Bill Klapp

Ecco! Oven-Dried Tomatoes: You can use halved cherry tomatoes or Romas or other tomatoes sliced at least 1/4" thick (you may want to experiment with this-some tomatoes have so much water that, if you slice them too thin, you end up with a ring of peel and very little tomato!). For the seasoning ratio, the baseline is 3 quarts of cherry tomatoes for the following quantities of spices: 2 tablespoons dried basil 1 tablespoon sugar 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt (I prefer 1, but it is a taste thing) 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground pepper (I prefer 1 1/2) Heat your oven to 300 degrees. Combine the above ingredients well. Array the tomatoes on parchment paper on baking sheets, and sprinkle the mixture evenly over them. Put the tomatoes in the oven. At the same time, reduce the heat to 225-250 degrees. Bake until the tomatoes are dry, but yet a little chewy. These will not be as dry or as chewy as sun-dried tomatoes, nor quite as intensely flavored. Cooking time can vary, but I would allow at least 3 hours. If your tomatoes are particularly juicy, you can help them along by gently draining tyour baking sheets during the cooking process (not preferred, of course, as you may be dumping flavor, but sometimes necessary). Let them cool to at least room temperature before using on your pizza. It is OK to refrigerate them, and they should last a few days, perhaps up to a week, if properly sealed. I have not tried this with fresh basil, but I cannot imagine that it would work as well. I am still trying to get suitable pictures of the pizza oven!

Scott, in the old Burgundy example I gave, the problem is that the wine is barely wine to begin with. If it is handled delicately, it might give a moment's pleasure, taste and aroma. However, even without the vigorous decanting, such a wine would not likely last long if merely poured. In such a case, it is the exposure to air which causes the decline. Splashing and swirling merely hastens the demise. With other old wines, the same theory holds true, but with a less delicate wine, there is improvement rather than destruction. Exposure to air eliminates off-putting bottle aromas, and allows the flavor and aroma of the wine to emerge. Less delicate wines, such as Bordeaux, Cabs, the bigger Rhone wines and Barolos, often need considerable exposure to air before they show well. In those cases, the splash and/or swirl techniques do the wine no harm, but instead, hasten the wine's achievement of optimal drinking condition. I haven't heard the Burgundian dictum about not decanting young Burgundy, although many people are of the view that one should NEVER decant Burgundy, because of its delicacy. I rarely decant Burgundy for that reason. Its pleasures are often too ephemeral to make any aeration a good thing.

Splash decanting works fine, but, as noted above, you would not want to do it with a fragile older wine or a younger wine that had already thrown sediment. In the latter case, you can, of course, decant to clear the sediment and then swirl in the decanter. I disagree with Scott, in that there is no fruit left to bruise in a finished wine. You can damage a wine in many ways, but not by bruising. That ends when grapes become wine. If, however, an older burgundy is going to give you only a brief hint of nose and taste before turning to alcohol water, then the splash/swirl approach is sure to kill what little pleasure may have been possible.

Peter is right-it is the Piemontese dialect term for ultra-thin, ultra-rich fresh pasta. The best makes dried angel-hair pasta seem bulky by comparison, and is made with up to 40 egg yolks per kilo of flour. Since local egg yolks are reddish-orange (the chickens eat well!), the tajarin is a school-bus yellow color. It is so tender that it virtually melts in your mouth, and it is so rich and delicious in its own right that it is always very lighty sauced.

Da Felicin closed briefly for renovations, and in 2003, lost its Michelin star. I have heard a strange story or two about the owner. One involved some confusion about whether or not a reservation was cancelled, where Felicin's owner tracked down the person who had made the reservation in another nearby restaurant and blessed him out publicly! As noted above, however, Trattoria della Posta is the clear up-and-comer in Monforte these days. Another in town, La Collina, is also getting some good press, although I have not tried it.

It already has. It is known as Guido di Costigliole, and for the time being, has mama Lidia and her youngest son in the kitchen. When they left Costigliole d' Asti, we got two Guidos for the price of one. The Santo Stefano Belbo location is the restaurant for a fancy Relais et Chateaux hotel.

Not so fast! The age of a wine, especially port, has much to do with its oxidation rate. Why, no less a personage than Robert M. Parker, Jr. is known to tell tales of young wines so thick and dense that there are no signs of oxidation after a week. You can, of course, question the wisdom of uncorking a young port before its time, but it does stand to reason that there will be cases where you can continue to drink such a bottle for weeks, especially if recorked in some fashion as suggested above. Stated another way, slow oxidation is not always a bad thing...

Riedel, Schmiedel! I can get the same effect by using existing glassware and filling it with 1971 Gaja San Lorenzo!

Friends with Alice, too-they hooked up during the last Slow Food Salone del Gusto in Torino.

Elena Rovera is the owner's name at Cascina Cornale. She is friends with my wife. Great woman, and the cascina is a great concept. We buy things there that are quite literally not seen anywhere else. Craig, La Contea is getting really close to home! Maybe I should let people stage in MY kitchen! Better yet, if you're really good, you can be the executive chef for the Klapp household. No pay, for damn sure...

Sam and Dave (hey, I like that-Sam and Dave!): Are you sure that you guys are not Piemontese? My people will add an egg to ANYTHING, just to pick up a little extra richness...

rgural, helpful point on the repackaged yeast. It may not have been kept sufficiently cool, either. Regarding the poolish, remember that this is pizza dough with low-gluten flour. Maybe I overstated the case by calling it a poolish to begin with. I redub it "30-minute proofing"! Having played around with instant and dry active over the weekend, I am going to declare my recipe best with fresh yeast. While my dry active result was good, it was not up to the fresh yeast dough standard. There is apparently more to yeast than mere leavening. Things are not always what they seem in pizza dough...

Did not make it to Ciau or Enoteca this past trip. Enoteca has always been fabulous. I love the people at Ciau, and the kitchen is capable of brilliance, but in recent visits, it was not there. Ciau has been banished to Klapp purgatory, with La Contea in Neive. I'll go back to both, but, given the extraordinary quality of Piemontese ristoranti, it is tough to waste your limited opportunities on places that do not deliver the goods EVERY time out.

I think that a lot of people of a certain age grew up being forced to eat tuna casserole and creamed tuna on toast, made, in each case, with really lame tuna. The stuff was cooked forever, and the smell alone drove you out of the house! Salmon cakes (from canned salmon, of course) had pretty much the same effect. What a far cry that is from a modest amount of that fine tuna available in Italy and some good onions cooked only for a few minutes! Maybe a few black olives with the tuna, onions and capers... Ah! But do not forget the Zen of pizza topping. Less is more. If I want salade nicoise, then perhaps I should build it somewhere other than on my pizza!

Tuna and onion! Be still, my heart!

Allright, maybe I'm a closet traditionalist! The single-person, 10-12" thin pizza seems so much more civilized than the 16-20" monsters sold by most American pizza joints. Cooks quick, served fresh, hot and individually tailored to the consumer...

It seems clear that you can make crust with high gluten flour, and I am not a stickler for tradition, but only low gluten flour is used in Italy. Maybe high gluten flour works better for some of you with a pizza stone and the limitations of a traditional oven. I am a little surprised to hear about the tearing problems using 00 flour, though. It is not a problem that I have ever had with 00, except maybe when trying to create ultra-thin pasta dough (which is egg-based and altogether another creature).

We have another pizza rant going on down on the Italy board. Feel free to visit!

I think that Mr. Kinsey is on target. Is it possible that we are weaving in and out of general breadmaking techniques versus pizza dough techniques a bit? I go for the long rise on pizza dough for flavor development and a necessary loss of elasticity (by which I mean the tendency of the dough to spring back, rather than hold its shape, when stretched). Pizza dough is very much an anti-gluten proposition.

rgural, I agree re: gluten development. It is not going to happen to the level that alberto described in the 5 minutes or so that it takes to knead dough to a suitable fermentation stage in a Kitchenaid. The long fermentation does the trick.

This just in: I knew that a Michelin one-star known for its seafood specialities, La Noce in Volpiano, had closed, and it was said that the owners were moving to Pollenzo, near Bra, the site of the second new Guido. Lo and behold, it's a merger! The catalog for Slow Food's cheese extravaganza in Bra reveals sponsorship of a dinner in the new Guido on September 19. It appears that Ugo Alciati (a better bet as mama Lidia's successor to the Guido culinary fortunes) will share the kitchen with Savino Mongelli of La Noce, while Savino's wife Marcella will share the front of the house with Piero Alciati. This could, of course, be a recipe for disaster, but the idea of grafting excellent seafood onto the legendary Guido menu is ever so appealing. I will check it out this fall. Peter R, as I took inventory of my summer trip, I realized that work (via laptop) had kept me from any new revelations. My summer favorite was clearly Trattoria della Posta in Monforte, which, like Il Centro in Priocca, has blossomed into a ristorante to contend with. See also my post under "Alba Restaurants".

Now that sounds right. Extra flour is often required in very high humidity, and you may have overdone it a bit without it showing up until later. The short kneading sounds like part of the problem, too. I use a Kitchenaid and dough hook, too, but for at least 5 minutes. See the "pinch test" in my dough post below. I'll bet your dough hung together, but was too dry to pass the test. It is important to realize that, with pizza dough, you can stop the kneading and adjust the balance of the ingredients at will, and you often need to, when atmospheric conditions impact the dough.

I had the instant stuff come up lame on me two nights ago. I suppose that it could have been old, but it had a "sell by 8/22/03" date on it, and it looked to have been put up in baggies by the best bakery in Chapel Hill, NC, which is associated with the store where I bought the yeast. Worked great for the poolish and an initial two-hour rise, but delivered nothing in the oven. By the way, the GFerrari pizza oven works! It is rather temperamental, in that it is calibrated on a 0-3 scale rather than by degrees. It said to bake best on 2 1/2, but that charred the bottom of the crust before the top was perfectly done. The other trick is that the pre-heat light must be on when you are cooking the pizza, or else the top heating element will not be on. Got excellent results at the "2" setting, a normal golden brown, home oven result at "1 1/2". In my opinion, worth having if you are a serious pizza person. At "2 1/2" setting, delivered a fully-cooked pizza in 2 1/2 minutes; at "2", about 3 1/2 minutes; at "1 1/2", about 4 minutes. They also make a double unit that sucks 2,400 watts. The crust is really crisp and somewhat dry on the bottom, and moist, but cooked through, on the top. The stone gives a light charred effect, but you won't mistake it for a wood-fired pizza. The top element is hot enough to produce the blistering effect, but without any char. Makes a nice-looking pizza. Can be used for frozen pizzas and reheating commercial pizzas as well. My only other problem was the sorry quality of toppings in the U.S. I got the very best available-imported buffala and prosciutto, farmer's market veggies, etc., but it was no use. It was still a let-down after fresh buffala and spicy Calabrese sausages in a wood-burning oven! The dough was better, nearly as good as in Italia, as it was made with flour, salt, EVOO and honey from the old country. I missed the fresh yeast, though. As indicated above, the instant yeast was a dud for some reason, and active dry yeast does not seem to develop as much flavor (at least in the 7 hours I had to let it work) as fresh yeast.

Had this been your first attempt ever, I would have said too little liquid for the quantity of flour. As that is not the case, yeast would be the only other component that could cause an unusual effect (you can make dough without olive oil or honey, and too much of either would produce the opposite effect), but it sounds like your yeast was OK. Did you use some weird type of flour?

There is no reason why steaming (or baking, for that matter) would not work, if they are not overcooked and the moisture balance is good. If the lemongrass and basil are deftly handled, I'm betting on that dish...