The Three Greatest Pizzas I’ve Ever Eaten and How To Replicate Them

Pizza may be one of the most tortured and debased food items in America. There’s a place here in Portland called Pizzicato where I saw black beans on one of their artless bastard pies. So you understand. But there is room here for transcendence. The high bloom of pizza craft is still on the horizon, but on the gentle slopes leading up to it are some important milestones. Here are three, each with a pointless missive on how I discovered them. At the very end of this article you’ll find the recipes for the dough and sauce you can use for my versions of these.

#3 THE KING OF CASINOS JOHN KOPECKE

John was a hard drinking mamma’s boy and sous chef at Cascades, a Portland restaurant I worked at in the late 80’s. I was a dishwasher. The menu was knock off French jazz fusion, and by that I mean French as interpreted by rich people who bought a restaurant for their wayward yacht kid and then hired a Ramada Inn head chef to get the kitchen up when he showed no interest. John would have been a better head chef but nobody liked him, so number two it was. Famously, John was fired and then rehired in the same night, in fact in the same hour, due to my actions. John played the lottery on every shift he worked and told anyone who would listen that if he won he wasn’t even going to change back into his street clothes. He was walking and none of us would ever see him again unless he ran us down in his Rolls. On a rainy Wednesday or Thursday night after the dinner rush he sent me down the street to the convenience store to get the winning numbers. He did this every time it rained so I knew it was coming. Before I left I wrote his numbers down on a slip of paper and when I returned I told him there wasn’t any print out so the clerk had written down the winning numbers on a piece of paper. I gave him the slip with his numbers and he compared, his eyes growing wider and wider. It was like he’d been hit by lightning when he got to the final number. He wheeled on the chef. “FUCK YOU LOSER!” Then he frisbeed a dinner plate through the window into the waiters. He threw back his head and howled like a baboon. Then he advanced on me screaming and I punched him in the stomach. Unphased, he stormed up to the lockers upstairs where the staff changed and snorted a line of coke, screaming down the stairs as he did. “And now I’m smoking a joint! Fuck this place!” He wanted his pant after all, I guess. The head chef looked at me, sadly, and I winced. “He didn’t win,” I said. “I was pissed about having to walk down there in the rain again.” The big old chef sighed and lumbered up the stairs and gave poor John the bad news. His howls of anguish echo in my dreams to this day. Before this event, John would occasionally make me the third best pizza I’ve ever had.

The Blue Cheese, Blackened Oyster, Toasted Pine Nut and Arugula Pizza.

This isn’t especially tedious. The oysters I’ve modified, but this part is easy. Typical blackening involves a powder mix, i.e. cayenne powder, white pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and more, but all of these powders have either an aluminum or tricalcium phosphate as an anti-caking agent. Both of them irritate my stomach and maybe yours too. Opinions will differ and that’s mine.

Steam 1 ancho chili and 3 cloves garlic, blend with 1 tbsp. olive oil, salt, fresh ground black pepper

Shuck a dozen oysters, drop in ancho chili blend

Heat cast iron skillet to very hot

Drop the oysters in, leaving bulk of sauce in bowl

Turn once or twice, set aside when slightly crispy

NEXT, the toasted pine nuts and steam the arugula thus-

Heat sauté pan, sprinkle in ¼ cup pine nuts, dash of salt

Toast, moving gently

Pour pine nuts into side bowl and put the pan back on burner unwashed (pine nut oil resin) and sprinkle in ½ teaspoon fennel seeds. Toast, then add dash of balsamic and dash of water, big handful of arugula and cover immediately, then turn off heat. This is to steam the arugula so it won’t curl and burn on the pizza.

You can guess the rest. Roll out your dough, big ladle of sauce, then add the blue cheese, oysters (they should look like sun dried tomatoes) the arugula and the pine nuts. If you’re crazy cool, hit the top with a random splash of olive oil. Bake at 450 until done, usually 8-10 min. Thanks John.

The Second Best Pizza I Ever Ate

#2 The Aspen Arnold

One night years ago I got home from work, took a shower and then just lay there on the couch with the TV on, too tired to read and my eyes were fried from doing art crap all day anyway. The Food Network was on. It was late. I was half asleep, in between dreamland and oblivion when something intruded on my rest in a pleasant way. The TV. It was a special on pizza. I give less than any shit at all about the so called debate between deep dish and flat, New York and Chicago. The real fight in the pizza arena is beyond that Jurassic squabble. But this show host seemed to agree with me. I listened with my eyes closed until they got to their number two, coincidentally my number two here as well. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favorite pizza. Made at a little place in Aspen. This made me smile, but when they interviewed the chef I open my eyes. Seconds later I was writing down notes, wide awake. I’ve modified it a tad in the last few years. As Arnold has grown more introspective, the recipe has become more thoughtful (doh!).

The Tomato Base-

This is different from to go to catch all. Take two baskets of cherry tomatoes, preferably mixed as in gold, red and purple heirloom, half them and toss in a bowl with olive oil, garlic, and real garden oregano, maybe four sprigs. Bake at 375 until skins detach. Let cool and then pluck the skins off, place in bowl, add pinch of salt. Done.

The Three Cheeses.

This calls for marinated mozzarella, smoked swiss, and comte. The smoked swiss is soft but you can grate it if its really cold. The mozzarella will just be sliced in disks.

The prosciutto. Get a good one. Order from Di Bruno Bros.

Roll out your dough. Brush with olive oil. Then a scattering of mozzarella disks, don’t go crazy. Then some smoked swiss in the bare patches. THEN the tomatoes. Then the comte. Last your curls of prosciutto. Here’s the best part. Bake at 450, 8-10 min. When it’s done, take it out and slice it and THEN drop an egg yolk in the center. Break the yolk so it runs gently between the slices. Holy fuck this is good.

#1 The Home Happy Hour Badass

Cibo here in sunny Portland Oregon makes a fine version of this. One rainy night Sylvia and I went in during happy hour and I got it. She got the mussels and I found that rolling up a slice of this and dipping it in her sauce was not only fantastic, but so good that for a moment the rain went away and I was a sun bronzed surfer dude with a righteous boner on a beach in the Mediterranean, preparing to commune with naked Old testament warrior babes and speaking the language of birds. This pizza gets first place because it’s the easiest. It relies on two key ingredients, homemade mozzarella that you marinade in olive oil and fennel fronds and anchovies. Much of the time the anchovies we’re exposed to are easily mistaken for cat food because they are, essentially, cat food. A good anchovy is not like good cat food. It comes in on the high end of excellent human fare. The heretics at Bon Appetit would have you believe the jarred Ortiz brand of anchovy is best, and if you believe in bigfoot and Santa Clause, you just might believe it. Agostino Recca in the tin is the way to go. They’re large, meaty and salty. Don’t overdo it.

The HHOB is supremely easy. Roll out your dough, ladle out the sauce, put a few basil leaves down, add mozzarella disks, then use six or seven anchovies. Bake at 450, usually 8-10 min.

The All Purpose Pizza Sauce

I start with a big can of whole tomatoes, preferably fire roasted. Why whole? In tomato processing, the finest tomatoes find their way into these cans. The tomatoes that fall apart go into the ‘chunk’ cans, the ones that disintegrate into ‘sauce’ and ‘paste’. Open that can and blend. Leave in blender for the moment.

In a soup pot-

Dash of olive oil

4 cloves diced garlic

1 diced shallot

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Cook this until garlic and shallot begin to brown, add pureed whole tomatoes, two chopped sprigs of oregano, salt to taste, and lower heat. Thicken at low heat until ¼ of the volume has evaporated away. Some people add a dash of red wine just before the tomatoes and that isn’t bad. Others add cracked black pepper to the first step. The idea here is that its basic. You can monkey with this on your own forever. Consider rosemary. Roasted garlic. A puree of Turkish figs rehydrated in brandy. Pomegranate molasses. A carrot juice reduction. Go for it!

Pizza Dough

At this point I don’t measure anything and just go by sight, making different volumes for different occasions, but this is a good place to start-

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon sugar

1 packet instant dry yeast

2 teaspoons sea salt

1 ½ cups lukewarm water

Dash of olive oil

Put the water, yeast and sugar in a bowl and gently mix. Let sit. Half an hour later (give or take) the yeast will be active a bubbly. Add the flour and salt and olive oil, kneed into a big ball and cover with a moist cloth. Let it rise, kneed again a couple times and you’re basically ready in a couple hours. Double these amounts and separate into 4 or five balls, use one today and saran wrap the rest individually for use later in the next few days.

LAST NOTE- the pizza stone vs the cookie sheet. A pizza stone is a fine thing but I don’t have one and I likely never will. It’s even possible that I do have one, somewhere in all of my cooking ephemera, but its way in the back with the backup spice grinder and the festive holiday Ethiopian coffee pot. I use a cookie sheet, lightly oiled (olive).