Pizza with Family Using the Ooni Pizza Oven

Gift giving is really hard for me, especially when it comes to gifting stuff to my parents since they never tell me what they want! So I was ecstatic when my dad lightly implied that he was interested in making pizza at home. I took the opportunity to get him an Ooni pizza oven, partially as a gift but also partially to live out my own dream of being able to make bubbly, crispy, neopolitan-style pizza at home. I flew out to NJ to visit the family and we basically made pizza all weekend long. I've been making pizza in my apartement oven for a while now by using a pizza steel, so I had the dough recipe down to a science (I like to use Adam Ragusea's pizza dough recipe). We made a couple of different pizzas, including margherita, pesto-goat cheese-sun dried tomato, and (my favorite) paneer tikka. The first two are straightforward, but for the paneer pizza, my mom used an interesting method that we all quite enjoyed.

Instead of using besan (gram flour) as many recipes suggest, she pulsed some roasted, skinned chickpeas (chana) to create a fine powder and used that as the binding agent. This created a nicer consistency in the finished project. As far as other spices go, we used the regular characters:

garam masala, red chili powder, turmeric, coriander powder, cumin powder, kasuri methi, and ginger garlic paste.

For the pizza, we spread regular pizza sauce on the dough, added the uncooked paneer tikka, and topped with sliced red onions. The dough and paneer finished cooking at roughly the same time, making it quick and easy.

Lodi, CA

I suppose this is a good opportunity to introduce Chandani, my partner and the person who lovingly enables a lot of my eating and drinking experiences, especially when it comes to trying new wines. It was her birthday last weekend, and to celebrate, we decided to take a low-key trip to Lodi, CA. The Lodi AVA is a relatively lesser-known wine-producing region ~1-1.5h east of the Bay Area, particularly well known for its production of Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon wines. The expressions of both varietals is generally more ripe fruit and less oak/earth than those from nearby Napa and Sonoma, which makes it a great activity for a mild summer day.

We started at Michael David Winery, which is located west of Lodi proper on Hwy 12. The winery makes a bunch of wines in different styles under a bunch of different labels, but they're particularly known for their high volume "Freakshow" label, which has a Cabernet Sauvignon version as well as a Zinfandel version. We particularly enjoyed a few of their other Zinfandels (particularly the "Earthquake" and "MDW" labels), all of which were fruity while still retaining some amount of complexity from the high-tannin grape. The winery also had a bunch of other interesting wines, including a single varietal cinsault and some bordeaux-inspired blends. Definitely a spot I'd recommend.

We visited a few other wineries and enjoyed the wine in general, although some winemakers exhibited a style which favored strong elements of oak (vanilla, smoke) which both of us thought overpowered the wine itself.

We finished up at a brewery in town and had the dinner of champions - nachos - before spending the night at the Poppy Sisters Inn, a Bed and Breakfast just west of Lodi's Main Street. We both loved the time we spent there, and highly recommend trying a trip to Lodi if you find yourself with some extra time in the Bay Area.

Some New Dessert Wines

Chandani and I also went to a restaurant we've been wanting to go to for a while now - Nopa in SF. The meal was good (small plates, great for vegetarians), but both of us were particularly excited about the Liquid Desserts available. We ordered two to share and were very happy we did. The first dessert wine was a Barolo Chinato from Castello Di Verduno, a producer in the Northern Italian region of Barolo. I'm a huge fan of Barolo in general - it's normally a rich and complex dry, red wine made from the Nebbiolo grape that's known for its ability to age for 10+ years. So when I saw this one, I was intrigued.

Barolo Chinato is produced by taking dry Barolo and steeping aromatics (traditionally, some combination of herbs, spices, and a bittering agent, like Gentian root) in the wine. Alcohol is added (usually in the form of grappa) along with sugar to make the wine drinkable. For this particular wine, the nose showed notes of peppermint oil, betel leaf (a waxy, vegetal leaf), nutmeg, and fennel bursting out of the glass, with subtle notes of sweet cranberry following up from behind. Some oak characteristics appeared, as well. On the palate, the sweetness of the wine balanced well with its bitterness; I personally loved the sensation, but Chandani hated it. Both of us concluded independently that the taste was uncannily like that of mukhwas, a common after-meal mouth freshener composed of fennel seeds and sugar-coated seeds, which helped us contextualize the sweet/bitter combo. Fennel is a common aromatic used in Chinato, so it's definitely a reasonable call. The palate also showed flavors of anise and coriander with a mildly minty finish.

The second wine, a semi-sweet white wine from southwest France, was made from a grape varietal called Gros Manseng. This varietal is notable for its ability to retain high acid and high sugar late into the harvest season - this means that a sweet wine made from this grape will retain acidity, making it more well balanced than some other sweet wines. This gives it a lighter body and mouthfeel than other white dessert wines like Sauternes or Tokaji, both of which are often almost syrupy on the palate. It's also younger than those wines, so the aromas and flavors are more reminiscent of pear and nectar with some expression of honey and blossom. It was an excellent, refreshing conclusion to our meal.