Farmer’s market season is (finally) in full effect, and I’m back this year at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never even been to the Morningside market, as PRFM is so close to my house. But it’s a very good market and it seems to be getting better too – more vendors, more people…less parking. I took these shots on a visit a few weeks ago.

Surprise, surprise – the city wants more money…, or I guess just enjoys being a pain in the ass.

Souper Jenny out selling her lobster rolls.

The line at Crepe Masters is always 5-10 people long so I’ve never had one, but they must be good.

My favorite vendors include: Native Juices, Riverview Farms, H&F Bread, Pine St Market, Moto Bene, Zocalo Salsa (salsa verde!), and Farmer Jeff’s produce.

Dan Latham (Moto Bene) is making some outrageous pizza from his portable oven. Kessler wrote about him here.

The pies often utilize whatever is in season at the market. This past Saturday I had a pie with ricotta, mozzarella, thin slices of zucchini, breakfast sausage, topped with squash blossoms after cooking. Wow. His end crust is some of the best I’ve had – light, slightly puffy inside, and just crispy enough. Really fantastic. Texturally, it’s somewhere in between Varasano’s and Antico. If and when Dan sets up shop, his pie is going to be formidable. Based on a two minute conversation, he seems to be a nice guy that loves pizza; definitely a welcome addition.

Bought some greens…

Roasted spring onions and cherry tomatoes, bibb lettuce, dandelion greens, homemade ranch dressing

Burgers last night – H&F bread made the burger

Lunch at Varasano’s features a few sandwiches unavailable at dinner. I tried them.

I’ve been for dinner a few times in the last couple of months and the pizzas are as consistent and delicious as they’ve ever been. On weekend night visits it has been packed full of people. It’s empty at lunch. Service is still a little pushy – “are you suuuuuure you don’t want donuts?”. But it’s still the best pizza in town for my tastes. It’s the dough – it rocks.

So good news, the sandwich bread has the same light and expansive texture with intense sourdough flavor. Delicious. The sausage and pepper for sandwich with a side Caesar for $8.95 was very good. Peppers/onions were a little slimy.

“Italian Deli” sandwich – coppocola, sopressata, fontina, basil, sun dried tomato. It was also very good – creamy fontina, the fresh basil with a strong aroma of anise, and the acid zip from the sun dried tomato made the sandwich for me.

It was tough to not order a pizza, but the sandwiches are definitely worth trying if you are in that area for lunch.

I’ve visited Pizzeria Fortunato on the East-West Connector in Smyrna a handful of times (post #1 | post #2), but I had a great experience there recently that I thought was worth sharing.

After a fun Saturday afternoon, I was looking for somewhere that could offer a cold beer and some guilty food. Pizzeria Fortunato had me covered.

In addition to pizza, there are some very decent wings at PF. Plenty of sauce, crispy, and plump, without being overly rubbery. I like wings to be a bit smaller than this, but these will fulfill a wing craving, no problem.

If that’s not guilty enough for you, you should try the fried provolone dish. It’s sort of an Italian version of queso fundido.

On this visit I noticed on the specials board that a variety of Italian classics, such as veal milanese, are offered at PF. I’m curious to see how they are one day. The closest to traditional fare that I’ve tried are the meatballs.

The meatballs were large, soft, well seasoned, and they didn’t have a reheated texture or flavor. Very respectable.

By the time the pizza arrived, I was stuffed. It was also very dark outside (we sat at a table on the patio) so this is the best photo I could muster up. The pizza was huge and loaded with pepperoni and sausage. It’s not a “trendy artisan” pie, but it’s delicious. I’ve always found their crust to be somewhat texturally odd and devoid of much flavor, but it’s not offensive in the least, and the crust isn’t a doughy gut bomb.

That being said, I just can’t help myself, I really enjoy discovering cities through eating. We walked all over the city doing the normal normal tourist stuff (Times Square….<shudder>), but that gets old real fast to me. Hanging out in restaurants I get to do some great people watching, I try to pick up the vibe of the restaurant & neighborhood, and it gives me the chance to talk to bartenders, waiters, sommeliers, and people who just happen to be sitting next to me. When they find out I’m interested in food, they all immediately have lists of “must-try” dining destinations, and I end up in some wonderful spot I never would have found otherwise. It makes the trip much more personal to me.

On a beautiful NYC weekend, diners were out en masse, restaurants had all the windows and doors blown open, and patio dining with a bloody mary was in style. For that experience, I’ll gladly accept the obsessed label.

Flickr albums are below, you can click on the set label within each slide show to go to the actual Flickr page, which has descriptions of most photos.

Since a change at work at the end of last year, I am now in Columbia, South Carolina three days a week, allowing me plenty of time to explore their food scene. Unfortunately I think Columbia has a long way to go, especially compared to Charleston and Greenville, which are both vastly superior in terms of cuisine and weather.

Of course, there are gems, my favorite being Terra just across the bridge from the Vista (downtown). I probably visit once a week. Chef Mike Davis is young, creative, and recently had the honor of cooking at the James Beard house. The menu has some mainstays, but the specials are often the way to go. On a recent visit they were trying out some bar snacks, including lobster “corn dogs”. This was fresh lobster, fried on a stick, with a tempura like texture. It was a little gooey from being undercooked, but showed potential and was a fun attempt, and was worth ordering at $7.

I often end up ordering the wood fired pizzas, as they are too hard to pass up at $10. The pizzas are super thin, very much like Sardinian flat bread, with great toppings. The duck confit and port soaked cherries is my personal favorite, though the carnitas is a close second.

The frisee lardon is also a common order of mine – rich chewy Benton’s bacon, mushrooms, and a poached egg soaked in jus. Sinful and delicious.

Last week I tried the veal hangar steak with risotto. Perfectly cooked veal, wonderful al dente risotto with little cubes of roasted butternut squash, and once again, a good value at $20.

I don’t have a picture of another dish I like, but Terra commonly offers a skate wing appetizer, which is three medium sized pieces of fried skate, with celery root mash, and hericot verts for $8.

On another trip, I ventured towards the east side of Columbia, near the military base, where the best ethnic food can be found. The ladies at Mai Thai near my office, who often day dream about how good the Korean and Chinese food is in Atlanta, sent me over to Pho Viet when I told them I was seeking pho.

Compared to my first pho mission in Columbia, this was stellar, but I’m slowly learning just how good we have it in Atlanta. The broth was decent, though the ribeye wasn’t thin enough, and the brisket was tough and too lean. The omission of Thai basil was also disappointing, I love that stuff.

Last week I decided to seek out tonkotsu ramen. I found it at Inakaya. This was edible, but my heart sank as I realized that this was no Haru Ichiban or Yakitori Jenbei. The broth was too salty and was too thin, and the pork was a major let down. Rather than the thin slice of fatty, falling apart pork, these were three little pieces of tough pork, maybe small slices of roast loin.

The adventure of finding great food in Columbia has been a lot of fun, and as mentioned, only reinforces how good the food is in Atlanta, particularly ethnic food. Terra can be slightly inconsistent in execution, but I think it’s the best food in Columbia, with prices which beat anywhere of comparable quality in Atlanta. They also has a wide wine selection with fair prices.

I’m sure there are other “finds” in Columbia, and my plan is to try them all. 

This past Thursday through Sunday I had a jammed full schedule, including an insane amount of guilty pleasure eating. Luckily my weekend included a total of twenty miles of running; my fancy GPS watch said I burned 3,070 calories. Somehow I still think my appetite managed to beat out my metabolism.

Thursday night a group of us met up at one of the back tables at Antico for pizza and wine. The quattro stagioni was our first pie, and probably my favorite pie of the night. The toppings are my favorite part of Antico, second only to the ambience. The peppers on the san gennaro, the Italian sausage, the spicy calabrese peppers, and the copious amounts of sauce are all great. But the crust is a bit doughy for me. It’s often too dense, too gummy. The quattro stagioni we were served had the crispiest and lightest crust of the bunch, and perhaps not coincidentally, it appeared to have been cooked the longest. I really think their pies could go for just a few seconds longer in the oven, but that’s just me.

I loved this bottle of Morgon we had with the pies, it is head and shoulders better than most $20 Pinot based Burgundy you will find. The sparkling vouvray wasn’t a bad deal for $15 either. Both are available at Tower.

For lunch Friday I made my way downtown to Grindhouse. This was my second visit, and my first opportunity to try the apache burger, as they were out of the green chiles on my first visit. It wasn’t as spicy as I would have guessed, but this was one of the best burgers I’ve had in a while. The two meat patties were thin, soft, not overcooked, and had the most delicious griddle crust I’ve ever seen. Add to that a perfect bun, and crispy hot, salty seasoned krinkle fries, and I was a happy fat man for the rest of the day.

Later that night I went to the circus, which I haven’t attended in probably fifteen years. I forgot how amazingly well trained (abused?) the animals are. And forgot that popcorn costs $7. ZING ZANG ZOOM!

After the show I hit up La Fonda Latina where Slice used to be on Howell Mill. I had two chicken tacos, which were surprisingly decent. They were filled with large chunks of char-grilled chicken. The salsa was poor though, it tasted like they add tomato juice to it.

On Saturday my parents visited for my Mom’s birthday, and we took her on an eating tour of ATL. As they were staying in Buckhead, we started on the Westside and worked our way back towards their hotel. The first stop was the bar at Abattoir. The four of us sampled the duck meatballs, pickled shrimp, fried chicken livers, ceci peas, pommes frite, and celery soup. The celery soup was creamy and sinfully nourishing, and I loved the meatballs, particularly due to their super soft texture. The pommes frite seemed different than the last time I had them, I’m not sure if they’ve changed the style of if my memory isn’t serving me correctly, but I recalled liking them more in the past. Anyone know if they’ve changed?

After Abattoir we made our way over to Tuk Tuk, which was my first visit there. We easily sat at the bar, though at 7:30PM there were no open tables in their main dining area, a good sign for them. The spinach wraps pictured below were great, though the jerky in the background was probably my favorite dish. Flavorful, not overly leathery, and a fairly large portion, considering it’s jerky.

For “dessert” we went to Varasano’s. I don’t visit Varasano’s as much as I should, especially considering how much I love pizza. The pies on Saturday night were as good as I’ve had there, the sour dough crust is perfectly epic when it’s on point – light, full of sour flavor, crisp & chewy at the same time, and not “dough blow” inducing. Being a crust lover, I don’t think there’s better pizza in ATL.

You know what my dream is? I would love for Varasano’s to start offering some pasta entrees or small plates, similar to the menu at Flour+Water. If I could get the celery root tortelloni I had there, or “garganelli with fennel pollen sausage, chard, and fresh horseradish” they are currently offering, in addition to killer pie, you wouldn’t be able to drag me out of there. For now, eating at the bar at La Pietra, then heading on over to Varasano’s will have to suffice.

Finally on Sunday, I completed the first steps towards assembling my new sous vide immersion cooker. We’ll see if this sucker works. My past “handy” accomplishments include hanging a towel rack.

The Neapolitan (or tongue twisting Neo-Neapolitan) is my true pizza love, but something about the buttery, flaky crust, stuffed full of cheese and toppings, quite literally a “pie”, was calling my name.

I Googled a recipe for Gino’s East (a pizzeria in Chicago I’ve heard of, not sure where) and of course found a website and video detailing how to replicate it. Later I found another version, with a great picture. I followed the recipe for the most part, with a few variations due to lack of ingredients and overall forgetfulness.

I mixed the dough as described, though I didn’t have yellow food coloring. I also forgot the cornmeal. My dough was probably too sticky – it should almost be wet, but not sticky, due to the high amount of cornmeal and oil. I let it rise in my oven from about 8AM until that evening when I cooked the pizza.

The dough will quickly rise and the texture will get very puffy. I punched it down once around lunch time, and let it rise again.

My quick, standby pizza sauce is very easy. It’s an uncooked tomato sauce, which will work just fine on normal pizzas, especially if cooking with high heat. With a Chicago pizza, which will cook for a long time, I think the raw sauce works even better.

It’s simply a can of pureed/crushed Roma tomatoes (you can crush whole tomatoes if you want), with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, red pepper, and sometimes I use a microplane to add just a tablespoon of good parmesan cheese. Don’t store your sauce in the fridge, or if making it earlier, take it out about an hour before cooking to let it come up to room temperature.

For the toppings, I purchased some Tuscan sausage from Star Provisions. I sliced them in an obvious phallic nature, then cooked them a few minutes each side.

I used Sargento cheese for this pizza. I think you’re going to get better results with mozzarella like this, versus fresh mozzarella in water. The high moisture content of real deal mozzarella will cause the cheese to break down, and the pizza will be too wet for the slices to hold together.

I also purchased pepperoni from Star Provisions. It was just a few bucks for these 10 slices, so worth it.

When I was ready to cook, I greased my cast iron skillet heavily with butter. I rolled out my dough, did my best to throw it evenly into the pan, then trimmed the sides. Start the layering process with the cheese. I did an even layer of Sargento, then used some shredded mozzarella to ensure an even cheese layer.

After the cheese I added the meat, then a healthy dose of sauce. The pizza cooked on the lower rack for roughly 40 minutes. I started at 350 as instructed, but it didn’t seem to be cooking fast enough so I bumped it up to 400. I also broiled it for a minute before taking it out and letting it rest for a solid fifteen to twenty minutes.

You can see the sides pulled away, making it very easy to cut.

The pizza was very gloppy, even after 20 minutes rest.

A few notes on this pizza:

• I could have used more oil in the dough, more cornmeal, and I could have added more oil to the pan. Oil is your friend when it comes to this type of crust.
• I probably could have used just a bit less sauce, but the cooked sauce was delicious
• It was agreed that the high quality pepperoni and sausage was the tipping point for this pizza – the quality was apparent and everyone loved it
• Cooking at 350 is probably too low, next time I’ll try a bit higher the whole time
• Man this was delicious, everything I had hoped it would be, a true pizza gut bomb

So of course, after that pizza, we ate some Ad Hoc Fried Chicken. Awesome. The poulet rouge chickens are about $8-10 each at Whole Foods, and they are so worth it. Chickens aren’t supposed to be fifteen pounds. And as Keller mentions, a smaller chicken is better for fried chicken due to the better meat to crust ratio.

For now, you can get all voyeuristic and watch the slideshow from last weekend’s trip to Sonoma/SF. We took the red eye back Sunday night, so we had about 10 hours to kill in San Francisco before we had to roll ourselves onto the plane. We went at the town hard. Mind you, it was my first eating marathon. I hit the wall somewhere around Mission (maybe meal #5 of the day?), but I pushed through the pain and thought about everything I’ve worked for, and how I wasn’t going to quit until I ate pizza at Flour+Water. That’s what winners do.

The dining frenzy that has ensued since Blissful Glutton first posted on Antico Pizza on Hemphill has been swift, in fact, I don’t know that I’ve seen any establishment be so well received in such a short period of time (check out the 42 five star reviews on Yelp). And yes, I too have succumb to the fantastic vibe and food from this wonderful Westside pizza mecca.

I’ve made four visits since they opened, and every time I come away happy. Best slice ever? I’m not going to go that far, and if you read my pizza series you’ll know I am not a big fan of categorizing pizza in that manner. But Antico pizza is special. The care in each pizza is palpable (and delicious). Giovanni and his crew set the mark for hospitality. The patrons give each other the little nod while in line, as if to say, “yeah, I’m in on it too”. And the diavaola pizza with spicy sopressata and fiery marinated calabrese peppers haunts my dreams.

The one problem I’ve had with Antico’s pizza is that it can get quite soggy in the center, often within minutes, which I find to be problematic, especially when the business model is, or at least was intended to be, takeout. This pizza needs to be eaten right away. Before I took a pie home last Friday night, I made a point to stand at the communal table and devour two slices before heading out. In the eight minutes it took me to get in my kitchen, the pizza was a limp mess. It was still edible by folding it over, but it just wasn’t the same.

I noticed on the box that holes have been punched in the top, something that I didn’t notice on the first pie I took home a week ago. I wonder if Antico did this in attempt to reduce the steaming effect on the takeout?

Instead of eating the soggy pizza, I decided to forego eating for a few minutes and try to reheat it, but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Pizza stone? Directly on the rack? Aluminum foil?

I finally settled on using a cookie sheet. I figured the pizza is already cooked, we just need to crisp the bottom surface. A hot pizza stone is going to bake the pizza quickly, and cooking directly on the rack won’t provide the hot surface we need all over the bottom of the slice.

I placed the sheet in the oven, then heated it to 400 degrees. Once it reached temp, I threw two slices directly on the sheet and promptly heard them sizzle.

They came out fantastically. The sauce dried out a bit, as reheated pizza normally does, but in a short three minutes the dough crisped up perfectly. The tip of the pizza was just dry enough to support the load of the toppings, no longer soggy at all, and the crust puffed up and became light and chewy and wonderful.  Dare I say, the crust was even more enjoyable than it was right out of Antico’s ovens, when I thought it was a bit heavy on this particular pie.

Not that reheating pizza on a heated cookie sheet is some sort of amazing discovery, but if you are dealing with a soggy Antico pizza, I highly recommend going this route. Let me know how it goes, or if you have better results with other methods.

–

Per usual, I’m about a month behind in my Bon Appétit series. This recipe for Summer Tomato and Bell Pepper Soup and Fig, Prosciutto, Gorgonzola, and Arugula Pizza are both from the August issue. I’ve still seen some real tomatoes out at the markets, but I don’t think it’s going to be much longer, as summer feels like it’s fading fast. I wanted to ensure I got one last fresh tomato dish in before it does, and I’ve been cooking a lot of pizza lately with my family, so these two recipes made sense as the selection.

The tomato soup recipe was part of a “no-cook dinners” section, so this recipe used all raw ingredients like a gazpacho. I was a little put off by the use of jarred roasted red peppers and plain old tomato juice, but I stayed true to the recipe and used the specified ingredients.

One 1lb heirloom tomato was enough to meet the specified 1 1/3 cup of chopped tomatoes.

I don’t really have many other process photos because this recipe was so quick. I mixed the chopped tomato with the olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, chopped roasted red peppers, and the tomato juice. I only had creamy horseradish in stock, not prepared horseradish as specified, so I added 1 tsp of whole grain mustard as a substitute. Then it went in the fridge and for roughly two hours of ingredient intercourse.

Here I have plated with halved cherry tomatoes, basil, and Sweet Grass Dairy soft goat’s cheese. That cheese is insanely smooth, creamy, and earthy.

The soup was good, but I couldn’t help but think I would have liked it better with freshly prepared tomato juice and red peppers. I cut back on the amount of tomato juice by about 1/3, and it was still plenty thin. You could easily get the juice/flesh/seeds out of some other tomatoes and use that as the liquid. There are lots of uses for the extra tomato exterior you would have on hand, namely pico de gallo. That being said, when I got a bite with the goat cheese and the basil, this soup was delicious.

On to the pizza. Here I’ve sliced the figs, roughly four vertical slices per fig.

I didn’t prepare dough ahead of time, so I purchased some Publix dough (shame!). One problem I’ve often had with Publix dough (and Trader Joe dough as well) is that the dough recoils and will just not get very thin. A lot of times you can leave it out for thirty minute after you first stretch it to let the gluten relax, then you’re able to get it a bit thinner, though often times still isn’t thin enough. Luckily my dad picked up a trick from Diner’s, Drive-Ins, and Dives that works really well.

If the dough won’t stretch out thin and recoils, sprinkle a generous amount of cornmeal all over the surface of the pizza then stretch or roll it out again. It works. The dough won’t recoil at all. If it does, give it a bit more cornmeal. Below you can see the before and after with the cornmeal.

You may be wondering, as I did, how the cornmeal affects the taste. Well, I couldn’t even tell it had been hit with cornmeal, and I’m am dough snob. Perhaps it affects the ability for nice bubbles to form, but the trade-off is worth it; too me a thin and crispy pie is much better than a thick and doughy one.

You can see how I thin I got it by the “window-pane” I created below.

Another benefit of using the cornmeal is that I was able to use one Publix dough ball twice. Below is the 2nd pizza from the same dough ball. The second time I tried the BA recipe, I added some of that goat cheese, which turned out fantastically.

The recipe calls for fig balsamic vinegar to use for marinating the figs, which is stupidly expensive and you will use it twice and forget about it in your pantry. Instead, I took five slices of figs, 1 Tbsp of sugar, and about 1/2 cup of regular balsamic and reduced it by half. There ya go, fig balsamic.

First the pizza is cooked with just the cheese. Then remove it from the oven and add the prosciutto.

Then the figs and throw it back in the oven for 1 minute to heat up the figs.

Then the whole deal is topped with arugula which has been tossed in a balsamic/evoo dressing. The arugula looks like crap below, because it was crap arugula. Whole Foods didn’t have a single decent looking bag of arugula that day.

The fig/cheese flavor combo was killer, though the pizza with the goat’s cheese was even better. The blue cheese can be strong and the creamy Sweet Grass cheese really helped smooth it out. The prosciutto was nice but I wish I hadn’t cooked it even the one minute. It firmed up the beautiful (and expensive) prosciutto di Parma. The arugula could be left off, there’s enough going on here without it.

I drank a 2007 Domaine Rosier sparkler with this. This wine is from Limoux, a region where sparkling wine actually predates the sparklers of Champagne. There are sparklers documented from the 16th century in Limoux. Suck it, Champagne.

This Mauzac/Chardonnary blend is a good value at $17 (Whole Foods Buckhead price, can be found online for much cheaper), especially when compared to decent Champagne. Despite the current economic catastrophe and oversupply, the prices of Champagne aren’t really budging. Eric Asimov of the NY Times wrote a good article on this a couple of weeks ago.