Real Sicilian-Style Pizza

Written and Photographed by Tom DiGangi, Jr. 

My grandmother lived with my family when I was a boy.  And, I learned a lot about food because of it.  She was born and raised in the small hill town of St Anna on the southern coast of Sicily before she settled in Philadelphia after an eventful emigration from the old country.  As I have been told, the journey involved a gun, a stowaway, and oddly enough, a donkey.  But, that is a story for another day.

Grandma used to make a pan pizza that I still dream about.  It bore no resemblance to the uber-cheesy, topping heavy, beasts that Pizza Hut, Pizzeria Uno, or any of the other unfortunately Italianesque chains perpetrate on diners in shopping centers and food courts around the US and the globe. 

No.  Bernadina Abruzzo’s pizza was sublime.  A medium crust - not to thin, not to thick, crispy to bite, yet airy to chew - was the foundation for it all.  The rest was incredibly simple.  A base-coat of fine olive oil.  A sparing amount of homemade tomato sauce, lightly flavored with garlic and basil, topped the crust.  An even more sparing dusting of parmigano, or more often then not, pecorino, cheese finished the pie.  After all, she was from Sicily, where sheep milk and its resulting pecorino cheese still reigns supreme. 

  

Simple as it was, I cannot imitate it and have given up.  Instead, I have taken to improvising on her theme of simple, high-quality ingredients used in shockingly small proportions.  The following recipe is one of those attempts.  It elicited a “this is absolutely delicious” response from Laura who rarely expresses praise above “good.”  What can I say?  She is part German, so as long as the food is on time, it’s usually o.k. by her.  With that context, “delicious” is high praise.

Pan Pizza with fennel sausage, mushrooms and arugula

Ingredients

4 Cups Pizza Dough – see recipe

4 Oz. Sweet Pork Sausage with Fennel

1 1/2 Cups Tomato Sauce, homemade – see recipe

4 Sun-dried Tomatoes, finely diced

2 T Dry Vermouth

2 Cups Hen of the Woods Mushrooms (A.K.A. Maitake), roughly chopped

(substitute with crimini or button mushrooms)

2 Cups Arugula, roughly chopped

1 Cup grated Caciocavalo Cheese

1 Cup grated Parmigano Reggiano Cheese

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

Procedure

To make the pizza dough…

Laura makes great (and easy) bread dough every week that we leave in the fridge.  Check out Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day for the recipe and procedure.  When we want to make bread, we pull out a handful of the dough, form it into the desired shape and let it rise for an hour while the oven is heating-up.  To convert this bread dough into pizza dough, we add a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and kneed it in.  Then, let it rise in an oiled bowl on the countertop for a couple of hours, but it could sit there all day and would only get better.  The longer the dough is left to rise, the lighter the pizza crust.  You could always use store-bought dough, but you wouldn’t, would you?

To make the tomato sauce…

Sauté a few cloves of crushed garlic in a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil until lightly browned.  As you may infer, precise measurements are not critical here.  Add a small can (about 20 oz) of high-quality whole plum tomatoes that you crush with you hands or a masher.  Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer.  Season with salt, add about a dozen leaves of whole basil and simmer for 10 minutes.  Done!

To assemble the pizza…

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a sauté pan, heat a tablespoon of olive oil and add the sausage, crumbling it into small pieces.  Cook over medium heat until brown.  Add the sun-dried tomatoes, tomato sauce and two tablespoons of dry vermouth.  Scrap the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to release any good stuff stuck to the pan.  Simmer for a few minutes and set aside.

Coat a half sheet pan with a liberal amount of extra-virgin olive oil.  It should be thick enough so that you can write your name in the oil in the pan with your finger.  Stretch the dough with your hands to roughly the size of the pan without breaking the dough.  Do not use a rolling pin, as this will break the edges and release the air from the dough.  Your goal is to keep as much of the developed air (or rise) from escaping from the dough.  Press the dough into the pan, leaving at least a half-inch edge to develop the perfect crust handle.  If the dough is too elastic and pulls away from the sides, let it rest a few minutes, then finish the job.

Remember, it is all about the dough, so add the toppings sparingly!  Start with the tomato sauce and sausage, then the mushrooms and cheeses.  Reserve the arugula.

Place the pizza-in-a-pan on the center rack in a 400-degree oven for 10 minutes.  Then rotate the pan and cook for another 10 minutes.  Add the arugula and return to the oven for three to five minutes.  Total cooking time is approximately 25 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and let rest for at least five minutes before serving. 

Accompaniment

I dreamed-up and indulged in a cocktail while making this dish, and named it the British Virgin Islander, because it incorporates the English favorite, gin, with the Caribbean staple, rum.  But, there is nothing virgin about it.  If someone else has already created this drink or used this name, please accept my apologies.  I am aware of neither.

In a shaker, mix plenty of ice with 1 part gin, 1 part white rum, ¼ part dry vermouth, juice of ½ of a lemon, and juice of ½ an orange.  Mix and strain into a chilled martini glass.  Finish with a rim garnish of a wedge of orange and a wedge of lemon. 

I can’t promise you’ll love it, or that it goes best with the pizza, but it felt right to me. Enjoy!

Secrets to a Great Fall Harvest

Written By: Tom DiGangi, Jr.

Photos By: Laura Knott & Tom DiGangi, Jr.

Each autumn, friends and family respond with quizzical looks and surprised comment when we report on the garden’s output in October, November and – yes, sometimes – December.  When most folks are raking leaves and tossing rotting jack-o-lanterns, we are harvesting greens, peppers, root vegetables, and an assortment of herbs.

What then is the secret to a great fall harvest, you may ask?  Actually, it’s at least three secrets.

First, the gardener must be lazy or preoccupied, and fail to harvest in summer.  See previous blog posts, such as this post , which shall serve as testimony to the truism about us being lazy or preoccupied.  This year, we simply didn’t harvest our fennel bulbs when they were ready in July – preoccupied I suppose.  Maybe we were too busy watching the Philadelphia Phillies magical 102 win regular season.  Then nature took its course. The large stalks began to die in the heat of summer, and all hope was lost for a harvest.  Yet we let the dying plants just stay in place – lazy I suppose.  Don’t repeat this to the kids, but our inaction was ultimately rewarded.  Now, young bright green fennel plants are emerging around the brown and brittle stalks.

Unfortunately, this is not metaphor for the Phillies season, as they failed to sprout anew in the playoffs, instead just dying-off after the regular season.  But, at least I have fennel for football season.  Sunday football will feature whey-fed pork sausage sandwiches (from our friends at Bobolink farm) with sautéed fennel.  I can taste it already.  That sandwich could benefit from some peppers.  But, peppers - you say - are summer fruits.  They can’t join the party.  This brings us to secret number two.

Invest in a fabric “greenhouse” or plastic “coldframe” to keep your summer plants going into winter.  The theory is that a transparent cover over your planting beds allows sunlight in to warm the soil during the day and traps warm air throughout the night.  If the greenhouse is too great an investment, then pick-up some cheap cloth row covers that you use to literally cover your crops (i.e., a sleeping bag for plants).  You can remove them in the morning to allow direct sunlight and replace them in the evening to keep off the frost.  They won’t work too long into the cold months, but will definitely extend the growing season.  With row covers on, chances are the pepper plants, like the Giant Marconi seen here,

will last longer than my beloved Philadelphia Eagles will remain in the NFL playoff hunt.  However, defeat in sports is much easier to digest when followed by a sausage, fennel and pepper sandwich.

Let’s say that you don’t have the patience for row cover management, or you're just not that into peppers.  Then, focus on secret number three... next year.

Plant a garden that produces more than just summer season favorites like tomatoes, eggplant or cucumbers.  Add in cool weather crops like celery root, fennel, horseradish, leeks, peppers, pumpkins, spinach, swiss chard and turnips.  In our garden, these are all still going strong this fall.  Some of these crops can be planted in spring for an early summer harvest, and may produce a second harvest in the fall.  The fennel and swiss chard did just that for us this year.  The multi-season life of chard is evident in this photo.

New crisp leaves appear from the tops of the roots, now revealed from the snipping of leaves from those roots all year long. 

Come to think of it, that swiss chard sautéed in a bit of garlic and olive oil would go really well with the sausage, fennel and peppers.  Now, if we could figure out how to grow beer, then we would really have something to make us feel better about Philadelphia sports this autumn.

A Beginner's Cut Flower Garden - First Steps

An ideal day for a cut flower article would have been Mother's Day, but I am running severely behind schedule (as usual) and  haven't gotten to it. I normally celebrate Mother's Day with a reprint of my favorite blog entry ever, known as Joyce's Mother's Day Heist. Alas, even that little bit of nostalgia got passed over this year in the May melee of summer garden prep.

You see, we last left off in the fall with the semi-completion of what I fondly call "The Great Wall of Tommy" (hereafter known as GWOT). All of the remaining grass inside our fence was tilled up and turned into a two-tiered vegetable garden with about 17 raised beds, plus the plantings all around the fence perimeter. In total it's about 3600 square feet of delicious full sun exposure resulting in (FINALLY!) enough room for a cut flower garden.

I've always wanted cut flowers but felt that every square inch of sun needed to be reserved for tomatoes and peppers. That would not have been a problem if only I lived in Vermont somewhere in the proximity of Waitsfield. If I did, I would just buy a share of Amy's Organic Cut Flowers and let her do all the work. A $100 share gets you 10 fresh bouquets - one per week for ten weeks. That is an amazing deal, considering you would pay about the same amount for non-organic, non-local, and not-long-for-this-world flowers from your grocery store. I really wish I lived closer and could do this, but without an expensive relocation on the horizon, I figured the next best thing would be too start digging and then check in with Amy Todisco herself for some advice.

The two beds I chose flank the GWOT, and will hopefully make a lovely first impression upon entry to the veggies. The bed on the left had been empty and mulched last fall, and was not too bad when April rolled around. However, the bed on the right had some token fall plantings and no mulch. The result? Well, let's see. Or let's talk about what you DON'T see here: some lovely varieties of stonecrop slowly choking to death , a series of unimpressed rose of sharon saplings, overwintered ornamental cabbages, depressed mums, buried lamb's ears, a high-maintenance diva rosebush crying into her martini, and my lonely little buddha (though enlightened and non-attached, still secretly wishing to be back safely on the shelf at the Christmas Tree Shoppe with his other identical buddha friends). What you DO see is an obnoxious little white flowered creeper called chickweed, which spreads by running along the ground and dropping seeds to come up next year. The bed on the left had a total of about four of these plants and took minutes to weed. But weeding that other bed resulted in scenes both dirty and graphic, involving filth, sweat, and various and sundry four letter words. Let's take this time to look away, and check in with Amy about some important first steps.

I asked Amy for advice about starting a cut flower garden for the first time. What follows is Amy's handy to-do list.


1. Choose a full sun location (at least 8 hours per day).
2. Soil should drain well.
3. I would recommend getting a soil test to see what kind of fertility it has and what it might need. Usually the agricultural extension office in each state can provide this for gardeners.
4. Choose flowers. Probably planting seedlings versus seeds is the easier route for the first garden. Seeds take a long time and it's more satisfying for the new gardener to see something already in the ground.
5. Ideally, grow organically (which means using compost as opposed to Miracle Gro, as well as liquid seaweed and/or fish emulsion for fertilizer, and no pesticides.)
6. Water, weed, and watch as the flowers grow, attracting butterflies and bees, and impressed onlookers.

Wonderful! Now here's the part where I admit that I asked Amy's advice after already choosing the site, buying plants, and digging. As luck would have it, I did pretty well except for the soil test part.  I always mean to get one of those! One of these days ...

Soon after I started, my beds looked more like this:

I managed to rescue the lamb's ears from the right and move them to the left bed, as seen above. The mums and rose of sharon trees were relocated, and the cabbages put in a pot until their inevitable death due to the heat of summer. Most of the stonecrop survived, and I transplanted some creeping thyme between the stones in the path. The diva rose stayed put, shooting me dirty looks and talking on her tiny cell phone the whole time  (she's named "Bella Donna" so I should've known she'd be a pain). The buddha breathed a sigh of relief and I gave him a nice wild portulacca plant to hold in his cupped hands. Done.

And now for the real fun. I had already done the shopping for plants, doing a lot of googling to find recommendations. I was planning on mixing perennials with annual plants, annual seeds and even vegetables, space permitting. Here's my current inventory:

Perennials - Foxglove, Delphinium, Liatris, Thrift, English Daisy, Sea Holly, Yarrow, Blanket Flower, Salvia, Peony, Lupine

Annuals - Zinnia, Osteospermum, Dahlia, Snapdragon, Cosmos

Seeds - Zinnia, Sunflowers, Sweet Peas

Veg - Malabar Spinach, Grapevine (to grow over the deck)

Of course, I had to ask Amy about her favorites as well: "Let's see, my favorite cut flowers at this point, and I may change my mind after this season growing some new ones, are zinnias, sweet peas and snapdragons. I also like the perennial peonies-the more fragrant the better. And, I love lavender-the flowers, the essential oil, you name it." That means Amy can jump off the turnpike the next time she's cutting through Jersey to get someplace else and will still be able to find her favorite flowers in my yard!

And there you have it. My cut flower garden is on it's way, but not completed. The plants are in, seeds are sprouting, soaker hoses are laid out, but the mulch isn't in place. I'd like to have my "after" picture with some big beautiful flowers in it, so give me another month for the fascinating conclusion of my cut flower adventure! Thanks again to Amy Todisco for indulging my requests for input, and best of luck to her and her cut flower garden CSA. Please check out her websites, especially the cool products she offers on her website www.greenlivingnow.com.

Thanks for reading, and see you soon!

Wild Foods Of Spring: Fresh Trout and Twin Crustini

by Tom DiGangi, Jr.

I set out to create a meal constructed fundamentally of wild ingredients.  This endeavor has become something of a rite of spring in recent years.  It sounds like a big project - making a meal without a trip to the store - but in all honesty, it’s pretty easy. 

The project began at six o’clock on a drizzlely Tuesday evening, after the standard vehicular combat along Interstate 78 that some people would call “commuting.”  A quick change of clothes – from blue suit, red tie and winged-tip shoes to wading pants, fishing vest and Indiana Jones-inspired hat – and I was soon casting a fly into the Pohatcong Creek that borders our property.  A dozen or so casts later, and the main ingredient was procured and dispatched, streamside.

SOAPBOX WARNING (If you are uninterested in conservation, skip this paragraph.)

Now, it is rare that I keep a fish to eat.  Years of informal fishing education have gotten at least one important concept to stick in the chowder that passes for my brain.  That is…we can’t just treat our planet like everything in it is ours for the taking.  We humans have to conserve the gifts of nature, not screw around with them, or worse, not recognize them as gifts at all.  I suppose that’s why Laura and I take so much pleasure in gardening.  You plant something.  You care for that thing.  That thing and the other things around it support each other (e.g. bees and fruiting plants).  Finally, that thing feeds you, and you start the cycle all over, again.  So, when I kept a single trout for dinner on that Tuesday evening, it was with great humility and respect, and promises to release the next dozen fish I catch and to support a Trout Unlimited stream restoration project next weekend.

ALL CLEAR (It is now safe to keep reading.)

Cleaned trout in hand, I proceeded to the garden, along the way, pulling some dandelion greens from the lawn.  In the garden, I snipped some chives and harvested some over-wintered spring onions.

Here is what I did with the ingredients, including some of our previously harvested and stored garlic, locally produced honey and unfiltered apple cider vinegar.  Laura makes her own bread.  So the only products not self-produced or local were the salt, pepper and olive oil.  Not bad.

Pan-Seared Wild Trout with Dandelion and Spring Onion Crustini (Serves Two)

Ingredients

1 Whole Wild Trout (gutted, head and fins removed)

4 Spring Onions or Scallions (roots removed)

4 Slices of Crusty French Bread (½-inch think slices)

1 Garlic Clove

3C Dandelion Greens (roots, stems and flowers removed)

½C Chives

1T Wild Flower Honey (local, if possible)

7T Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1T Apple Cider Vinegar

Black Pepper (freshly cracked)

Salt to taste (sea, grey or kosher)

Procedure

To make the Crustini… Toast the bread slices until golden brown.  Rub each slice with the whole garlic clove to transfer the essence of garlic to the bread.  Drizzle 1 teaspoon of olive oil over each slice (4 teaspoons in total) and set-aside.

To make the Fish… Season the whole, cleaned fish inside and out with salt and pepper.  Add 1 tablespoon of the oil to a non-stick pan and place over medium heat.  When the oil starts to shimmer, add the fish and the spring onions to the pan.  Cook for 5-7 minutes depending on the size of the fish.  Flip the fish and cook an additional 5-7 minutes.  The onions should finish in the same time as the fish.  Remove the fish and onions from the pan.  With a sharp knife, remove the fillets from the fish by making an incision along the back (dorsal) of the fish and gently separating the fillets from the bones.  Set-aside.

To make the Salad… In a non-reactive bowl, make the dressing by whisking the honey, vinegar, salt and pepper to combine.  Slowly add 3 tablespoons of the oil while whisking to create an emulsion. Add the dandelion greens and chives to the bowl with the dressing and toss gently to coat.

To plate the dish… place a fillet in the center of each of the two plates, and a slice of crustini on both sides of each fillet.  Top one crustino with the green onions and the other crustino with the dandelion and chive salad.  Duplicate with the other plate.  Drizzle both plates with the remaining oil, and serve with a white wine such as Riesling Trocken.