The box had my name on it. Problem was, I did not remember ordering anything. “Maybe it’s for someone else with the same name,” offered the delivery guy. “With the same address?” I said. “Unlikely — take it back.” “Are you sure?” “No. Wait.” I dialed my mother.
“It could be a bomb,” she said. “Whatever happens, don’t open that box.”
“Manang,” I tell the help, “can you get me some of that, uh… you know, that leaf from the garden?”
“That that?” Later: “You mean this?”
“That.”
Anyone who has casually followed this blog knows that the one item of food most heavily featured here is pizza. Naturally, that makes people think I’m some kind of connoisseur. Or, worse, since I’ve mostly featured pizza I myself made from scratch, a snob.
After four days of making pizza from a single batch of dough, the only thing that came out blistered was my ego. Yesterday I saw some localized browning on my Margherita (see photo above), so today I had counted on a few trapped bubbles to burst, or at least burn. For good measure I turned on the electric broiler an hour prior to get my oven as hot as it could. Then I slid the pizza in, and just as the dough began to puff up and the cheese to ooze, the power went out.
Considering I often whine about how long proper pizza dough takes to develop (or at least to cold-ferment), this braided pizza proves that I still have time to kill. And yet I was not entirely satisfied with how this one had turned out. It took too long to bake, even for “rolled” pizza, and the crust too uniformly browned, looking as if it came from a neighborhood bakery. Too nice, in fact. After waiting a full day for the dough to proof, I expected something a little more rustic, like blisters on the crust — you know, as in (ahem) Neapolitan pizza.
There’s a giant tin of wheat crackers sitting forlorn in the kitchen. Ma had bought it per my father’s request, but then he had pronounced that it was not the kind he had asked for. “Well?” I said. “It is the right brand, is it not?”
My excitement at making pizza is always tempered by the prospect of preparing the dough. It takes too damn long. “You want pizza,” I say to my mother, “you should’ve told me yesterday.” “Well,” she says back, unfazed, “I’m telling you now.”
On the third day the pizza dough I halved, slathered with meat sauce, dotted with cheese, sprinkled with dried chili flakes, strewed with bean sprouts, topped with shrimp, drizzled with garlic-infused oil, sprinkled with sea salt and more pepper (black), baked in a cast-iron skillet, and garnished with baby basil.
Boys and girls, it was one superb pizza.
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.
How thin can a pizza get? Any thinner than this and it would not hold, that’s for sure. The bread is crusty — all crust, in fact — light, and crispy. Like tortilla, you could say. And you’d be right.
