When my parents are away I ignore set meal times and eat whenever I feel like it. It is liberating to know that no one will go hungry because I am too lazy or tired to prepare lunch or dinner, not to mention a proper one. What it boils down to, really, is an invitation to eat unhealthily, whether it’s pancit palabok and fries from Jollibee (a guilty pleasure), the tapsilog at Andok’s, or chicharon (pork cracklings) with cold rice.
Being home alone used to hold a different appeal for me. Or at least it involved a different kind of freedom. Everyone’s only young once, and I confess that liberated from my mother’s watchful gaze, I wasn’t always the angel that I promised I would be. Not even today — although these days I mostly delight myself in not having to steal a backward glance to see if she’s around while I stuff myself with fast/junk food. I would feel pathetic if I weren’t enjoying myself so much.
Is pizza junk food? It depends. Greenwich’s certainly is — as if their use of the word “overload” isn’t telling enough. But if you have been around long enough, you might remember that it wasn’t always that way. Back in the mid-1980s Greenwich was all of a kiosk at Greenbelt. They served only one type of pizza: a five-square-inch flatbread topped with ground beef and bell pepper. That was it and it was perfect. Today Greenwich has gone the way of Greenbelt, that is to say an assault on the senses.
Having said that, I feel better about my pizza. They’re as bare-bones as pizza can get, and will probably be scoffed at as anemic by those whose idea of pizza has been shaped solely by advertising. I bet they feel sorry for me as I do for them. The joke is on them.
Making pizza from scratch is not as difficult as you think. You just need a bit of forethought. I made the dough three days prior (from Italian 00 flour that I had almost forgotten I had). The sauce — actually a ragù — was from three weeks before, and it tasted much better than when it was newly made. The mozzarella, if you must know, we have had since before Rustom Padilla came out (I bought a big block). Wait — you don’t know who Rustom Padilla is? My point exactly: That cheese was way old.
Also, there is an amazingly fast and easy way to cook pizza. Start the dough on a smoking cast-iron pan, garnishing while it cooks from beneath, then finish it under the oven broiler. (More on the method here.) I had lunch in under ten minutes. It took more time to defrost the ingredients.
The pizza was far from perfect. The crust could have been more thin, but I had to work within the constraints of the pan. Note to self: Next time, halve dough. Or buy a bigger pan. Meanwhile, I had half the pie to myself. I’m a pig.
And here was lunch (more like brunch, actually) the next day: a riff on pissaladière or French pizza.
No cheese — as it should be — just lots of onions sautéed with ginamós (fermented fish fry). Instead of the traditional anchovies (we had none), I topped the dish with roasted buwad bolináw (dried fish fry). We were out of olives as well; I used capers, although the pizza was salty enough without. It was a quick bake so the crust wasn’t able to develop a nice char, but not so quick as to avoid burning the toppings in places, so on the next try, I stuck the dough into the oven for three minutes before garnishing (I left out capers this time), then put it back in to finish. The pizza was delicious either way; this one just looked better. I really ought to try it with anchovies and olives next time around. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m thinking shrimp and bean sprouts.
I often hear it said that to Italians, a pasta dish is less about the sauce than the noodles, and that pizza is really all about the bread. My bread has a looong way to go. I was once at a party with Margarita Fores, the restaurateur, who recounted her frustration trying to make pizza crust turn out like the kind made in Naples. She spent months churning out one failure after another. Was it the tropical humidity? The oven? The local H₂O? So she had water flown in all the way from Italy. Now that is pretty hardcore, don’t you think? I love pizza, but not that much.
My parents love pizza too, but at their age I should not be encouraging that fondness, no matter how lean my pizza may be. Come to think of it, I’m not in the best of health myself. But I can’t help it. An empty house will always be an invitation to break the rules. It’s only my idea of fun that has changed. Besides, porn looked sexier on Betamax.
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