Pizzeria Bianco: the Elaine Robinson of pizza?

The last scene in the movie, “The Graduate,” still confounds me. Ben has just stolen the doe-eyed and very un-Jewish Elaine Robinson from her pristine church wedding after a stressful, empty gas tank pursuit. As they board the crosstown bus, victorious, and grab a seat in the back, we hear Paul Simon sing, “Hello darkness, my old friend…..” Their faces move from elation to remorse, from victory to loss.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I woke up last Thursday morning, the morning of my final pursuit of Chris Bianco’s nationally lauded pizza, was it all about the chase? Once you got the prize, was it no longer prize-worthy?

I spent an entire week, three years ago, in pursuit of the prize, enduring an almost two-hour wait just to get on the waiting list, which, we were told, was four hours long. Six hours for pizza? There was clearly a chance that Chris Bianco was, in fact, Elaine Robinson in a flour-dusted chef's coat. But when you're in the chase, the prize is just that much shinier.

We arrived at 5 o’clock on that beautiful Thursday evening and put our names in. There was no line, but we were told the wait would be about an hour, possibly less, so check again in about 30 minutes.

The area surrounding Pizzeria Bianco is surprisingly un-Phoenix-like. No signs of desert, just a little cobblestone street closed to traffic with a few older brick buildings. Pizzeria Bianco owns two of the buildings, the restaurant and the bar next door, where they have checker and chess boards set up, presumably for patrons to endure the long waits. Feral cats roam around, which is entertaining if you like cats. I do, especially when the inexperienced try to sidle up to them and get hissed at.

After milling around for 50 or so minutes, we were seated. I already knew what we would order, having read the menu fifty or sixty times over the past three years: the Margherita, the Wiseguy, and the Biancoverde. We also ordered the spiedini (fontina wrapped in prosciutto and grilled, kebab-style), and a big plate of olives, which I ate myself.

To start: bread, olive oil, and olives. A girl could live on this.

Wood-fired pizza is ubiquitous nowadays and I credit Chez Panisse for that. Alice Waters, and her co-chefs, have been cooking in wood-fired ovens since the 70’s. So when our pizzas came and I took the first bite, the crust didn’t wow me. Everyone’s doing it, and a lot of people are doing it really well. This was good crust, but not religious crust.

But as I invested myself in this pizza – first, with the Biancoverde, a white pizza with olive oil, fresh mozzarella, and fresh arugula, then the Wiseguy, another white pizza, this one with fresh mozzarella, fat slices of fennel sausage, caramelized onions, and my addition of wood-roasted mushrooms – the flavors started to haunt me (as I write this four days later, I can still taste the mushrooms).

The Wiseguy: fennel sausage, caramelized onions, roasted mushrooms (my addition), and mozzarella.

My dining companions and I fought over that Wiseguy, each eating our allotted pieces as fast as we could so we were guaranteed another piece. I speared anything that fell back on the serving plate, especially the mushrooms, which were revelatory as far as fungus goes.

The Biancoverde was the most visually pleasing and lightest of the three. Salty cheese, peppery arugula and olive oil have been done before, but the ingredients here, especially the cheese, made it taste better than most.

The Margherita: mozzarella, tomato, and basil

I didn’t try the Margherita until the next morning, when I had the last two pieces for breakfast. Even then, the flavors were bright and the cheese was admirably salty. Any pizza that can sustain its flavors after 12 hours in a cardboard box, in an iffy hotel refrigerator, is a pizza worth standing in line for.

A really good meal: A slice of Wiseguy, olives, and a glass of local beer.

Pizzeria Bianco, with all its PR-driven hype, was surprisingly unpretentious. No hip music. The waiters did not have an exaggerated sense of their importance in the relationship. And the sparkling water was from Arkansas. But the best part: they thanked us for waiting.

A perfectly perfect cookie

Years and years ago, when I was baking at full throttle, I had grand cookie ambitions around Christmas time. I would find pictures of elaborately decorated cookies on the cover of Gourmet magazine, and I would make them. All twelve varieties, each more complicated than the next. And then I would make a batch of puff pastry just for fun.

I'd be lying if I said I don't have the energy to do that anymore. I don't have the desire. I'm not nearly as enamored of trying a million different recipes, but thank God I was once a compulsive recipe tester, because now, thanks to my 16 hour baking marathons, I know definitively what works and what doesn't.

Case in point: Animal Crackers from Nancy Silverton, my pastry idol. I've been making this recipe forever, and I make it whenever cookies are called for at school, or any other event. Even though nothing in the world is perfect, these are. A perfectly balanced, tender sugar cookie, forgiving, easily re-rolled, just lovely and perfect. I sometimes want to hug this recipe. It comforts me like a family member who knows me, and never - not ever - acknowledges my flaws.

Animal Crackers

from "Desserts by Nancy Silverton"

8 oz. unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. cream

1 Tbs. real vanilla extract

4 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

(Note: I add a big pinch of salt to the recipe. Don't tell Nancy)

To decorate cookie tops:

2 egg yolks

crystallized sugar

Using the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until it whitens and hold soft peaks, 3 - 5 minutes. Beat in the sugar until well-blended. Whisk together the eggs, cream and vanilla and beat in, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Sift together the flour and baking powder, and add to the butter in three batches, mixing briefly after each addition. After the last addition of flour, beat until just combined. Make sure any flour on the bottom of the bowl is fully incorporated.

Flatten dough into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least two hours, and as long as several days.

Preheat oven to 325. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/8" thickness. Cut dough with your favorite cookie cutter, using as much of the surface area as you can - this will leave less dough for re-rolling. Place on paper-lined or non-stick cookie sheets. If you have enough sheets, place one empty sheet under your cookie sheet. This keeps the bottom from browning too quickly.

Whisk the egg yolks together, and lightly brush the tops of the cookies, then sprinkle the top with crystallized sugar. This gives them a delightful crunch. If you're going to decorate them with frosting, you can omit this part.

Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the sheets from front to back to ensure even baking. Bake for about 7 - 8 minutes more, checking to make sure they don't brown too much. They should just turn light gold.

A quick one

When I was a kid, I liked to make concoctions. I would gather ketchup, mustard, salad oil, dried spices, and any other bottled liquids I could find, along with a bowl and start "cooking." Everything would get mixed together and inevitably turn into....vomit. Cooking did not come naturally to me.

But the idea, the desire for the impromptu mixing together of ingredients to create something wonderful, remains. This is why I love making soup. Shoot from the hip. No measuring. With the wild promise that anything could happen. Spontaneity reigns when you make soup.

So the other day, I grabbed some florets from the pumpkin-sized head of cauliflower I had and a red pepper, and something magical happened. I only use the word "magical" when something really is magical, and not as hyperbole. It was magical; trust me on this. An Indian cauliflower soup with curry, turmeric, and a hint of cayenne. I served it with a scoop of basmati rice because I live for carbs, and it seemed authentic that way. The whole thing came together in an hour. Here's the recipe, give or take.

Indian cauliflower soup

For 2 servings:

1 1/2 cups cut-up cauliflower florets

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced

1/2 small onion, diced

1/2 shallot, diced

1 Tbs. canola oil

1/2 tsp curry powder, or to taste

1/2 tsp turmeric

pinch cayenne

chicken stock to cover (about 2 1/2 cups)

1/2 cup chopped frozen spinach

salt and pepper to taste

a squeeze of lime

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottom pan, like a Le Creuset or a heavy pot. Saute the onion and shallot until translucent and soft, about 8 minutes. Add the red pepper and cauliflower, and sauté 5 minutes more. Add the spices, salt and pepper to taste, and sauté another couple of minutes, until everything is well-coated and starting to soften. Add the chicken stock and enough water to cover the vegetables by an inch or so. Bring to a boil, then reduce and partially cover. Simmer for about 25 minutes. The cauliflower will break up into little bits and become very soft. Remove from heat, let cool a couple of minutes, then puree in a blender. You may want to do this in two batches to keep the lid from blowing off the blender and exploding all over the kitchen. You can use a food processor as well. When fully pureed, thin with stock if necessary. The soup will be very creamy. Add the frozen spinach (the soup must still be hot for this to work), and stir well.

Ladle the soup into wide soup bowls and put a scoop of basmati rice right in the middle. I added a squeeze of lime, and it was magical.

A completely unbiased take on chocolate

My friend, Bob, and I have this ongoing argument about chocolate.

Bob: Milk chocolate is the best.

Me: If you think that, you must be a pussy.

Chocolate lovers love bittersweet chocolate. End of story. They can also like milk chocolate, but they know that bittersweet is far superior, and that milk chocolate is a poor man's semi-sweet, which is a poor man's bittersweet. Milk chocolate is for those who don't like cilantro, olives, and Indian food. You know, people with immature palates. White chocolate won't even be discussed here.

The real argument is this: just how bitter should bittersweet be? Some people, like myself, favor a mellower bittersweet, while others like it so bitter, it borders on unpleasant, even punitive. In any event, bittersweet rules.

The best bittersweet is Callebaut, a Belgian brand that produces some of the most balanced chocolate around. I am in love with Callebaut and will defend it to my death. I know some people love Valrhona, and I will admit that its exotic names and wine-like complexity make it sexier, but give me the frank directness of Callebaut any day of the week.

When I worked in the kitchen, Callebaut came in whopping 11 pound blocks. Chopping large blocks of chocolate is about as fun as plucking one's nose hairs, one by one. After a day of chopping, I would go home and soak my wrists in ice cold water and try not to weep. But there is one extremely satisfying part of the process. To get it going, the chopper would lift the block over head, still wrapped in paper, and fling it to the ground, resulting in a resonant THUD! Sometimes, you might even get a THWAP! if it hit the ground just so. If you did this with vigor, or even better, in a murderous rage, the chocolate might break into ten or so pieces. But if you were tentative in your flinging - a tentative flinger - you'd be lucky to end up with two or three still barely manageable pieces. If someone was particularly pissed off that day, they automatically got the job.

Chocolate is moody, like my eight year old daughter, and that's why, when you prepare chocolate for coating (a melting process used in making candies and truffles), it's called tempering. Because it's like giving a child a bath. The chocolate may decide it's not in the mood to be tempered that day, and have a tantrum. I think this is why the French like chocolate so much - because chocolate is a challenge, like a beautiful, enigmatic woman who offers glimpses of availability and then just as quickly withdraws, enjoying the pursuer's misery.

Here are some good chocolate sources, in case you feel like getting in the ring with the beast.

Callebaut - available in smaller 12 - 16 ounce chunks at Whole Foods. Or through the website Chocosphere.com, which has every brand and product you'll ever need.

Valrhona - perhaps a sexier chocolate than Callebaut, but I still like my workhorse. Valrhona also makes an amazing cocoa powder (available at Chocospere.com) and a variety of bittersweet bars with varying degrees of bitterness for tasting.

La Maison du Chocolat - Makes the best plain chocolate truffles I have ever had, and they'll gladly ship them to you. I haven't been to their shop in New York, but have been to the one in Paris, and it was miraculous. The entire shop is cloaked in chocolate brown, from the walls to the carpeting. They have everything chocolate - cakes, candies, amazing macarons - and the taste level is exquisite.

Vosges - a Chicago success story. Exotic truffles and bars. They have a few shops around town, and also sell in Whole Foods.

As for milk chocolate, well, gee, have you tried Hershey's?

Living in a creamy alfredo world

During the summer, my family and I traverse the 90 miles from Chicago to southwest Michigan on a fairly regular basis, passing through the soft, moist armpit of Indiana. Indiana is Americana; love of God and country come before just about everything else except maybe alfredo sauce.

I noticed this on our last visit, as we decided on a restaurant for dinner. We always seem to stop in Michigan City, Indiana, the land of outlet malls, and home to every chain restaurant in existence. If you look around the main drag, there's Steak n Shake, Chili's, The Olive Garden, Baker's Square, Denny's, Culver's, and the fast food Big Three: McDonald's, BK, and Wendy's. You can add to that Quizno's, Subway, Pizza Hut/WingStop......you get the picture.

My pick is always The Olive Garden (even though canned olives in my salad are a disgusting folly, they're also sort of delightful), which is overridden by the other members of the family, who inevitably pick Chili's. It's really all the same, now that alfredo sauce has infiltrated pretty much every fast food menu (At Chili's, it's Cajun Pasta with garlic alfredo sauce).

You won't really get an argument from me regarding alfredo sauce. Screw my arteries; it's a wantonly self-indulgent cloak on bland food, and besides, the heart wants what it wants. And mine wants alfredo sauce. Like, a big plate of it, with a side of fettucine, a big grind of pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. And yes, please pass the parmesan and the grater. I love the creaminess of the sauce mixed with the salty grit of the cheese, and the slithery slipperiness of the noodles. I don't know if there's a more sensorially pleasing food.

In Italy, there is no cream in the sauce, which is to say, we've taken something perfect and Americanized it. In Italy, it's all butter and cheese, and some pasta cooking water to emulsify those two perfect ingredients into something even more compelling. The Italians, who know a thing or two about pasta, know that the cream is superfluous, and perhaps even detrimental.

But try telling that to the Americans. I grew up with cream in my alfredo. I'm used to it, although once you taste the real version, it gives you pause. Oh, so that's what it's supposed to taste like. But I suppose once you start mixing alfredo with the likes of jalapeño and cajun spices, you're not much concerned with authenticity anyway.

Viva la frita!

If there's one thing I fret about, it's a missed opportunity. Take last weekend. I went to Ann Arbor, one of my favorite food places in the world. It's not quite the food holy land, but it's close. One reason is Zingerman's, the world's greatest deli. If $15 sandwiches seem like highway robbery, you've never tasted Zingerman's Bakehouse rye. Or their Georgia Reuben, or Pat & Dick's Honeymooner, or the sublime mushroom barley soup, or the brownies....do I need to go on?

But last weekend, I missed out on Frita Batidos. I had never heard of the place until I stumbled upon a spirited discussion about it on a football blog (my other passion) a few days ago. Its proponents declared it the next coming in Ann Arbor, so I decided to check out the website. I figured with that name, it was a nacho place. You know, refried beans, sour cream, a Latin bandito with a six-shooter in one hand and a margarita in the other, welcoming you inside.

What I found was a revelation, as these things go. A modern Cuban-inspired sandwich place, with beautifully plated food, sides of rum-soaked pineapple, and fruity tropical milkshakes (I'm close to tears).

A frita, I learned, is a Cuban burger made from spicy chorizo. The ones at Frita Batidos are served on an egg bun with chili mayo and shoestring fries on top. But you can also get a fish frita or a black bean frita or one topped with a fried egg or cilantro lime salsa or tropical coleslaw, or all three. And if you don't want shoestring fries on top, that's fine, too, although who would be that foolish?

Other ridiculously great-sounding sandwiches include seared shrimp, cilantro oil, pea shoots, and bermuda onion on brioche, and the Inspired Cuban: aromatic roast pork, tasso ham, thick bacon, gruyere, cornichons and chipotle mayo on Cuban bread. You can also get a bucket of fried smelts, which I might consider here, or the Best Snack Ever, which is beans, rice, salsa, and cheese. Something tells me its simplicity belies its complexity.

Come October, when I return, I will grab a seat in the window and eat my fish frita with tropical coleslaw and drink a perfectly tropical batido (guava maybe?) and be happier than a human has a right to be.

Donut anxiety

I've always considered donuts a laid back proposition. Not the case at the Donut Vault. The stakes are high, quantities are limited and timing is everything. And with the advent of real time social networking, you know exactly where you stand (in a really, really long line with your smart phone, obsessively checking Donut Vault status updates every two minutes) at all times.

We hit that line on Saturday at 10:00 AM. It was about 50 people long and it wound around the corner of Franklin on to Kinzie into the hot sun. I've stood in lines for food before, but this time, I felt sort of foolish, like a donut novice, which I'm not. I grew up on mother's milk and donuts. It's a genetic certainty, my love of donuts, that was passed down from my mother. Just recently she confessed that when she turned 16 and got her driver's license, she would lie to her parents and tell them she was going to a late mass on Sunday, but instead, she'd head to a bakery on the outskirts of town, where she'd get half dozen glazed donuts and eat them all, unrecognized. Now, she's probably going to hell.

But that sordid foray explains our outings at the grocery store when I was in high school. Before we started to shop, my mother and I would head over to the bakery section and buy a dozen sugared donuts in a white paper sack. By the time we finished our shopping, 4 or 5 would be gone. In the cart was another bag of mini powdered sugar donettes, which my stepfather would eat over the course of the next few days, two here, three there, the telltale white powder lingering on the counter at all times from the constant reaching in and pulling out of donuts. I lived in a donut crack house and we were all addicts.

I know my donuts. I don't like Krispy Kremes. Too sweet. Dunkin Donuts taste like the test tube they grew in. My favorite bakery donuts come from Dinkel's here in Chicago. They're dreamy, especially the apple cider donuts rolled in sugar and spice available in the fall. The best restaurant donuts I've ever had came from Campanile in Los Angeles. Nancy Silverton, my pastry idol, concocted a dream plate of two kinds of donuts - ricotta fritters and beignets - accompanied by homemade vanilla ice cream and warm huckleberries. I had that dessert twenty years ago and I'm still reeling.

So there I was, in line at the Donut Vault on Saturday, slightly scared. It takes balls, and a modicum of arrogance, for a restaurateur to expect people to wait in line for any extended period of time, especially for a $2.00 donut. For the first time during one of my many food pilgrimages (there have been many), I wondered if it was worth it. I considered going across the street to Dunkin and getting the test tube donut and calling it a day. Who wants to wait an hour in the hot sun for a freaking donut?

As I was standing there, getting angry, I was also following Facebook, and getting real time updates on which donuts were selling out, and which were getting low. As this was happening, I watched single people come out of the tiny shop carrying two boxes of donuts. And I was starting to get donut rage.

REALLY? You really need two dozen donuts? You know, there are people in line here who would be happy with just one. Asshole. Asshole with a little dog.

And then before I knew it, I was standing inside the vault. Only it wasn't really a vault, it was a hallway pulsating with hip hop music. My 8 year-old daughter was with me and when the singer sang, "Motherfucker motherfucker mother fucker bitch," she looked up at me, alarmed. I was alarmed. These better be great donuts. Motherfucking great donuts. Bitch.

And then it was our turn. I stepped up to the very hip hip hop counter and ordered one of each: old-fashioned buttermilk, chocolate glazed, vanilla glazed, and pistachio. Score. The only one that was sold out was the gingerbread stack and that didn't even sound like a donut, so who cares?

One hour and fifteen minutes after we first stepped in line, I had a Donut Vault bag in hand. We found a spot right in front of the Moody Bible Institute (I knew God would somehow find his way back into this), sat down on a bench and started eating (pictures below, beginning with pistachio, then chocolate, followed by vanilla glazed then buttermilk).

These are good donuts. Good, big, squishy, and very sweet donuts. The chocolate one needs more chocolate glaze. The pistachio wasn't pistachio enough. The vanilla glazed had little flecks of real vanilla bean - a nice touch on what was probably my favorite. And the old-fashioned buttermilk was delightful - I think. I don't remember it very well, but I'm pretty sure it was good.

I still prefer Dinkel's, where there might be one or two people in line in front of me. And where the donut anxiety is at a minimum.