When you think of old-style Italian-American restaurants does red sauce spring to mind? Red check wax table cloths, family-style servings, a free salad with your entree, rotund red-faced guys with their sleeves rolled-up, going “ey!” and slapping each other on the back? Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s also close to the truth in a lot of places, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I, for one, love a classic east coast red sauce and meatballs joint, but it’s not the complete picture.

Ferdinando’s Focacceria on Union Street in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood has been in business as long as any in New York City. In 1910, in the heart of what was then a burgeoning Italian community, it opened its doors principally to cater for expatriate paesani working at the nearby Brooklyn docks, and it’s been serving the neighborhood faithfully ever since. However, unlike many of the other Italian eateries in the area, Fernandino’s does not serve everything with lashings of tomato gravy (not that they don’t offer red sauce – try it with their tripe), instead, they serve their original regional Sicilian dishes as if they don’t care or aren’t aware that long-established Italian restaurants are supposed to top everything with a meatball. They are most famous for their panelle and vastedda (chick pea fritters and veal spleen sandwiches, respectively), which they didn’t just decide to start selling since David Chang and Michael Symon announced it was cool for Brooklyn hipsters to eat offal.

That Ferdinando’s and many other original Italian businesses are still in operation in Carroll Gardens speaks to the fact that descendants of the neighborhood’s original communities remain where their forefathers first landed, in sight of Ellis Island across New York harbor. Not that simply by merit they don’t deserve to be in business, but that health-ninnies and changing dietary proclivities have discouraged most people from looking kindly upon rolls filled with deep fried chickpea dough or boiled calf-innards.

Our recent visit was the culmination of several years of anticipation and a pleasant relief after a terrible, screamy morning with our 5-month old. It was planned as our first lunch out with the baby, and we arrived flustered and desperate that he would nap long enough to allow us to get through a meal in peace. Finding ourselves a table at the rear, as distant as possible from the other patrons, we settled ourselves in and admired the time-worn decor of sepia-tint photos of the old country, a thickly over-painted tin ceiling and some attractive stained glass. The baby sparked awake shortly after we’d ordered our wine, but to our amazement, he emerged from his car-seat cheerful, quiet and relaxed. Maybe he is as susceptible as we are to a relaxing restaurant atmosphere? Whatever the reason, cue a great lunch.

Owner Francesco Buffa’s food is unrepentantly rustic and from the mismatched plates to the friendly but slightly gruff service, it is a truly authentic experience of old Brooklyn that is increasingly hard to find. Starting with a cold octopus and celery salad and a plate of garlicky broccoli di rape with a basket of crisp Italian bread from Mazzola bakery two blocks up, before proceeding with a panelle and mozzarella sandwich and a vastedda special (with the most unctuous ricotta), our happiness reigned for nearly two hours. In fact, so becalmed were we and Paolo, that we had dessert and espresso as the wait staff cooed around the baby.

Buddhists say that expectations are the root of all suffering, but even if we’d had the greatest morning of our lives instead of one of the most grueling, Ferdinando’s would still have been special. We will be heading back again soon to try their famous pasta con le sarde (with sardines, raisins and pine nuts) and rice balls stuffed with house-made ragu and peas. Whether Paolo will cooperate remains to be seen, but the food is so good that it’s worth the risk.

Regular We Are Never Full readers out there may have noticed that we’ve been less than active in the new posts capacity of late — some of you may even mourn the loss of our chirpy and spirited voices from your weekly web-browsing, though we expect many might find it welcome relief. Either way, we’re on temporary hiatus from blogging at the moment due to being in the process of finding a new apartment where we can cook, be somewhat more physically expansive, and hey, even entertain guests (!). All in all, a tricky proposition in a city where 700 square feet apartments are listed as “luxurious” or “roomy’, the description “sun-drenched” equates to the presence of a single window, and “galley” kitchens are advertised as being something to get excited about.

Still, we remain confident that we’ll find somewhere appropriate soon and will be back-up and blogging in our familiarly grating tones by early September, at the latest. In good time, we hope, to regale you with the still-fresh tales of our recent trip to Québec City, and the delicious comestibles its citizens introduced us to.

In the meantime, we wish you an enjoyable remainder of August, and look forward to hitting you all up when we’re back.

With over 61,000 pizzerias in America, how many do you think have really got it right? My guess is about 100. I’ve had some really, really, really shitty pizza in this country (Colorado!? San Francisco!!?) I’ve had some really, really shitty in my own neighborhood of New York City! I still have yet to find a place that really rivals the pizza I’ve eaten in Italy, until now when I realized I can make it myself in the comforts of my own home.

There’s place called Franny’s here in Brooklyn that is one of those annoying, overpriced and over-trendy but packed every night. When we finally decided it was time to see if it lived up to the hype, we were totally disappointed. When I eat something as simple as pizza, I don’t feel like dealing with a pretentious, trendy, annoying hipster attitude or staff. I don’t feel like being charged $16 for a pizza the size of a medium-sized plate and leave hungry. We ate reasonably-priced pizza at Isabella’s Oven, but the crust just didn’t quite do it for us. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We will never eat thin-crust pizza around New York City again. There’s no reason. For $20 worth of ingredients, a $15 pizza stone (genius, will never live without it – GO BUY ONE NOW), a $9 bottle of Chianti and my ipod, I can have a better, less expenisive, tastier and more relaxing culinary experience in my small Brooklyn kitchen then going to any of those shit-house, wannabe, up-their-own-asses Italian-style pizza places up the street (sorry, I think you’re finding out my true feelings on Frannys). Remember folks, there’s a difference between the type of pizza we’re going to show you how to make here and the many delicious New York City Pizzeria’s I love and adore (Lombardi’s, Arturos, John’s, Pino La Forcetta, Grimaldi’s, Di Fara, Totonnos, etc. etc.).

In fact, if you don’t feel like making pizza dough from scratch, go ask your local pizzeria for some fresh dough. More than likely, they’ll sell it to you. Just make sure it’s simple – nothing more than flour, yeast and water. No crazy bits of roasted garlic, no honey, no nothin’. The other thing that you must, must have, as I mentioned earlier is a pizza stone. This is KEY to making the best pizza at home. Third thing you must have is a really, really simple sauce recipe. Naturally, I recommend using my sauce recipe - it’s simple and delicious – just make sure you simmer it much longer than what is called for. The sauce should not be very wet, but more concentrated. Fourth is space to roll your dough out and a bit of muscle. I can’t toss friggin’ pizza dough in the air for the life of me so I spend my time rolling and rolling and rolling this pizza dough till it FINALLY does what I need it to do – roll out thin. Finally, you need a hot oven. If your oven has a hard time making it past 425 degrees, this may not work as well for you. You need to whack it up as high as it goes (550F+) and allow the pizza stone 20 minutes to heat up before you heat up the dough. Follow these simple instructions and you’ll have perfect pizza every time.

Here’s pictorial of all the pizza’s we’ve made recently to give you some ideas of toppings, most recreated from ones we ate while in Italy. Immediately following the picture you will find a really great recipe for pizza dough from Jeffrey Steingarten’s book It Must’ve Been Something I Ate. Buon Appetito!

Pizza with Cipollini Onions and Tonno

Pizza Romana (Pizza w/ Capers and Anchovies)

White Pizza with Mushrooms, Leeks and White Truffle Oil

Pizza with Anchovies and Cabrales (or Gorgonzola)

Bresaola, Arugula and Parmigiano Pizza

Pizza Romana (Capers and Anchovy) with Cracked Egg on Top

So, hope your mouth is watering and now YOU will think about a new pizza with toppings you love! Check out how to make pizza dough below.

PIZZA DOUGH ALA JEFFREY STEINGARTEN (an adaptation)

Ingredients:

• 6 to 6 1/2 cups of flour

• 1 1/2 tsp instant or active dry yeast

• 1 tbsp. plus 1 teaspoon salt

• 3 1/4 cups cold water

• 1/2 cup cornmeal or semolina flour

What to do:

1. In the mixer bowl of your food processor, stir the flours, yeast and salt together. Pour in the water and stir vigourously with a wooden spoon until everything comes together into a “shaggy dough”.

2. Put the bowl on the mixer and attach the beater – not the dough hook. This dough is too wet for regular kneading. Mix on low speed for a minute then beat on high speed for 3 1/2 minutes, scraping down the beater and bowl halfway through.

3. ***Steingarten explains the way to knw when your dough is perfect: With well-floured fingers, pull off a piece of dough about the size of a walnut and roll it in flour. You should be able to stretch it with the fingers of both hands without breaking for at least 3 inches across.

4. Scrape the dough out onto a heavily floured work surface. Fold one side over the other and allow to rest for 10 mintues. After 10 minutes, cut dough into 4 equal pieces and shape each piece into a ball and place each in a well-oiled bowl to rise until double in size – about 3 hours. ***NOTE: Steingarten likes to then put his dough balls in the fridge for an hour… if you have the time, do so, otherwise, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.

   

5. Preheat your oven to as high as it can go (at least 500 degrees!) and allow the pizza stone to heat up for a half hour to one hour.

6. On a well-floured surface, pat each dough ball into as flat of a circle as possible. Stretch it by draping the dough over your fists, knuckels up, passing it from hand to hand until it reaches about 12 inches. ***NOTE: This is the thing, do not despair at this point if it’s not going as perfectly as you want. This is not as easy as Steingarten says. With practice, it’ll be easier. But, we give the fist to fist way a try for a bit, then bust out a well-floured rolling pin and litterally attack the dough with our pin until it gets as thin as we need it to be. We like it to be about 1/2 a centimeter thick when we first cook it on the pizza stone.

   

7. ***This is where I do things a bit differently than Steingarten. Using oven mits, take your pizza stone out of the hot, HOT oven. Scrape your pizza dough off your floured surface and place on the hot stone (it will begin to cook immediately) and place back in the oven for two minutes or until there is a tiny bit of color on the surface and edges of the dough. Remove from oven and place back on your work surface. It will be ‘stiff’ but not fully cooked.

8. Depending on what type of pie you are making (red pie, white pie, olive oil and herbs-brushed pie), put down your ‘wet’ ingredients first (ie: tomato sauce). Don’t put too much on, just a thin layer for taste.

   

   

9. Add your toppings (go light like the italians! you don’t need to have 2 inches-worth of toppings to make this pizza taste good) and then your cheese (get low-moisture mozzerella and fresh buffala mozzerella that’s as low-moisture as possible – the moisture in the cheese could moisten your crust and cause it to be too wet and heavy).

10. Add the topped pizza back to your pizza stone and put back in the hot oven for 4 to 7 minutes, making sure all the cheese is melted and bubbley and the crust has some color to it. Remove from oven and allow to rest for a moment before biting in.

    

***If you’re interested in learning how we made any of the pizzas you see pictured above, let us know. We don’t mind posting the recipes. For the most part, you can kind of get a feel for the recipe by looking at the picture and the title of the pizza. But, we’re here to help. You’ve gotta give these thin-crust pizza’s a try!

Our end of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn (one of the two main thorough-fares in the neighborhood Architectural Digest recently named the best in America, Park Slope), is festooned with restaurants of all kinds. In fact, there are more restaurants, I would say, than there are any other kind of stores on the street. An average of perhaps two and a half eateries per block. Many of these have sprung up in the last few years and are of a certain type – dim-lighting, dark wood interiors and “fusion” menus – catering to the newly-arrived, brownstone-purchasing, high income-earning folks that used to only inhabit the upper west and upper east sides of Manhattan . Since the advent of these restaurants, many of the neighborhoods’ original retailers have left – in fact, just this past weekend, we noticed that the shady-looking storefront selling Articulos Religiosos had gone, probably to be replaced with some joint with a menu trying to emulate Tyler Florence. Anyway, in the midst of all this change and gentrification sits Los Pollitos II, a small, noisy Mexican restaurant specializing in rotisserie chicken, a few northern Mexican staples (fajitas, burritos, etc.) and some more Caribbean-coast inspired dishes, that has remained a constant in the culinary landscape of our changing neighborhood.

Last night, my wife and I were feeling a bit under the weather and decided we wanted Pollitos’ chicken soup, some rotisserie chicken, rice and beans and a salad. A very basic, wholesome meal without too many flavors. A large soup (more than a pint), half a roast chicken, a small rice and beans, an order of tostones (starchy, fried, smashed plantains) with garlic sauce, and a large house salad was ordered. We were told we might have to wait 45 minutes to an hour for our order, but we were undeterred — Pollitos has become a go-to restaurant for us (one month this year, when we were crazy busy organizing our wedding, we went there nearly twice a week) and when you want Pollitos, you can’t have anything else. So we settled in to bear our hunger pains until the food arrived. Not only did it arrive in less than half an hour, but the bill was $19.23 for enough food for two meals for two people, or maybe more because we eat too much. $19.23!! Worringly, it’s almost cheaper than buying ingredients and cooking it ourselves, but this isn’t unhealthy food. It’s not low-calorie and it’s certainly not fat-free, but rice, beans and chicken with a side salad is what most of the world would call a good meal and would eat more often if only they could afford it.

Their chicken soup is frankly, a triumph. Never before have I had chicken soup with more flavor and less fat. It arrives with carrots, potatoes, chicken (half a breast and a whole wing, in this case), onion and cilantro, and is, or might be, a meal in itself. Perhaps because they have so many bones from all the rotisserie chickens, their stock is just that bit richer than elsewhere, or perhaps it’s the cilantro, I’m not sure, but I would strongly recommend you try it whether you’re feeling a bit rough or in perfect health. I could rave on at length about how tasty their rice and beans is (something that a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to make tasty), how delicious their tostones and garlic sauce are (really amazing) and how much crisp, fresh salad they give you, but instead I’m going to devote my final words to their rotisserie chicken. It is succelent and juicy – even the white meat, the skin is crisp, salty and almost sweet, and the bones are chewable because of the slow-cooking. It may be the the finest rotisserie chicken in the city and you can get a whole one for under $8. I rest my case.

Indeed, we are not the only ones who have discovered Los Pollitos II, however, I think we may have the distinction of being two of its most regular customers. In the past year, we must have eaten there twenty times, and call me a pikey if you like, but I took my wife there for her birthday too! (They gave us a free dessert, a weird, sweet shot of something, and five of the waiters took an old warped guitar off the wall and serenaded her with “feliz cumpleanos a ti”. How’s that for customer service?)

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