Pizza

It was the fall of 1978 and I was newly enrolled at Southern Illinois University. Of all the new experiences I was about to have little did I know that not one, but two pizzas would soon enter my life. I had returned to college after a three-year stint with the USPS. My experiences as a letter carrier, during three of the worse winters on record, inspired me to a higher calling.

With the help of a fellow postman who had attended SIU years before, I was introduced to an interesting community in Carbondale, Illinois. Through them I found a roommate who came complete with a sweet mutt who turned out to be pizza number one. Please bear with me and I will explain.

My roommate had moved to SIU destitute. When we were introduced he was living in his car, and showering and eating at friend’s houses. He had the contradictory traits of good-natured optimism tempered by down-on-your-luck pessimism. In one breath he would express his utter hopelessness with life, and then some how infuse it with a joy for his passions of Busch beer, marijuana, art (for he was an accomplished technician, but frustrated artist) and backgammon.

Earlier in the year he had fallen for a puppy, but could only keep her if he landed a job at the local pizzeria. He did, and thus Pizza was christened and found a home. Pizza had a caring, but troubled disposition. Where this stemmed from I could never be certain. Was it the precariousness of her owner’s life or the fact that she lived in a car for the first year of her life - I will never know.

He eventually moved in with me and Pizza became my sidekick. Pizza and I had our issues, but we loved to wander through the forest. We explored all the natural treasures of Southern Illinois: Little Grand Canyon, Fern Cliff, Giant City, Panther's Den and Garden of the Gods to name a few.

She led the way, clearing the trail of varmint for me, and I checked her for ticks when we returned from our adventures. For me she was the pet I never had and I introduced her to the world of wild non-urban scents. As a busy college student, it was great to have a companion without all the responsibilities of owning a pet.

And now on to pizza number two. The kind you eat, not the kind with a wet nose. It was in a cramped off-campus apartment that I first experimented with making bread and pizza. With my mother’s one-of-a-kind pizza as my inspiration, I just seemed to know how to put one together.

I drew on my memories of Christmas Eve when after midnight mass we would rush home to create our own personal pizzas. My mother would have all the fixings laid out before us and we could make any kind of pizza we wished. I can still smell them coming out of the oven.

So I would like to share with you an adaptation of my mother’s pizza. It is my way to show appreciation to a Japanese culture that has taught me to respect my elders and my heritage, to recognize that each meeting and yes, even each pizza or hike in the woods, is a once in a lifetime event to be cherished.

There is a lot of room to play in this recipe, so please feel free to improvise and let me know how it turns out. Enjoy!


Momma’s Pizza

Dough: One package rapid-rise yeast,
One cup warm (not hot) water,
One teaspoon salt,
Two tablespoons olive oil,
Two tablespoons yellow cornmeal,
Two tablespoons stone ground whole-wheat flour,
Approximately two cups all-purpose white flour.

Mix the yeast, water, salt and oil. Then add the cornmeal and whole-wheat flour. Mix and slowly add the white flour till the dough is moist, but not sticky. Put in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes. Punch down, divide in half and knead. Let rest and then spread out on two oiled cookie sheets.

Once done, coat dough with oil and add chopped stewed tomatoes. Cover them with shredded mozzarella cheese and then sprinkle the pizza with oregano, salt and pepper, and Parmesan cheese. If you decide to add vegetables, sauté them first, and of course you can add meat, but I am vegetarian (another trait developed at SIU), so you are on your own here.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cook for approximately 20 minutes. Then open a bottle of a nice young red wine like Dolcetto d’ Alba and feast.

Volume 5725 (4) 8/22/2008

Tiramisu

I am at a bakery on Harlem Avenue purchasing a cannoli cake for Easter dinner. My mother requested it and for those of you who did not have the privilege of growing up with an Italian mother you may never know how ephemeral of a delicacy a cannoli is.

The cannoli outside the home rarely does well. I have seldom been to an Italian restaurant that did a cannoli justice. That is except in Italy. In Italy food takes on the utmost priority. All else is sacrificed to it.

While I ordered the cake a large, obviously Italian-American man with a dyed comb over enters the bakery and quickly places his order. He has the confidence of a long time patron. I ask if he has just ordered a tiramisu cake and he nods yes. He has had many of these and then he mentions the cream puffs I have been staring at are particularly tasty.

My mother use to make these I tell him and soon we fall into a quiet reverie about the past. We talk about the regret of lost parents and about a childhood of wonderful meals. We have both come to realize that not everyone is blessed with the great cuisine our mothers, grand mothers and aunts provided for us.

A couple of days later when I come to pick up my cake a younger version of the above gentleman walks in and begins an animated discussion with the staff. Unaware of the intricacies of cake design he is having trouble answering the questions necessary for the building of a custom cake. After much haggling with the young girl behind the counter, a more authoritative woman enters the fray.

Her first question to him is what is the cake for. It turns out the cake is for his birthday. With much conviction he relates how tired he is of the incipit cake that has been provided for him in the past. He is no longer willing to tolerate such mediocrity. This year he will have a cake of his own choosing or none at all.

As I bear witness to this young man's heartfelt fervor, I think whom else but someone steeped in the culinary conviction of an Italian-American would take such an interest in flour, water, butter and sugar at such a tender age. I think how proud his mother will be when she sees the cake. She will realize that her baby boy has finally grown into a man. It will be taken as a sign of maturity.

I notice he has no wedding band on his finger and realize his actions today will seal his faith. If he has a girlfriend she will soon be his wife and if he does not, a wife will be found for him. The far ranging implications of his actions may never be known to him, but no matter. They reveal a level of sophistication that I am sure he does not recognize.

This starts me thinking of the process of socialization. Chanoyu has a role in this. To an outside observer Tea appears to be a fussy way to make a beverage, but to a practitioner, at least to one who has spent time studying, making tea is only a small portion of the knowledge contained within Chado, The Way of Tea.

I recently received a copy of A Chanoyu Vocabulary; 1650 words and phrases that represent the nomenclature of Tea translated for the English-speaking world. In the forward Genshitsu Sen, the retired 15th generation Grand Tea Master, talks of his life long mission to bring peace to the world by sharing a bowl of tea.

How could this be? It seems too simple, almost naive, but Genshitsu Sen is not naive. He was pilot in the Japanese Navy when WWII ended. He has, in his own words, traveled overseas more than three hundred times, and spoken of and served tea to many world leaders. In light of this he has recently been appointed the Japan—UN Goodwill ambassador.

All this accomplished through the proper serving of something as simple of a bowl of tea, and the fostering of the four guiding principles of Chanoyu: harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. These principles are hard to find in our hectic world. Tea helps us to incorporate them into our daily lives.

For this we can thank the sixteen generations of tea masters and especially Genshitsu Sen who made the decision to share the culture of Japan and his message of peace with the rest of the world. He had the courage to come to America to begin his quest in 1951, only a few years after WWII ended.

I am hard pressed to believe that any of the protagonists in our present conflicts will be so magnanimous. Maybe if we sit them down with a bowl of tea and a slice of mom's cannoli cake we may get some resolution to our present dilemma.

Volume 5722 (4) 7/25/2008