Anything Doesn’t Always Go!
February 21, 2005
I went out to dinner last week, to a restaurant that specializes in wood-fired brick oven pizzas. I like pizza, especially thin-crusted pizza. If it’s cooked in a wood-fired brick oven, even better, for the flavour of the wood is something you can’t achieve at home. There’s a lot to like about pizza; not just eating it, but making it too.
My experience with pizza started years ago, when I worked at Zuni Café in San Francisco. The brick oven was my favourite station, despite the fact that when I first started working there, every thin-crusted pizza I made was any shape but round. It took me about three weeks (with a very patient chef) to realize that the shape you end up with after stretching the dough is directly related to the shape of the dough that you start out with. Therefore, always start shaping your pizza from a round ball of dough if it is a round pizza you’re hoping for.
My brick oven pizza experience continued at the New England Culinary Institute , where it was my assignment to develop the menu for the brick oven at their new restaurant in Burlington, Vermont, The Commons. I became fascinated, and somewhat obsessed with developing the perfect dough recipe. I learned so much then about how the environment (humidity, altitude, natural air-borne yeasts) affects the dough-making process. By adjusting the salt, yeast and water, I came up with a winner (or a “weener”, as my French chef and boss said).
The pizza that I had last week combined sweetness and acidity perfectly. It was topped with pesto, halved roasted Roma tomatoes, lemon-thyme grilled chicken, and feta cheese and was drizzled with honey. Yes, honey. It was the combination of the honey and the tomatoes that was so spectacular. Delicious. I even had a pizza for dessert – a variation on apple crumble. The pizza crust was topped with roasted apples, which were in turn topped with a crumble topping and the whole thing was drizzled with caramel sauce. It was a little over the top, but tasty.
That food experience started my mind wandering on the subject, and I realized that one of the nicest things about pizza is that anything goes. Then, I stopped dead in the tracks of my own thoughts, and remembered Grannie.
I had two grandmothers who couldn’t have been more different from each other. I suppose that is reflected in my mother and father, who also really couldn’t be more different from each other. I’ve written about my maternal grandmother before. Close your eyes and imagine a “real old English grandmother” and you’ve just imagined my Nana. She was sweet and round with pure white hair (at least when I knew her). She sewed curtains, made dresses and knit sweaters for everyone. She cooked as little as possible, making the same tried and true recipes over and over again, excelling in the dessert category, especially with her trifle.
Grannie was a whole different bag of worms! This was the grandmother whose favourite clothing colour combination was red and purple. Grannie was a fireball. She only stood four feet eleven inches high and weighed no more than one hundred pounds. She would not only throw her head back, but drop her chin down to the ground as well to let out a wildly infectious laugh – a laugh which I, growing up in the company of cruel outspoken children, had the ill fortune to inherit. Grannie’s hair was not white – no, Grannie’s hair was blue, from perhaps too much of the bluing popular with ladies of her age and generation. I could go on talking for hours about Grannie, but let me get to the point. Grannie was a good cook. She lived her entire life in Trinidad and was not afraid to attempt any recipe. She was an excellent baker, throwing her whole little body into the kneading of the dough. Grannie cooked for people – to nourish and love people – and she enjoyed it.
My brother was Grannie’s first grandchild, and as such earned a special place in her heart. They would read Winnie-the-Pooh stories together when he was a small boy. When Winnie no longer held much interest, Grannie would find other ways to make their relationship special. Sometimes, this involved cooking.
For my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary, my whole family went to Trinidad for two weeks. I have many memories of this trip – the anniversary party in Port-of-Spain (at the time, the biggest gathering I had attended); waking up to my brother yelling and seeing a half clad robber in our room; the Hari Chrishna’s who partied down the road every night; the gecko that lived behind my uncle’s speaker; my grandmother’s cooking. The memories don’t always flow together or make sense, but they are vivid.
On this trip, Grannie decided to cook something special for her favourite grandson. He was a teenager at the time and was visiting from Canada. Grannie must have heard that growing Canadian boys love pizza, for that is what she decided to do. Grannie would make Kevin a pizza – it would be the first pizza she had ever made. It was at the memory of this particular pie that my thoughts about pizza froze in their tracks last week. Grannie made a pizza for my brother that will be forever remembered and never replicated.
Grannie was proud of her pizza. There was a big build up to dinner that night, and we all sat waiting patiently for the pie to arrive at the table. When it was placed down, it didn’t really look like the pizzas I was used to at home, but I figured that things always look different when homemade, and was not discouraged. I remember the pizza looking enormous, but perhaps I was just smaller then. Grannie cut it into large wedges and served it up. We all took our first bite, stopped mid-chew and looked at each other. Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong.
Aren’t pizzas like omelets and quiches? Can’t you put really anything on them and end up with a successful meal? After all, there are breakfast pizzas and dessert pizzas. There’s even a restaurant in San Francisco that specializes in Indian pizzas. All those pizzas work. What happened to Grannie’s pizza? That’s the big question. What did happen?
It’s been years, but here’s what I remember. It was a ground beef pizza. I can’t remember the cheese because there was so much ground beef, but it must have been there. Grannie was a great baker, but something went awry with this dough. I remember it being more of a pastry than a pizza dough. But there was more than this. There was a flavour discord, so to speak. She must have put something on that pizza that made it taste … crazy…yes, crazy. I can’t think of any other way to describe it.
We each gracefully ate our one wedge of pizza. I can’t even call it a slice. A slice would be manageable. You could pick a slice up with your hands, or use a knife or fork if you really wanted to. This was no slice of pizza. This was like a heavy wedge of open-faced beef pie. Still, we were a well brought up family, and ate what was on our plate in silence. With dinner finally over and no second helpings requested, we thanked Grannie and thought we were in the clear. Not so.
The next day, when it was lunchtime, Grannie’s pizza reared its ugly face again. Grannie commented on how lucky my brother was to have a second chance at this gourmet creation. She’d heard that leftover pizza was a North American delight as well! He was obliged to have more. With other selections on the table for lunch, my parents and I quickly opted for anything non-pizza. Golden Boy was hit with the pizza a few more times that holiday. It crawled back onto the table time and time again until it was finally put to rest. I reveled in this scene that kept replaying itself before me at the dinner table. I laughed at my brother’s position as favourite grandchild. “Even Winnie can’t save you now!!!” I jeered in my own mind.
I have many memories of both my grandmothers. Grannie was always a kick in the pants. She enjoyed laughing and didn’t mind being the inspiration of others’ laughter. I can’t remember if we ever told her of the pizza incident (as it will be forever remembered). She would have laughed. It is often from our grandparents that we learn big lessons in life. I learned from Grannie. I learned to laugh, and I learned that anything doesn’t always go!