Spice on Ice

April 2 in the Herald Journal:

When Cache Valley chefs flaunt their culinary stuff, everyone wins. There certainly weren't any losers at Spice on Ice, the food competition at the George S. Eccles Ice Center on March 25. Some of the best professional chefs of Cache Valley pitted their talents during the annual cook-off and fundraiser for the ice arena.

It all started with the appetizers. Spicy fresh tuna and roasted red pepper sushi were served with chipotle sauce and knock-off-your-socks wasabi under a lighted ice sculpture at the table of chef John Simpson of Culinary Concepts. Pounders chef Kip Loy showed off his food prowess with a silky smooth Lomi Lomi salmon salsa with fresh Ogo seaweed with a crispy noodle-wrapped prawn smothered with guava ginger sauce and a single house-smoked spare rib with a sweet passion fruit glaze. There were a lot of happy sticky faces in the room.

Although the meal was actually served next to the ice rink, rather than on it (I had visions of ice skating waiters and wore my thickest socks), the food had plenty of spice. We passed around platters of pink pungently-smoked salmon with sweet coconut vanilla rice, complex and pleasantly spicy coconut curry chicken and dry-aged sirloin with earthy twice-baked blue cheese potatoes. The hardest part of the evening was taking only my share.

Infamous local talent like Frank Ford of Smokin' Blues Barbeque, Dustin McKay of the Elements, Greg Chambers from Firehouse Pizzeria, Ash Oberoi, from Indian Oven, Ted Mathesius from Hamiltons, Sham Singh of Tandoori Oven, and Jeff Woolley of USU Catering wowed the audience with their mouthwatering presentations. The chefs more or less donated the food and their efforts for the fundraiser, and for a chance to win coveted awards … People's Choice, Judge's Choice and Overall Chef of the Year.

Ultimately only one chef could win – well, actually two in the case of the People's Choice award. The votes for first place were miraculously tied between those who loved the peppery steak medallions topped with cherry sauce and blue cheese served by McKay of Elements, and those who preferred the piles of thick spiral pasta smothered in lemon cream sauce with tender citrus-infused white shrimp from Chambers at Firehouse Pizzeria.

If you didn't make it to the event, you may have a chance to taste one of the People's Choice award winners. In 2009 Chambers included the winning entree from the competition on the Firehouse Pizzeria menu. He is currently considering including the 2010 winner on his menu.

The Judge's Choice award went to Woolley and USU Catering's seared Kobe beef tenderloin cooked to a perfect medium rare. Broccoli greens and spicy tomato fennel sauce gave the ensemble a pleasantly bitter ying to the yang of the flavorful meat, sweet nutty butternut squash dumplings and Porcini mushroom ragu. The Judge's Choice award was based on points earned for presentation, texture, and flavor.

The Overall Chef of the Year award went to McKay of Elements. My thick piece of peppery steak was that melt-in-your-mouth variety of meat. I cut it with the side of my fork, and followed each bite with a creamy dollop of buttermilk whipped Yukon Gold potatoes. The peppery bite of the steak was cut by a sweet cherry-port reduction sauce and the sweet mustiness of blue cheese. It was perfectly balanced, good quality food, and basically heaven on a plate. In the words of my table mate, Dan White of Logan, you don't often get a steak that good. This award was based on an equally-weighted average of the Judge's Choice and the People's Choice scores.

I wondered at the absence of some of the other good restaurants and caterers in the valley. The awards are prominent enough to benefit them with publicity, and most chefs love a good food battle. But the event didn't suffer from their absence.

In the end we were left with very full stomachs, and with the good feeling around the table that only really great food can create. Although I knew that the well-organized event was held to raise money for a great local amenity, the only non-profit ice arena in the West, I could only think how lucky I had been to take part (and from some platters more than my part) of some of the best professional food in Cache Valley. I won't miss next year's event.

Jack's Pizza

When you see the word “pizza,” something inevitably pops into your head. It might be a memory of an impossibly deep Chicago-style pizza packed in casserole-like layers of olives, sausage, tomato sauce, cheese and saturated dough. It might be the delicious paradox of thin-crust pizza – crunchy on the bottom, chewy in the center – that you folded sloppily into your mouth in your dorm room. Or maybe the savory smell of caramelized ham and pineapple, or the mellow aroma of wet mozzarella melting rapturously with sweet plum tomatoes and basil in the intense heat of a wood-fired oven.

In Chicago it is thick. In New York it is thin and wide. Greek immigrants in the Northeastern U.S. slathered dough with olive oil to make it crisp and topped it with feta cheese and Kalamata olives. California pizza became a platform for non-traditional seasonal produce like bean sprouts and shaved carrots. Vermont pizza replaced tomato sauce with a drizzle of real maple syrup over breakfast sausage and eggs. The Western U.S., ironically, popularized Hawaiian pizza, topping ours with sweet pineapple and sliced ham.

Everyone has their own idea about what constitutes a great slice. Considering the history and passion associated with the food, writing about “pizza” is like tackling the topic “The Bible,” or “The Chinese Empire” or “Logan Park Strips.” Where does one begin?

I began at Jack's Woodfired Oven at 256 North Main in Logan. I found Jack and Julie Carlisle working around the large Italian-built wood burning pizza oven in the center of the restaurant. Sticks of apple wood were stacked loosely against the wall. White-hot coals lit the interior of the oven, cooking fragrant yeast dough. I was there for some real pizza.

I know what you are thinking, real pizza? But there is such a thing. Italians cared enough about pizza to “copyright” the method, and to delineate the ingredients that go into an authentic one. There is even an organization.

According to the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association (VPNA) based in Naples, Italy, (and backed by the European Union) authentic pizza must be cooked in a wood oven. Jack's got one. It cooks at an infernal 900 degrees. Jack's job is to stand in front of the cave-shaped opening, shoveling around the rapidly rising dough. Cooking a pizza at home can take 10-20 minutes, but in a wood-fired oven like Jack's, the pizza is done in two. The high heat removes the moisture from the thin crust quickly, making is crispy on the outside, and leaving it chewy on the inside.

I ordered the Margherita pizza (at Jack's it is called “That One Pizza,” but if you ask for a Margherita, they'll know what you are talking about). This classic Italian pizza is made with high-moisture mozzarella, tomatoes, and fresh basil leaves – and according to VPNA, is the only certifiably authentic pizza in existence.

Jack cut generous slabs of fresh mozzarella (the kind packed in brine) and scattered them with sauce on the hand-stretched dough. It melts in a creamy pool, and has a chewy, texture with no grease. This type of cheese begins extremely mild, noted Julie, but as it cooks it absorbs the intense flavors of the other toppings … the sweet acidity of tomatoes, the fragrant fresh basil, and the woody taste of smoke and extra virgin olive oil.

The Carlisles seek out the best possible ingredients, and get them locally when they can. The flour in the dough comes from Central Milling Flour on Center Street. Their Gouda, Gruyere, and Feta come from Rockhill Creamery. The dough is handmade. The sauce comes from fresh tomatoes – seeded by hand. The basil is fresh, fragrant, and whole. It becomes slightly crisp on the top of my pizza.

For the Carlisles, this all began as one serious hobby. They built a wood-burning oven in their yard, just to experiment. They'd never been to Italy, or to New York City for that matter. They'd never tried to emulate the authentic Pizza Napoletana … it just turned out that what the Carlisles liked was basically the same pizza the Italians had perfected over hundreds of years. You start with really good flour, and make a wet dough, said Julie. That way you get a good rise in the hot oven, and get exceptional texture.

My Margherita was exceptional. The salty Mozzarella absorbed a mild smoky flavor from the oven accentuated by a bit of Parmesan and smoked Provolone. The mottled brown crust had just a hint of char and was well balanced by sweet tomatoes, clean-tasting basil and chewy cheese. Pizza at Jack's needs to be folded to be eaten properly. Because the focus of the pizza is flavor, not structure, the crust isn't super-inflated. It's the toppings that you taste. The Carlisles encourage pizza seekers to order no more than three toppings. If you get more than that, said Jack, the flavors are muddled, too intense, and the thing doesn't cook properly.

When you go to Jack's, I recommend ordering one pizza per person. The prices are reasonable, and the current lunch special is a downright deal. My companion and I ordered one small (9 inch), as well as two “mini” (6 inch) pizzas that came with the lunch special. When we left, we weren't carrying any boxes. The large (12 inch) may feed more than one, but I'd lean to the hungry side when ordering.

To clear them of any liability, the Carlisle's pizza does not conform to all the freakishly strict standards maintained by the VPNA. The price of importing San Marzano plum tomatoes from the south of Italy, and south European-produced buffalo cheese would be cost prohibitive, for one. And they don't measure their stretched dough to the centimeter. So if you want a technically correct VPNA pizza, fly to Italy. But if you want a pizza that at heart is authentic, with a dash of Cache Valley, go to Jack's.