A Rhode Island Pizza

   

Between growing up in New Jersey and living in Rhode Island, the states with, respectively, the largest number and percentage of Italians, I have eaten a lot of very, very good pizza. Truly fine thin-crust pizza can only be gotten in such Italian strongholds—New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven—as anyone who has had to, say, move to the middle of the country, knows. Pizza dreams always come back to that one little place that is pizza perfection for you: the right amount of black on the bottom of the thin crust, the subtle slick of oil on the top, the moderate smear of properly salted, unsweetened sauce, the restrained yet optimum amount of good cheese, browned here and there to perfection.

For as long as I can remember, Friday night was pizza night at my house: first, in New Jersey, the order of four large pizzas from a local pizzeria for our family of eight; then, in college in Rhode Island, going out for pizza on a Friday night off-campus; later, making my own every single week, a Friday night ritual. I don’t make it every Friday anymore. But I make it a lot. And lately, I’ve been making it frequently, because for the first time ever I don’t feel as if I absolutely must make my own crust or forego pizza altogether. Now in Rhode Island, pizza can be a simple matter of assembly.

A lot of good impromptu food is about assembly of great purchased products—think antipasto platters—and most dishes, including pizza, are the result of assembly of various components in the end. But first you usually have to make or cook them. Now in Rhode Island, with the exception of the truly simple and lightning-quick matter of the sauce, you don’t. You can make a true Rhode Island pizza—indeed, a more-Rhode Island-than-ever pizza—with some special products from our local producers of artisan food products.

The foundation, literally, of this Rhode Island pizza is the fresh, thin, oval pizza shells from Olga’s Cup and Saucer, now available in some local markets. Though Olga started out in Little Compton, it was not until she moved to Providence and put together a professional operation that the food began to meet my food-snob standard; with the offering of this pizza crust, I would have to say that I am now impressed. Pizza every day! Thank you, Olga.

But that is just the bottom line, or at least, the bottom. Now we also have a very good, properly salted, creamy mozzarella from Narragansett Creamery, also now available at a market near you (Thank you, Louella). And we’ve always had chouriço. So in making my Rhode Island pizza, I thought: why not substitute a good handmade chouriço for pepperoni? Not that you can’t get terrific pepperoni here, but why not push the envelope on the Rhode Island theme?

This turned out to be a very good thought. Here is how to assemble your very own Rhode Island pizza. And if you don’t live or summer here, as always, I’m sorry. But do come visit.

A Rhode Island Pizza

Partially cooked, the Olga’s shells already have a generous amount of cornmeal on the bottom; they come in packages of 2 and freeze beautifully. Commercial chouriço will yield more oil than handmade, similar to commercial pepperoni. Serves 1 as a meal, 2-3 as appetizer.

For the sauce

1 15-oz can imported Italian tomatoes, preferably Pastene™
1 T olive oil
salt

In a medium skillet, heat the oil. If the tomatoes look watery on opening the can, drain them; if not (Pastene’s usually do not), put them right into the hot oil. Likewise, if the tomatoes seem hard (Pastene’s usually are not), cover the pan for a minute to soften them. Cook the tomatoes over moderately high heat for 2-3 minutes, chopping them with the edge of a wooden spoon, until they are broken down and a sauce begins to form. Lower the heat and cook at a moderately low simmer for anywhere from from 2-3 to 10 minutes more, depending on the tomatoes, until you can drag the spoon across the center of the pan and create a liquid-free tunnel. The sauce should be completely cohesive but not dry; be careful not to overcook, as the sauce will continue to lose some moisture on cooling. Near the end of cooking, add salt very gradually, just enough to take any acidic edge off to yield a true, sweet, round tomato flavor; again, this will depend on the tomatoes. Do not muck it up with a lot of dried herbs. Remove from the heat. Let the sauce come to room temperature before using.

For assembly

1 Olga’s pizza shell
1 8-oz Narragansett Creamery mozzarella
2-3 T freshly grated parmaggiano reggiano
¼ lb (about ½ link) hot chouriço, skin removed, sliced very thin
1 tea oregano (optional)
extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling (optional)

Preheat oven to at least 450 F, 500 F if your oven will go there.

Place the shell on a baking sheet or peel (if using a pizza stone); you can sprinkle it lightly with cornmeal, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Spread it thinly with  sauce; if you make the above amount, you will have 3 or 4 tablespoons left over, which you can refrigerate for another use. Slice the mozzarella thinly while cold (a wire cheese cutter is good for this), and arrange around the shell on top of the sauce; follow with the thinly sliced chouriço. Sprinkle with the parmesan cheese and the oregano if using. Bake until the cheese is lightly browned and gently bubbling, the crust is golden-edged, and you smell pizza. Home ovens vary widely; if you can get your oven hot, this will take 5-8 minutes, so start checking after 5. If not, it may take as long as 15 minutes. You want to remove your pizza before the bottom gets too dark or the cheese and sauce lose too much moisture; it should still have a gloss.

Remove from the oven and, if you wish, drizzle-sprinkle a tiny bit of extra-virgin olive oil on top. Transfer to a board and let sit for a minute or two; using a pizza cutter or very sharp knife, cut it into pieces and serve, with hot pepper if you like. Enjoy the real thing.

 

                                            

Chouriço: Another Portuguese Gift

In Rhode Island, where the Portuguese are second only to the Italians for largest immigrant population, Portuguese food (like Italian food), is truly part of traditional Rhode Island cuisine. In addition to loving our Portuguese pao de milho and sweet bread, we eat Portuguese chouriço alongside eggs as readily as bacon or ham. Outsiders sometimes think our chouriço is like Spanish chorizo, or even Mexican, but it is not. As you know by now, I adore Mexican chorizo, but it is a different animal. Actually, it’s the same animal, the pig, but a different item altogether, despite surface similarities. All three are distinct in taste, with the Mexican being more finely ground and vinegary, as well as seasoned with chili pepper, and the Spanish containing more paprika and smoked to a harder, drier, finish.
Portuguese chouriço is a lightly smoked sausage made with coarsely ground pork shoulder, garlic, paprika, vinegar, pepper, salt, and sometimes red wine, and stuffed into natural casings. Most come in mild, which is standard, or hot versions. “Gourmet” versions, including lower-fat and chicken sausages, are now available (and they are very good), as are finely ground and skinless sausages, and ground meat and patties. Several area sources with different offerings are Sardinha’s, which is carried primarily at upscale stores and which you may need to order online, and Amaral’s, Gaspar’s, Furtado’s, and Michael’s, which are widely available in stores locally as well as online. If you live in Rhode Island or the part of Southeastern Massachusetts that injects itself between Rhode Island towns, you can make a pilgrimage to Chaves Market on Columbia Street in Fall River for the store’s own chouriço—mild,  hot, or extra fat, and so good that they don’t bother to carry any packaged brand. Chave’s chouriço is a true artisan product, and well worth the trip. In case you’re wondering, the extra-fat chouriço is preferred by some Portuguese cooks for the richness it gives to soups and stews.
Chouriço is a common ingredient in Portuguese dishes, from feijoado to kale and clam soup, clam and chorizo stew, chorizo with beans (especially favas), and egg preparations of all kinds. Sometimes it is just set on fire to cook (“flamed”) and sent to the table. Here is a recipe for a familiar Rhode Island classic.
LCM Portuguese Chouriço and Pepper Sandwich
The Portuguese dish Chouriço and Peppers is commonly a stewed dish of crumbled choriço with red wine and tomatoes served over rice, and used also as a sandwich filling. In college, my Portuguese suite-mates referred to it as “shittiesandpeppers,” its popular moniker. It is a favorite of all Rhode Islanders. My version is closer to a sauté of sliced rather than crumbled sausage, without sauce, and I serve it on a Portuguese sweet bread roll, which I have come to love for hamburgers and deli sandwiches as well. You could serve yours more traditionally with tomato sauce and on a soft torpedo-shaped plain roll, if you wish. And you can also prepare the entire thing on the charcoal grill, omitting the wine. Makes 3 good-sized sandwiches.
½ lb, generous, hot, mild, or mixed chouriço
1 small red pepper
1 small green pepper
½ medium onion
1 fat clove garlic
Salt, pepper
1 tea-1 T olive oil (see NOTE)
Big splash (about 2 T) red wine
Portuguese sweet bread rolls
Slice the garlic into thin slivers. Cut the peppers in half horizontally and slice them vertically into ¼” slices. Slice the onion into ¼” slices, and slice the chouriço into ¼” rounds, leaving the skin on. (You can also remove the skin after cooking sausages whole; see below).
Put about a teaspoon of olive oil into a large heavy skillet and heat it to medium-high, rotating the pan so that the oil coats the surface. When the pan begins to smoke, turn the heat down a little and toss in the choriço; cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the fat renders; do not over-brown. Remove from the pan and set aside. (If you want your chouriço skinless, cook it whole before cutting; remove it from the pan and pierce the skin with a sharp knife; draw the knife down lengthwise; remove the skin; and slice into ¼” rounds).
Restore the heat to medium-high and toss in the peppers. Cook for about a minute, stirring, then toss in the onions; cook another minute, then toss in the garlic, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook another minute, return the chouriço to the pan, splash with the wine, toss around, and cover loosely, letting steam escape, to let the vegetables soften a bit—about 5 minutes cooking time total from when you throw in the peppers. (NOTE: If you are using a commercial brand like Michael’s or Gaspar’s, the sausages will yield enough fat and you will need only a little oil; if an artisanal or lower-fat brand, you will need to add more oil to cook the peppers.)
Toast Portuguese sweet bread rolls lightly, pile with the chouriço and peppers, and enjoy a taste of Rhode Island.
                     
                                             
___
Notice: Voting for Rhode Island Monthly’s Best of Rhode Island is open, and there is a category for best local website. If you appreciate Little Compton Mornings and would like to show your support, you may vote here now: http://www.rimonthly.com/Rhode-Island-Monthly/Best-of-Rhode-Island/Best-of-Rhode-Island-Ballot/ . I thank you!

Butterscotch Beans: Saturday Night Special

To an outsider, New England has some odd gustatory habits. Sweet doughnuts served with sour pickles during sugaring-off season (hard upon us: coming up in a future post). “New York System” wieners that put minced hamburger meat on top of hot dogs—appropriately called “gaggers” here in Rhode Island, and not to be found anywhere in New York. Coffee milk, of course. And sweet baked beans as a main course, accompanied by rich, slightly sharp brown bread. Strange to you, perhaps; perfect sense to us.
The baked beans and brown bread are, in fact, a tradition for supper on Saturday in New England. It is, granted, an old-fashioned one, but one that has by no means disappeared, especially in the Northern states where, let’s face it, rib-sticking, intensely flavored food is what we crave on a blustery night (I live in “southerly” Rhode Island, but as soon as the temperature drops below 60, I start craving this kind of food). Baked beans are underrated, I think; they are one of those things, like good homemade potato salad, or rice pudding, that you just have to keep taking one more spoonful of. I’ll wager you haven’t made, perhaps not even served, baked beans in years (ever?). Try some; you’ll like them. You needn’t necessarily (although I recommend it, at least once) limit yourself to beans and brown bread: beans with baked, glazed ham and scalloped potatoes and green salad, a favorite menu of mine, will do. But do try them.
I use Butterscotch beans, a calypso bean also known as Steuben Yellow Eye, although you can use the more readily available Great Northern white beans. Butterscotch beans are a true heirloom, 17^th-century bean generally believed to be the original—and still the best—bean for Boston Baked Beans. Like many dried beans, they are really pretty: you want to make something with them (I mean like a bracelet, not just something to eat). They nearly triple in size when cooked, having wonderful absorptive capacity, to borrow a term from the strategy field. Baked beans are infused with the flavors in which they are cooked. These are, in my house, maple, mustard (which supposedly aids their digestion, but just tastes good), and roasted salt pork. Sometimes I add some good chili powder for a little kick.
Rhode Island Baked Beans
This is based on the recipe of my old boss, Gary, but altered to substitute maple syrup for most of the molasses and with the addition of a huge hunk of roasted salt pork. You can, of course, skip the roasting step and simply cut up and add the salt pork. But you’d be sorry you did if you knew what you’d be missing. Historically, this dish would have included much more salt pork--the meat of the meal. Serves 12 or more; may be halved except for the pork, which can be cut by ¼.
2 lb butterscotch beans
1 lb salt pork, with as much lean as possible
1 large onion, finely chopped
½ cup dark molasses
1 cup maple syrup
3 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped (Gary said, “infinitesimally”)
6 T dry mustard
Put beans in a large bowl, add water to cover by at least 2 inches, and let soak overnight. The next morning, put the beans and water in a Dutch oven, adding more water if necessary so that they are completely covered; bring to a boil; and then reduce to a simmer and cook, skimming the major foam, for up to an hour—likely less. To test, lift out a spoonful of beans and blow on them gently: they are done if the skins split. Drain, reserving the liquid.
While the beans are simmering, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and cut the pork in half horizontally. Score the rind of the top half (you may need to make individual cuts in it with a sharp knife, as the skin is tough) and place it in the oven in a shallow baking dish; roast for 45 minutes, or until golden brown and the skin blisters. When done, lower the oven to 300 F. Chop the remaining half of the salt pork into ¼” cubes.
In a bean pot or other deep heavy dish (my ancient bean pot fractured from fatigue years ago, and I have since used a hefty soufflé dish), place the roasted salt pork. Pour the beans over/around the pork, leaving some of it exposed, and then distribute the chopped pork among them.
In a small bowl, mix the molasses, maple syrup, mustard, garlic, onion, and 2 cups of the reserved bean liquid. Pour over the beans, and combine gently so as not to bruise or break them; your hands are best for this. The liquid should be just at the level of the beans—not above, or they will stew; if not, add a bit more of the reserved bean stock. Put the lid on the pot (or cover with foil) and bake for five hours, checking the level of liquid hourly and adding a bit more to keep them just covered and to prevent them from drying out. Remove the lid and cook one hour more. The beans should be glazed and dark caramel in color. Serve with Boston brown bread and butter for supper, digging under the pork rind to pull out some long meaty shreds of pork for each serving.
If you are a true New Englander, you will make a bean sandwich with the leftovers next day, mashing them between two slices of sturdy homemade white bread spread with a little mayonnaise and mustard. A little sliced, grilled Portuguese-style chorizo would not be amiss.

Beets: Sweet

How could you not like a vegetable that is simultaneously considered an aphrodisiac and all-around medicinal superstar, and when cooked and peeled glistens like a jewel and tastes like buttered silk? That comes in purple, gold, and pink-and-white striped packages? This is the not-so-humble beet, excellent source of sugar, dietary fiber, folic acid, minerals, and antioxidants like vitamin C. Beets are one of the few vegetables I liked as a kid (along with their less sugary but also sweet friends, corn and carrots), but when I started cooking I really came to appreciate them. Like a reliable dinner party guest, they can blend in anywhere and keep up their end of the conversation.

That is, pickled beets and borscht are only a few of their many amenable talents. They or their juice add intense color (and sweetness) to pasta, custards and ice creams, broths, and cakes; they are even used rather widely to enhance reds in commercial food production. Beets can be candied, pureed, or grated raw. They have a natural affinity for similarly hard vegetables and fruits, cooked or not: carrots, apples, pears, radishes, jicama, celery root. They love acid—any vinegar, especially sherry or balsamic, and orange, lemon, or lime—and spices like ginger, black pepper, allspice, and chili. They are good w/ nuts and with most soft cheeses like blue, goat, and mozzarella. They are at home with meat or fish. And, of course, you can make wine.

A basic and infinitely variable combination of flavors and textures that I like is beets with corn and goat cheese. I use it for my favorite pizza in the world (after the simple Margherita, of course), a grilled pizza with a smear of tomato sauce topped with beets, onions, corn, goat cheese, and a sprinkling of parm and basil. If I have time, I cook all the vegetables on the grill. Sometimes, as in the photo, I finish the pizza indoors, either in the oven or on top of the stove on my trusty old Calphalon. I love the beet/corn/goat cheese combo so much that I often eat it as a salad with a sherry vinaigrette, or make some sort of taco or egg or stuffed beef dish with it.

Local beets are available spring through fall. Buy beets that are firm and of uniform shape, and that look, even when dirt-covered, smooth and purple rather than woody; the leaves should be fresh and sprightly. Try to cook them as soon as possible after buying; it is better, in my opinion, to store them cooked rather than uncooked. If you do refrigerate them before cooking, cut the leaves off a few inches from the beetroot (the color starts to bleed as soon as you cut into the root), do not wash, and store in a paper bag in a low-humidity bin. To cook, roasting is the way to go: Preheat oven to 400 F (for a few beets, I use the toaster oven). Trim beets close to the root. Place each beet onto a rectangle of foil; roll up and twist the ends. I don’t season them before cooking because who knows what I may want to do with them, but you could, with a little salt, pepper, and olive oil or butter in the packet. Roast until easily pierced with a paring knife; depending on the size of the beets, this could be 20-40 minutes. If not using immediately, I throw the foil packets right in the fridge until I want them, up to several days. When ready for them, unwrap and rub the skins off with your fingers.

The late fall beets are a nice size and shape—and luckily for me, there is still corn, both the bicolor variety Providence and white variety 86. I consider goat cheese to be a staple, so that’s on hand. I have my favorite Mexican chorizo, El Popular (o.k., I consider that a staple, too), Serranos, and coriander. I’m hungry for breakfast, so make these sweet, sour, spicy taquitos.

Triple S Breakfast Taquitos

This makes enough for about 8 taquitos, with leftover meat and possibly cheese for making an omelet the next day. Note that this is Mexican chorizo, a completely different product than the Portuguese or Spanish; if you can’t find it, it’s relatively easy to make (but not as good as El Popular’s). Although this recipe has several steps, they only take a few minutes each.

For the corn

3 ears corn, cut off the cob
1-2 Serrano chilies, stem trimmed
¼ cup water
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup heavy cream
Pinch kosher salt

For the beets

3/4 lb beets (about 4 medium), roasted as directed above
1 stick El Popular or other Mexican chorizo, or just under ½ lb
1 tea sherry vinegar

For assembly

5” corn tortillas
2 or 3 teaspoons lard
5 oz mild cold goat cheese, such as Montrachet
2 T finely chopped cilantro
Reserved beets (optional)

Over high heat in a 9” lightly buttered skillet, toss the corn and the chili for a minute or two until it is smoking and begins to brown. Add the water and sugar and cook over medium-high heat for about three minutes (it will begin to brown rather quickly); add the cream and a large pinch of salt; cook another minute and set aside; it will be saucy, not thick.

Peel, slice, and chop the roasted beets into ¼” dice; if you wish, remove about ¼ cup of them for garnish and set aside.

Slit the plastic casing of the chorizo along its length, and turn the chorizo into a frying pan. Cook over medium heat, chopping with the edge of a wooden spoon, until it’s a fine mince and has released its red oil; do not allow it to brown. Toss in the diced beets and the vinegar, and stir to heat and combine. Keep warm.

In a small cast iron skillet or crepe pan, melt about a teaspoon of lard. The oil should be enough so that the tortillas coat and sizzle, but not enough for them to submerge. Fry the tortillas until they are lightly brown and puff a little; drain on paper towels, then place on the rack of a 300 F oven to stay warm.

Crumble the cold goat cheese quickly with your fingers; using a fork, toss with the chopped coriander. For each taquito, spread about 2 T of the caramel corn out to the edge; put a generous T of chorizo-beet mixture in the center; garnish with a few of the reserved beet jewels if desired; and top with a sprinkling of the goat cheese.