DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

(I wrote this last September, shortly after returning from Greece. While working to un-lose our luggage, I lost track of this story.)

On the west edge of Ia, a long concrete staircase descends to a port town called Amoudi. By “long” I mean there are about 220 steps. The space between individual steps is sloped too, providing nearly another step’s worth of altitude change. (Here is a picture of the steps from Ia to Amoudi, as seen from our departing ferry.)

It’s a hard walk down, and a lot more work than it seems like it should be. We broke a sweat as we hiked downhill into the late afternoon sun. It was the second time in three days that I’d stopped to rest while going down stairs on Santorini… although the other time I had a 100kg suitcase in each hand.

Our goal: a sunset dinner at one of the tavernas at water’s edge.

We arrived an hour early, warmer than we’d hoped to be and in more dire need of rehydration. Fortunately, the tavernas in Amoudi receive regular donkey-loads of the Greek beer, Mythos. Mythos is pleasantly inexpensive, which is helpful to people enjoying them in quantity.

For dinner, we used the small-plates approach that had been so successful on previous evenings; we ordered one or two mezes (appetizers) at a time, spacing the meal out over 90 minutes. European restaurants never rush diners, so we were able to enjoy a leisurely meal as the sun went down.

Hiking back up the 220 steps after sunset was, curiously, easier than the descent, due to the cooler air. Then on the way home we stopped at one of the pastry shops on the main street of Ia and inhaled a piece of baclava the size of a cantaloupe.

Overheard at a party the other night:

…so I bought a new camera at the duty-free in Abu Dhabi…

I thought, “There’s a sentence I’m unlikely to ever be able to utter except in irony.”

I heard another equally-unlikely sentence at that party, which I planned to report in this space. I thought the pair would bookend the story of my plain-vanilla existence. But I forgot the other sentence due to yet a third sentence, which I myself said and then repeated numerous times throughout the evening. It was this: “Pass the wine!”

In completely related news — related not to wine, but to unlikeliness — my wife jumped out of an airplane yesterday. Yes, on purpose.

I’m not sure she’s really landed yet. I imagine we’ll have a brightly-colored nylon suit hanging in the closet within a matter of weeks.

The first thing I have to say is that the pizza party was a big success. All five pizza recipes worked well; two were surprise standout hits.

My grand plan for stress-free preparation was only a partial success. I had decided to manage this dinner party like I manage software development projects: break down each task into small pieces, assign time estimates to each, add up the time estimates to make a schedule, then work backwards from the due date to ensure that everything is finished when it is needed.

But just like most of my software development projects, this took about 20% longer than we figured.

The problem was that the schedule didn’t account for everything we had to get done. Interim cleanup is one example: had we not washed any dishes during the prep, the kitchen would have become unworkable, with every surface covered in stacks of used knives, cutting boards, bowls, saute pans, etc. We didn’t allow time for cleaning dishes, but it had to get done.

Otherwise, things ran pretty smoothly. Specifically, having a schedule for the ovens was a big help; the oven-roasted toppings were done on time, and the pizza stones had time to come up to temperature without delaying dinner.

The dough, mixed previously, had to be scaled before rising. This requires a dough scraper, a kitchen scale, a sheet pan, parchment paper, spray oil, white flour, semolina flour, water spritzer, counter space, and a clean plastic garbage bag. Each of the dough balls is rolled tightly and placed on the parchment (sprayed with oil, dusted with semolina), which sits on a sheetpan, which goes into a plastic bag that is misted inside with water. There the dough sits for two hours to rise. During this time, the gluten relaxes to such a great degree that shaping the pizza crusts takes only a few easy tugs.

I didn’t take any other photos of the prep — another task we didn’t put into the schedule was “shoot pictures (10 minutes).”

We had only one recipe mishap. The “Manchu Spicy Garlic Chicken” pizza called for carmelized onions sauteed with a brown sugar and vinegar glaze. The glaze, after cooling for 45 minutes, turned brittle. When it came time to spread the onions on the dough, I was surprised to pick up a rigid chunk of what was essentially carmelized onion candy. At first I began crumbling it onto the pizza, but then I thought better and tossed it in the trash. We served the pizza without onions, and nobody missed them.

Sullivan Street Potato Pizza, made with Yukon Gold potatoes and sweet yellow onions, was one of the group favorites. The recipe (as was noted previously) is from Artisan Baking. Because it’s a (vegan) cheeseless pizza, it can be easily served at room temperature, which is useful for pacing a five-pie meal with the limitations of a two-oven kitchen.

Smoked salmon pizza with creme fraiche, red onion, corn, and mint, was the bold experiment of the evening, and it turned out wonderfully. (It looks a little funky, but it tasted great.) We invented our own process for this pizza, based on a Wolfgang Puck recipe and a description of the salmon/corn/mint combination in an old food-section article in the newspaper. The individual flavors are surprisingly complementary. This was my personal favorite.

Within this five-pie feast I was running a dough experiment; the second batch had barely been kneaded, in an effort to make a crunchier crust. The results were clear: the fully kneaded dough was superior. The experiment didn’t yield a crunchy crust, but an overly-chewy one.

We closed the meal with Millenium Midnight Mousse Cake, which most guests ate with whipped cream. I was entertained by this because the pie itself is self-consciously vegan (made with tofu rather than butter/cream/eggs).

And then later I knocked back a tablespoon of fresh-ground flax meal in a shot of orange juice, a little fiber treat for my overwrought intestines. Good luck with that cheese, boys!

My plan for not being in the middle of frantic cooking when dinner guests arrive requires that I be more than typically organized. This dinner will be different from most because we will make five recipes we’ve never tried before.

To get organized, I read through all five pizza recipes and made checklists for each. The first checklist is the order of assembly: what ingredients, in what order, go onto the crust. This will prevent me from forgetting any toppings (this happens much more frequently than you might imagine) and will save me the trouble of keeping five cookbooks open on the counter.

The second checklist is the set of tasks required to prepare all ingredients for that pizza — everything from “pick sage from garden” to “shred and blend cheeses” to “sautee mushrooms.” These items are all assigned times, so that I can add up the times, subtract the total from 7:00 PM, and know when I have to begin the prep.

All five sheets are hanging on the door of the refrigerator.

The other task for today is to make pizza dough. I’ve made two batches, which differ only slightly.

The first batch is my standby. It’s simple, and the results are beautiful. It is an invention of Peter Reinhart, documented in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. If you ever make pizza, this recipe alone is worth the price of the book.

The second batch is a variation on the first. I omitted the olive oil from the dough, and I didn’t fully knead it. I am testing a suggestion noted in this column previously, that crunch and gluten are at cross-purposes. The theory says that doughs with fully-developed gluten become bready, and therefore go limp under the weight of toppings. To achieve a crunchy crust (says this theory), the dough should be only briefly kneaded.

Both doughs went into the cooler to retard overnight, immediately after mixing.

Did all the prep pay off? Find out.

I’ve written about Biomorph desks before. I bought one a few years ago, and I think it’s the best desk in the world.

It’s a split-level desk: the front can be lowered to keyboard height, and the rear can be raised to monitor height. It’s big enough for two monitors, speakers, and a laptop too.

I’ve been told of a sale on 30 of these desks, purchased at auction from (you knew this was coming) a failed dot-com. The desk surface is “Maple Appleply”, which in my opinion is the nicest of the available finishes. See the finishes and other specs at the Biomorph Personal Interactive Desk website.

The original retail on these things is about $1700. The used desks, which just like you have survived at least one dot-com implosion, cost $695. Yes, that’s still a lot of money, but as I said this is the best desk in the world. If you don’t want to buy one of these, don’t worry too much… your medical insurance will probably cover your carpal tunnel surgery.

If you’re interested, email me and I’ll put you in touch with the seller.

These desks will be gone by the end of the month.