illdothedisheslater

Well it’s been forever since I made a pizza, hasn’t it?  Well, I’ve made some ‘zas, but mostly repeating my old favorite Chicago Deep Dish.  AND I don’t think I’ve done an authentic Italian one yet, so it’s time to try Sfincione – or Sicilian New Years Pizza.  (In Sicily it’s sfinciune – which I don’t understand.  Why just change the one letter?)  This is traditionally made with onions and anchovies in a tomato sauce, and topped with caciocavallo cheese and bread crumbs.  This, of course, means that I will have to look at, touch, smell, and possibly even taste anchovies which fills me with horror.  This recipe is from Serious Eats.  Here’s the obligatory photo of dough ingredients, which is probably getting repetitive for any dedicated reader (hi mom!).

Step 1: Dough

Flour, yeast, salt, olive oil.  Add water.  Blah blah blah.  This is another recipe that calls for a wooden spoon, which I like.  The crust calls for:

250 grams of AP flour
5 grams kosher salt
2 grams instant/rapid rise yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
173 grams water

Does this all seem a little exact and picky to you?  Me too. But the recipe calls for grams, I have a neat-o digital scale that deals in grams, and I’m halving this recipe because it looks huge, even planning to feed six people.

Whisk the dry ingredients, then add the oil and water.  Mix with wooden spoon(!)  It will be a shaggy, wet-looking dough.

Rub the dough with olive oil, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and place in the fridge for at least 12 hours, but up to three days.  I accomplish this on Friday night, because my husband is involved in some sort of nerdy online game thing and I am banished from the den for the evening.  He is banished tomorrow night, when my lovely friends come over to eat Sfincione, so we’re even.

Step 2: Sauce

The next morning, as I prepare to make the sauce, I realize the tin of anchovies I bought a million years ago in preparation for this recipe has expired.  Actually the tin is bulging threateningly and I’m afraid to throw it in the garbage can in case it explodes.  I nestle it gingerly into the trash and head to Kroger for more anchovies.  There is a non-injury car accident blocking the way out of my neighborhood, so I have to drive around four extra blocks to get to the store.  No biggie.  Two hours later I realize I’m out of beer and head back out to Kroger.  The accident scene is still bustling, and I notice one of the crash victims is some sort of military guy – full fatigues, boots, hat, and duffle.  It’s hot as balls out and they’ve been there for two hours, so I decide to do a good deed – Dishes Supports the Troops!  Yes she does!  I head home and load a plastic bag with one of every cold drink I can find in the fridge – Gatorade, Coke Zero, Diet Dr. Pepper, and sparkling water.  I head back over to offer a cold drink to a hot soldier.  (Hot temperature-wise.  He was not particularly attractive, despite the uniform.) “Excuse me, sir?” I ask.  He turns as the handle on the bag breaks and instead of offering a cold drink to a serviceman, I instead THROW four cold drinks at him.  As I scramble around in the street, squatting and retrieving my beverages, he politely thanks-but-no-thanks me.  I pack up my filthy drinks and go home, feeling like a prime a-hole.  The only thing that could have worsened the situation would be if one of cans had popped and did that roll-spin-spray thing while I crab-walked after it. Sigh.

Back to the sauce!

Here we have

One large can of whole tomatoes, crushed by hand (or blender or food mill – it’s your life.)
1/8 cup olive oil
One medium onion, finely diced
Four anchovy fillets (yuck, yuck, yuck), finely chopped
½ Teaspoon each of oregano and crushed red pepper flakes.

Dice the onion finely and saute it gently in olive oil for around 20 minutes. Chop the disgusting, hairy, oily, smelly anchovies and add them to the onions.  They look, feel, and smell like cat food.  My dog attaches herself to my side for the remains of the day.

I’m sorry.  I know that’s gross.  Try not to gag as a hot, oily fish smell overtakes the kitchen.  I can do this. I can eat worms, I can eat worms. (Old-school Survivor reference).  Douse the stench fire with the tomatoes.  Simmer for 20-30 minutes until it’s thick and saucy.  Recipe Red Flag*: They don’t say whether to use the juice in the can or not.  I keep it in.

Step 3: Topping

This pizza is unusual in that it’s not topped with delicious pepperoni and gobs of stringy cheese, but with a breadcrumb mixture.  Huh.  Recipe Red Flag: Recipe calls for “one loaf” of “Italian-style” bread.  What size loaf do you ask?  No clue.  What exactly is “Italian style”?  No clue.  I have two gallons of breadcrumbs in the freezer. They’ll do.  How do you halve an unknown quantity?  I ask Mr. Dishes, who studied mathematics – he informs me that it’s simple algebra – x/2=y.  So I don’t have a beautiful mind.  Fine.  I decide two cups of bread crumbs will do.  Grate one ounce of caciocavallo cheese on the large holes of a box grater.

(Yes, I have a mixing bowl with Dracula on it.)

Caciocavallo cheese literally translates to something like “cheese on horseback”, but is NOT made from horse milk.  (Come to think of it, why will we gaily drink from cows, sheep, goats and buffalo, but eschew the gentle horse or clever pig when it comes to milk?)  (Note to self: research pig cheese.  Wait.  Bad idea.  Don’t do that.  Stahp!)  It’s usually a cow or sheep milk cheese formed into a gourd shape.  Strings are tied around the “stems” of two cheeses and they are hung to ripen and dry.  Like saddle bags!  Get it?  This is all moot because the main thing caciocavallo cheese actually is, is hella expensive.  Now I pay $20/lb. for real Parmigiano-Reggiano, so I know from expensive cheese right?  It doesn’t come out of a green can is what I’m saying.  Luckily I find a quarter pound chunk for $17.99/lb. on one of my cheese pilgrimages.  Another thing caciocavallo cheese it, is hard as a mo-fo.  I feel like I’m grating a thick bone . I grate and grate until my shoulder aches.  One ounce turns out to be a lot of really, really hard cheese.  I break a sweat.

Give the cheese and breadcrumbs a spin in the food processor with 1/8 cup of olive oil until it becomes “a fine powder”.  That looks just fine to me.

Pour another 1/8 cup of olive oil onto a rimmed sheet pan.  I’m using a half-sized cookie sheet, meaning half the normal home-use size, not industrial restaurant kitchen half.  Remove the dough from the fridge, and dump it into the pan.  Rub oil over the top of the dough and let it come to room temperature.  This will relax the gluten and make it easier to stretch out to pan-shape.  This will take at least two hours.  Slowly and periodically encourage the dough to spread and flatten. It will feel bubbly and alive under your hands.

Preheat your oven (baking stone on the bottom rack) to 450, then top with sauce.  Then – gah!  Two more ounces of grated cheese!  Mr. Dishes is out at a movie, so I can’t pass the bone-grating chore on to him and his muscles. Sigh.  I grate.  Ow.  Spread the sauce over the dough lightly, so you don’t mush the crust too much.

Top with bread crumb mixture and drizzle with more olive oil.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until “top is golden brown and bottom is crisp and bubbly.”  The top gets golden brown real damn quick, so I lay foil over it while the bottom catches up.  Ta da!

It’s lovely.  It doesn’t smell fishy, not really.  There’s a certain savory quality to it that is… interesting?  I feed it to my husband.  I feed it to myself.  I feed it to my lovely friends…

No one really likes it. No one comes right out and says it.  Friends politely finish their pieces but don’t go back for seconds.  Mr. Dishes says bluntly, “It wasn’t good.”  (This is not actually cause for divorce as one might think.  I request honesty about my cooking, and I mean it.)  The anchovies are a tease – just enough flavor to bug the anti-anchovy faction, but not enough to please the pro-anchovy types.  The sauce is a bit too chunky and sweet.  The crust is… okay.  A little too puffy and not so flavorful.  The breadcrumb topping tastes like toasted breadcrumbs.  The expensive cheese doesn’t fight its way through the competing flavors.  Another fail.  I mean it’s not bad, really.  It’s just not good.  Meh.  This recipe gets two and half mehs.

I know I promised some Marcella Hazan coming up, and I will get on that once I think of something interesting to say about zucchini soup.

* I’m making Recipe Red Flags a regular feature, as I can use them as excuses when things don’t turn out very well.  Maybe.  I have to find a cute little flag icon.