pizza

Harvey! (pause for applause)
Harvey wins a free large pizza, courtesy of Brandani's pizza. Sounds like he will be going with the Buffalo chicken pizza, but the prize includes unlimited toppings, so Harvey, maybe this is the time to try something different. That's up to you.
I have your email address and will be in touch with you in the next 24 hours about collecting your prize. Congratulations!

I'd venture to say that of all the staples in your kitchen, rice is both one of the easiest to cook and one of the easiest to screw up. What could be simpler than putting rice and water in a pot, bringing it to a boil, and letting it simmer till the water is absorbed?
Yet there are many potential pitfalls along the way - adding too much or too little water, stirring too much or too little, or at the wrong time, setting the heat too high or too low, and cooking the rice too long or not long enough. Different types of rice - short, medium and long grain, brown rice, wild rice - can require different treatment, and be more or less suitable for different uses. What if you want to add a liquid ingredient like tomato sauce? How does that affect the amount of water you need? One or two mistakes and you can end up with a pot full of mush, or burned rice stuck to the bottom, or a messy stovetop from a boilover ... you get the idea.
One solution that's worked for me is cooking rice in the oven. This has some drawbacks, though. For one thing, rice is often served as a side dish, and you may want to use your oven for the main course. Even if you don't, using a full size oven to cook a pot of rice doesn't seem terribly energy efficient.
Enter the rice cooker. This handy appliance takes the guesswork out of cooking rice, and can produce remarkably consistent results. Yet do you want to shell out anywhere from $25 to over $100, and take up valuable kitchen counter space, with what Alton Brown would call a "unitasker"? And how do you know what kind to buy?
A newly published book, 300 Best Rice Cooker Recipes, can help. Despite the title, this is more than just a recipe collection. Author Katie Chin provides a practical, thorough, and informative guide to using your rice cooker, and in doing so she demonstrates that these devices are far more versatile than the name implies.
Chin, who's described somewhat vaguely on the back cover as a "private chef, food consultant and spokesperson, television personality and cookbook author," starts off with an introductory chapter that covers the various types of rice cookers, features to look for, and advice on selecting the one that's best for you. She then discusses the many types of rice (including such exotic varieties as Bhutanese red rice and "forbidden black rice"), other grains such as millet, quinoa, buckwheat and barley, and legumes like black-eyed peas, lentils, and various beans. General cooking guidelines are provided for each, showing the recommended ratio of rice or grains to water, and the optimal cooking time.
The remainder of the book is devoted to the recipes, which are arranged thematically, with chapters on breakfast, soups, main dishes, sushi and even desserts, most of which are grain-based puddings. A separate chapter delves into "steam cuisine," and explains how to use your rice cooker as a steamer for preparing entrees like steamed fish, veggies, custards and more.
Cooking tips accompany each recipe, and occasional side boxes provide helpful information about some of the ingredients called for in the recipes, from the commonplace (shallots, for example) to the hard-to-find (such as sambal oelek, an Asian chili sauce). Two sections of full-page color photos show what many of the dishes should look like, though somehow I doubt that my versions would come out quite so picturesque.
In short, there's a lot packed into this book. But the question remains, is it worth buying any cookbook these days, when it's so easy to find recipes for free on the internet? The answer to that, I guess, depends on your cooking habits and preferences, and on the cookbook itself. 
If you don't like rice, or if you don't own a rice cooker and are certain you never will, then obviously isn't for you (of course if that were you, you probably wouldn't have read this far). And if you are less interested in recipes than in captivating writing, ditto. This is a manual, not a literary work.
But if you own a rice cooker and would like to get more use out of it, 300 Best is well worth picking up. You'll learn more about your appliance, about rice and other grains, and about many ways to use your rice cooker that almost certainly never occurred to you before.
And if you've never bought a rice cooker because you saw it as a one-dimensional device that was good for only one thing - cooking a pot of rice - this book will dispel that idea in a hurry. You might want to make some room on your bookshelf for this volume, and some room on your kitchen counter for a new rice cooker. 300 Best Rice Cooker Recipes, by Katie Chin. 400 pages. Publisher: Robert Rose (July 28, 2011)

This past weekend, I stopped at the Garden Factory in Gates, where every weekend in October they're doing a "Fall Family Fun" event, with rides and activities for the kiddies and other attractions. The main draw for me was the presence of Tuscan Wood Fired Pizza, a local entrepreneur who appears at various events around the area with his truck trailer that contains a working wood-fired pizza oven.
The owner (who goes by the name "Tony Tomato" - he's the guy wearing the pizza-shaped chef's hat) does this primarily to advertise his business installing wood-fired ovens for both private individuals and restaurants. I doubt that he makes much profit just from selling the pizza, when you consider the expense involved in trucking this thing around, getting it fired up,  and so on.
But even if you're not in the market for a $2500 wood-fired oven on your patio, the TWFP trailer is worth checking out for the pizza. It's pretty good stuff.
Several menu items were available, but all I was interested in was the pizza. From the choices of cheese, pepperoni, and pesto, I went with pepperoni. All were the same size, about the circumference of a standard paper plate, as you can see in the photo.
My pie had a thin crust, nicely charred along the edges. The well floured bottom was not charred, and the slices were quite pliable, suggesting that perhaps the floor of the oven was not tremendously hot. Tony rotated the pie several times to get the edge charred, thanks to the radiant heat of the fire, and the air inside the oven was clearly hot enough to melt, and slightly brown, the cheese in only about three minutes (that would be convective heat, I think), but the conductive heat of the floor or deck of the oven, while high enough to bake the crust, wasn't so high as to char it or turn it super crisp. Perhaps the raw flour on the underside of the pie also acted as a heat barrier too.
That's not a criticism, just a description. I like my crusts crisp, but from some things that I've read, pizza in Naples - which is as authentic as it gets - is quite pliable and is typically eaten with a knife and fork. (And some of that has to do with the type of flour that's used as well, I think - some flours will brown and char more easily than others.) So whether a pliable or very firm crust is "better" comes down largely to a matter of personal preference.
My pie was topped with a moderate layer of herb-tinged tomato sauce, and a nicely melted top layer of creamy mozzarella. The components were well balanced, and this was an easy pie to consume.
Tony uses gas to get his oven started, then from there keeps it going with hardwoods like applewood. He told me that his laser thermometer measured the oven temperature at around 900 degrees, though I'm not sure what part of the oven that's measuring.
I'd love one of these ovens in my back yard, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Until that changes, I'll be happy with my home oven, and with visits to local pizzerias, including Tony Tomato's mobile operation. This was good enough to rate a B+ from me.
Tuscan Wood Fired Pizza Catering, Webster, NY 545-6305
Email: tony@tuscanwoodfiredpizzacatering.com
Check his Facebook page for upcoming public events.

It's time for another pizza giveaway, and it's a good one - Brandani's, one of my favorite local pizzerias, has graciously agreed to give one lucky reader of this blog a free large pizza, with unlimited toppings. As readers of this blog will know, I've given Brandani's an "A" rating, for its great crust and wide selection of flavorful pizzas, so it'll be hard not to award this to myself, but I promise to be fair.
To enter, all you have to do is visit Brandani's menu page, then leave a comment after this blog post, telling us your favorite Brandani's slice or Specialty Pizza, or just stating why you'd love to win a free Brandani's pizza. The winner will be selected next Friday, October 14, and will be chosen at random using random.org. You may leave as many comments as you like, but multiple comments will not increase your chances of winning.
If you win, I will need your name and mailing address. You can email it to me ahead of time, at rochesternypizzaguy@gmail.com, or include it in your comment, or you can wait until the contest ends and the winner is announced. Be aware, though, that if I do not have your address in advance, and you are the winner, I will give you 48 hours to get it to me. If I don't receive it by then, I'll select a different winner.

I've written a couple of posts about Nino's on Culver Road, with posts about its thick crust, Sicilian-style pizza and the thin crust "Napolitan" pie. But in my conversation with Nino's owner in February 2010, he told me that his personal favorite is the focaccia pizza.
Well, I really enjoyed the other pizzas from Nino's, but you mean to tell me that I hadn't even had the best one?
It took a while, but not long ago I did finally pick up a large focaccia pie. For this one, I decided to leave the toppings entirely to Giacomo - whatever he thought best.
As I was waiting for my pizza, Giacomo - who loves to talk about pizza as much as I love learning about it - explained to me to his focaccia pizza is closely related to another dish, sfingione (which I've also seen spelled "sfincione"). Like a lot of these things, it's hard to pin down a precise definition of sfingione, perhaps partly because the term might mean different things to different people and in different places, even within Sicily, though you can read a general description of this style of bread here and here. Probably because that name is so unfamiliar to most Americans, though, Nino's sticks with the more accessible "focaccia" and "pizza."
Now, when I think of focaccia, I generally picture a rectangular, dimpled bread, with very sparse toppings - maybe just olive oil and rosemary, possibly with a light sprinkling of sharp grated cheese. This wasn't that. My pie came topped with mozzarella and Locatelli cheeses, sausage, portabello mushrooms, roasted red peppers, garlic and onion.
The mushrooms scared me a little bit, as I'm not a big fan of 'shrooms, but one bite allayed my fears. There was a lot going on here, but somehow those toppings all blended together in a veritable symphony of flavor. Pardon my hyperbole, but it's an apt metaphor. My palate could distinguish the various flavors and textures of the individual components, yet they also formed a cohesive whole, the same way that your ears can pick up the sound of particular instruments in an orchestra, yet the overall effect is of hearing one seamless piece of music.
It's not often that I start describing a pizza by talking about the toppings, but that's more a reflection of how good this tasted than of any deficiency in the crust. It was rather thick, with a pan-baked bottom, firm and crisp along the edge, but bready and chewy inside.
One thing that confused me was how this differed from the Sicilian pizza. In fact, it seemed pretty similar. I figured I must be missing something.
So I spoke again to Giacomo and found out that Nino's focaccia and Sicilian pizzas are in fact one and the same thing. Same dough, same process.
But one of the things I love about talking to Giacomo is the way that his love for his craft comes through. Rather than just a simple answer to my question, I got a ten-minute discourse on the etymology of the word "focaccia," the subtleties of working with dough, and the importance of using fresh, local ingredients whenever possible.
As to the focaccia/Sicilian pizza thing, the gist of what I got was that the distinction is more cultural and colloquial than anything else. In Sicily, focaccia is a bread that's often baked at home - the word is derived from the Italian word for fire, "fuoco," since focaccia was traditionally baked in a fireplace or hearth. Pizza tends to be more of a commercial product and is typically more amply topped, with tomatoes, cheese, and more.
That distinction is explained somewhat on Nino's website, which describes focaccia as a thick-crusted, "flat hearth-stone-baked Italian bread [that] can be topped with herbs and other toppings" such as olive oil, rosemary, sage, and coarse salt. It may, though, be "topped with onion, cheese and meat, or flavored with a number of vegetables."
Regarding Sicilian pizza, Nino's has this to say:  "Thick and crispy crust on the outside, yet soft right under the sauce. Keeping with the tradition of Sicily, our sauce is sweeter than the usual variety. Made with a thick crust characterized by a rectangular shape and topped with tomato sauce, cheese and optional toppings. Thick crusted slices are cut square, with dough that is over an inch thick. Marinara sauce - Sicilian sauce is a bit sweeter than those found in other types. The body is pureed, which is typical for this style."
So going by those definitions, I guess what I got here would fall more into the focaccia category, given the absence of tomatoes, or who knows, maybe it was really sfingione, but in the end these distinctions are mostly semantic. And my taste buds aren't interested in semantics. Whatever you call it, this was very, very good stuff. (By the way - though Nino's menu lists both focaccia and Sicilian, the prices are the same for each, so no need to worry that you're going to pay more if you order one or the other.)
Nino's isn't the easiest place for me to get a pizza. It doesn't open till 4 p.m., and they don't sell slices, which pretty much limits me to bringing a pie home for dinner, but due to our respective locations it's a long drive for me and it's a challenge to get the pizza home before it cools, even with my pizza bag. But the pizza is good, it's distinctive, and I don't think I've met a pizzeria owner more dedicated to his art than Giacomo. So you can believe me when I say that I'll be back, and I already know what I want. For that, you'll have to wait and see. Until then, Nino's once again merits an A rating from me.
Nino's Pizzeria and Focacceria, 1330 Culver Rd. 14609
Phone:  482-2264
Hours: Sun. 4 - 10 p.m., Mon. - Sat. 4 p.m. - 11 p.m.

City Newspaper now has the final ballot for its Best of Rochester 2012 survey both online and in the paper copies. It only takes a minute or two to vote and you could even win a prize!
Of particular interest to me, and I hope you, are questions #6 (Best Pizza Slice), #7 (Best Specialty Pizza), and #62 (Best Local Blog). Whatever the outcome, and whatever your vote, thank you for voting!

A new pizzeria, by the name of Uncle Eddie's (not to be confused with Cousin Eddie) opened recently on Dewey Avenue in Greece. I stopped by a couple of weeks ago for a slice.
My pepperoni slice had a thin to medium crust, with a dry, non-greasy bottom that was more firm than crisp. The underside displayed some crackling, and was singed, but not quite charred in a few spots. The edge was rather puffy, but bready and somewhat crisp.
(I should mention that the server informed me that due to an error, their slices at that time were smaller than usual - ordinarily they serve "giant" slices. So he gave me a break on the price, and my slice and can of pop came to just $3.)
The melted cheese, which was applied in good proportion to the crust, had a bit of tang to it, so I'm not sure if it was all mozzarella or perhaps a blend, but it was pretty good. A light dusting of grated cheese, probably Romano, also added a little flavor.
Sauce often goes almost unnoticed on a lot of pizza, but it's one of the most variable and distinctive components. Uncle Eddie's sauce was characterized by a subtle aroma of herbs and a faint background spiciness on the palate.
Uncle Eddie's offers some 17 pizza toppings (including salami - I've used that at home and I think it's quite good on pizza) and three specialty pizzas (Buffalo, veggie, and "supreme," with an assortment of toppings). They also do calzones, wings, hot and cold subs, and fried sides. It's pretty much a delivery and takeout place.
With Uncle Eddie's opening, the corner of Dewey and Latta has become a mini hotspot for pizza; Paulie's (which I haven't been to in way too long) and Petrella's are both close by. But based on this one visit, I think Uncle Eddie's should do fine. Personally, I'd have liked just a bit more crispness in the crust, but that's just me. On the whole, this was a tasty, well balanced slice of pizza. Nice job. I'll give it a B.
Uncle Eddie's Pizzeria, 4402 Dewey Ave., 14616
Phone: 865-5222
Hours:  Mon. - Wed. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Thu. - Sat. 11 a.m. - midnight, Sun. noon - 9 p.m.