New Haven Pizza Wars - Modern

My fourth and final battle of the New Haven Pizza Wars took place the other day at Modern Apizza, which I choose for a few reasons: it has some pretty stellar Yelp reviews, a handful of people I've met in New Haven mentioned it in their list of apizzarias to hit up ("oh, you gotta go to Sally's, definitely Moderne, Pepe's too..."), and it's not nestled within the much-hyped Wooster Square area that's home to my now-familiar apizza haunts. It was time to branch out from the usual.

By this point I knew the drill - arrive early on a weekday, marvel at the amount of people who already have giant pizzas on their tables, grab the first booth I can find, order myself a small mozzarella-and-mushroom-pie.

I first noticed how extremely nice and speedy the waitstaff was. While the folks at the other three restaurants weren't not nice, they were pretty blasé about the whole serving thing, and I definitely waited quite a while for things like water, food, and my check. At Modern, I was greeted immediately upon sitting down, given water mere seconds after that, and though the restaurant was almost completely full by the time I place my order (New Havenites really like their apizza), my lunch arrived just 9 minutes later.

It wasn't the most photogenic of apizzas. And at first sight, I wasn't too impressed - the cheese was an odd, pale color, I was uninspired by the mushrooms, and as I had since come to expect, burnt sections dotted the edges.

It was, however, pretty tasty. Ample amounts of cheese covered the crust - so much more than I'm now used to that I realized just how much cheese actually goes on a pizza (versus an apizza). Under my old Chicago-style circumstances, I would never had thought this was a lot of cheese.  The sauce was sweet, the crust had a nice crunch to it, and I was delighted to discover what I thought were completely burnt parts were instead just tastefully blackened. The mushrooms, though, were definitely out of a can.

With tax and tip, it cost $12.50, and I was happy to eat the leftovers for lunch breakfast the next day.

Stay tuned for next week, when I wrap up the war correspondence and determine, once and for all, who makes the best apizza in New Haven.

Want to read the previous Pizza War entries? Here's where I talk about Abate's, Pepe's, and Sally's! 

Nutella S'mores Mini Pies

While walking around downtown New Haven the other night, I caught a whiff of something I don't normally get to smell - a campfire. Maybe it was just someone burning some leaves in a nearby backyard (I think that's legal in CT), but nevertheless, normally all I smell around New York is garbage or the occasional hot nuts stand. I breathed in that evocative scent of a freshly lit wood-burning fire and was immediately transported back to summer days spent camping in Wisconsin and Northern Michigan, gathering around the fire with my friends, cooking up hot dogs and eating s'mores.

Which got me thinking, "Wow, how long has it been since I've had a s'more?"

To which I answered, "Well, there was that misguided experiment involving leftover Christmas candy and my microwave last January, but that didn't really count."

And then I realized that I was talking to myself while enthusiastically sniffing the air and that even the bums were starting to give me a weird look, so I quickly walked on.

The next day, I combined my great culinary skills with memories of summer, and made these.

Ingredients
6 mini graham cracker crust pie shells
8 oz. Philadelphia Cream Cheese
2 tbsp heavy cream
1/2 cup Nutella hazelnut spread
Marshmallow Fluff, for decoration

How to

In a large bowl, mix together the cream cheese, heavy cream and Nutella until smooth.

Spoon the mixture into each pie shell and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. This will make it easier for you to add the marshmallow topping.

When you're ready to decorate the pies, spread and dollop the Fluff in fun patterns.

Some things I discovered about working with Marshmallow Fluff:
   - It's a feisty condiment, and takes some encouraging to get it to do what you want it to do
   - If your fluff is too stiff to work with, put the entire jar in the microwave for about 10 seconds. This should make it maleable enough to work with for a while. If it starts to re-harden, warm it up again.
   - Disposable applicators are your friends - I used wooden chopsticks and a plastic fork to decorate my pies, because I had no desire to try to scrape fluff off of my silverware.

*Normally, I'd have a few more pictures of the pies. But right after getting the second close-up photo, my phone face-planted itself in the spiral pie. I then learned that of all the things you don't want your phone to be covered in, Marshmallow Fluff is pretty much #1. Luckily, I had invested in one of those plastic screen protectors and my phone is hearty and survived the fall, unscathed. But if you can help it, you should probably keep your phone away from all things Fluff. 

busy/busy/busy

Like most others, the demands of my job ebb and flow with complete irregularity. Sometimes I have hours upon hours to bake pies and eat pies and surround myself with all things pie. Other weeks, I actually have to go to work. This is one of those weeks.

On that note, I leave you with a picture of a delightfully yellow flower bed I discovered the other day - happy spring!