Maters and Pan
January 29th, 2010I Cannot Resist
This is really unfair. A reader mentioned a brand of San Marzano tomatoes he thought I needed to try, and of course, I had to exit my burrow and buy some. This is practically entrapment.
I just got some Cento San Marzano tomatoes, at my local grocery. They’re $2.99 for a 28-ounce can. I tried one. They have more oomph than the “San Marzano REGION” tomatoes I tried last night, but they’re not exactly bursting with flavor. They have some zing to them, which is more than I can say for the others.
I also found a 9″ square cake pan. I can’t tell if it’s nonstick or not. I hope not. I can’t use that around the birds, at 550°. It will give off poisonous gas. I stuck them outside, and I put the pan in the oven. I guess we’ll see what it does. If it doesn’t burn, it’s not nonstick.
It’s a quality pan, which is worrisome. I need an extremely cheap and thin pan. This one is thinner than the steel pan I tried yesterday, but it’s still a little thicker than I want.
I think the relatively high sides will be good for the cheese. They should block some of the radiant heat, which would make the cheese cook slower and give me time to get a nice brown crust. Another possibility: because this pan is small with high sides, I could throw a sheet of foil over it while the crust browns. It won’t touch the cheese and get stuck.
Stanislaus Foods claims it’s almost impossible to get San Marzano tomatoes, but then, they have incentive to exaggerate, since they sell California tomatoes. Their products are jam-packed with sweetness and tomato flavor, so I doubt the Centos will knock them off their lofty champion-tomato perch.
Time to make dough.
January 29th, 2010 at 4:28 PM
I’ve heard about the authenticity issues with San Marzanos, too; the designation in Italy of agricultural products by region is a government-supervised process in which fraud is incentivized and bribery frequently occurs. I guess it’s a little like our “organic” designation–not necessarily representative of goodness. Italians are more likely than most to believe that various foods are good only if grown in certain places. This dates back to the Roman Empire, at least in the case of olive oil fraud. I can’t remember where I read about this–some of it I heard from a friend who has lived there for a long time. I’m not that concerned about it if the tomatoes have good flavor. I’ve been trying every variety on offer at the grocery store; the Muir Glen organic ones were tough and green and not that good. I used a brand called San Marzano that was apparently grown in the US that was much better, and I’m trying the Centos next.
I suppose I should pony up for the Stanislaus sauce to try it. Wish it were available around here.
January 29th, 2010 at 4:30 PM
Don’t despair. You can probably make ten or twenty doses of Stanislaus sauce for the price of one Cento pie.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:31 PM
The experiments continue. Glad to see that you are watching that non-stick around Marvin and Maynard. Kiko says “Wanna grit?” Really.