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May 26th, 2009 - 1:07 pm
Healthier pizza? A suggestion:
Two words: “Less cheese.” As I’ve noted before, the modern trend of omitting sauce in favor of an inch of cheese is both bad for you, and bad pizza. If I wanted cheese toast, I’d order cheese toast.
True, but…
The finest, maybe purest, pizza I know of is the classic Margherita. A razor thin crust with nothing on top but a drizzle of olive oil, tomato slices, a few chunks of fresh mozzarella, and whole leaves of just-picked basil.
Yum.
I could go for a Zinfandel after just READing that.
The problem is that, even when you order a pizza “light sauce,” there is no guarantee that the teenager making the pie will honor that request, or even see it. He might even have a different notion of what “light sauce” is, and you end up with a pie dripping with sauce. Thus, people end up requesting no sauce out of self-defense.
I personally like to substitute garlic butter for sauce.
Healthy pizza and unhealthy pizza are barely the same food. The kind of pizza you describe is good, but so is the stuff with the thick, bready crust, three kinds of spicy meat, a half-inch of cheese, and so much grease coming off of it that it leaves puddles on your plate. The latter has about 4x as many calories, of course, but there are times when the former simply won’t do.
I’m with Alsadius. The classic is nice, but sometimes, you want an excess of excess.
Of course, my ancestors considered cod soaked in lye to be a delicacy- if you can survive that, a little cheese isn’t going to be a problem.
I’m in complete agreement about the tastiness of Margarite/Margharita or however they spell it. I also agree with Alsadius. When people ask me what is a good pizza place, I ask them which kind of pizza they want. For thin crust, I recommend an Arizona chain called Oregano’s. For deep dish, I go to Zachary’s in Tucson. For New York big slices and grease, I hit Brooklyn Pizza on 4th Avenue. For a tasty sauce and the best crust in town, I hit Venice Pizza on the East side. For delivery or takeout from a big chain, I avoid Pizza Hut like the plague since they add some sort of plastic emulsifying coating to the cheese so it doesn’t bubble up. I order Papa Johns on Mondays when pick up is $5.99 for a large one topping (and get another to reheat later.) For frozen pizza, I get the ones at Trader Joe’s (which has a decent Margerite, but oh the humanity! avoid the goat cheese monstrosity as if you are a vampire and it is a holy water immersed crucifix in a sunlit cage) For toppings no one would imagine, go to Magpie’s for pine nuts, artichoke hearts, or whatever else floats your boat. And for those times when I was scrounging the sofa cushions for stray nickels, there was always Totino’s. But those days are best left in the past. Along with those 32X36 pants.
I used to order pizza with extra sauce but not extra cheese — but that was from Round Table Pizza, which is restricted to the west coast. The pizza sauce I get where I live now, I really don’t care for so much. But Papa John’s cheesesticks…
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Oh, sorry. I was away for a moment.
I’ll be in my bunk.
Please. If you want healtier pizza, you have to get rid of the crust.