Happy Halloween.

RIP Studs Terkel

Excerpts from Race:

"Terkel writes: "My wife was driving down the street in a black neighborhood. The people at the corners were all gesticulating at her. She was very frightened, turned up the windows, and drove determinedly. She discovered after several blocks, she was going the wrong way on a one-way street and they were trying to help her. Her assumption was they blacks and out to get her. Mind you, she's a very enlightened person. You'd never associate her with racism, yet her first reaction was that they were dangerous."

"'My father is the kindest, sweetest man you ever wanted to know,' says another black woman. She writes for a trade journal. 'He's very dark-skinned. It infuriates me to think that some little white woman would get on the elevator with my father and assume, just by the color of his skin, that he is going to harm her, and clutch her purse tighter. To think that my father, who's worked hard all his life, put us through school, loves us, took care of us-to think that she would clutch her purse because he's there. The thought makes me so angry.'"

"'I went through a bad time,' recalls a fireman's wife. 'I felt like being white middle-class had a stigma to it. Everything was our fault. Every time I turned on the TV, it would be constant trying to send me on a guilt trip because I had a decent life. I was sick of people making the connotation that because I was raising a good family, I was responsible for the ills of the world. The white middle class was getting a bum rap. Even when I went to church, I was angry.'"

"'What I found fascinating is the tragically humorous condition of northern whites. The civil rights movement made the white ethnic groups more democratic. The Poles, Jews, Italians, and Irish could all get together in their hostility to the blacks. It has become another aspect of the democratic creed. Being white in America made them feel equal to all other whites, as long as the black man was down below.'"

"'I think you become an adult when you reach a point where you don't need anyone underneath you. When you can look at yourself and say, "I'm okay the way I am." One of the things that keeps my class of people from having any vision is race hatred. You're so busy hating somebody else, you're not going to realize how beautiful you are and how much you destroy all that 's good in the world.'"

http://www.studsterkel.org/

Pizza

Now that it's fall the oven has been fired up nonstop.  I had been dying to try the Cook's Illustrated recipe for Pizza Bianca (Oct. 2008) and was met with great results.  It's a wet dough recipe which means no rolling and lots and lots of messy hand washing.  I used my hands rather than an electric mixer and both pies came out fine.  Here's what I did:

PREP!

Red Sauce:

2 28 oz. cans San Marzano tomatos (whole peeled) 

5 cloves of garlic

basil (dried or fresh)

salt & pepper to taste

The red sauce can be done ahead of time (or while the dough is rising) and I use it for pizza, pasta, etc.  It is super simple:

1.  Blend both cans of tomato sauce with roughly chopped garlic and place in saucepan over high heat.  Note the level in the pan.  Add one 1/2 can (14 ounces) of water and let come to a boil then reduce to a simmer.  (At this point, skim foam left from blending and discard.)  Allow mixture to reduce back to 28 oz. (level noted in pan earlier) and add herbs. (If you are using fresh, one small bunch of basil is fine.  If using dried you will need less, about 3/4 teaspoon.)  Turn off heat, let cool, jar it up and/or use it on your prepared pizza/pasta/etc.

Dough:

3 cups all purpose flour

1 2/3 cups water, room temp

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1 1/4 teaspoons sugar

Olive oil

1.  Place the first three ingredients in a bowl (or mixer bowl) and mix slowly until no patches of dry flower remain.  Scrape the sides of the bowl and continue again mixing until all flower is incorporated.  Let dough rest for 20 minutes.

2.  Sprinkle yeast and sugar over dough, knead slowly until combined scraping sides occasionally.  Increase speed on mixer or just crank up the elbow grease and mix until dough is fully incorporated with a glossy sheen and pulls away from the sides of the bowl (about 10 minutes.) 

3.  Oil up a bowl and hands (its good for your fingernails and skin) move dough into oiled bowl and flip it once or until fully coated in oil.  (At this point the dough is really wet so you need to get slicked up with oil or else you are going to be in a sticky mess.)  Let rise for 2-3 hours or until triple in size.

4. An hour before dough is finished rising preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  At this point I split the dough, made one classic dough for pepperoni and jalepeno for me and one olive, caper and anchovy dough for Lauren.  I must admit, the latter was my favorite.  I split the rising dough and kneaded in 5 or 6 quartered olives, one can of rolled anchovies with capers along with about 1/2 the oil from the anchovy can to one half.  I unrolled the anchovies and capers, used the capers as they were but loosely chopped the anchovies (about the size of the olives.)

5.  Spread the plain dough on a oiled sheet pan (I rubbed mine with raw garlic) and let rest for 5-10 minutes.  The same follows for the olive/anchovy/caper dough.  Cooks Illustrated recommends topping with sea salt and rosemary.  I used mozzarella, red sauce, pepperoni and hot peppers.  For Lauren's I topped with sun dried tomato paste and goat cheese.  If using a pizza stone bake for 15-20 minutes on the middle oven rack at 450 degrees.  If not, 500 degrees on a low rack will do.  Rotate pans halfway through cooking.  Brush finished pizzas with olive oil.

Enjoy.

Freshstart.

Jessie wants me to "make her a website" for Christmas.  (christmas?  or just because?)  

My first idea was to send her to blogger.com with some ideas on how to spice it up.  When I checked the site out (I had used it in the past) I entered her email and info with hopes of just setting something up for her and having her receive info on her web address and password but because blogger is tied to google and her email is tied to a gmail account (or something) I couldn't go any further without actually logging her in.  Instead I entered my own info and came upon this blog I had set up a little under two years ago.  

I never saw the point in using it because I had myspace and their blog template was easy enough.  Now I pretty much hate myspace.  Its owned by THE capitalist pig and for some reason I have to log in three times and then enter one of those squiggly letter 'I'm no robot' codes = pain in the ass.  Plus the whole "social networking" thing sort of lost its luster or perhaps was just usurped by facebook.

Anyway.  More than that I have been cranking out paintings and have started to record some music and I don't want to limit onlookers to myspace or facebook users only.  Plus, I figure the more I blog, the better my writing will be and I've been really slacking in that department.

So thats it for now.  My goals for this blog are those I just stated and also to repost old blogs from various sites for the viewing public.  I know there are some really humorous or bizarre stories buried in there.