Service was over. Another brunch, another dolla. This service I’d deem agreeable, but what made it a moment to celebrate, besides knowing staff drinks were reportedly on their way, was that the solar eclipse of pizzas was seconds away from hitting the staff meal table. Two worlds colliding between when two menus, each changed daily and with their own respective landscape displayed by way of a pizzaiolo’s mise-en-place , brought forth a candidly curated collection of cheeses. This collision only happened so often, so when the FOH general manager, a saint who will rename nameless, saw what pie was getting its last few beauty blisters in the oven, hands clasped by her heart with eyes wide open asked me if it was happening? Was it really happening? With a cool nod and childish grin came a soft, “Yes. Yes, it’s happening.”
I’m talking about none other than “The Cinque Formaggi”. That’s right, to hell with your four cheeses. We’re talking numerically literal next level cheeses here.
The starting lineup on this cheese roster include: 1.) The liberally salted, well drained Mozzarella Curd,2.) Coins of Buffalo Mozzarella, 3.) Coarsely grated Pecorino Toscano, 4.) Shaved Grana Padano, and 5.) Pinched dollops of fresh ricotta. Each cheese in its own respective dimension. It’s important to note the specifics of the application of the Toscano, that being: taking a hulking handful, clumping it in your palm, then broken up into small craters. Part of the PM lineup for the “Amatriciana” pie, all rights reserved to a Jacob W. for bringing that delicious pizza to our attention), the Pecorino Toscano cheese is the real MVP in creating such a dynamic cheese sensation). Salty, but aged just shy of losing its innocent creaminess, and becoming a full fledged, salty, hardened by life cousin, Pecorino Romano. No disrespect, but he just wasn’t part of the chemistry. He’d be like the 6th member to a boyband. Talented; sure, but sometimes excessive in the hip thrust choreography, always reaching for that higher note in group harmonies with spotty success, and just barely fitting into frame in press photos.
The backstage players to our fab 5 were: Garlic( oil dabbed, heavy handful of slivers), Sea Salt, Ground Chile Flake, and a skosh of Sliced Calabrian chiles. The Calabrians are the perfectly placed lights that capture the inherent glow of our glistening cheeses. All elements together as one create one hell of a show that impregnates your memory as one of the finest pies your mouth has ever witnessed.
Pizza in hand, drink imbibed, I paraded around the corner, holding the pie high over head, resting it securely on the elegant three prong finger stance. Wanting for a French horn or other exclamatory wind instruments, I settled for a deep chested booming “ Thee Cheenk-Way Formaggi!!!” I placed the pizza down next to the other less adored ‘za’s. I’d barely placed the pizza on the table before a murder of Sunday Brunch Survivors circled in for a piece. Standing back, I see one of the newer staff, look at me with an awkward open-mouthed glare. Had I reached an obnoxious volume in my enthusiasm for delivering this lauded pizza? Yes, absolutely. Did it call for the resting “what the fuck did he just say?” face? I doubt it.
The server made her way around the crowd and came up to me eyes slanted in grave dissent.And Scene…
Brunch Survivor #4367: “What you said is racist, and I don’t think is very funny.”
My face turned to a puddle rippled by this confusing pebble out of left field. In earnest befuddlement and my staff drink kicking in I burped out,
Cheesy Fantastico:“Que?”
Brunch Survivor # 4367: “What you said is racist.”
My chef was in ear shot of our conversation and now was also interested in what potentially I, one of the more tamely mannered cooks in the lot, could have said that would be deemed racist. Quietly, afraid to repeat what had been hollered, she murmured.
Brunch Survivor #4: “Chink. Chink way …. You called the pizza “Chink Way Formaggi!”
I turned to face my Chef, as he simultaneously turned towards me, in the dawning disbelief of this lost in translation moment, this homonym gone wrong. With a shared tone of “you dumb-dumb” we replied in unison,
Chorus: Cinque means “5”.
Brunch Survivor #4367: What?!
Chorus: It means “5” in Italian.
Brunch Survivor #4: Like, really? Oh. Oooooooh.
Chorus: Uh, yeah.
With a couple seconds to digest the awkward assail, we found ourselves in hysterics. How preposterous?! To think that a Chinese American “halfie” like myself would use such vulgarities to describe a pizza, innocent in its nature besides its volcanic cheese waiting to eviscerate the mouths of the impatient, and further haunting digestive systems sensitive to excessive dairy consumption…Oh, wait, that’s right. I forgot that nobody has ever correctly assumed me to be from this ethnic gene pool. Forever I am: ambiguously brown.
Forever, shades too dark to accurately match any specific cultural identity. Culturally steeped in a rare blend of San Franciscan and Midwest culture, I was a brown splotch on the spectrum of typical American upbringing. I felt myself to be as white as they come in many ways. My own mother, blonde and blue eyed. My Grandma Ethel; a veteran pie maker, held in high esteem by her Midwest neighbors, not to mention a wicked ketchup-topped meatloaf recipe in her back pocket. Without these two blatant reminders, it always remained clear in my own head that I was in fact Chinese, by way of the sheer volume of Chinese relatives that speckled my earliest memories of family gatherings, and the red envelopes peering out from their pockets around holidays. It was my secret from the world. It never required effort to maintain this ambiguity. Why ruin the peaceful view of the world I operated in? Never being made fun of for cultural disparities, my enemies unable to find a foothold on from what angle to attack from. I grew up chubby; cheeks ripe for some old bingo freak to pinch to their heart’s content, an appetite and diet destined for King’s disease, contained by a thick layer of awkward shyness the majority of my years. Wasn’t that enough fuel to be occasionally picked on? Why add tinder to the fire? Let them believe whatever suits their imaginations, and I could continue to live on with my life in quiet acknowledgement of my own ethnicity.
In the moment, under the cross hairs for making racist remarks, I spoke up, corrected, and told Brunch Survivor #4367 that I was half Chinese myself, so there was no possibility of any racist undertones, and we all lived happily ever after. Or did we?
(Caution: Real Talk Ahead)
The current climate for racism towards Asian Americans as well as pretty much every other ethnicity, color, and culture, is scorching the available Earth we’re all trying to share. My social media feed is buried in rampant injustice towards Asian Americans. Photo after photo depicting innocent people physically and verbally beaten for trying to co-exist in a misinformed country that allows them to be themselves only when convenient and done quietly. I can’t unsee the pain, confusion, and disappointment in these victim’s eyes. I can’t unsee the images of my own grandparents, relatives superimposed on these same faces. Their gaze piercing my question; what if I’d spoken up sooner? How many times did I passively let small aggressions, “jokes”, racially charged gestures towards my own people go uncontested? My answer is sad and not uncommon; far too fucking long. I am sorry.
Hiding behind my ability to float between a myriad of ethnic possibilities is not an option to pursue any further. Posting a blog encouraging myself and others to speak/stand up for innocent individuals facing these often violent injustices is a lot easier than doing so. I acknowledge this, and can’t fix the passive mistakes I’ve already made, but I’m telling y’all now that the cloak comes off, and accountability starts now.
Il Cinque Formaggi; The Pizza
For those that forged across the Cheesy Rambling River, appetite and ambition to cook still intact, here you go.
You will need:
- An oven that will brave 450 + temperatures
- Brush for garlic oil
- Pizza peel/well-floured upside down sheet pan (MacGyver approves this message).
- Pizza Dough (buy it or make it, this recipe don’t care. We’ll talk dough some other
time, so long as you have enough to make at least two of these pizzas)
Cheeses (Quantities are for TWO pizzas. Don’t be a joker overtopping your shit and making soggy puddles on your pizza)
- 8 oz Fresh Mozzarella Curd, well salted and drained (regular fresh mozz. is fine but be sparing due to higher water content)
- 1 Ball of Buffalo Mozzarella, about 3.5/4Oz, cut into ¼” coins
- 8 oz Pecorino Toscano, grated (relish the quest in finding this cheese or sub a mild aged sheep’s milk cheese
- 5 oz Ricotta cheese, if you feel like burning bucks look for Bellwether Farms
- 1 piece of Grana Padano or King Parmigiano, peeler/shaving instrument at the ready
- 7 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced…(insert tired Goodfellas reference here), submerged in olive oil
- 3 Calabrian chiles, seeded and sliced thinly
- Red chile flake ground finely
- Sea salt
Preheat your oven to it’s brink. 500 is the furthest my oven goes to, so ya, if yours doesn’t, it probably won’t be quite as good. Bring your slightly inferior but still delicious pizza to your landlord and give’m hell until he does something about it.
For now, I’m making the sweeping generalization that with the 1 billion google results for pizza recipes that y’all are able to make/get dough transformed from blob to supple blob to circular canvas, thus the dough disquisition isn’t on today’s agenda.
With your pizza stretched and ready on a well floured pizza peel or upside down sheet pan in my case, using your brush dab five or six spots on your pizza canvas with your garlic oil. Sprankle that sea salt and ground chile over the center of the dough. Throw down a dozen or so slices of the garlic from your garlic oil. Now, with a disciplined hand of restraint add your mozzarella curd, followed by the buffalo mozz. Squish and pinch the pecorino toscano, and spoon the ricotta into any remaining cheese gaps. Light application of Calabrians to top things off, and boom! Yo pizza is ready for takeoff.
Bake that bad Sally for a solid 5 minutes before even considering looking, let alone opening your crappy apartment oven. Give the pizza a little 180º, and forget about it for another 2-3 minutes. Cook it until there be some major browning or blisters, if you lucky, on the crust, and the cheese be bubbling. The cheeses should still have some discernible definition, and not some homogenous orang-y brown veil.
If all this looks proper, get grating thick and quick with that grana or parm situation. With just enough parm to cool the volcanic cheese bubbles, you may be safe to start scarfing this wonder of the world, otherwise let cool a minute, drool bucket situated appropriately. Mangia that shit.
Cheesy Fantastico 