The Beautiful Simplicy of Rome (or how I learned to love the Wal-Mart)

Dean Martin--"That's Amore" (mp3)

In the 60 days or so since I've returned from Rome, I have yet to track down a cup of coffee to match the get-it-anywhere kind of everyday stuff I was drinking in Rome. Oh, I've tried. Panera, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, my house, with coffee I've bought here, with coffee my daughter brought to me from Italy. Tried my best, but just can't do it. I even bought us an espresso machine for Christmas (everyone was drinking coffee in Italy!) in hopes of making my own "Cafe Americano," but even that hasn't been very satisfying.

C'est la vie. This isn't about what Italians can do that we can't.

I have been roasting tomatoes with great success this winter. It's very simple really. You buy up a bunch of Roma tomatoes, slice them in half, put them on a baking sheet, sprinkle them with salt, and put them in a 200 degree oven for 6-10 hours. It's hard to be exact without knowing the size of the tomatoes. But it isn't like you have to keep watching them or anything (though I'd check them after about 6 hours). You'll smell them roasting. A tomato smell will infuse your house.

Roasting tomatoes is about concentrating flavor. It's not about turning them into an oven version of sun-dried tomatoes, those leathery things that you pay a fortune for in gourmet supermarkets. Roasted tomatoes are much, much better.

You take them out of the oven when they still have a bit of plumpness to them. They may be down to about half of their original size, but they will still have some juice in them. When you take them out, you chop them up coarsely, toss them with some olive oil, maybe a little pepper, then put them in a bowl, cover them and refrigerate them, and you have the basis for any number of delicious, healthy meals waiting for you.

While you're boiling pasta, put your oven-roasted tomatoes in a food processor until they're fairly smooth, maybe heat them a little in the microwave and you've got an immediate pasta sauce that's far better than anything you'd pour out of a jar. Grate a little parmesan over the top of your dish, salad and bread, and you've got a quick, homemade, middle-of-the-workweek supper.

Here's where Rome comes into play.

One of the best pizzas, out of many great pizzas, that I had in Rome consisted of nothing but crust and tomatoes. That's right--no pile of cheese, no salty pepperonis, no combo of more ingredients than you can count. Just a good crust and a tomato sauce. And within the sauce itself, the same simplicity--no oregano, no basil, no chopped this or sauteed that, just tomatoes, a bit of olive oil, a bit of salt. But good tomatoes. Really good tomatoes.

Because the beautiful simplicity of eating in Rome is not fancy preparations or layers of flavor. It's about the ingredients, and when you have good ingredients, you don't have to do much to them.

Here's where Wal-Mart comes into play.

I've fought Wal-Mart forever, probably still should. But when you walk in there and they have a huge bin of Roma tomatoes for $1/lb. and everywhere else you see those same tomatoes, they go for about $2.24/lb. or more, it's hard not to stock up.

And what's more surprising, Wal-Mart has a better crust to make a Roman street pizza than just about anywhere in town. Yeah, I like to make my own pizza dough. But not all the time. And some of you never do. Well, the "Thin Pizza Crust--Napoli Style," one of the Signature Flatbreads made by the bakery at Wal-Mart is one of the few authentic, all-natural crusts that you can buy in this city. And it is certainly the cheapest. And the thinnest. Forget Boboli or Pilsbury or any of that kind of crap crust with enough preservatives in it to give it a shelf life of 2 years and no particular connection to anything resembling real pizza.

So you wanna do like the Romans even though you're not in Rome? Spread your Wal-Mart crust with your oven-roasted tomatoes, chopped or pureed to your liking, maybe drizzle a little olive oil and a little sea salt over the top. I've been known to put a few sliced mushrooms on top, maybe even a bit of grated parmesan. Bake it at 450 degrees for about 8 minutes. Cut it into strips.

Have a glass of a light Pinot Grigio with it. Take a bite. Close your eyes. Taste tomatoes and sun. Put on Dean Martin. Forget the winter blues.

Rat Pack member Dean Martin is available at Itunes.

Pizza Town

Mike Bloomfield with Al Kooper--"Man's Temptation" (mp3)

I am living, all too briefly, in Pizza Town.

There are many visions of Paradise. This is one of them.

Most of the best pizza that I've eaten in my life has been cooked for me here in Venice, Florida, the location of my mother-in-law's condominium for the past 25 years, and the place where I've often hibernated for Spring Breaks and summer getaways, for novel writing and grant reading, for spending a few days in a place where it's often possible to keep job thoughts at bay.

Venice, huh? I guess with that name the concentration of great pizza joints shouldn't be all that surprising, should it? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't really know the origins of this small, sleepy Florida city or of its swanky larger neighbor, Naples, about 80 miles down the road. Did Italian immigrants settle these locales and name them after their native cities? Did the names of these Florida cities make them more attractive to Italian immigrants from the North, looking for warmer climes to set up shop in their later years? I'm going with the latter theory. But anyway, a city with an Italian name serving great pizza should be a no-brainer, right? Then try going to Lafayette, Georgia in search of fantastic French cooking; you ain't gonna find much beyond french fries.

Venice, a town the size of Cleveland, Tennesse, has no fewer that 23 non-chain pizza places, to go with numerous chains.

Of course, I've just spent a month in Chicago, considered one of the great pizza cities, but I have to agree with Anthony Bourdain on that city's offerings. Deep dish pizza may be very, very good at some places, but it is more like a casserole, more like a "lasagna made with crust instead of noodles," I think he said. Besides, what kind of pizza is it really when you can't eat more than one piece before you're full? By the second piece, you're miserable.

The pizza palaces of Venice seem to have their origins more in New York City and that area. That means huge, thin crust pizzas. The medium is 14 inches; the large is 16 inches. And not thin crust as in the cracker crust now popular in the frozen food cases. No, this is thin as in tossed and stretched thin yeast crust with enough gluten in it that you can use the back of your fist to pull it farther and farther apart before giving it a twirl in the air. It's crust with character.

The pizzas of Venice come out of the oven with crust so thin you can't believe it's crisp in the center. A bite on the outside is crunchy at first, but then chewy in the center. And the sauce, spread thin, is bound to be some old family recipe. The toppings (the sausage homemade) and the cheese are not skimpy, but are not so plentiful as to overwhelm either the sauce or the crust. Great pizza is about a balance between all of the parts, at least until you get to the edges, and then it's just about the crust. My favorite place here in Venice, Luna Pizza, rubs their crust with olive oil and then sprinkles sesame seeds around the perimeter. It is superb.

If you keep up with food trends, pizza is hot right now. Seems like every restaurant, especially high-end ones, has installed a wood-burning oven to produce gourmet pizzas fired at 1000 degrees or higher. I like those pizzas. When I make them, I cook them on a stone in my oven with the temperature as hot as it will go. You can get a pretty kick ass pizza cooking on a pizza stone in your kitchen at 550 degrees.

But rather than a wood-fired duck pizza, I prefer the kind that come out of a large industrial pizza oven, a guy in a dirty white t-shirt and white apron opening the wide door and using his metal peel to give the pizza a shake every once in a while to make sure it isn't sticking. That's a Venice pizza. And then I'm not in Pizza Town, I'm in Pizza Heaven.