SOME MEALS ARE CONVENTIONAL, tracing a predictable curve from an ingredient list to a final shape-form as described by a precise and accurate recipe. They’re the meals Jeremy Bentham would eat, or maybe as a sped-up Taylorism could be applied to gastronomy. Other meals aren’t like that at all, and refuse to conform to your little boxes made of ticky-tacky. They follow their own rules, man.
You have a pizza stone, a nifty substitute for a wood-fired furnace that anyone in a rented house with an electric oven can heat up. Great! Let’s have pizzas! Take flour, a bit of lukewarm water, some sugar and some yeast. Mix it all up into dough.
A couple of hours later, spread it out, put pizza toppings on it, take your glasses off and speak with your tongue shoved between your front teeth like Jamie Oliver, and realise with irritation than actual pizza making is surprisingly demanding in infrastructure. Where’s my great big wooden paddle? Despite the urging of certain British celebrity chefs you can’t, apparently, make a meal appear out of enthusiasm and fat-fingered untidy boyish charm. Good intentions and a clever piece of hot ceramic are not enough in the face of abject failures to plan.
For instance, how do you get the pizzas from the flour-covered bench to the heated pizza stone in the oven? This is something should have thought of beforehand, hippy. Maybe central planning and detailed attention to outcomes do have a place in the kitchen. Oh well, roll them up then.
…to counterculture. My goodness that’s an ugly, um, whatever it is.
Sectional diagram, countercultural pizza
Actually that’s not so bad is it. Where’s my Kawasaki 900z1?
Add a comment
Casey · 8 April 2012, 11:55 · #
You finally cooked an alien. My admiration is speechless.
weez · 8 April 2012, 14:49 · #
Big wooden paddle or cutting board covered in cornmeal (aka polenta) will slip your pie onto your pizza stone easily. Will also make hella mess in your kitchen.
A vented (perforated) non-stick pizza pan is easier to use. Generates similar results without the logistical hassles of a hot pizza stone. Can assemble the pie on the non-stick pan & pop it into the oven
anddepan without paddle gymnastics.Fyodor · 9 April 2012, 11:32 · #
Ugliest calzone I’ve ever seen.
Naomi · 10 April 2012, 15:05 · #
Now there’s an avatar for sore eyes. Hi Fyodor!
Fyodor · 10 April 2012, 15:38 · #
Hiya yourself, Naomi.
Seems to be a day for nostalgia (melancholia?), with Teh Collective’s blogicide ‘n’all, but I have to say – inappropriately, I concede – that I don’t recall your previous gravatar rating so highly in the hotnessness as your new ‘un.
conjunctivitis.com – a site for sore eyes.
David Irving (no relation) · 10 April 2012, 15:50 · #
Yeah, the lack of a wooden peel (and asbestos fingers) is why I no longer use my pizza stone. The old metal ones (not non-stick) are fine.
Naomi · 10 April 2012, 17:05 · #
Thanks Fyodor, blushes, must be getting better with age.
j_p_z · 6 May 2012, 20:23 · #
Ugh, give it up with the pizza already. Just come to Brooklyn and we’ll be happy to feed you.
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