In The Jerk, Steve Martin plays a jerk, who meets up with a variety of whacky characters and, for a while, works in a circus.

Do you remember that scene where he’s sitting in a trailer and eating Pizza in a Cup. Back in the day, that was probably a ludicrous notion, but times have changed. Now you really can find pizza in a cup, or pizza in a cone, or you can make in your own kitchen…

Today, I present you with Pizza in a Jar. (The author rambles a bit about unrelated things, so scroll down if you don’t see the recipe immediately.)

Via lifehacker.com and Bon Appetit

I just learned something new from my local newspaper. Connecticut has three squirrel hunting seasons, and in fact, squirrel is more popular than one might have thought.

“Right now, I have five squirrels in the Crock-Pot at home, cooking,” Enie, 59, said prior to the festivities. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone try it who didn’t like it.”

His mother taught him how to cook with squirrel. Two of his favorite dishes are squirrel jambalaya and squirrel potpie.

So it sounds like squirrel meat requires some extended cooking to make it tender?

“It’s a dark meat,” Enie explained. “When it’s prepared right, it’s pretty tender. It tastes sweet, because they mainly eat nuts. Two squirrels would be enough for a meal for somebody. Three will feed my wife and I.”

There was also a comment in the article about somebody adding it to their pasta sauce.

Will we see more news like this as the economy lags and food prices rise? I wonder if squirrel would make a good pizza topping. If anybody has a recipe to share, add it to the comments on this post.

Ref: Squirrel: It’s what’s for dinner

Like, 1/8-inch thin crust.

I like my crust thin. I’m too in love with the flavors of the toppings to end up with a thick, fluffy, bready crust, and I love finishing a few slices and then munching on the hard, crunchy, pizza bones that remain in your plate. They’re like crunchy bread sticks that contain the flavors of the oils from the cheese, olive oil, a little char on them.

The day before yesterday I made a single dough ball.

• 275 grams of Caputo Rinforzato flour
• 190 grams of hot tap water
• 1 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 tsp kosher salt

I didn’t proof the yeast. I put the flour in the bowl and poured the water, which was probably about 130° into the flour and started mixing it with a wooden spoon.

Once I did this it was cooled down enough to add in the yeast and the salt and I continued to mix it until it came together and then I started to need it by hand for just a few minutes.

I covered the bowl and tossed it into the fridge. I was going to make the pizza the next evening. However, I didn’t feel well last night and didn’t make the pizza. The do spent another night in the fridge.

I took the dough out earlier this afternoon, so it was about 36 hours in the fridge, roughly. Let it warm up up a bit. Then around 4:00, made the pizza.

It stretched easily and I could see the light through the stretched out dough. I stretched it thin enough that a few holes appeared, but I just pinched those to close them. As I maneuvered the dough over to the peel, it was still stretching under it’s own weight as I carried it.

Toppings:

• Shredded mozzerella
• Slivered onions
• Crushed and minced fresh garlic
• Some left over cooked bacon from breakfast, chopped up
• Extra virgin olive oil drizzled over the pie

Made on my pre-heated stone at my oven’s maximum temperature, which is 550°F.

When I took it out, I could tell that it was crispy like I rarely see. It didn’t bend as I let it slide from the peel to the aluminum tray.

It was a fairly consistent 1/8-inch thick under the topics. The outer crust as you can see raised up a bit, but remained under 1/2-inch. Every bite was crispy and tasty.

A new wood-fired brick oven pizzeria, named Bufalina, opened close to where we live. We’re really happy to have them nearby because now it’s a 10-minute drive for delicious pizza instead of 25-30 minutes.

Bacon and onion pizza is a family favorite, so on our first trip, we ordered the Porri pizza. Porri is the Italian word for leeks. The leeks are caramelized, and combined with pancetta (an Italian bacon), and scamorza (a cheese which resembles a dried mozzarella). The Porri pizza took our basic bacon and onion and elevated it to the gourmet level.

You should give this topping combination a try. It was delicious.

If your pancetta is a bit on the salty side, slice it thin and distribute it evenly over the pie rather than leave it in chunks. The caramelized leeks are milder than onions, but have a unique, buttery flavor that onions don’t. I couldn’t tell if the scamorza was of the smoked variety because the mild smokiness we tasted could have been imparted by the burning wood.

If you live in the area, be sure to get to Bufalina. You can learn more about them on their website.

Foodie Fatale (Jocelyn Ruggiero) shares a cannoli recipe that looks good and she takes it to the next level with her instructive and dramatic video presentation on how to make them, step by step. I might even call it food porn.

Good luck trying to find the Salvatore Bklyn ricotta that she uses. Best as I can tell it’s only available in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

However, perhaps you can find a high-quality ricotta that is best for Italian desserts from a local cheese provider in your part of the country.

Back in the 70′s (and still in some places today), this is how real bagels were made:

NYC Bagels are the best that I’ve tasted in my lifetime. But even in NYC, it’s getting harder to find bagels that are made the old-fashioned way.

Authentic bagels are made with malt, though today, sugar and corn syrup is often substituted.

Bagels should be boiled, but many places now steam them instead.

Click to learn How To Make The Ultimate Bagel.

Click here to view on the website if you can’t see the video in your reader.

…and thank you Alex T. for sending me the link to the video.

In Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves), Antonio Ricci and his son Bruno take a moment out of their very frustrating day to forget about their problems and get some pizza.

Unfortunately, the restaurant that they go to is a bit too high-class for pizza, so instead they order up some Mozzarella in Carrozza — which translates to Mozzarella in a Carriage — and some wine.

It’s a wonderful father-and-son scene, in a must-see classic Italian film.

Mozzarella in Carrozza (Giada De Laurentiis’ version)

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds thinly sliced smoked mozzarella
12 slices whole-wheat bread
18 fresh large basil leaves
8 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil, for deep frying
2 cups (about) all-purpose flour
1 cup purchased pesto

Directions

Divide half of the cheese equally among 6 bread slices. Top with the basil leaves then the remaining cheese. Cover with the remaining bread slices, pressing gently, to form 6 sandwiches.

Whisk the eggs, salt and pepper in a large bowl until well blended and frothy. Place the flour in a medium bowl. Add enough oil to a heavy large frying pan to come 1/2-inch up the sides of the pan. Heat the oil over medium heat. Dredge the sandwiches in the flour to coat lightly, then dredge them in the egg mixture to coat completely and place in the hot oil. Cook until the cheese melts and the sandwiches are golden, about 3 minutes per side. Cut the sandwiches into triangles. Transfer the sandwiches to a platter and serve with the pesto.

Here are links to alternative recipes by Mario Batali, and Michael Chiarello.

If you want to watch the scene from the film, then click here.

On this Father’s day, please forget about all the problems of the day and enjoy some good food with your family.

Can you imagine being in an Italian-American family and having to eat a gluten-free diet? Pizza? Pasta? Bread? How would you survive?

It’s not something that I have had to deal with, I have friends that are gluten intolerant, and if I am making pizza for the crowd, I want to be accommodating.

Searching out recipes for gluten-free crust is easy. I found this one which gets great reviews: Gluten-Free Pizza Crust. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty complicated recipe and includes ingredients that you might not have in your pantry.

We have Caputo FioreGlut, which is Molino Caputo’s gluten-free baking mix. They’ve already blended most of the ingredients that you’ll need to make a good pizza crust. Have a look at the simplicity of their recipe:

Recipe for Basic Gluten-Free Pizza Dough
34 oz Water
3 ½ lbs Caputo FioreGlut Gluten-Free Flour (baking mix)
2 oz Salt
Yeast (amount not specified on package)

Almost too simple, but what do you expect from Italians. You should feel lucky enough that they provided you with actual measurements for the first three ingredients. My grandmother didn’t even have measuring cups in her house. If you asked her how she made something and asked her how much of something she put in, she’d grab some in her hand and say, “About this much.”

Let us know what you do for gluten-free crust and if you have any improvements to the basic recipe above, we’d like to see you leave a comment telling us about it below.

Update: Heidi mailed me some details on how her first attempt with Caputo FioreGlut worked out, so scroll down for more in the comments.

This semi-dense, sweet and egg-glazed bread has been an Easter tradition since before I can remember.

I think this is a modification of what some Italian bakers create when they bend the braided loaf around so that it makes a circle, and then they put decorated hard-boiled eggs into the loaf. But I can’t confirm that since I have no recollection of my ancestors making it that way.

I’ve got pictures, but not Mom’s recipe. Since Easter has already past now by more than a couple of weeks, I’ll post the image along with a recipe that I found on at cooks.com which is pretty close to what her recipe must be.

1 c. milk
1/2 c. (1 stick) butter, cut into pieces
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 env. dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
1 lg. egg, beaten to blend, room temperature
4 c. (about) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 lg. egg, beaten with 2 tbsp. water (glaze)

Scald milk in heavy, medium saucepan. Add butter, sugar, and salt. Let stand until butter melts. Pour mixture into large bowl. Cool to 105 to 115 degrees. Sprinkle yeast over 1/4 cup warm water in small bowl; stir to dissolve. Let stand 10 minutes at room temperature.

Add yeast mixture and 1 beaten egg to milk mixture. Stir in enough flour, 1/2 cup at a time, to form soft, slightly sticky dough. Lightly grease large bowl. Add dough, turning to coat. Cover bowl with kitchen towel and let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 2 hours.

Grease two heavy large cookie sheets. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth, 2 minutes. Divide dough in half. Divide each half into 3 pieces. Roll each piece out between hands and floured surface to 18 inch long rope.

Arrange 3 ropes side by side on 1 prepared sheet. Braid ropes. Pinch ends together and tuck under loaf. Repeat process with remaining 3 ropes on second cookie sheet for second loaf. Cover each loaf with kitchen towel and let rise in warm draft-free area until almost doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush egg glaze over loaves. Bake until loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on bottom, about 25 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool.

One difference that’s noticeable from the picture is that once the egg-glaze is brushed on, our version has poppy seeds sprinkled onto the top of the bread.

Let me tell you about the time my father had his cholesterol checked the week after Easter. On second thought, nevermind.

Instead, let’s just think about the flavors that make our Easter, in our Italian American (mixed with some French Canadian) family, that make us really look forward to this holiday. Last year we talked about a different kind of easter pie. That was more of a dessert pie. Pizza Chena is more like a full main course.

This usually gets made a day or two before Easter. It’s a lot of work to prepare it, with all of the cutting of the meats and cheeses. Some of the ingredients, like the basket cheese, may only show up in your local stores only around this time of the year.

Dad usually makes at least two of these. Before the Easter holiday even arrives, close to one-half of one of them is usually gone from the nibbling that occurs. He said that this recipe makes two regular-size ones, or one pretty big one. Let us know how you make out by leaving a comment below.

Here is his recipe:

Pizza Chena

(Often pronounced “apizza gaina”. He sometimes refers to it as Easter pie, but there are too many kinds of pies that only come out at Easter, like the one that we talked about last year.)

Use a deep baking dish or large casserole dish.

The Crust

5 cups flour
3 eggs
1 1/4 cup melted Crisco
3 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon garlic powder
3/4 cup warm water (if dry add more)

Knead until smooth.

Roll out about 3/5 of the dough. If you have a silicone pastry mat, it helps by letting you lift it over the baking pan to judge if it’s the correct size. When it’s the right size, spray the pan with Pam and then lift the mat with with the dough and flip it into the pan. Help the dough settle down to the bottom of the baking pan and push it up against the sides of the pan.

Filling

There are two main components to the filling. The chunks of cheese and meat, which are cut into small cubes, and the egg, ricotta, Parmesan mixture.

In total, you want 2.5 lbs of meat, so dice up the following into small cubes:

Regular Ham
Hot Capocollo
Prosciutto

Then do the same with the following cheeses:

1 1/2 lb of fresh basket cheese
1 lb mozzarella
1/2 lb provolone

Preheat your oven to 400°

Fill the crust in the deep baking dish with the diced meat and cheese.

Next, we’ll combine these ingredients.

18 -24 eggs beaten with a whisk
2 1/2 lb Ricotta
2 tablespoons pepper
1/4 cup grated cheese

First beat the eggs, then blend in the ricotta, grated Parmesan, and black pepper.

Pour this over the meat and cheese mixture and mix it in. You may also choose to simply mix the meat and cheese cubes into this looser egg and cheese mixture in a bowl and then pour the entire mixture into the crust.

Roll out a crust for the top and cover the pie with it.

Brush the top with egg whites and water. Cut a long slit in the top of the crust, down the middle.

Bake at 400° for 15 minutes.

Then turn down to 350° and bake for 60 more minutes.

Then 325° for 25 more minutes.

Remove from the oven and let it cool.

When it’s cool, it will be a dense aggregate of all things that are deliciously tasty. Wait at least three weeks before getting your cholesterol checked.

Who doesn’t love bacon? Bacon beer? Really? I gotta have some.

Bacon bread looks like it would be easier to make.

Recipe after the pictures at this link.

While talking about our cheesy government this morning, Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) brought up his dislike of the trend of putting too much cheese on pizza, saying “If I wanted cheese toast, I’d order cheese toast.”

He quotes somebody else suggesting that,

“You can get by with ordinary cheese; you can give people that pillow-soft puffed-up crust some adore. But without good sauce in sufficient quantities, it’s not pizza. Just so we’re clear.”

So what makes good sauce? True Napolitan Pizza is made with the following ingredients:

…
2. Proper ingredients: 00 flour, San Marzano (plum) tomatoes, all natural fior-di-latte or bufala mozzarella, fresh basil, salt and yeast. Only fresh, all-natural, non-processed ingredients are acceptable.
…

(Follow the previous link if you want to see all of the rules if you want to be certified).

What’s missing above, in my opinion, is a good quality olive oil that you can drizzle over the pie before it goes in the oven. Sometimes I simply mix some olive oil into the tomatoes.

Another passionate pizza person once told me that sea salt is a must.

I sometimes wonder if it’s a mistake to refer to it as pizza sauce.

My father gets his wood fired oven going hours before he’s going to make pizza and he prepares all of the toppings including the sauce.

He uses the 00 Caputo Flour, and the San Marzano Tomatoes which grow in the volcanic soil near Naples.

But from there he goes wrong. (Sorry Dad… I have to say it).

There is usually a sauce pan sitting on his stove, and in it is something that to me looks like a tomato sauce. Not a bunch of crushed San Marzano tomatoes, but something that looks like a thick puree. I ask him about it and he tells me that he uses the San Marzanos. I ask him, “What else did you put in there?”

He adds dried basil, dried oregano, salt, tomato paste… wait…what? Tomato paste? Hunt’s Tomato Paste? IGA tomato paste? What!?

If he wasn’t my father, I would call the Pizza Mafia and have this guy whacked. Furthermore, the only way that he could have gotten the whole San Marzanos into a puree must have been to put them through a blender. Purists would say that whips too much air into the tomatoes and changes the taste. On top of that, did he pre-cook the sauce.

I didn’t ask all those questions because at the news that he was putting tomato paste in with the San Marzano’s, I went into lecture mode.

If you’re using the San Marzanos for their superior flavor, then don’t gunk it up with all of that other stuff!

When you go to Sally’s or Pepe’s for pizza they call them Tomato Pies. In fact, the basic tomato pie doesn’t come with mozzarella on top by default. You have to choose that as a topping. If you ask the wait staff for a “large sausage and pepper”, they’ll ask, “Do you want Mozz on that?” (and that is pronounced like “moots”.)

I can’t say that any one ingredient is more important than the other. It all matters to me. What are your thoughts on the perfect pie?

Update: A reader emailed me and shared his thoughts about the blender and tomato seeds:

“BTW, I was just reading a bit in your blog about pizza sauce. I’ve also
read that putting the tomatoes through the blender breaks open the seeds
and adds unwanted bitterness to the sauce. So I just use a potato masher
to crush them by hand, and I agree that it tastes better. I used a
blender the other day with regular tomatoes (since they weren’t soaked in
juice like canned San Marzanos), but pulled the seeds out first, then
added them back to the sauce pan.”

He never baked like this when I lived with him! What a bummer. My college roommate Chuck Rossi shared these loaves, along with a little taunting.

A few weeks ago he sent me these two:

"On the left is an Italian style honey walnut bread (which is why it's so dark - the crumb is a purple/grey color). On the right is a spent grain rustic bread, using the spent grain from a beer brewer friend of mine."

And tonight teases with these two. Look at the yellow of that saffron bread!

"One the left is herb de'provence and on the right is a saffron bread."

Nice work Chuck. I’m impressed and wished you didn’t live on the other side of the country! And make sure that you take care of your dad. Toss him a piece of crust now and then so he doesn’t get malnourished!

Care to share your recipes?

Dessert after Easter Sunday dinner was always special for us because of the Italian specialties that we only had at Easter time. But some traditions fade as the years, and our older relatives that had more knowledge of the old world, pass on. For the younger generations, holidays become more American over time, and sometimes more generic in what we eat and how we celebrate.

Ah, but enough grieving, because Easter is also the time to resurrect traditional recipes to bring new life and hope to your festive Easter dinner table!

This recipe for Neapolitan Easter Pie looks wonderful. If you haven’t enjoyed this in a number of years, you should make it, and get your kids and grandchildren building memories of this and other fantastic traditional holiday foods.

What are your favorite foods that originated in the old world? Do you have a favorite food that you miss?

Working with a wood fired oven, you can easily get it over 900°F. Slide the pizza in, a minute and a half later, you can slide out a perfectly done, thin crust, Neapolitan masterpiece.

If you’re stuck with a conventional oven that tops out at 500-550°F, you might think you can’t come close to a wood fired oven.

The trick to get a surface to be even hotter so you can get closer to the results of a wood-fired oven is to use a cast iron pan, which is preheated on the stove, and using the broiler to hit the top of the pie.

Clever and worth a try.

My friend Gary tipped me off to this technique which he saw in this article at Lifehacker . Thanks Gary!