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No, really.. Slit my wrists, cut my throat, take me out and have me flawed!! If I can't have Pizza, I would rather DIE!!!
I'm not all that partial to one particular style of Pizza, either. New York Style, Chicago Deep Dish, Crusty North Beach Style. Sh#@t, I wouldn't even turn down good old frozen pizza. One of my favorite breakfast meals ever, is a leftover slice of pizza with a fried egg on top... Damn, that sounds good right about now.
Remember the early 80's, when Wolfgang Puck made the Duck Breast Pizza famous. That Sh#$!t was great. How about the California Pizza Kitchen Revolution.... Great quality pizza, cooked in a wood burning pizza oven. Fun, bright and fresh Pizza Houses in every Fr#!#!@#$n' mall in America. You gotta love that.
My love and fascination for the pizza came at the ripe old age of 13 when I began working for Mama Gina Costa, Owner and Patriarch of Gina's Pizza in Corona del Mar, Ca. By the time I left her pizza sanctuary at 19, I had spent a third of my life working in Gina's Kitchen.
She taught me how to scrub the scum off the walk-in floor and scrape the pizza ovens, long before she taught me the secret of her sublime crust, or the magic of her simple pizza sauce.
Even though it's been twenty five years since Gina's, I have never kicked that obsession with Pizza and am continually in search of the very best regional examples. The fact is that I am a true Connoisseur of the Fabulous Flat- Bread that is Pizza and will be until the day I die.
Now... Just because I like most pizza, doesn't mean that I don't have my favorites. Let's face it, there's pizza and there is PIZZA.
John's Pizza in the West Village New York, is probably the very best example of Pizza Perfection, in my not so humble opinion.... Quite obviously, Kerouac, Dylan and Ginsberg were onto something when they made John's Pizza their office back in the 60's. The first time I ate at John's on Bleeker, JFK Jr. and his new wife were sitting in the back, making love to a Pizza Marguerite, chopped salad and pitcher of beer. The fact is that the wood burning pizza ovens at John's, have been cooking pizza for decades. You really can't duplicate the seasoning that has taken place in those ovens.
Burt's Deep Dish, on the outside of Chicago is my favorite of that particular variety. This guy puts so much love and attention into his pies and has a dough recipe that can't even be explained. I've scheduled connecting flights through Chicago, just to make the pilgrimage to Burt's. I even tried to convince Burt to send a half baked deep dish overnight Fed-Ex, so my wife could experience his genius.
In San Francisco's North Beach, It's Tommaso's. The oldest pizza establishment in the Bay Area. It's the real San Francisco Treat. Family run for generations, always a line to get in, checkered table cloths and Chianti bottles hanging. It's pretty much the text book version of an Italian-American Pizza Joint and has the pizza texture and flavor profiles that put it right up there in the Pizza Hall of Fame.
Because this is an interactive forum, I'd like to use the opportunity to get your picks on the Best Pizza in your given area or town. Granted, for me... saying this is my favorite pizza, is like saying this my favorite song or my favorite sex position or my favorite wine... Pick the top 2 or 3 and post them in the comments. As a Pizza Anthropologist, it will be really great to learn, agree or disagree with your picks.
If you've read my last column, PORK... The other Vegetable!, posted last week on the Vine, you know that traditional pizza is not part of my current eating program. When you're on a strict Vegan regimen for 90 days with no diary, no white flour, no meat, etc. it makes the whole pizza thing a little tough. However, as the title of this column states, Give Me Pizza or Give Me Death....I don't really care to kick it in anytime soon. So, to try and stave off my suicidal pizza tendencies, I've come up with a Vegan option that has seemed to suffice for now:
Vegan Pizza Made Easy
1 package of wheat flour pizza dough (Trader Joe's cold section)
1 bulb of roasted garlic
1 roasted red bell pepper
1 onion (caramelized)
1 can of artichoke hearts (in water)
a pinch of kosher salt
a pinch of pepper flakes
-Take wheat pizza dough from package and mold into a round dough ball. Let it rise for 2-3 hours.
-Roast garlic bulbs in a 475 degree oven, drizzled with olive oil and covered with foil for 45min.
-Roast red bell pepper on the stove burner until black on all sides, put into a paper bag for 5min., peel, de-seed and slice julienne.
-Slice one onion and saute with a small amount of olive oil until caramelized, then add a touch of balsamic vinegar.
-Pound out pizza dough ball and place on a olive oiled baking sheet.
-Smear roasted garlic on the bottom, add other topping and bake for 8-10 minutes at 475 degrees.
Pizza Lovers Unite!!!!
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