Time To Make The Pizzas

I've come to that point...I'm now dreaming in pizza.

The other night Nicole got up to drain her oft-filled bladder, and while she was in the bathroom I stood up and went over to the bureau, which instead of being a familiar piece of furniture I thought was the pizza oven in which I had a pie that needed tending to.  Cooking in about a minute and a half, you can never take your eyes off the oven for more than 30 seconds, so I was convinced I had to make a quick move to turn it before one side got overcooked.  Nicole asked me what I was doing and I momentarily regained some semblance of reality, but I couldn't put together coherent words to explain myself.  Still not completely out of my dream state and confused, I went back to bed and just passed out, the pizza of my dreams left in half baked limbo.  It's like when I worked at the Longshore Ice Rink in high school and would dream I was working the register and sit up at night in bed and think I owed someone change.  Nightmarish.

The restaurant is open 7 days per week now, lunch and dinner straight through from noon to close.  I don't work all those shifts, and most of us are down to 5 day work weeks at this point, but the day to day repetition and aggregate time spent there mean life revolves around the pies.  It's seemingly impossible to get more than a day or two ahead of demand in prepping our ingredients, so we're always working against the clock to fill our station with all the accouterments in time for service.

As in DMX's breakthrough album "It's Cold And Hell Is Hot", every day is a battle, but in the case of the pizza man, it's the oven that tries to control me.  After 5 weeks or so I've learned some of the nuances of the 850 degree monster, and to force it to do my bidding rather than the other way around, well, sometimes. Building and maintaining a proper fire is something, from what Mario (Mario LaPosta, the Chef de Cuisine and senior pizza man, not Batali) says, that pizzaiolos in Italy go on at length about, distinguishing it as a craft unto its own aside from the making of  the pizza. 

This week I began the next frontier in pizza making, though probably not the final one, of stretching pies as they call it.  Not just putting them in the oven and cooking them, but first taking the disks of dough from the tray and stretching/working them into edible canvases.  Time is of the essence on this learning course so as to make me look legitimate in full view of our patrons who can see all the action at the open pizza bar (I'm not quite there yet, but my examples are usually roughly circular).  And to also free up Mario and Ruben, both veteran pizzaioli, who have been working with almost no time off since July because they're the only ones who to this point know how to make pizza from start to finish.

The skill of it is something that undoubtedly takes a good amount of time to learn, but to execute the stretching is a process of only about 30 seconds (unless you're the guy in the Visa commercial who rolls it around his back and along his arms), and given our volume of business, I'm getting a lot of practice.  I don't think I'll be tossing it in the air any time soon and bedazzling diners, but I basically have to become proficient at it within a few days since we don't have rolling pins, nor do we have anywhere to hide our mistakes.      

World Pizza Championship here I come 2013 or so (Mario placed 8th overall in 2010).

Quick Dins: Sea Scallops Over Tomato Relish

Quick meal, nutritious, summery...just what's needed sometimes.  Sweet, tender scallops atop a fine dice of roasted plum tomatoes seasoned with the "aroma" of garlic but mainly left to their natural sweetness derived from dry heat.  This would probably work as well as an app or tapa as it does an entree, since it lacks a little bit of carb component, but you can get creative on that.  The tomatoes can be made a day in advance or so and probably improve for it.  Once you have them relished like this, you'll see they're good underneath or on top of a lot of things.    

Ingredients For 2

1 lb. sea scallops (little membranes on the sides removed if not done by fishmonger)
3 lbs. plum tomatoes
Extra virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic, smashed
2 tablespoons white wine
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Couple sprigs fresh thyme
Optional: aged balsamic for garnish
Basil to garnish

Preheat an oven to 350.  Slice the tomatoes in half, then remove the seeds and inner flesh.  Place all the scooped out halves in a mixing bowl, and toss with the thyme sprigs, wine, vinegar and enough olive oil to coat nicely. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Drizzle some olive oil on a couple large baking sheets, then place the tomatoes on, cut sides down.  Arrange the smashed garlic on the pans and bake for an hour.  Let them cool to room temperature once out of the oven, then remove the tomato skins, which should come off easily.

Dice the tomatoes finely and try to keep them uniform in size.

Season the scallops with salt and pepper.  Heat a frying pan over medium high to high heat and add just a little oil to coat the pan.  When it smokes, add the scallops in one even layer, not over crowding the pan.  Cook in a couple batches if necessary.  Cook about two minutes per side, until there is a nice brown crust on each, and they turn from translucent to opaque.

Serve the scallops over the relish with some basil leaves and a conservative drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic if you like.