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 They say nearly all good cooking begins by chopping onions. Both literally and metaphorically, this truth remains. In a day when chefs are paraded around like kings, when entire television channels are devoted to recording and promoting food, and, well, food magazines are everywhere, it is easy to forget just exactly what food and cooking boil down to—chopping onions. All the good things start here.
This lesson, and more, I learned from making pizza. Though this fabled pie doesn’t typically begin with chopped onions, it does call for certain details that, if ignored, show. Cooking is mostly about attending to details. Pizza is simple—crust with sauce, cheese and toppings—yet it varies so that a “good” slice inspires mouth-watering devotion. Making one is a matter of doing the little things (resting your dough overnight, using fresh mozzarella and making your own sauce). Yet making a pizza in your own home that rivals that which you can have delivered for $16 is difficult.
But choosing to cook is always difficult. Cooking is hot. You’ll burn yourself. You’ll feel the pressure that is a pan full of hot oil, smoke and ingredients that have to be cut before going in it. At the last minute, when everything is on the verge of burning you will remember that the dish you are preparing is supposed to have scallions in it, and that you have them, but they are not chopped. You will have to fight the urge to cuss, because you are in front of children and because the pizza that you just spent 24 hours making is now resting on your upswept kitchen floor. It will drive you mad at times, but it will be worth it. Peter Reinhart says, the “race between browning the crust and melting the cheese is one of the great culinary dramas.” It is for dramas like these that we try in the first place.
In each issue of this magazine, we start by chopping the onions. In this issue we chopped pizza, we chopped a bunch of recipes, we chopped some of the finest restaurants in our area (TJ Pauls’, 2900, Aroma, Pelicans, Adode Deli, Meson de Mesilla, Wet Ultra Lounge, and Bella Napoli), we chopped and we chopped and we chopped. Now, we hope, you are ready to do the cooking.
Jeff Becker
575-525-7037
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