So close, so far apart

My daughter and her Oma spend a lot of quiet time together. I love it that they get along so well and always seem to have something to talk about, even during those times when there’s not much to say or left to do but play checkers for awhile.

But as much as I love to stop and look at the two of them in their calm togetherness, I can’t help thinking that by the very nature of our family, one part of her childhood will always be hopelessly one-sided.

Her German Oma lives only a couple of hours down the Autobahn and comes to visit us regularly, but her Canadian grandmother lives nine time zones and a long, expensive flight away. My mother is turning 85, still fit and active, still drives a car, goes out with friends and takes short trips, but understandably no longer feels up to the exhausting flight to Europe from the west coast of Canada all by herself. She’s made the trek three times in the 10 years we’ve been living in Hamburg, and we’ve flown there four, but now it’s all up to us.

I’d like to be able to offer my daughter what I feel is the best for her, and that includes regular contact with her grandmother. But by the very nature of having a family where grandparents live on opposite sides of the world, on this I fear we are always going to come up short. In contrast to the close, comfortable relationship she has with her Oma, her contact with her Grandma will always be like getting to know one another all over again. She’ll still be the red-haired girl, but each time she’ll have grown and changed into a new version of herself. Depending on mood, the effects of jet lag and any other combination of factors, there’s no guarantee the two of them will ever be able to settle into each other’s company, and after our time’s up and it’s time to go, that’ll be it until the next time.

We’re headed to Canada this year, not just because we want to, but because it really has been too long since she last saw her grandmother. It’s going to be a great trip: a week in Canada, then a wander down the coast of Oregon and California to Los Angeles. There we will stay with a friend of ours, before flying home from LA.

I really don’t know when the next time will be. And in the back of my mind, I’m always wondering: is this time going to be the last?

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Former US Attorney general Ashcroft has heart attack in Hamburg

We have once again roused our reporter out of hibernation for another Definitely Not the Daily News world exclusive.

By Kathy Kitzler

Hamburg (DNTN) Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft has suffered what appears to be a heart attack while on a personal visit to the northern German port city of Hamburg.

Ashcroft, whose brilliant career at the US Justice Department included having a statue’s naked boobs covered up so he wouldn’t be photographed in front of it at press conferences, keeled over just as he was about to enter the tropical aquarium exhibit at Hamburg’s zoo.

“There’s this funny-looking house-like thingy outside the entrance with all this carved wood and stuff,” said a family friend. “John’s a little short-sighted, so he got up on tippy-toes to get a closer look. Poor bastard had a seizure right on the spot.”

The temple was hand-made in Nepal using ancient woodcarving techniques. It is dedicated to Lord Shiva, one of the principal deities of Hinduism.

“That Cheever guy must have been one sick and depraved bastard as well,” said a weakened Ashcroft in a telephone interview from his hospital room, adding he thought the temple’s location couldn’t be worse.

“Imagine putting full-colour carvings of people engaged in such disgusting and immoral acts right in plain view at the entrance to a zoo, right where all those kiddies walk by!

What the hell is wrong with German people, anyway?“

The temple has been standing for nearly five years at the entrance to Hagenbeck’s, famous for being the first zoo in the world to come up with the idea of displaying animals in natural settings rather than cages.

Witnesses say they never noticed anything unusual about the building until the Ashcroft incident.

“It’s a good thing he wasn’t watching the boob tube,” said one 10-year-old zoo visitor. “You see this sort of thing on TV all the time here.”

Antipodean reaction to Ashcroft’s apparent angina attack was swift and decisive.

“That’s it, I’m headed to Hamburg,” said one well-known Australian nurse and blogger, adjusting her corset while logging on to a travel website. “I just love all those cute little figurines and stuff. Do you think they’d let me make a few plaster casts?”

© 2008 lettershometoyou

BMW builds fake village, massive ramp to launch new car in the US

One thing Germany has no shortage of is small towns. Head off the Autobahn and into the boonies, your drive will be slowed down to a crawl every four or five kilometres as you pass through another Unterpickelfering, Tafelförderung and Stübenhockerburg. You can’t pack 80 million people into a country the size of your average Texas ranch and expect a wide-open road.

Nevertheless, the marketing dudes at BMW have decided they had to invent yet another German town in order to promote a line of new cars.

The town is called Oberpfaffelbachen and is supposed to be somewhere in Bavaria. They say they even have a documentary filmmaker making a film about it all to create on-line chatter about the new car launch, and by launch I mean that literally.

The centrepiece of the film is a 454-metre high ramp said to have been built in the middle of a farmer’s field, upon which a car will be sent shooting down like a rocket, and, presumably, into the waiting arms of eager American car-buyers.

With the dive-bombing US dollar making German cars that much more expensive for Americans, I don’t know how well that’s going to fly, but they’re so deep into the project, there’s no turning back. The film is supposed to be in the final production stages, but you can catch the trailer if you can’t wait for its release, and if you’re really into it, sign up for the Facebook page!

Yes, it’s viral marketing. Get a buzz going, you never know how far it will go.

All in good fun, I suppose. Yet somehow, I find this video clip of a farmer heaping great steaming piles of bullshit into a wheelbarrow to be a pretty accurate portrayal of the whole thing:

© 2008 lettershometoyou

One more thing about that pizza

Last in a series. Part one is here, part two here, part three here, part four here.

The unfinished business: the video and the recipe.

A DVD copy of the show arrived in the mail from the production company today, along with the following note from one of the producers:

Dear Ian,

Here is the DVD as promised. The piece was well received both by the network and the ratings were very good, so it was a great success for all concerned. I hope you’re happy with the final cut, and once again want to thank you very much for the great teamwork.

And if it had been me doing the choosing, yours would have been the winner!

So there you have it. I know a lot of people have asked to see the finished segment, and I said I’d like to post it, but that’s turning out to be not only a technical challenge - it’s a huge file - but possibly a legal one. That means I still haven’t gotten the OK to post it online, so before it takes another few weeks to get that cleared up, if you want to see it, here’s my suggestion:

Send me an email to: kismac (at) freenet (dot) de

Include your name, complete snail mail address and two Cheerios boxtops and I will burn you a copy and send it back to you in the mail. Trust me, by the time I get this uploading and copyright crap all sorted out, it’ll turn out to be faster.

Edit: Please have your request in by noon - European time -  Wednesday March 26th, because I can’t take any more after that.

I hope that works out for everyone. It won’t cost you a penny. Just let me know you got it, mkay?

I guess a screen shot of the now infamous flag fiasco is in order:

As for the recipe, it might be American-style, but its pedigree is truly Canadian. I got it from my sister-in-law, whose parents came over to Canada from Germany. She got it from a brother-in-law, a Greek immigrant who picked it up while working at an Italian restaurant not far from Vancouver’s Chinatown. My sister-in-law adapted it a little for home baking.

It’s really quite simple. As long as you already have the ingredients on hand, you can go from dough mixing to eating your freshly baked pizza in 75 minutes. For two 25 - 30cm thick-crust pizzas, here’s what you do.

The crust:

Start with good, finely milled flour. I use Italian “Tipo 00″ flour - but it make sure it also says pizza flour on the package.

Four cups flour
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup lukewarm milk (should be hot to the touch, but never scalding)
1.25 cups lukewarm water (give or take)
1 tablespoon sugar
Two packages (about 18 - 20 grams total) fast-rising dry yeast.

Mix all the dry ingredients together, then add the liquid. The dough will be very moist and gluey, but don’t worry. Use a sturdy metal spoon and mix it very well. Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rise in a warm place while you mix the sauce and cut the toppings. Our oven has a bread-rising setting, but that’s not critical. Just don’t stick it on the balcony in winter.

The sauce:

One medium onion, diced very fine
One garlic clove, diced very fine
1 can good tomato paste
1 tablespoon dry oregano
1 tablespoon dry basil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper

Mix all together and add a bit of water if it looks too thick, because it should spread easily over the dough.

Toppings:

Lots of freshly grated mozzarella. I used the loaf kind, not the one that comes in those pouches in liquid.

I made a simple sliced olive and salami pizza for the show, but would have preferred what I like best: ham and fresh pineapple chunks. Yeah, I know - boring as bat shit, but I like to go with what I like. I wouldn’t use more than three toppings at a time, and if you’re using vegetables, go easy on them, especially with very moist ones like mushrooms.

All that slicing and dicing and mixing will have taken around 35 - 45 minutes, lots of time for the dough to have risen. Take a large metal spoon and divide the dough in two equal halves as you spread it into your well-oiled pans. You can also use a pizza stone, but make sure you put a good amount of polenta (corn meal) down or it will stick to the stone something awful.

Flour your hands and the top of the dough a bit, then spread it out evenly with your fingers. Leave a ridge around the edge.

Spread the sauce out thinly across all the dough. If you have big patches where you can’t see the white of the dough through the sauce, you’ve spread it on too thick.

In building the pizza, the thing to avoid is dumping all your toppings in one layer on top of the sauce, and then the cheese on top. If you do that, the pizza will separate into two layers when you bite into it, burning the roof of your mouth as the superheated sauce finally escapes, and the whole mess ends up in your lap.

Instead, put a layer of cheese down, then some topping, more cheese, more topping, until you’re done with a final top layer of cheese. That way, you have cheese all the way through, holding the ingredients together like glue.

Stick your pizza into a hot oven - around 275 degrees C or 550 F will do for most home ovens. Should be done in about 15 minutes, but watch it doesn’t burn because every oven is different.

Serve with red wine or cold beer and - if you really want to do it right - enjoy in front of a TV while watching Hockey Night in Canada.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

On flags and faking it: I actually came in second…

Fourth in a series. Part one is here, part two here, and part three here.

I’m glad I haven’t been taking this whole pizza thing all that seriously from the very beginning, because here’s the deal:

If you watch the show, you will see that the kids voted for which pizza they preferred by sticking little toothpick flags in a pizza, and that by the count, my cowpat pizza came in last behind the German’s, who won, and the Italian’s.

Actually, the producer had told me the day after we filmed it that I came in a very close second in the actual voting, right behind the German. I remember thinking as each taste-tester picked up another droopy slice of Italian pizza that it really wasn’t fair for him. He’d been waiting around there the longest, and even by the time we arrived with our relatively fresh-baked wares, his creations looked pretty lifeless.

Anyway three days ago, when she phoned to say the broadcast would be delayed by a day, the producer also said this:

Ummm…. I’m really sorry, but we ran out of little American flags to stick in your pizza. Because we didn’t have enough, there was no way to show that you’d come in second, so we had to make it look like you came in last.

All because they lacked a few flag toothpicks, they have to show that I came in third? Damn, maybe I should have brought along a bunch of these:

I guess it fits, though. Because I had to dash off to the airport and they still had more shooting and the judging to do, we faked the celebrations, so why not switch around the outcome besides?

As the late Canadian journalist Barbara Frum would have asked: Are you bitter?

Not a chance. I really had a lot of fun doing this, and besides - it’s only TV.

I’m taking off for a few days, but hope to post the video sometime next week for those who didn’t see it as it aired.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

OH! A couple of the many commenters have asked for the recipe - that’s on the way too!

New air date for pizza bake-off

For those readers living in Germany planning to watch the pizza show when it airs on German TV, the producers have just told me that the segment will be delayed.

Not so much longer to wait though: Friday, March 14 at 1910 on Pro7. The pizza segment should come on sometime around 1950, 2000.

Watch it closely. They stuck little flags of Germany, Italy, and the USA in the pizzas to illustrate which country they represent. There’s a story behind those little flags.

Tell you about it after it airs.

‘Til then!

The pizza shoot

Third in a series. Part one is here, part two here.

So after dragging all the ingredients in my luggage down to Munich the night before, the next morning a van is waiting at the hotel entrance to pick me up for the shoot. An hour or so on the Autobahn later, we arrive at Bonny’s Diner, an American-themed restaurant where we’ll film how to make the pizza.

On the way there, I learn who I’m up against that evening.

“The Italian runs his own pizza restaurant here in town,” the producer says, “and though he’s been here for ages, doesn’t speak a word of German.”

“And the German?”

“He’s a professional chef, goes all over the country catering to private and corporate functions, giving cooking classes, the works. He must have been on TV a half-dozen times already.”

And here’s me - duff blogger, regretfully opportunistic forum reader and hobby pizza baker, about to get royally humiliated. First before a live, studio audience, and again a couple of weeks later in front of millions of television viewers.

Fighting off visions of taste-testers slowly crumpling in knee-wilting groans of eye-rolling ecstasy as they take the first bite of the competition - after spitting mine out in disgust - we get to work.

After about three hours of walking in and out of the restaurant several times carrying at first a shopping bag and then a pizza, walking into the kitchen, taking the ingredients out over and over, several takes and re-takes of mixing the dough, throwing the sauce together, cutting up the toppings, grating the cheese, and saying and demonstrating how it is built and shoving it into the oven a few times, the crew is RAVING about the two I bake them.

“Man, I don’t know what the kids are going to say,” the sound girl says, “but that pizza is outstanding.”

They’re all nodding in agreement and I ask them, “can we just do that last bit one more time with the camera rolling?”

The cooking school

We pack up and head downtown to the cooking school where as we walk in, another shoot is in progress. It’s the German, and he’s making a pizza. A square pizza. Two huge, square pizzas, with really fancy dough, and he’s got a pile of ingredients on hand, one of which resembles salami.

It’s also like a church in there, because they’re filming and he’s explaining to the camera how he’s making them. But because we’re kind of pressed for time, I have still have to gather all the kitchen equipment together in absolute silence and start making three more pizzas, which are going to be whisked away on a delivery guy’s moped to the gang of waiting teenagers.

At one point I get really into the mixing and cutting and forget myself, start humming a song and banging pots around, and a camera assistant comes over and touches my arm.

…shhhhh….

Things start to get a little hectic in the final few hours. We pack up all the pizzas in containers - not those floppy cardboard boxes, but real pre-heated metal containers - stick them into cars and on the back of a moped for an agonisingly slow crawl through Munich afternoon rush-hour traffic to a school way on the outskirts of town, where 30 hungry teenagers are waiting patiently for us to arrive to do the taste test.

The Italian, as it turns out, has also been kicking around there for about two hours, and it takes another hour or so before the lights and cameras are set up and the kids told how everything is going to proceed. They get shoved from one side of the room to the other because this angle didn’t look right, that shot needed to be done over and the other thrown away, but we finally get down to the taste test just in time for me to realise my pizza has hardened, gone semi-cold and shrunk down to half its height.

They select a half-dozen or so from the audience, sit them down in the front row and blind-fold them. Each one, in turn, comes up and takes a bite of pizza, then is led away for a quick reaction Q&A before another camera.

I really hope they keep this one shot: One of the girls is about 17, pretty but in a Goth - lite kind of way, with cleavage down to a point that almost makes you want to ask, “Honey, does your Mum know you’re hanging out like that in weather like this?”

She stands up and is led toward my table and I pick up a plate with what I think is the best piece of the bunch. She picks it up and brings it to her lips, then opens her mouth wider, shoves it in, and…. bursts out in a fit of giggles, uncontrollably so, her laughter spilling out into the audience, and for a second or two there’s this awkward moment where I wonder if she’s going to lose it, if pieces of topping are about to tumble from the sides of her mouth, when suddenly the fit is over and she’s led away.

Before we know it, it’s seven-thirty in the evening and I have less than two hours before my flight leaves back to Hamburg.

This is where it starts to get surreal. In a mad rush, the three of us troop out of the little theatre and into a side foyer, where we quickly go through a bunch of set-up scenes, which I’m guessing are going to be used for the intro. First they ask us to run through a flag as if we were winning a race, but the camera guy says it looks like crap. So then we’re all given oversized wooden spoons and told to make like we’re gangsters, holding the spoons as if they were guns. We all look stern as we walk toward each other, meeting eyeball-to-eyeball and glaring menacingly at one another. They get close-up shots of that and then we each have to walk across the room, turn and fire the wooden spoon at the camera over a flag and walk on - James Bond 007-style.

Then we all pile back into where the kids are waiting, for a truly televisual bit of theatre. Because I have to dash off to the airport - by now there’s a taxi waiting outside - and they still have to stay at least another hour to shoot the taste test with the German - we have to fake the celebrations. Yup. I won’t tell you who won, but before I leave, the audience is told to go nuts cheering and clapping for each of us in turn, so that when the result is known, they can simply use the one that fits.

OK! The American pizza won! Yaaaaay!

OK! The German pizza won! Yaaaaay!

OK! The Italian pizza won! Yaaaaay!

And off I go to the taxi and home.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Reminder: Only three days to go. March 13, 1910 on Pro 7.

my day as an american pizza chef: the prep

Second in a series. Part one’s back here.

So between getting the go-ahead to fly to Munich to bake the pizza and actually getting there, a few things have to be worked out over the phone.

“So-oo….” the producer asks me, “Tell me how your pizza is going to be different from the Italian and the German one.”

I have to think fast. What is a German pizza? As we all know, the thin-crust all-fresh Italian pizza is the perfection we should all strive for, but German? All I can think of is that after harfing my way through a good dozen or so pizza joints throughout this land, it’s a disappointing mess, but in exactly what way, I couldn’t tell you. So with a nod to Italy, I play up mine rather than compare with the unknown.

“Well… you know how Italian pizza is so thin sometimes, you could wrap it up and eat it like a Crêpe Suzette? My pizza will have a thick, slightly chewy but at the same time very bread-like crust almost like a foccacia best eaten within 10 minutes out of the oven, the sauce will be somewhat hotter than what you may be used to, but without dominating the pizza, the toppings limited to two, maximum three. I like to keep it simple, and want to play up how anyone with the ingredients on hand can do the same at home, too. From scratch to table in a little over an hour.

“But I wouldn’t expect any fancy theatrics like spinning a floppy disc of dough above my head while belting out the finale from La Traviata or - God help us - God Bless America,” I warn her. “Before it has a chance to rise, my dough looks like a cross between barf and wet ceiling stucco.”

“Hey!” she says. “That sounds great! That’s the kind of stuff you’ve got to say on camera. You’ve got to play things up a little!”

I start to get anxious, wondering how all that would sound in my fractured German.

“Oh, and by the way, the toppings,” she goes on, “Each of you is going to make a salami pizza, so that we can at least have a level playing field there. But other toppings are up to you. Say, what are your other toppings going to be?”

“Well, I was thinki…”

“Oh - and did I tell you? You’ll probably have to make at least five, possibly seven pizzas, so you’ll be busy.”

“SEVEN pizzas?”

“Yeah, well, we’ll be shooting at an American-themed restaurant in the morning, and depending on how everything works out with the camera people, you’ll have to make two, possibly three there, then when we’re done, we’ll be driving into downtown Munich to a cooking school, where you’ll be making three, maybe four more. Those are the ones that will be judged in the taste test, which will be taken another 10-12 km away at a high school.”

I’m starting to think we should have talked a little more about that €100 honorarium.

Then, because I have a list of ingredients which include organic yeast, sea salt, authentic Italian pizza dough flour, tomato paste, salami and Santa Lucia mozzarella cheese, stuff you don’t find at your neighbourhood Aldi, I tell her it might be best if I bought them myself and schlepped them down with me.

“You sure you can take all those ingredients with you?” she asks. “It sounds like a lot to carry.”

“Nah, no problem,” I tell her. “But do you have a pizza stone? I can do it in a pan if you like, but I usually bake it on a stone. Makes for a nicer crust. Doesn’t sweat.”

“Uhh… we really want you to do it in a pan,” she says. “That’s the idea people here have of American pizza - baked in a pan, thick crust, that sort of thing.”

“Ummm, yeah, OK! I can bake it in pan if you like.”

Not that I ever have, mind you.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Next post: the shoot.