Pizza and cheese sandwiches

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A few Sunday mornings ago, the beloved Bill Geist did a story on “CBS Sunday Morning” about a grilled-cheese sandwich festival/competition in Los Angeles. (Americans have fetishized cheese sandwiches, just as they fetishize everything.) There’s a category in the competition for sandwiches with bread and cheese only; there’s a category for “exotic” sandwiches, with ingredients like pork ribs and pesto; and there’s a dessert category, which is a cheese sandwich incorporating something sweet.

Partner sniffed at the second category. “Those aren’t cheese sandwiches,” he said haughtily. “Those are rib sandwiches with cheese.”

“Why aren’t they cheese sandwiches with ribs?” I asked innocently.

He glared at me. “Obviously the ribs are going to overpower the cheese.”

I don’t get this. It’s a sandwich with cheese, so it’s a cheese sandwich. Who cares what else it has on it?

Evidently I am not a food purist.

This reminded me of something from Elizabeth David’s “Is There a Nutmeg in the House?”, but I couldn’t find my copy to give you an exact quote. Here’s a general paraphrase:

“I was looking at the menu of a local pizza restaurant, and noted that there were pizzas with bacon, and ham, and even pineapple. I am sure these are very interesting, but they are not pizza. I am not sure what they are.”

I worship the immortal soul of Elizabeth David, and would never disagree with her. But I have to disagree with her here.

“Pizza,” for me, is a thing that looks like pizza: sauce and cheese on a round flat bread-like crust. One of the original “pizzas” was the Neapolitan pizza margherita, which is red / white / green like the Italian flag: tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, basil. Another “authentic” Neapolitan pizza has an egg baked on top. (I love this, by the way, because I encountered it often in Tunisia, which is about six inches below Italy on the world map. Most of my American friends are either hilarified or disgusted by the thought.)

Sorry, kids: food is food. Pizza is pizza, whatever you put on top. Cheese sandwiches are cheese sandwiches, whatever you cram into them.

I just made myself hungry.

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Culinaria

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I collect, among other things, cookbooks. They fall into several categories:

Useful. Only a few in this category. The Joy of Cooking. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The King Arthur Flour Cookbook (I have the 200^th-anniversary edition, for which there is no replacement). When in doubt, I turn to these three. My friend Stu, years ago, referred slightingly to “Joy” as “101 Ways to Cook String Beans.” Well, ha ha. But if you want the basics, they're all there. And some damned good recipes, too.

Magisterial. Again, only a few. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The Larousse Gastronomique. My grandma's copy of the Encyclopedia of Cookery. I look through them sometimes for entertainment and inspiration, but I never ever ever ever use the recipes. I seldom need to know how to stuff a figpecker, or how to gut a wild boar.

Eccentric but useful. The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook is a goldmine of mid-century “ethnic” cuisine. My friend Paula turned me on to Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two, which has some excellent recipes in it, and which has a very satisfying 1960s look and feel. I bought The Best of Shaker Cooking in 2009 up in Hancock, Massachusetts, and it's full of interesting ideas. Peg Bracken's I Hate To Cook Book is no joke: it's loaded with excellent (and easy, and quick) recipes. And I have a little local cookbook from the late 1940s, published by a Lutheran church in Nebraska, with red-white-and-blue binding, and it's got some of the best cookie recipes I've ever seen, along with handwritten comments (“very good,” “try with almonds,” etc.) in the wavering old-lady handwriting of its first owner.

Church-group collections. Also PTA groups, Chamber of Commerce, 4-H Club, etc. The same recipes over and over again. Here's the test: if it has a recipe for “Wacky Cake” in it, discard it immediately. (Or, if you're like me, file it on the “cute but useless” shelf.)

Cookbooks to read for pleasure. Anything by Elizabeth David. Summer Cooking. A Book of Mediterranean Food. Elegant, precise, and beautiful. She measures things in wineglasses and teacups. If she says something is “very delicious,” I believe her.

And Alice Toklas! Try (if you dare) her recipe for Oeufs Francis Picabia:

Break eight eggs into a bowl and mix them well with a fork, add salt but no pepper. Pour them into a saucepan – yes, a saucepan, no, not a frying pan. Put the saucepan over a very, very low flame, keep turning them with a fork while very slowly adding in very small quantities ½ lb. butter – not a speck less, rather more if you can bring yourself to it. It should take ½ hour to prepare this dish. The eggs of course are not scrambled but with the butter, no substitute admitted, produce a suave consistency that perhaps only gourmets will appreciate.

I've never made it. I can only imagine the pan of glop it would produce if I did.

But I never tire of reading about it.

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