[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Chapter Eight_

Pizzas, Blintzes, Pastes, Cheese Cakes, etc.

No matter how big or hungry your family, you can always appease them with pizza.

Pizza--The Tomato Pie of Sicily

DOUGH

1 package yeast, dissolved in warm water 2 cups sifted flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons olive oil

Make dough of this. Knead 12 to 20 minutes. Pat into a ball, cover it tight and let stand 3 hours in warm place until twice the size.

TOMATO PASTE

3 tablespoons olive oil 2 large onions, sliced thin 1 can Italian tomato paste 8 to 10 anchovy filets, cut small 1/2 teaspoon oregano Salt Crushed chili pepper 2-1/2 cups water

In the oil fry onion tender but not too brown, stir in tomato paste and keep stirring 3 or 4 minutes. Season, pour water over and simmer slowly 25 to 30 minutes. Add anchovies when sauce is done.

CHEESE

1/2 cup grated Italian, Parmesan, Romano or Pecorino, depending on your pocketbook

Procure a low, wide and handsome tin pizza pan, or reasonable subst.i.tute, and grease well before spreading the well-raised dough 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Poke your finger tips haphazardly into the dough to make marks that will catch the sauce when you pour it on generously. Shake on Parmesan or Parmesan-type cheese and bake in hot oven 1/2 hour, then 1/4 hour more at lower heat until the pizza is golden-brown. Cut in wedges like any other pie and serve.

The proper pans come all tin and a yard wide, down to regular apple-pie size, but twelve-inch pans are the most popular.

Miniature Pizzas

Miniature pizzas are split English m.u.f.fins rubbed with garlic or onion and brushed with olive oil. Cover with tomato sauce and a slice of Mozzarella cheese, anchovy, oregano and grated Parmesan, and heat 8 minutes.

Italian-Swiss Scallopini

1 pound paper-thin veal cutlets 1/2 cup flour 1/2 cup grated Swiss and Parmesan, mixed 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten with water b.u.t.ter Salt Paprika

Moisten veal with egg and roll in flour mixed with cheese, quickly brown, lower flame and cook 4 to 5 minutes till tender.

Dust with paprika and salt.

Neapolitan Baked Lasagne, or Stuffed Noodles

1 pound lasagne, or other wide noodles 1-1/2 cups cooked thick tomato sauce with meat 1/2 pound Ricotta or cottage cheese 1 pound Mozzarella or American Cheddar 1/4 pound grated Parmesan, Romano or Pecorino Salt Pepper, preferably crushed red pods A shaker filled with grated Parmesan, or reasonable subst.i.tute

Cook wide or broad noodles 15 to 20 minutes in rapidly boiling salted water until tender, but not soft, and drain. Pour 1/2 cup of tomato sauce in baking dish or pan, cover with about 1/2 of the noodles, sprinkle with grated Parmesan, a layer of sauce, a layer of Mozzarella and dabs of Ricotta. Continue in this fashion, alternating layers and seasoning each, ending with a final spread of sauce, Parmesan and red pepper. Bake firm in moderate oven, about 15 minutes, and served in wedges like pizza, with canisters of grated Parmesan, crushed red pepper pods and more of the sauce to taste.

Little Hats, Cappelletti

Freshly made and still moist Cappelletti, little hats, contrived out of tasty paste, may be had in any Little Italy macaroni shop.

These may be stuffed sensationally in four different flavors with only two cheeses.

Brown slices of chicken and ham separately, in b.u.t.ter. Mince each very fine and divide in half, to make four mixtures in equal amounts. Season these with salt, pepper and nutmeg and a binding of 2 parts egg yolk to I part egg white.

With these meat mixtures you can make four different-flavored fillings:

Ham and Mozzarella Chicken and Mozzarella Ham and Ricotta Chicken and Ricotta

Fill the little hats alternately, so you'll have the same number of each different kind. Pinch edges tight together to keep the stuffings in while boiling fast for 5 minutes in chicken broth (or salted water, if you must).

Since these Cappelletti are only a pleasing form and shape of ravioli, they are served in the same way on hot plates, with plain tomato sauce and Parmesan or reasonable subst.i.tute. If we count this final seasoning as an ingredient, this makes three cheeses, so that each of half a dozen taste buds can be getting individual sensations without letting the others know what it's doing.

Dauphiny Ravioli

This French variant of the famous Italian pockets of pastry follows the Cappelletti pattern, with any fresh goat cheese and Gruyere melted with b.u.t.ter and minced parsley and boiled in chicken broth.

Italian Fritters

1/4 cup flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1/4 pound fresh Ricotta 2 eggs, beaten 1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella Rind of 1/2 lemon, grated 3 tablespoons brandy Salt

Stir and mix well together in the order given and let stand 1 hour or more to thicken the batter so it will hold its shape while cooking.

Shape batter like walnuts and hold one at a time in the bowl of a long-handled spoon dipped for 10 seconds in boiling hot oil.

Fritter the "walnuts" so, and serve at once with powdered sugar.

To make fascinating cheese croquettes, mix several contrasting cheeses in this batter.

Italian Asparagus and Cheese

This gives great scope for contrasting cheeses in one and the same dish. In a shallow baking pan put a foundation layer of grated Cheddar and a little b.u.t.ter. Cover with a layer of tender parts of asparagus, lightly salted; next a layer of grated Gruyere with a bit of b.u.t.ter, and another of asparagus. From here you can go as far as you like with varied layers of melting cheeses alternating with asparagus, until you come to the top, where you add two more kinds of cheese, a mixture of powdered Parmesan with Sapsago to give the new-mown hay scent.

Garlic on Cheese

For one sandwich prepare 30 or 40 garlic cloves by removing skins and frying out the fierce pungence in smoking olive oil. They skip in the hot pan like Mexican jumping beans. Toast one side of a thickish slice of bread, put this side down on a grilling pan, cover it with a slice of imported Swiss Emmentaler or Gruyere, of about the same size, shape and thickness. Stick the cooked garlic cloves, while still blistering hot, in a close pattern into the cheese and brown for a minute under the grill. Salt lightly and dash with paprika for the color. (Recipe by Bob Brown in Merle Armitage's collection _Fit for a King_.)

Spaniards call garlic cloves teeth, Englishmen call them toes. It was cheese and garlic together that inspired Shakespeare to Hotspur's declaration in _King Henry IV_: