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Tomato sauce – Pizza sauce

Draining the sauce.

When I make pizza, or, for that matter, make anything that requires tomatoes, I reach for a jar of our passata – which is an Italian word for sauce, except that it isn’t really sauce.

Let me explain, if I can. Passata is a product you make by passing cooked roma tomatoes through a mill. The only ingredient is tomato. It isn’t sauce, per se. It’s crushed tomatoes. With a basil leaf or two and a touch of citric acid to make absolutely sure I don’t kill any of my family members, even though the acidity of tomatoes makes it pretty hard to grow anything in there. I wouldn’t dream of canning garlic or mushrooms but tomatoes are pretty safe – a low bar to clear.

In tandem with a bunch of other crazy neighbours, every year I get about 120 pounds of organic Roma tomatoes from a farm not too far from Vancouver. The tomatoes show up in boxes, all ripe and perfect, and we (myself and any other family members I can dragoon into helping) spend an afternoon boiling them up and running them through a food mill, making several dozen jars of passata. Or sauce. Or whatever the English word is for sieved tomatoes.

To take the sauce from passata to pizza sauce, I make it the way Joe Beddia tells me to do it in Pizza Camp. Fresh tomatoes, no cooking. Bit of garlic, oil and salt. Let stand for a few hours, or overnight.

I used to just use it straight from the jar, but there is a lot of moisture in with the tomato pulp and things were getting a bit gooey, so now I have taken to concentrating the pulp by running yet again through a sieve. I used to use a coffee filter as well but that was just too much trouble – messy and super time-consuming. The fine sieve works, uh, fine.

It tastes great. Takes a couple of hours to do, but only about 30 seconds of work – the rest is waiting for things to drain.

Simple, tasty. I do love having the jars of tomato in the basement. We use them for all kinds of things. Now if only I could convince a certain wife of mine to let me build a wood-fired pizza oven in the backyard. So far my attempts to articulate my rock-solid case for a new piece of backyard furniture have fallen on deaf ears.

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Junk food. But a higher level of junk food.

Super tasty

I’m eating a really awful sour-cream glazed doughnut while I write this. Hm. Better have another to see if it’s any better…

Many years ago I was at the PNE (the local summer fair, here in Vancouver) and I was wandering around with my Hasselblad, taking photos of interesting things. It was a lot of fun. I went thinking I would maybe get a few good photos but I ended up with a bunch of images I was really proud of. Here is the roller coaster:

It’s way scarier than it looks – especially if you’re sitting next to your youngest child. And she isn’t particularly well strapped in.

And the swings. A ride that I last rode when I was in Grade 6. Didn’t end well for me. I’m not usually prone to motion sickness, but… Yeah.

Dangerous ride. That’s all I’ll say.

But back to the junk food and the Funnel Cakes.

I was wandering around a back area of the fair. It was right beside the chaos, but about 20 paces away – enough to be in a rather forlorn and somewhat less traveled area. I thought it looked fantastic and so I took a photo.

…and then I figured I had best pay for the privilege. I bought a funnel cake.

The booth was run by what I’m guessing is a husband-and-wife team. I expect they would go from fair to fair, peddling their funnel cakes. I vaguely remember being told it was an old family recipe. The fellow had a funnel full of batter and he picked it up and made a crisscross pattern in a deep fryer. In about a minute he flipped the lattice over and cooked the opposite side.

Then out on to a paper towel of some sort, a liberal dusting of powdered sugar and it was handed over.

It was heavenly. Better than any other doughnut I think I have ever had. Who knows why? It could be the family recipe, it could be the fact that I was really hungry. The cake was freshly made – still piping hot when it landed in my hands.

But I think, possibly, it was because it was made with a bit of love from someone who took his work very seriously; who had done it a zillion times before and who knew exactly how to produce the perfect piece of deep-fried battered goodness.

If you’re going to eat junk food, it better be good junk food.

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Failure. Even if my family didn’t see it that way.

Not my best effort, but the arugula hid the worst of it. Gotta like greens for that sort of thing.

Not dignifying this with a photo, either. Well, ok, here is a shot from above. 

I burned the pizza last night. Both pies. 

In my defence (not that it helped much at the time and the failure does still sting, a little) I was cooking them over a charcoal fire in a thin metal kettle barbecue. It’s all we have here at the lake. I do have a pizza stone, though. We aren’t savages.

My technique is pretty crude: light a bunch of coals in the kettle, get them going really well, drop in the pizza stone, wait half an hour or so and then cook the pizza. 

This time I used lump charcoal, rather than briquettes. Man, that stuff burns hot. Like really hot. Like hotter than I expected. Ergo, the first pizza, as I was trying to get some heat on top (which, in retrospect, was just not going to happen in a contraption like that) burned rather badly. It was still really tasty, just, as my mother would say, “Crispy”. 

The second pizza was better, but the same thing happened again – a moment of inattention and it was black. Talk about a testament to the triumph of hope over experience. That annoying “Fool me once, won’t get fooled again” quote would also suffice. 

There is only one solution; try again. I’m getting better with barbecue pizza, but there is work yet to be done. 

On a positive note the customers weren’t too fussed. They ate it and didn’t give me a hard time. It’s nice when family is like that. In fact, they told me to stop beating myself up – that they enjoyed it and I should move on.

My wife brought up this post I showed her a while back. Apt.

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Arugula.

It was on the pizza, and it was oh so tasty.

My mother-in-law has this vegetable garden. I built her some raised beds a few years back. When I say ‘I’ what I mean is there was a crack team involving my brother-in-law who can actually build things and myself, doing a lot of the ‘support’ work. Like hauling seemingly endless yards of dirt.

My mother-in-law fills them with the most amazing collection of produce.

Including Arugula. It grows rather slowly in those boxes we built, but she has lots of room and as a consequence there is plenty to go around. Over the last few days it has been on pizza, in several salads and eaten straight. It has a lovely, soft flavour. What is even more galling, from a fellow gardener’s point of view, is that she has plants that are volunteers from the year before. And that arugula is amazing as well. I struggle to get anything going in my garden.

The produce is nothing like what you would get in a box. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with buying arugula from a store. In fact, I find it incredible that they can pick it, wash it, package it and move it hundreds of miles and it’s still fresh. But I do wonder if they grow a varietal that’s is prone to last, rather than taste good. Or I wonder if sitting in a truck for a few days would take the edge off of pretty much everything.

Regardless, it is amazing how much better it tastes fresh from the garden. I feel very lucky that we have access to it. And to her, too. My mother-in-law is a lovely woman. Her daughter is nice, too.

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These aren’t like Grandpas. Nothing personal, dad.

A truly ugly photo of the raw ingredients.

My dad makes the best mashed potatoes. When he comes for dinner and mashed potatoes are on the menu, he is deputized to do the work. My children insist.

He does it with aplomb, and uses only the most basic ingredients. I’m always trying to get him to put in some white pepper or sour cream… He just uses a bit of butter, some milk and maybe a pinch of salt.

No gooeyness, no lumps, it’s amazing how he can get them just right. Much as I try to compete, I’m always outgunned. But in the hierarchy of mashing potatoes, at least I’m ahead of my siblings. I remember a story about my younger brother, mashing potatoes with a hammer, as he didn’t have a proper masher. Apparently the pot was saved only because he had overcooked the potatoes and a protective layer of starch had been cooked to the bottom of the pot. Lucky guy. I understand they weren’t much good, but the tools do make a difference.

Here’s the irony. Well, maybe not an irony, per se, but an interesting situation. I hate to tell too many tales, but when I was a kid my mom would rice potatoes for us. She would boil them up and then put them in a ricer (basically a huge garlic press) and we would then have this dry, nearly unpalatable mound on the plate, along with whatever was being served that evening.

We would beg for mashed potatoes. My mother would refuse, insisting that mashed potatoes were, ‘denatured’. And then she would remind us that in Ireland they had a potato ricer mounted to the countertop in some homes. As if, somehow, that made any difference to me wanting mashed potatoes. It wasn’t my fault the Irish have strange kitchen conventions.

I remember, even as a young kid, thinking that some academic level mind-bending was going on here. For goodness’ sake! It’s almost the same thing. And then once we slathered them in butter it really made no difference.

But alas, it was not to be. The best potato masher in the family had his skills ignored for years. They were brought out only at holiday meals when the extended family – those for whom mashed potatoes were a regular table occurrence – had us over for turkey dinner. It was only later that I guess my mom had her Damascene moment and allowed mashed spuds at the family table again. I wasn’t around to see it, but I do remember being served mashed potatoes at their house one day and thinking to myself that an earth-shattering moment had happened. I just wish I had been around to witness it.

Regardless, the net effect was just fine with me and my kids, as my dad hadn’t lost any of his skills in those fallow years.

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Keep this up and you’ll kill the family.

Despite a nutritional value in the negative digits (or perhaps because of it), pancakes hold a position of great regard in our home.

I have probably made them a couple hundred times over the last few years. My technique is constantly evolving, as it is for everything I make, but I have this recipe down pretty much flat. Pancakes are one meal that everyone happily eats. We do have fundamental differences over syrup – my self and my younger daughter enjoy pure maple syrup; my wife and older daughter, in what can only be viewed as a purely passive-aggressive stance, enjoy cane syrup. We are using up the last of a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup which only adds to their transgressions.

Yes, white flour. Yes, sugar. Yes, devoid of any real nutrition, and then you slather on some butter and douse them in syrup.

…but you can put raspberries on top. Or strawberries. Or some huckleberries. It probably doesn’t really do much for the overall nutritional value but it doesn’t hurt.

Having teenagers as I do is a full-throttle journey into the world of carbohydrates. These pancakes tick every box on Planet Starch and as a consequence are met with adulation. I would love to get more protein and fat in the meal – yes, I know that is what bacon is for, but hopefully something a little less processed. At least there is some fat in the butter.

The plate of flapjacks sits out on the stove after breakfast is over. Yesterday there were 6 extra pancakes. This morning there was an empty plate.

As much as I know they’re really not that good for anyone on any level, making a meal for my family that is met with cheers is as much about me feeling good as a provider as it is about me feeding the family.

I just sometimes wish they would show as much enthusiasm for a salad.

Right, the recipe.

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 2 eggs separated
  • 2 cups milk.

Mix dry ingredients. Whip egg whites in small bowl. Mix egg yolks and milk in another small bowl. Combine milk mixture into the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in egg whites. Cook in oiled pan until cooked through.

Enjoy.

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Food as a proxy.

Bananas, Cuba. Where everything is a proxy for something else.

I was chatting with an old friend over a beer last night. He works with the Government of Canada in the Foreign Service office. Well, everyone was repatriated so he’s now home. Living with his folks, because his house is rented out to a very nice family who expected he wouldn’t be needing it for another couple of years. His wife and daughter are also with his folks. Good thing it’s a big house. It’s my understanding that as wonderful as that situation might be in an abstract form, it sets up many opportunities for interpersonal friction.

Our conversation was wide-ranging, as they always seem to be, but he did comment on something that has me thinking: He brought up the notion of food being a proxy, as he had been spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen, cooking for his own family and his parents.

A proxy is, according to dictionary.com:

proxy [prok-see]

noun, plural prox·ies.

  1. the agency, function, or power of a person authorized to act as the deputy or substitute for another.
  2. the person so authorized; substitute; agent.
  3. a written authorization empowering another person to vote or act for the signer, as at a meeting of stockholders.
  4. an ally or confederate who can be relied upon to speak or act in one’s behalf.

I saw these definitions and I thought, “Oh boy, where to start?”

Thankfully, it was a lighthearted conversation we were having, but his thesis was that in cooking for his family (and especially his parents) and in making food that they were obliged to eat, it set up a power dynamic that caught him off guard.

On the one hand, it’s dinner. We all have to eat.

On the other hand if you’re cooking for another, what is the message that the food is replacing?

Man, now I’m in way over my head. There are two issues here. One is what is the food acting as a proxy for in terms of inter-personal relationships? The other issue is what the food is saying? Or what the creation of the food is saying.

I’m staying with the first one for this post.

Thinking about myself, because that’s what I do so well… There are a few people in my life where food has played a major part. And in every one it has been (as far as I can tell) positive. No one used food as a weapon. No one used it as an improper tool to control a young, foolish boy. (Well, except when it was something like profiteroles or a nice piece of perfectly cooked salmon and then it was decidedly Pavlovian, but let’s agree that was done in the name of science and just move on.)

For me, food really isn’t used as a proxy, as far as I can think. It is used to communicate. I’ll deal with that in a later post.

But as a proxy? I don’t think so. But I can see how you could use it as such – there was an anecdote I read about years ago: A young woman was returning from her studies in Canada to her European home at Christmastime – I can’t remember specifically where it was. As she stepped out of the taxi in front of her childhood home, both of her parents greeted her with their own, individual, versions of the same dish. Jetlagged and exhausted, not to mention freezing, they insisted she try both versions then and there on the front porch… …and then decide which of the two was better. Can you imagine being welcomed home by that?

The food was acting as a proxy in that story, for sure. But I shudder to imagine what role it was actually playing. I prefer my food to be a proxy for just how much I enjoy my family and how much I appreciate them. There is no better way to show how you feel about someone than by cooking them a meal they will love.

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Of all the best laid plans…

My goodness, they grow up quickly. Now she’s 17.

What do you do if you’re out of ideas? When your kids eat an endless supply of junk food that appears, seemingly, out of nowhere? When you just don’t have the ability or the energy to do something about it?

Or when you’re out of ideas for helping kids with anxiety, or with migraine headaches. Or both. Or Math homework. Because the parent in you wants to tell them to just get a good night’s sleep and eat some healthy food. Hey, it might not solve everything but it’s a start. Generally comments like that are not welcome in conversations with teenagers. Who knew?

Breakfast used to be pretty good. We had a system down. Mondays were this, Tuesdays, that. Wednesdays were these great egg sandwiches I would do with English muffins. But then my wife started fasting in the mornings, and the kids can barely get themselves out of bed on time, and it has descended into something really not worth doing. And a certain someone (not me, my goodness, no) was grazing on the English muffins so when I reached for them they were unavailable. It’s hard to cook when you don’t have all the ingredients.

One kid leaves the house, always late, always hungry. The other leaves the house on time but with not nearly enough food to keep her going through the day. And now that no one is going anywhere in a hurry due to COVID, it’s even more chaotic.

Then they come home and have a huge snack, or eat when they arise – some time in the mid-afternoon – and they aren’t hungry for dinner.

They’re getting to the age where they can’t be punished. Heck, they’re well past that age. I’m totally out of ideas. I want to say, “here, eat! It’ll cure what ails you.”

But to no avail. Oh well. What is it they say about ‘fighting the good fight?’ Is that a timely thing to say or think? I hope so. Gotta be something in that box that Pandora opened.

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Ugh, Oysters.

Direct from some seabed, somewhere nearby.

I love fresh oysters and I have no idea why. The thought of them really isn’t particularly exciting, really. And yet, somehow, they are amazing.

My oyster journey started more than 20 years ago, when I was having a bite to eat with a friend of mine. He is older than I, and I trust his food suggestions without question.

A tray of fresh oysters went by and I grimaced. He looked at me and asked, “You don’t like oysters?”. I replied I had never had one, but the idea was somewhat challenging. He responded by ordering a dozen malpeques. I figured that if John said they were good, I wasn’t going to die.

And here’s what happened. I had one – with a touch of a vinegar mignonette. I was totally unprepared for how much I enjoyed it. I remember thinking quite a few things, most notably, “huh, I have been missing out.”

This order of Kusshi Oysters that I had with my dinner last week was delightful, but my wife still won’t try one, no matter how much I try to encourage her to give it a shot.

The oyster lesson has stuck with me – my mom always wanted us to at least try dishes that were presented to us as children. She made some pretty strange (to a kid) dishes. Some were great, others less so. This is something I do with my children. I always ask them to at least try it. Sometimes they’re right and they hate it. Sometimes the plate is clean before I can get another word in. Things haven’t changed much since I was a kid.

So far, no one in my family has taken me up on my conviction about how great oysters are. Even my brother and sister aren’t interested. Time will tell, but I expect that at some time in the near future someone in the family will admit that I was right, and they are really good.

While I’m at it, I would also like a pony, now that we’re wishing for crazy things.

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That was a while ago.

It was a while ago. And even then it really wasn’t that good.

I was asked by one of the utilities here in British Columbia to take a few photos of some of their properties. I made a fairly large loop (about 600km) and ended up driving down the Fraser Canyon on my homeward leg.

My grandparents lived in Salmon Arm, BC and we would regularly drive the 7 hours and visit them. Before 1986 when they built a new highway, the only reasonable way up was the road beside the Fraser River. Several times a year we would all pile into our car (1977 Chevrolet Impala – quite the machine) and we would make the trek. Once, and only once as I recall, we stopped here for breakfast, as my dad always wanted to get on the road early. It was a Smitty’s Pancake House in Yale, BC.

In the first decade of my life I probably traveled this road 30 times. In the following three decades I have been up it three times, as I recall. Wait. Maybe four times. Regardless, it has been a while.

Things have changed, obviously. This location has, sadly, closed and the town which always felt somewhat bustling is now very quiet. The food here was really not very good, and I expect that there were a number of factors that involved the closing, but ‘great food, I’ll miss it’ was probably not something that people said much of.

That said, though, I remember being here once, probably when I was about 8 years old. And I remember it like it was yesterday, almost 40 years later. Even bad meals can do that to you.

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