PIZZA POWER

I was in a big supermarket in Cornwall just before Christmas and I saw a very large man peering into a freezer cabinet.  And in incredible excitement he called to his wife, standing maybe ten feet away “Look! Look! Look what they’ve got!.”  The wife came over and looked, and so did I.  What they had were frozen pizzas.  The man chose one, and his wife chose another.  This made them very, very happy.

Now, I’m not a man to criticize other people’s food enthusiasms but this man was as excited as I’d have been if there were zebra steaks in the freezer.

I suppose the fact is I really don’t GET pizza.  This is no doubt a personal failing, and you may say (as people do) that’s because I’ve never had REALLY GOOD pizza, and this may well be true.  In general pizza is what I have when I can’t think what else to eat.  And by now I know two things, 1) it’s always a disappointment, and 2) it’s usually better the next day if I have a leftover slice for breakfast.

So I was surprised to find myself strangely excited by this picture that appeared on Instagram a few days ago.

It’s from Wylie Dufresne who used to run the restaurant WD-50, in Manhattan, a damn fine establishment: molecular gastronomy but not offensively so.  These days WD-50 is closed and Dufresne runs Du's Donuts & Coffee in Williamsburg, and frankly I don’t really GET doughnuts either, but that’s just another of my failings.

The Instagram image suggests Dufresne is teaching himself to make pizzas, and this one looked great, although closer inspection reveals that it’s something called a potato pie which seems in every way more desirable than a ‘real’ pizza – and those fried green onions really do look good.

In fact I was so moved by the picture that I decided to have a pizza.  Not a really good one, obviously.  I bought a very cheap and not very cheerful base, fried up some Cumberland sausage and green onions, put them on the pizza, added some black olives, and you know in the end it really wasn’t all that good.  The base was the real problem.  I scraped off all the topping and threw most of the base away.  I didn’t even bother saving any for breakfast the next day.

I was going to say ‘a lesson learned’ but I don’t think I learned anything I didn’t already know.  But then the next day, Instagram being what it is, Mitsuru Tabata once of Acid Mothers Temple who describes himself as ‘Guitarist, bassist and vinyl junky. Aka burger man. Also curry addict.’ posted an image of a pizza he’d made:

 It looked good.  And then another one:

Once again I was tempted (I’m hoping that 'powder cheese' is just a dodgy translation of grated cheese) but I know myself – I’m resisting.  For now.