Jamie All Week

Pizza Fritta x 2 (actually x 6, but other 4 are in bellies now, RIP)


Jamie makes EVERYTHING sound fresh and delicious, even something as boring as wilted spinach. And here’s the kicker: His recipes are easy to follow. He often avoids assigning exact measurements to ingredients; instead, he casually throws around words like “bunch” or “few sprigs” or “several”. The vagueness would make me panic a little bit in any other situation like with prescription drugs. After all, the subjective interpretation of these words can completely alter a dish’s flavor profile. But that’s precisely why Jamie free-floats his way through certain recipes. He wants the reader/home-cook to have a true sensory experience. Cooking shouldn’t be systematic. Cooking is about tasting and smelling and seeing and sometimes a lot of spilling (on yourself).

His Pizza Fritta (fried pizza) recipe is a good wake-up call for these sometimes-dormant senses. There is minimal measuring involved (not surprising), aside from the pizza dough. I’d never made my own pizza dough from scratch and though I was tempted to purchase the pre-made dough at Whole Foods, I decided to embark on a richer experience of mixing and kneading my own. Plus, Jamie says his pizza dough recipe is “fantastic, reliable” and even appropriate for “bread”. You sold me, Jamie.

Aside from working up a sweat kneading, everything in the crust department came together smoothly, pun intended. As unappealing as frying dough in 2 inches of oil sounds, the end result is a light brown, puffy disc that looks a bit like puri that tastes kind of like a donut, or, well, fried dough.

Problems did arise when I was making J’s Simple Tomato Sauce. I have a predilection for sweet, thick tomato sauces, carried over from my childhood obsession with ketchup, and his recipe didn’t speak to my senses. The sauce I ended up with looked more like tomato soup, and my roommate suggested that I add tomato paste to it, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. Sorry Jamie. I probably should have used a shallower pan to cook it in because in my saucepan, it never quite reduced to a concentrated, “Diane Chang”-level sauce.

Topping pizza is pretty intuitive. You top it with whatever you like to eat. I strategically arranged sliced mozzarella, cherry tomato halves, torn basil, oregano, sauce on my donut-crust. Then, I popped everything in the broiler for five minutes to seal the deal.

Since it was pizza night, my friend Amy decided to dub it “Fattiest Meal Ever” by bringing us two giant cupcakes from Delilah’s. And my jeans do not lie. Definitely fatty, but I’d like to just call it “sinfully delicious”.




Post-modern pizza dough turkey.


What I should have done to my asparagus soup.


The reason why my pants aren’t fitting today.


Wait, no, this is the real reason.


See the above caption.


SIDE-NOTE
A translation of Jamie’s pizza dough recipe that’s much easier to understand via Serious Eats.

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