Thanks for the tip, November. I saw the show at 1 a.m. in the morning as your alerted me to . . . zzzzz . . . zzzz. . . and enjoyed seeing my old friend, Marc Malnati, again. I used to dined at his flagship restaurant in Lincolnwood, Illinois at least 2 or 3 times a month for 25 years or more. He often -- in the early days -- escorted us to the table when his dad, Lou, was alive. The program, tho, in large part was filmed at their Buffalo Grove, Illinois restaurant which I had also been a frequent diner at when I lived a few miles from it. I really miss Marc's brand of Chicago style deep dish pizza and often crave having a piece of his great "sausage" pizza again.
I like Bobby Flay (one of the few I do on the FoodNetwork), but he blew it when he tried to duplicate or "interpret" a Chicago style deep dish pizza. First of all, the crust has to be crimped or squeezed on the edges and not the "fat-lip" that occurs on some other styles of pizza. I'm not saying that's bad, but that's just not typical of Chicago style deep dish pizza. Second, his staff must have researched "Chicago style deep dish pizza" on Google and, as most people experienced, came up with a
false,
mistaken clone or copy-cat recipe that includes corn meal as part of the recipe. I could go on for a long time on this subject, but suffice it to say that it has been proven time and time again that corn meal is NOT an ingredient in Chicago deep dish pizza at any of the renown and famous Chicago deep dish pizzerias (e.g., Lou Malnati's, Uno's and Due's, Gino's East, Pizano's, etc.). Now . . . some people like it. But I don't like the gritty and sandy feel that I find with corn meal inside the dough recipe itself. It's fine with me to put it underneath the crust, but not in the dough itself. (Semolina, however, is a totally different story.) Just my opinion.
Thirdly, the great deep dish pizzerias never put hot sausage on their pizzas (along with the hot spices that Flay added). Not saying that some may not like it, but it is extremely atypical of Chicago deep dish pizzas. Fourth, his crust as you should note from the television program was much thicker than Malnati's. That's because of the misnomer that Chicago style deep dish is real thick. It is not. It's just a little thicker than ordinary Chicago style thin crust pizza.
Lastly, there isn't a pizzeria in all of Illinois that I know of that would represent Chicago deep dish pizza with an ingredient such as Broccoli Rabe that was a main ingredient on Bobby Flay's Chicago style deep dish pizza on that show. Now that isn't just plain old Broccoli, which is bad enough by itself, but a special gourmet style that is very different from typical Broccoli. This is weird stuff and if you want to try it, be my guest (
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/broccolirabe.htm). Most Chicagoans would say . . . yuke IMO.
But I enjoyed seeing the pictures of Marc Malnati making his great, great, great Chicago style deep dish pizza again. I look forward to next summer when I return to his area to indulge in some of that delicious and fantastic pizza again.
