no knead to apologise

where i grew up, pizza was something you bought from the supermarket in miniature, personalised portions, kept in the chest freezer in the garage, and broke out on a saturday night when your kids had been REALLY good.  it came in two flavours, and each smelled disturbingly of stale cardboard.  then, with my teen years, came delivery from one of the two chain-pizzerias in town, but now the essence of cardboard had been joined by a nasty chemical aftertaste that appeared to ooze disturbingly from the rubbery cheese.  it's like drinking a glass of franzia; it might tick all the definition boxes, technically “wine,” but do you really want to go to there?  no, tina fey, i do not.  and then, suddenly, before our very eyes, pizza underwent a revolution of sorts.  she slowly removed her oversized, buddy holly style glasses,  shook loose her tight bun of hair in slow motion until it cascaded over her shoulders, and wouldn't you know it, pizza even took the popular guy from school home and had her wicked way with him.  you GO, pizza!  now THIS is the dish i can blow a thousand calories over and not feel like i've wasted my time (or my waistline).

jim lahey apparently owns a bakery and a restaurant in new york city, has a number of cookbooks under his belt, but i had never heard of him until last week.  in the wonder that is bon appetit magazine, i read the recipe for his no-knead pizza dough and realised that, for better or for worse, jim lahey and i have had a date with destiny for a long, long time.  THIS is the kind of pizza that i dreamed about in my youth; with a crust of taught, crisp edges and chewy interior, perfect in its imperfections, charred yet moist, slapping all other pizza crusts across the cheek with a white silk glove and challenging them to a duel.  (spoiler alert: jim lahey's no-knead pizza dough wins.)

the best thing about homemade pizza, of course, is that you can make it to fulfill your every desire (or, at least most of them).  the sauce was a can of fire-roasted tomatoes and garlic whizzed up in the food processor.  there was fresh mozzarella torn up into rough little ribbons.  there was bacon imported from wisconsin, cut into perfect wee lardons. (more on this in a later column.  this bacon refuses to be content with a mere paragraph; a bridesmaid of ingredients.  no, no.  this bacon is a bridezilla of foods, demanding its time in the spotlight and its own reality show on E!  and, frankly, justly so.)  and finally there was thinly-sliced red onion and red chile flakes (as apparently I can eat no foodstuff without adding red chile flakes).  it was, for lack of a better word, redonkulous.

okay, so there’s the good.  now for the bad.  there’s a british adjective: faffy.  it means fiddly, tricky, sometimes annoyingly time-consuming.  well, full disclosure here, this was one faffy recipe.  first of all, you have to start it at least a day in advance, so it’s definitely not a good option for all the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-apron cooks out there.  then there were a few dough malfunctions…  i think part of the problem was that my dough was too wet.  the image i had of whipping the dough around my knuckles, twirling it in the air with perfect harmonious elasticity didn’t quite come to be.  it was more like a british chick with tacky, flour-covered hands battling ferociously against gravity as the dough sagged faster than keith richard’s face and heroically tried to reach the floor as i grabbed at it, desperately trying to stop it from ripping.  so, yes.  there was that.  then there was the fact that my pizza stone broke.  and that the remaining pizzas stuck to the substitute baking sheets.  BUT, for a titch less water in the dough and a few less degrees in the oven, this would be a perfect recipe.  and, for me, at least, the perfect pizza is worth a little faff.  in fact, i think i owe it to that little bespectacled girl of my youth.

no-knead pizza dough (adapted from jim lahey’s “my pizza”)

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for shaping the dough
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 1/2 cups water

in a medium bowl, thoroughly blend the flour, yeast and salt.  add the water and, with a wooden spoon or your hands, mix thoroughly.

cover the bowl with plastic wrap and/or a damp kitchen towel and allow it to rise at room temperature for 18 hours or until it has more than doubled.

flour a work surface and scrape out the dough onto it.  divide it into 4 equal parts and shape them into a rough square.  with each portion, fold the four corners toward the center,  flip it over so the seam side’s down, and shape into a round.  dust with more flour and let it rest for an hour.

(at this point, if you don't intend to use the dough right away, wrap the balls individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 3 days.  return to room temperature by leaving them out on the counter, covered with a damp cloth, for 2 to 3 hours before baking.)

during the last hour of dough's resting, prepare oven. arrange a rack in upper third of oven and place pizza stone on rack and heat oven to its hottest setting, 500 to 550 degrees, for 1 hour.  (my new oven heats to a blistering 550 and this is when my pizza stone decided to commit culinary suicide.  i shall be trying 500 degrees next time...)

working with 1 dough ball at a time, dust dough generously with flour and place on a floured work surface.  carefully shape dough into a 10- to 12-inch disk by spreading gently from the inside towards the edges.  (or wrestle with it in mid-air, attempting to stretch it with your knuckles.  fun, but faffy.)

when ready to bake, switch oven heat to broil.  sprinkle a pizza peel or rimless baking sheet lightly with flour. place dough disk on prepared peel and top with desired toppings.

slide pizza from peel onto hot pizza stone.  broil pizza, rotating halfway, until bottom of crust is crisp and top is blistered, 5-7 minutes. 

is this thing on...?

once upon a time there was a british girl who lived in seattle.  well, frankly, there are probably many of them.  but let’s just talk about this one for a sec.  she loves reading and strongly dislikes math.  she is woefully accident-prone.  she chooses peaches over nectarines every time.  she once ate jellyfish, and not for a dare.  she grew up in asia, has lived in 3 continents, and traveled across all but the really chilly ones.  she has 3 kids, 1 husband, and 154 cookbooks (really.  i just counted).  (counted the cookbooks.  i remember how many husbands & kids i have.  on most days.)  she loves cooking, drinking, and swearing.  often at the same time.  oh, and she hates people who talk about themselves in the third person, so let’s get rid of that sharpish. 

i’ve always said that lunch is a much-maligned meal.  actually, i’ve never said that.  but let’s, for the sake of sounding sage & wise, pretend that i have.  dinner is the big daddy meal of the day, dinner needs no extra props.  breakfast is THE most important meal of the day, so they say.  brunch is all kinds of special weekend fanciness.  but what about poor old lunch…??   i reached a point earlier this year, after my 29^th cheese and tomato sandwich in a row, that i said to myself, ENOUGH!  enough of spending the whole day folding laundry, and driving kids around places, and prepping dinner, and folding more laundry, and changing diapers, and, oh, i dunno, folding laundry.  mama needs a goddamn special treat in the middle of the day!  so i sat down with a few of the 154 and decided to revive the fancy lunch.  “plenty” by yotam ottolenghi (best.  name.  ever.) is a fantastic tome that i got my mitts on last christmas.  (maybe if george michael had given that chick with big hair “plenty” by yotam ottolenghi instead of his heart, then she wouldn’t have given it away the very next day.  then again, george michael probably isn’t losing too much sleep over that these days.)  it’s chock-full of mouth-watering vegetarian recipes, and though i am by no means a herbivore myself, i do have a long-standing love affair with the old veg.   

(this is my menuboard in my kitchen, by the way.  i offer it as an excellent answer to being asked 800 times a day "what's for dinner???"  read the damn board, people!!) 

 

baked eggs with yoghurt and chile was first up.  with a few tweaks, of course.  i was low on arugula (SO much less fun than its alter-ego “rocket”), so i added in some spinach and other baby greens.  i had no “kirmisi biber” (who the hell does??  whatthe?  sounds like some kind of arabic pop star), so i used some aleppo chile flakes.  i had no sage, so i left it out.  (sod off, sage.  go find a simon and garfunkle song to pout in.)  and in a wild attempt at being healthy, I omitted the melted butter yotam has in his original recipe.  (gotta pick your battles, right?)  and even with all the wonky tinkering, it was a feast of utter deliciousness.  hearty yet healthy, tangy with just the right kick of heat from the chile.  here follows the recipe, with my tweaks bolded (as i am terribly, terribly important).

baked eggs with yoghurt and chili (adapted from “plenty” by yotam ottolenghi (in case you missed that), 2010)

 

serves 2 (or one very hungry mama)

2 large eggs
2 tbsp olive oil
a bag of rocket/arugula (or whatever greens you have kicking around in your fridge)
a couple of good-sized dollops of greek yoghurt (please note the british spelling.  makes it taste a little snooty, with just a hint of pretention)
1 garlic clove, crushed

a few sage leaves, chopped (or none at all)
1/2 tsp kirmizi biber (or a decent sprinkling of chile flakes)
salt

preheat the oven to 300°F.

place the greens and olive oil in a large pan and sprinkle over a little salt.  sauté on medium heat for a few minutes, until the greens wilt and most of the liquid has evaporated.

transfer to a small baking dish (or leave in the pan, if ovenproof) and make two deep indentations in the cooked greens.  carefully break an egg into each hollow then place in the preheated oven to cook for 10-15 minutes, or until whites are set.

whilst the eggs are baking, stir the garlic into the yoghurt and season generously with salt.  set aside.

when your eggs are cooked to your liking, take them out of the oven.  spoon on a large glob of garlicky yoghurt and sprinkle over the sage (if you're using it) and the chile flakes (or justin bieber, should you have any on hand).  serve immediately.

And to the two people who are actually reading this, I urge you to try it.  it’s even easier than pie (as my number-one son would say), and it’s really rather good.