Tag: Pizza

San Diego (March 2025)

San Diego (March 2025)

I used to work and live in the San Diego region for a year about 15 years ago. A former colleague of mine let me know she was retiring and moving away and so we decided to head down for a few days to see her and just enjoy San Diego. Unfortunately we have been on the mend from our first bout with COVID so weren’t 100%. At least I was no longer shedding so I felt okay still visiting. After moving back to southern CA last year, it’s a relatively short drive down to SD. We left on a Sunday morning making the drive that much easier without any traffic. Our AirBnB wouldn’t be ready to check in until the afternoon so we headed straight for Pacific Beach (PB) to get some lunch.

We haven’t been down to the area in probably 10 years now so I had done some research on food places. We settled on the Pacific Beach Fish Shop. This place is unique in that you choose the fish and then the means of getting it into your mouth (taco, salad, sandwich, plate). D had two of their pre-made recipe tacos: TKO Taco (Mahi Mahi) & Pineapple Express taco (Mahi Mahi) while I had their fresh catches of the day: Halibut taco & Rockfish taco. Overall I think they were tasty though one of D’s fish was kinda dry and there wasn’t any sauce on that one. We grabbed some coffee two doors down at Elixir Espresso Bar.

We then made our way over to the actual beach in Pacific Beach (we tend to go towards Law Street Beach). It had rained very briefly while we were getting coffee but cleared up by the time we made our way to the beach, though it was still quite windy so we didn’t stay too long.

New York City (October 2024)

The whole idea that started this trip was a simple conversation from a year ago with my cousin on joining her for a dinner. She mentioned that she’s in NYC every year for her husband’s work function and always thought of skipping out on a boring work-related dinner where all the people did was talk shop and enjoy a delectable meal. As this year’s work event got closer, D and I checked in with the cousin and she said that dinner was a go if we wanted. So we booked our flights and hotel stay for NYC for October. We actually went in October of last year for my friend’s business grand opening.

This time we flew out of LAX and took a direct JetBlue flight to Newark. We landed around 7:30 pm and caught a cab into the city, which took about an hour. After dropping our bags at our hotel in Midtown East at the Intercontinental New York Barclay, we walked over to PJ Clarke’s for a much deserved drink and late dinner. This bar/restaurant opened in 1884 and is particularly known for having a good burger. D had the burger and fries while I had classic fish and chips. To drink I had a Smoky Old Fashioned while D had the 1930 (Elijah craig small batch bourbon, lime juice, st. elizabeth allspice dram, simple syrup, angostura bitters, orange peel).

We stopped for a night cap at the hotel bar (we had a $30 credit for each day of our stay).

The following morning I woke up and headed to get bagels for us while D got ready for the day. I went to our normal spot, Ess-a-Bagel, (that we went to the last 2 times) as it was just up the street. By the time I got there (around 10am?) the line was out the door. Luckily it moved relatively smoothly and I got our bagels and a coffee for D (I had a coffee with the hotel room’s Keurig).

This time it was a bit of a disappointment. The bagels themselves and their crumb didn’t seem as chewy as normal (maybe a little dense). I kind of wonder if they’ve grown too much that quality control isn’t as good because they’re so busy.

We wanted to check out Harlem and Sylvia’s (one of the oldest classic southern fare food in the area). To get there, we walked down to Grand Central Station and hopped on a subway to head up to 125th street. I’ve found that every neighborhood in NY has their own feel, from midtown to LES to Chelsea to Brooklyn.

Harlem was very musical – lots of music just everywhere. The two places we had looked up were Sylvia’s but also Red Rooster (Marcus Samuellson’s place that he opened up in 2010). They were actually just down the street from one another. We settled on Sylvia’s and had some yummy food. I had the lunch special which was a fried chicken leg with some collard greens and D had the chicken and waffles. Both were very good.

We also walked over to the Apollo Theater, a classic institution for music, comedy, and other performances.

Cruising part 2 (Naples) (2024 Europe)

Cruising part 2 (Naples) (2024 Europe)

Continuation from previous post.

Somehow I missed this port stop when I started on part 3 of the trip so Naples will get its own short post.

I had anticipating and looking forward to this stop because this is where Pizza Napoletana (Neapolitan) pizza originated from. This trip for me was an exploration of the various foods of each region. Naples sits near Mount Vesuvius, famous for the eruption that destroyed the city of Pompeii.

Waking up and stepping out onto the balcony, I could tell it was going to be another hot and humid one. The sky was kind of a hazy red-orange.

We had breakfast and then disembarked and started the trek to Galleria Umberto I, which is a public shopping gallery. Prior to walking through, we stopped at Gran Caffè Gambrinus – a historic coffeehouse founded in 1860. On the way there we walked by the Fontana del Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune) and the Castel Nuovo (“New Castle” or Maschio Angioino).

Fountain of Neptune
Castel Nuovo

New pizza dough recipe

So I decided to try a new pizza dough recipe.  This was made mostly out of necessity since I hadn’t made the dough the night ahead.  I have been using the overnight slow no-knead method for years and it produces a night sour-like dough that D likes.  I also haven’t used my new stand mixer for pizza dough and figured this would be a good time to try it out.  I tweaked the original recipe a little.  I had seen this recipe on one of my FB groups and it looked good – it’s a Martha Stewart recipe (https://www.marthastewart.com/332275/basic-pizza-dough).

Ingredients:

  • 2 tsp active dry yeast
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • (eyeballed) 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 4 cups AP flour
  • 1.5 cups of warm water
  1.  In the bowl I added the warm water with the sugar and yeast and let it bloom for about 5 minutes.
  2. To the bowl I then added the AP flour, salt and olive oil.
  3. Using my stand mixer, I mixed the dough for ~10 minutes (on the low or #2 setting)
  4. This produced a cohesive smooth dough that I placed in an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled (~1.5-2 hours) – this was a very active dough that more than doubled
  5. I punched the dough down and then divided it into 4 equal pieces and formed 2 into balls for the pizza (I saved the other half to make bread another day).
  6. After about 2-3 hours I formed the pizza into a large disc for baking.

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What I liked about this recipe is that it provided for a dough with good strength to it when working it.  The one I had been making was a little more delicate and harder to stretch into a nice round shape like the above.  Overall I thought it was a little light on salt and didn’t create the same depth of flavor as the overnight dough but it works if you have less time.

-StewsCat

Pizza dough comparison

Last month I tried a new pizza dough recipe.  A few months before that, I had read in Men’s Health about an easy pizza dough that did not require hours of preparation (I had been using a no-knead dough recipe that required an 18 hour rise (more details below).  I am always looking for both more efficient and tasty recipes for pizza dough.  My wife enjoys the one I had been making but I am all for tweaking and improving so I decided to try this new (to me) recipe.  I was fairly certain I had left the magazine in a spot in my treadmill room but lo and behold it wasn’t there.  I resorted to trying to google the same recipe and don’t know if it was the exact one I had read about initially but I went with it.

Quicker pizza dough ingredients:

  • 6 cups AP flour
  • 2 1/4 cups room temperature water (recipe called for cold water)
  • 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  1.  Add 3 cups of flour and 1/2 tsp yeast to 2 1/4 cups of water in a large bowl and combine
  2. In a separate bowl, mix remaining 3 cups of flour with the salt.
  3. I then added in the flour mix to the flour-water combination (from step 1) and kneaded it within the bowl for about 5 minutes.
  4. I let the dough rest – covered – for 30 minutes.
  5. The dough was separated into 4 (relatively) parts and 3 of them saved in saran wrap and frozen for later use.
  6. I split the dough into 2 balls and made pizzas from them.

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