Sunday, November 06, 2011

PIZZA: THE SECRET INGREDIENT


I don't know why anyone would make pizza from scratch at home when great pies can be had cheap almost anywhere in America. Hmmm...well, wait a minute, maybe I can imagine why. You go to all that trouble because you have an idea for an improvement that could beat what the pros do.

Okay, here's my idea and I'm dying to test it. It's something you add to the sauce.




That ingredient is...(drum roll)..stock! That's right, stock, just like you find in French cooking. I'm no expert, but I know from the internet that it's possible to make both cheese and mushroom stock (stock = a condensed essence of a food's flavor that's much more intense than the real thing). Has anyone ever tried using stock in pizza? We'll never know because professionals don't share their secrets. Anyway, I'm dying to try it.

I'm also dying to try aromatic stock.  That's a stock whose purpose is to make the food smell good.



Making aromatic stock might be more complicated than it sounds. My only knowledge of aromas comes from a movie called "Perfume." According to the film a great aroma is a combination of three scents: the first is a the "grabber" smell. It's immediately intriguing and delightful, but doesn't last very long. The second aroma is the long lasting body of the smell, the one that everyone associates with your product. The last smell is the aroma's soul...the unexpected scent that gives a unique character to the product.

The film explains that the initial smell requires a tiny amount of alcohol for fast delivery to the nose, but that quickly evaporates. The second smell requires fat because the smell of fat stays on the nose for a long time. The third smell...well that's the tough one. I wonder what unexpected smell could give an ordinary slice of cheese pizza...a soul.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Knock 'em dead with that new pizza idea, Eddie. Have you talked to any professional chefs or culinary artists about these ideas? Seem to interesting to waste and put on the backburner.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anonymous just wrote this comment to a post I put up on April 9, 2007:

Kandinsky did not regard his theories as RULES or laws that anyone was required to follow, not even himself. The process of creating the painting had its own internal requirements. I recommend an excellent short film "Wassily Kandinsky:Invisible Shapes" that explains his progression as an artist and relates his theories to a specific work. The goal of art, he thought, was direct communication with the viewer without the mediation of conventional language or objects.

Reply from Eddie: That film sounds great, I'll look it up! Thanks for the tip!

Marlo said...

Hi Eddie, Miss you!!! ---Marlo

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Marlo: Hi Marlo! You've moved to Facebook and don't update your blog as often as you used to. What a loss to your Blogger fans!

Anonymous said...

Stock may well impart a flavor intensity to your pizza experiment. But a simpler tack is to just use as many organic ingredients as possible - cheese, tomato, onion. You won't believe how much better organic ingredients will improve the taste!