#roberta's

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For the second year in a row, Creem Magazine took over the backyard of Roberta’s in Bushwick, Brooklyn for an entire day for a show called Summer Sunburn. This year’s event began in the afternoon but since I was shooting something else, I didn’t arrive until right before Pissed Jeans took the stage as the headlining act.

The quartet from Pennsylvania performed songs from their new record, Half Divorced, along with playing older material and ending the show with “False Jesii Part 2,” from their 2009 album, King of Jeans, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year and has a reissued LP that you can purchase from the Sub Pop Records webstore here.

Pizza Margherita

2 servings;  15 minutes, plus 1 hour to heat oven

Here is the archetype of a thin-crust pizza pie, a pizza margherita adorned simply in the colors of the Italian flag: green from basil, white from mozzarella, red from tomato sauce. This pizza is adapted from the recipe used by the staff at Roberta’s restaurant in Brooklyn, who make their tomato sauce simply by whizzing together canned tomatoes, a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt. The ingredients offer in their proportions what appears to be a kind of austerity — not even 3 ounces of cheese! But the result is home-cooked pizza to beat the band, exactly the sort of recipe to start a career in home pizza-making, and to return to again and again.

Ingredients

1 12-inch round of pizza dough, stretched (see recipe)

3 tablespoons tomato sauce (see note)

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 ¾ ounces fresh mozzarella

4 to 5 basil leaves, roughly torn

Preparation

Place a pizza stone or tiles on the middle rack of your oven and turn heat to its highest setting. Let it heat for at least an hour.

Put the sauce in the center of the stretched dough and use the back of a spoon to spread it evenly across the surface, stopping approximately 1/2 inch from the edges.

Drizzle a little olive oil over the pie. Break the cheese into large pieces and place these gently on the sauce. Scatter basil leaves over the top.

Pan Pizza (6-8 servings; 1 hour/30 min, plus 15-20 hrs resting time for dough)

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE DOUGH:

1000 grams unbleached all-purpose flour, approximately 8 cups

30 grams kosher salt, approximately 1 1/2 tablespoons

700 grams lukewarm water, approximately 2 3/4 cups

60 grams unsalted butter, preferably high-fat European-style, approximately 1/4 cup, melted

40 grams olive oil, approximately 3 tablespoons, plus more to grease pans

5 grams active dry yeast, approximately 1 3/4 teaspoons

FOR THE SAUCE:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 clove garlic, peeled and minced

2 tablespoons tomato paste

Pinch of chile flakes, to taste

1 28-ounce can chopped or crushed tomatoes

2 tablespoons honey, or to taste

1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

FOR THE PIZZA:

Olive oil

Part-skim mozzarella, roughly grated, 525 grams or 4 1/2 cups: 175 grams or 1 1/2 cups per pie

Fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes, 300 grams or 3 cups: 100 grams or 1 cup per pie

Sliced pepperoni, to taste

3 pinches fresh oregano, or 3 teaspoons dried: 1 pinch or teaspoon per pie

PREPARATION

Make the dough a day or two before you want to bake; the recipe makes enough for three pies. Combine the flour and salt in your largest mixing bowl. In another mixing bowl, combine the water, butter, olive oil and yeast. Mix well.

Use a rubber spatula to create a well in the center on the flour mixture, and add to it the liquid from the other bowl, stirring with the spatula and scraping down the sides of the bowl to bring everything together. Mix it all together until it is a large, shaggy ball of wet dough, cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit for 30 minutes.

Uncover the dough and, with floured hands, knead it until it is uniformly smooth and sticky, approximately 3 to 5 minutes. Move the dough ball into a clean mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 3 to 5 hours at room temperature, then refrigerate, at least 6 hours and up to 24.

The morning you want to make the pizzas, remove the dough from the refrigerator, divide into 3 chunks of equal size (about 600 grams each) and shape them into oblong balls. Use olive oil to grease three 10-inch cast-iron skillets, 8-inch-by-10-inch baking pans with high sides, 7-inch-by-11-inch glass baking dishes or some combination thereof, and place the balls into them. Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise at room temperature, 3 to 5 hours.

Make the sauce. Place a saucepan over medium-low heat, and add to it 2 tablespoons olive oil. When the oil is shimmering, add the minced garlic and cook, stirring, until it is golden and aromatic, approximately 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the tomato paste and a pinch of chile flakes, and raise the heat to medium. Cook, stirring often, until the mixture is glossy and just beginning to caramelize.

Add the tomatoes, bring to a boil, then lower heat and allow to simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Take sauce off the heat, and stir in the honey and salt, to taste, then blend in an immersion blender or allow to cool and use a regular blender. (The sauce can be made ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator or freezer. It makes enough for 6 or so pies.)

After 3 hours or so the dough will have almost doubled in size. Stretch the dough very gently to the sides of the pans, dimpling it softly with your fingers. The dough can then be left to rest for another 2 to 8 hours, covered with wrap.

Make the pizzas. Heat oven to 450. Gently pull the dough to the edges of the pans if it hasn’t risen to the edges already. Use a spoon or ladle to put 4 to 5 tablespoons of sauce onto the dough, gently covering it entirely. Sprinkle the low-moisture mozzarella onto the pies, then dot them with the fresh mozzarella and the pepperoni to taste. Sprinkle with the oregano and lash with a little olive oil.

Saturday, July 29th, 2017

Recovery day.  Friday night, M and I were invited to dinner at Blanca, a 2-two Michelin star restaurant tucked into an old factory/warehouse space beyond the main a dining room and the semi-enclosed labyrinth of courtyards, at least a couple of bars, and dining spaces that comprise Roberta’s on Moore St in Bushwick.  At the end of what feels like a night market in some hip third world capital, cobbled together with corrugated metal, recycled timbers and bits and pieces of torn down buildings, we were led through a black door into a sleek, high-ceilinged, space; white, modern and clean that opens onto a stainless steel kitchen faced by a long counter that seats up to a dozen or so people for a 19-course tasting menu that began for us at 9:00 p.m., and as near as I can tell, ended around 1 a.m.  I say near as I can tell because our hosts, L&J, ordered six bottles of wine for the four of us though my memory of events becomes somewhat hazy at about course number 15.  I am so glad M suggested last minute we take a Lyft (not Uber), rather than drive to the restaurant.  If not, we’d probably have had to leave the car there and go back and try to find it in the morning. 

The food: beyond anything I’ve had before, not only in terms of scale, variety, creativity and visuals.  The tastes were all distinctive and fresh, all prepared and beautifully plated before our hungry gaze.  The wines L ordered, matched the food in all those things -- scale, variety, distinctive and visuals.  L had started us off with two different whites, the second a Chenin Blanc. I don’t know that I knew what the first one was.  If I did, those brain cells have since gone to a better place.  Then two bottles of the same (Umbrian) red, ordered and set to breathe together in a beautiful, tall decanter, made by a glass-blowing customer especially for the restaurant. 

After we finished those off, and now that L’s judgement is sufficiently impaired, he proceeds to order another bottle of wonderfully expensive red (French?).  I mean, other than Brunello, I don’t get to drink really good wines often and I’ve forgotten almost everything I knew about French wines...  let’s just say it went down way too easy. 

We were engaged spritely conversation by our three servers -- Jamie, Missy and Leslie -- all of whom seemed very happy to be there, except perhaps Missy, who dropped a plate on her foot at the beginning of the service and was happy to moan about it all night (It did look a bit swollen and bruised).  L plied us, the servers and the chef with samples of the wines (probably saving my life), and I do believe that even the staff were a bit tipsy by the end.  After dinner was cleared, one of the servers brought us a pizza from Roberta’s (unbidden and on the house) that we ate as if we were starving.  By now I’m stuffed and marinated.  Not surprising as I also remember eating M’s lamb course and J’s uni.  Good thing I’m committed to stay sober, exercise and lose weight for the kidney transplant this Fall! 

Needless to say, getting up at 7 a.m. yesterday a.m. to make breakfast for the B&B guests was a challenge.  Fortunately, it was a light day, and was back in bed and asleep before the first of them had come down to eat.  I slept then until 11:30 a.m. and woke up at the sound of the door bell, though I can’t remember who it was or if I even answered it.  I spent the rest of the day taking it easy.  We ate summer squash and mozzarella pannini from Blue Apron for lunch, took another nap and then walked to Maya Taqueria for dinner, the extent of my physical exertion for the day.  Yes, I ate again -- a chili relleno platter with rice and beans, and two diet cokes.  The perfect cure for a good-wine hangover.  Sadly, it says more to my tolerance for alcohol than to the quality of the wine, that I wasn’t as hungover as I was tired.

I think now I’m going to do a nice 5k speed walk around Prospect Park to ease my guilty conscience.