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Magic Beans
O
Creative ways to transcend your Italian pie
By Tim Pierson
ne of the joys of food is its power to transcend culture. “If I can’t walk in their shoes, I’ll eat their dinner.” The key to this transcendence is authenticity. If I make a pizza: with Italian flour crust, the sauce with Roma tomatoes just picked from a garden in Naples (Napoli, to be accurate), topped with sausage made from hogs fed whey from Parmigiano Reggiano, then aged and smoked in the chimney of a worker from the Ferrari factory in Modena (I can’t think of Modena without Ferrari), and huge basil leaves picked this morning from a hillside near Rome (Roma) before the morning dew disappeared, charred to perfection in a coal-fired oven (yes, coal!) to a live recording of Puccini recorded at La Scala – that would be ideal. HOWEVER, it’s late, the family is hungry, supper isn’t even started yet, and I’m living in the real world. That’s when it’s time to become a refrigerator chef! But before I begin, I am reminded that frozen pizza, straight out of the box, tastes a lot like the picture of pizza on the box. Then I reflect on what my late Uncle Milt always said, “We’ll doctor it up.” Being optimistic, I start with the produce bin in the fridge. I throw out the brown lettuce, the limp green onions (scallions), the cilantro turning black (it does that in three days), and the spotted lemon. I’m left with half an onion wrapped well enough to be usable, some rather wrinkled grape tomatoes, and a
green pepper with a soft spot. Moving up to the shelves, I spot the ubiquitous jar of olives (black or green is irrelevant), the remaining three eggs in a carton that I can’t remember purchasing, the butt of a summer sausage, a bag of shredded cheese with a recent expiration date and (we’re still in South Dakota) a half-bottle of ranch dressing.
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MOVING to the canned goods, there’s a jar of marinated artichoke hearts that have been there since before the kids were born, a four-ounce can of diced green chilies, a can of corn, a can of diced tomatoes, several small cans of those disgusting but delicious smoked oysters, baby clams, sardines and anchovies. And lastly I find the magic ingredient— beans. I’ve got black, baked, pinto, kidney, butter and cannellini. Then I take everything I’ve found and pile on the tower of toppings, giving form to what started out as a one-dimensional pizza.
WE’LL DOCTOR IT UP
ALL OF MY FINDS (with the exception of the expired produce) can make a frozen pizza more interesting, filling and nutritious. The trick, I say to myself, is to keep in mind the basic culinary principals of contrasting flavors, textures and color. Now I’m ready to reap the rewards of my ingenuity, along with the fringe benefit of getting junk out of the icebox. Sorry folks, this is no recipe, but merely meant to remind you how with a little magic, you can always make the best of what you have. //
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