Pizza in NYC

Within an hour of landing at La Guardia, I was eating a pizza in Little Italy. Brussels sprouts, caramelized onions, red sauce, mozzarella. The dough was delicious, but the pizza didn't come together. It was the first of many. I'm not sure I really made my peace with New York style, but I can certainly appreciate many aspects of it.

To start, I should mention that most pizza eaten in Chicago isn't thick or stuffed or Chicago style. If you are at a party or just want to watch a movie at home, you get a thin crust. Because you are paying a bit for delivery, you might as well get a medium, even if its just you - so you'll have leftovers.

The crust will be a little crispy, but still flexible. The cheese a solid layer, a dry mozzarella base, cooked at least partly golden. The crust peeks out from the edges, but is only a little thicker there. It might be cut into squares - if you ordered a large it almost has to be.

There are definitely restaurants to go and sit down for pizza, where it is more likely to be Chicago style, or Italian, boasting brick ovens, etc. Still, pizza for Chicagoans, most of the time, is a usually a delivery comfort food.

In New York it’s different. Pizza's mythos is as a street food, bought by the slice, eaten with one hand on the way to wherever you are going. The design of a New York slice lies in this purpose.

Squares won't work, it has to be one big piece to hold. You don't want to get your hand messy, so the edge crust should be thicker, like a handle. If you want to hold it with one hand, it can't be flopping around, so there are two choices: cardboard stiff, or so flexible you can easily do what to a Chicagoan seems a blasphemy: fold the pizza lengthwise, holding the thick crust side in a "V" shape, giving it a rigidity to hold horizontally, keeping the ingredients stable. Also as you take bites, your lips only touch the crust, so you end up with less sauce and fat on your face. Handy if you are walking down the street. To make this happen, the crust is thin and floppy, undercooked to a Chicagoan.

Aside from function, I'd have to say that the pizzas I had in New York were more ingredients oriented. The sauce was always bright and distinct, the dough sweet, cheese often fresh mozzarella - leading to less browning.

I think typical pizza in Chicago doesn't have the same attention to individual ingredient quality, but develops a lot of flavor in the execution - the browning of the crust, it’s slight crisp texture, the golden wonderful in the cheese.

I'm not interested in dogmatic arguments about what the real pizza is. Let it be constantly reinvented! Having had pizza in DC and San Francisco you are forced to be a little more open minded.

My usual kind of pizza

Picasso at MoMA

Sometimes things work out...

Picasso at the Guggenheim

I wandered up the spiral walkway that is the Guggenheim, taking in Picasso in Black and White. When I came to Marie-Thérèse, Face and Profile I spent a long while absorbing it. Eventually I moved back to the inner wall, squatted down and leaned back against it, watching the people walking by, stopping at the painting. I let the minutes float by. Sometimes my view was blocked partly or completely, at other times not at all. I studied the legs, mostly silhouetted against the warm glow from the lights which lit the painting and the nearby wall, and the light which spilled in from hidden windows and bathed everything. The configurations of people and poses were endless. They leaned to one foot or the other, moved in close and back out again. Couples chatted briefly as they looked at the painting, then moved on. I would love to sit and photograph as these legs configure and reconfigure, with the static glow of the painting and wall as the backdrop - dozens of photos of the configurations. At least because of the no photo policy in the museum, I have to let it stay unrealized.

What comes through so clearly is Picasso’s love of Marie’s beauty, of the form of her face and body, her hair. There is something in this and many of his works that is so careful and reverent, attempting to portray the subject with such a basic set of inputs. To embellish or include anything unneeded would be just as unnatural as an errant brush stroke.

The audio tour included narration from one of Picasso’s daughters. First hand accounts are worth so much more to me than listening to long interpretation. One of the things she said was that Picasso was near-sighted, so he would paint a bit, then move back to view the work. Many of his pieces seemed to benefit from some extra distance.

4AM in the Bakery

• perfect for the collector
• “Ancient Bones That Tell a Story of Compassion”
• strandbeests
• google street view oddities
• cabin porn - hate the outside, love the inside
• what could be funnier than instagram and nickelback?
• merry christmas!

Beef Jerky

It took a while, but I’ve finally made a reasonable beef jerky. Reasonable enough to put some instructions up anyway.

Start with some lean beef. I like flank steak. It must be fresh. Since jerky isn’t actually cooked, the flavor of the meat comes through clearly, and it won’t be as good if it has been in the fridge for a while, even if it is not actually “bad”.

The meat below is not really lean enough. Although the meat doesn’t have a lot of fat throughout, the visible fatty bits are a bit difficult to trim out. Dry jerky can last a long time, even at room temperature, but fat will turn rancid. If you refrigerate or eat it soon, this works fine though. Grass-fed beef or bison or deer will be leaner and also more flavorful, in general. This was just a Whole Foods flank steak.

Put the beef in the freezer for long enough to get a bit stiff, but not freeze. Otherwise it will deform quite a bit when you cut it and it will be hard to make consistently thick pieces. I got this mandolin and found it quite a bit easier than using a knife. I also got these gloves to use with the mandolin.

In theory the gloves should offer some protection, but I’m still extremely careful, and use the plastic holder piece as I get closer to the end. My lawyer says you should use the safety holder the whole time.

At this point, recipes diverge greatly. Many call for a marinade, with soy and worcestershire sauce being favorite liquids. I prefer a simple rub. The main tastes to balance are salt and spice, and it is a bit of trial and error to get it right. It’s important to take notes and do things for consistent amounts of time to adjust from one batch to the next. It won’t work well to salt it later - you’ll have bland meat with salt on top - and there is no way to un-salt it later. If possible I like to cut across the grain to make it less chewy.

This batch ground in my mortar and pestle:

• 1 T kosher salt
• 1 T whole corriander
• 1/2 T whole white peppercorns
• 1/2 tsp minced onion
• 1 T garlic powder
• 1 tsp hot (sharp) paprika
• .25 tsp chipotle powder
• 2 T sweet (not sharp) paprika

(I will try less peppercorn next time)

I believe this was enough for about 1.5 pounds of meat. Make extra. Add it to the meat. How much you add is important. I try to do a light even coat, working it around and making sure the pieces aren’t folded and unseasoned in the fold.

The latent moisture will dissolve the salt and make it hard to tell how coated things are, so have lots of rub, and work quickly.

Let it sit overnight in the fridge.

Before putting in the dehydrator, I dipped the pieces very briefly in apple cider vinegar, let them drip for a second, and then placed them in the dehydrator. I’m using a borrowed mega-dehyrator which I love. The cheaper ones may work too. I’ve been setting the temperature to 105 degrees, with the house at 65 and somewhat dry. I don’t think setting it past 115 is a good idea; you don’t want to cook the meat. On the other hand, it needs to at least superficially start drying somewhat quickly to keep it from going bad. It may be that on a hot, humid summer day it isn’t really possible to dry it well.

Timing can vary. The Excalibur has a timer, so if it works out that you have to go to sleep, you can at least guess at how much longer it needs. I would think if it is mostly dry, you could be conservative with the timer, and do a little more the next day if needed. Overall it might be a good plan to start it before you go to sleep and monitor it the next day. I would plan on 10-16 hours in the excalibur, in the winter, and much more in a passive model without a fan.

You will have to resign yourself to testing jerky as it dries. At first it will clearly be still raw, but over time it will become stiffer and dryer, visibly cracking along the grain if bent. Still, for some time the center will seem not quite dry. The timing is up to you. I like it just to the point where the center has lost its raw taste, but not more. This makes it dry and chewy, but not like cardboard. If it is dry like this it will keep for quite a while at room temperature. Let it cool completely before bagging.

Table, Donkey and Stick

Table, Donkey and Stick has been doing open houses this week - basically some drinks, baguettes, rillettes, and some pickled items - a little taste of their eventual alpine themed menu. They went through an interesting process of having two guest chefs cook pop-up dinners, and then chose the one that they felt was a great fit.

It was just warm enough to sit outside around the awesome fire kettle. The kitchen was busy (researching?) and chosen chef Scott Manley occasionally came by to get something from the outdoor fridge or bring drinks, and Matt Sussman, the manager, waited on us, eventually having a seat and talking with those of us clustered around the fire. Everyone was friendly and the mood was great - a great thursday night. I'm looking forward to the main opening.

Making Jerky

• thanksgiving flow chart
• MAKE THE MONUMENT BIGGER
• if you want to live long, move around a little
• I’m sure Chicago will find some way to regulate this out of awesomeness
• want to lose elections? put anti-scientists in charge of science committees
• the assassination will be tweeted
• your life will never be the same

Odds and Ends

There are still some photos from the trip that didn’t fit into any larger posting.

Yoshi and I were making time through Nevada. We were on Highway 375 - marked prominently as the Extraterrestrial Highway. We had to take a leak.

Nevada highways cut straight lines through imponderable expanses, and then rise briefly to a few low mountains, turn a few times, and then glide down to the next stretch. The next set of mountains, and their promise of a turn or two, sit in the distance. For the next thirty minutes, the entertainment choice is either staring at them, or staring at the dry shrubbery flying by at 80 mph.

At the next exciting three turns, I pull over and cut the engine. We get out of the car. The silence lasts for miles. We scamper down the hillside a little to pee, but then I notice something odd.

Roadside altars are common, especially out west. Perhaps the climate preserves them, or perhaps it is more of a cultural thing. This isn’t the usual bright set of flowers by the highway. This is a chapel, with a bench, and lights, far enough off the road that you'd never see it driving by.

When I see these I can’t help but think of the random day, a car coming into the turn, a distracted driver, or an oncoming car veering into the drivers lane. The instant of tire screech, gravel, glass and slamming. Things can change really quick sometimes, and everyone else has a lot of time to think about it later. All the time in the world.

I hear a truck miles away, faintly. The desert air is crisp and dry and warm. Yoshi reluctantly hops back into the car, and I start the engine, flooding away the silence in a rumble of engine and rush of AC.

Bioneers

I spent the weekend at the Great Lakes Bioneers Chicago event. Despite having a photography blog and a foodsorta blog there are a lot of organizations/groups/etc that I don’t know anything about, but as I looked at the program for this event last week and decided it was worth checking out.

The notion of Bioneers is a sort of intersection of community, environmental, and food advocates, and also a bit of DYI/post-consumer thinking. Added to that was something I see in some computer programming circles: a notion of craft, of being an expert about something and caring about what you do, and of working with other like minded people. Although on the surface some of these subjects risk becoming a little “crunchy”, the speakers and people leading workshops were very practical and hands-on. There was little rallying against Big Whatever, and lots of practical examples - from starting a food co-op to building neighborhood communities to composting.

The real theme in the end was Place - the immediate environment around you. Your house, your neighborhood, your city - we can be very disconnected from it, and it is probably not a natural way for us to exist.

Some highlights for me:

• Naomi Davis is organizing her neighborhood in West Woodlawn, trying to start a botanical garden and other programs to help her community. I wish the site had more information, she was a very strong speaker.
• The Dill Pickle Co-op has been around for a while, right under my nose. A few members led a talk about how it was started, and food co-ops in general.
• Nance Khlem and John Lardner from JPL Engineering led a discussion about composting from two different angles. Nance Khlem has start small and medium sized composting projects all over the world, often brushing against regulations. John Lardner spoke about some very large scale composting operations in Chicago and the challenges involved. The amount of food waste that gets thrown out is staggering.
• Mark Lakeman talked about communities and neighborhoods, and how in the United States our cities typically were built without the squares and public spaces where people converge and interact, and how to start to work around that. It looks like there is an older (but similar sounding) version of what he is saying on youtube

Anyway it was pretty inspiring to be around so many interesting ideas for a weekend.