Clams and Ham at Dolce Vita

My sister-in-law visited recently and requested that we get some pizza at Dolce Vita. My response was a quote of Jules in Pulp Fiction, “Shit Negro! That's all you had to say!” Unfortunately, the reference was lost on her and we enjoyed a moment of awkward silence followed by my attempt to explain the reference followed by more awkward silence.

In addition to great pizza, Dolce Vita is a favorite spot of mine for photographing food. It’s something about the antique glass plus the black tables plus the colorful pizzas that make for some great food photo opportunities.


The first pizza was a special of porchetta and Portobello and basil, which is fancy talk for ham, fungus and weeds. Nomenclature aside, the pizza was great. The porchetta would make Oscar Meyer green with envy and the mushrooms were nicely sautéed.


The next pizza was their vongole, which is Italian for clams. Adorning this pie were vongole, garlic, cherry tomatoes and mozzarella. I’m a fan of clams and what I really liked about this pizza was that the clam juices worked its way through the melted cheese and into the crispy crust. The result was a juicy pizza with a bottom whose crispiness was paper-thin. Any juices that collected on my plate were sopped up by the crust that I butterflied to maximize its juice sopping capacity.

So if you find yourself in Dolce Vita
Try the pizza named after clams
Their crust is like a crispy pita
And you can say you ate like Tam

Bánh mì & mignon

Lunch

Met a good friend for lunch today at Les Givral on Milam. With sandwiches for $4 or less, this is a great place to get full for cheap. They're famous for their Vietnamese sandwiches called bánh mì, which literally translates to "bread."

Handheld heaven

This particular one is the "đac biet" or "special." Stuffed inside a warm, baked-fresh-daily French baquette are sliced meat (BBQ pork, chả lụa and French ham), pâté, pickled carrots, cucumber, jalapeno, cilantro, butter, mayonnaise, soy sauce and ground black pepper. As if this wasn't already enough mm-mmm in a bun, I add a couple of spoons of chili garlic paste to make my forehead sweat. The last two sentences just made my mouth water.

As I always say, if it doesn't have kick, it ain't worth a lick.

Dinner

On the commute home from work today, my wife and I agreed to not work out. So to celebrate our reaching an agreement, we made steak and scallops for dinner.

Yes, the sea scallops really were that big.

This 10 oz filet started off just under 3 inches thick but after cooking it shrank to roughly 2 inches...shrinkage sucks. I cooked the steak just like I did on last week's post. As you can see, I delivered on my promise to have steak again this week. Correcting last week's mistake, I got a thick cut and broiled it for 3 minutes each side, after searing of course. The result was a perfectly medium rare steak. Yay me!

The huge sea scallops were seared on medium high heat for about 4 minutes each side. The fleur de sel with dried basil and garlic was sprinkled on after cooking. The spinach, onion and mushroom mixture was also prepared just like last week.

This time around, I added tomatoes, both for added veggies and for more color on the plate. Thoroughly wash and wipe the plum tomatoes dry (this will reduce oil splattering later). In a hot pan on medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, minced garlic and 1 teaspoon of dried basil; toss to evenly coat the pan. Add the tomatoes and constantly shake to keep the red rounds moving. Continue until the skin on all the tomatoes have burst, about 5 minutes. Serve dinner.

So before you start your own scallop and steak dinner, I leave you with this closing thought: If scallops were blue, would it be called "smurf and turf"?