows Nest Club." On the way home I saw a Domino's pizza. They're the closest it comes to the type of pizza I like, so it got me hungry and I ordered one. It was ok, not great, but alright.
All this got me thinking, "I know exactly how I want my pizza to taste, so why don't I just figure out the exact formula for that?"
So that's what I started research work on this weekend.
I like rich tart sauce. That was easy to do. Make a very patient soffrito of onion, garlic, celery, then top off with three cans of italian passata, some tomato paste, and handful of chopped oregano. Simmer for an hour. Season as necessary with some red wine vinegar and salt. Child's play for anyone that regularly makes pasta sauces.
The trickier bit is the crust. I like a reasonably thick crust that is fluffy. I decided to skip the typical Jamie Oliver recipes and consult my big baking tome, the Culinary Institute of America's "Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft."
I followed it to the letter, using 57.8% hard bread flour and 42.2% semolina. (I cut the recipe proportionately, as it would have made more than eight pounds of pizza dough). About a kilogram of flour in total, this made enough dough for two large pizzas.
I cooked one pizza on a preheated pizza stone. The other pizza I cooked on a teflon-covered metal tray that has air vent holes throughout. Mom bought this for me a while ago.
Verdict: the metal tray makes a materially crispier crust than the pizza stone.
Although I double-proved the pizza dough, I still found it not fluffy enough for me. It wasn't doughy, but it just didn't have the Bertoni lightness I craved. In my next recipe iteration I will increase the ratio of hard bread flour to semolina so that there is more gluten in the bread and it can rise better. I will also roll out the crust thinner to start as I didn't anticipate how much it would rise. Finally, I think I will prebake the crust even longer than I think prudent to really brown the crust well.
Toppings worked well. I used fine Italian buffalo mozarella and a liberal shaving of parmesan from a beautiful ingot I bought in Sydney. The pepperoni I pre-heated in the microwave to drive off some of the grease. I hate wet pizza. I also pre cooked the mushrooms to drive off the water.
None of this is as good as Pizza Pub of course, but what to do....