By Jeffrey Freehof
Photos by Josh Keown

Many of you have contemplated adding pasta to your menu but may still be reluctant. Well it’s time to cast your worries aside. I’ve written about pasta in the past and have even lead demos at International Pizza Expo. My goal now is to bring you through the most important part of making it happen — perfect pasta preparation!

Let me start with the very basics. There are two things that must happen before a single noodle can hit the pot of water. First, the water must be heavily salted. If you’ve ever been in the ocean, I imagine at some point you have gotten a mouth full of seawater. I hope you remember what that tasted like because that’s how salty I want your pasta water to taste. You can achieve that by putting 2/3 cup of salt into 4 gallons of water. Secondly, make sure your water comes to a full boil before you place your pasta in the pot. I’m not talking about a slight simmer either. Get the water to a full, rolling boil.

Now, you are ready to cook your pasta but there are a few things that are critical to successful pasta prep. One, don’t overcrowd the pot with too much pasta. Remember if you are using dry pasta, the pasta will absorb the salted water and expand in size. I’ve seen cooks put two parts pasta into three parts water, and before the pasta is fully cooked it has absorbed all the water and can’t continue to cook properly. They inevitably scorch the bottom of the pot and that burnt flavor will permeate through the rest of the pasta and ruin it all. Eight pounds of dry pasta in 4 gallons of boiling water is a good ratio that you should cook in a 5-gallon pot.

The second critical point I want to make is that you must frequently stir and move your pasta around, especially once it first goes into the boiling water. This is what keeps it from sticking together. I like to use an extra long pair of tongs to stir my pasta so I can pull the strands apart from each other. The wider the pasta’s surface, the more opportunity it has to cling to one another. Fettuccini will stick more than linguini, and dry lasagna noodles just love sticking together. I don’t like to waste oil, so I don’t oil my water. Some people say it will prevent your pasta from sticking. I say that simply adding oil to your water won’t achieve that goal and a few minutes later will simply go down the drain. The oil will come in handy after the pasta is cooked, however.

Although these points that I’ve shared with you thus far are all important, this next step, if not followed correctly, will throw all your previous efforts down the drain. You must cook your pasta about 90 seconds less than al dente. Al dente literally means “to the tooth.” As a culinary term that means to the bite, slightly firm or not overcooked. Most Americans and many restaurants overcook their pasta. Since I’m teaching you a method of cooking pasta that will be rinsed and chilled and then dipped in boiling water to order, you must slightly undercook your pasta in order to get it to the perfect texture as you are serving it to your guest.

I remember one of my first jobs as a teenage cook in a diner-type restaurant that had spaghetti on the menu. They would pre-cook the pasta and then store it in water, which is the absolute worst thing you can do! Another foolish thought is to think if you shut the heat off under the pot of pasta, that since the water is not boiling any longer, that the pasta is no longer cooking. Wrong! As soon as your pasta is slightly under al dente, I want you to drain it and immediately rinse it in cold water. This will mean that you’ll have to move the pasta around under the running water. This process should be completed within a couple of minutes.

Do not allow there to be any warm spots at all, otherwise the pasta will continue to cook slightly. While the pasta is still wet from rinsing it, pour about a half-cup of oil over the pasta and massage it in. Now you are ready to store your pasta under refrigeration. I would suggest that with portion bags, you portion out your pasta to the appropriate size (8 to 10 ounces for an entrée-sized portion). This will allow you to stock only what you need for each shift on the line instead of having a large container of pasta where your staff will never consistently portion the same every time. You will have a three-day shelf life on your pasta, so only cook what you anticipate serving for a two-day period. Have a small pot of water (unsalted this time) with a strainer basket on a grill or burner on at all times during meal periods. You will need to replenish the water many times throughout the day. When you get an order for pasta, as long as the water is at a boil, you only need to submerge the cooked pasta in the boiling water for 30 to 40 seconds. Then be sure to drain it well before it goes into the dish to ensure you are not serving a watery pasta entrée.



Although the cooking procedure is the same for all pastas, the cook time will vary from pasta to pasta. For example, thin spaghetti will take approximately seven minutes to cook where angel hair will take only three minutes to cook.

Tip: If you are using fresh pasta, use all the same procedures but know that your pasta will cook in approximately three minutes.

Rigatoni al Filo di Fumo

Yields: 4 Servings

¼ pound pancetta in a chunk about ½ inch thick
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 cups canned plum tomatoes (juices drained), crushed
½ cup frozen peas
1 pound cooked rigatoni
½ pound shredded or chopped fresh mozzarella
4 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Pare the rind from the pancetta and cut the meat into a small dice. In a large sauté pan set over medium heat, cook and stir the pancetta until it starts to get crisp around the edges.

Add the oil to the pan. Put the garlic through a garlic press into the pan. Add the tomatoes and peas. Raise the heat and bring the sauce to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the sauce, breaking up the tomatoes with a fork or spoon.

Add the rigatoni to the pan with the tomatoes. Immediately add the mozzarella and toss to combine.

Divide the pasta among four heated pasta bowls. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese over each serving.

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Chef Jeff Freehof
Photos by Josh Keown

Love it or hate it, ricotta just may be the most versatile cheese found in pizzerias today. Not only is it used in pasta dishes, but it can also be found atop pizzas and in rich, delightful sauces and desserts. It’s important to understand what ricotta comes from and how it’s made. Ricotta is Italian for “recooked” — it is made by “cooking” whey. It makes delicious lasagna, ravioli stuffing, gnocchi, cannoli, cheese-stuffed shells and even a great treat that both of my grandmothers used to make me called cheese blintzes (cheese filled crepes). Naturally, I’d be a fool if I didn’t mention how great pizza is with dollops of ricotta baked on it.

Many of us who have been blessed to learn how to make our own homemade fresh mozzarella at International Pizza Expo have learned that fresh milk has an enzyme added to it to separate the curds and whey. It’s that curd that we can buy to then make our own mozzarella. So, what about the whey? Well, it is then cooked to make ricotta.

Like types and styles of pizza crust and sauce, there are many different kinds of ricotta. There’s whole milk and part skim, with an obvious difference in the fat content. But there are also different textures you can find in ricotta cheese. Many ricottas can be a little bit grainy, and they are suitable for making lasagna, ravioli, manicotti or stuffed shells. Personally, I prefer a whipped, smooth ricotta cheese. It’s more versatile and has a much better mouth feel.

In order to use your ricotta cheese for both pasta dishes and desserts, it makes more sense to buy just one type. Ask your vendor to provide you with samples of the various ricottas they carry so that you can try them out for yourself.

For lasagna, manicotti, stuffed shells and ravioli, I like to season my ricotta with salt, pepper, garlic and Italian seasonings. I call my lasagna “Four- Cheese Lasagna” and find it much easier to assemble with all the cheeses in the filling instead of layering each cheese as I’m making the lasagna. For that reason, I add Parmesan, diced or shredded mozzarella and provolone cheeses to my ricotta filling. I fi nd it important to add a few eggs to this mixture to bind it together once it’s cooked.

There is superfine ricotta cheese available with very low moisture designed for use in desserts. This cheese is designed to hold powdered or confectionary sugar well without getting too moist and loose. Mixing three pounds of this ricotta with one pound of powdered sugar and a couple of tablespoons of almond extract makes a perfect cannoli filling. With a pastry bag, I fi ll my cannoli shells and then dip the ends in mini chocolate chips.

I even attempted tiramisu with this smooth ricotta as a replacement for the traditional Mascarpone cheese — and it came out perfect. I like to make a big batch and freeze it. First, I whip four quarts of heavy cream. When it’s almost whipped all the way, I add two pounds of powdered sugar and three small boxes of instant white chocolate pudding powder mix (which acts as a stabilizer).

Next, I fold in six pounds of smooth ricotta. This completes my cream filling. Once that is ready, I brew a double strength pot of coffee and sweeten it with 3 pounds of sugar. I line two full two inch hotel pans with plastic wrap and assemble the tiramisu.

I start by lining each pan with ladyfinger cookies. I drizzle the sweet coffee mixture over the cookies. Next, I layer in some of the cream. I repeat the process until I have three layers of soaked cookies with three layers of the cream. This will fi ll two hotel pans. Then I freeze it all.

In order to get a clean cut on the tiramisu, pop it out of the pan while it’s still frozen and cut each yield into 28 squares. Wrap each piece individually and keep them frozen. Pull a few out per shift. Thaw them in the refrigerator. Serve each piece with a sprinkling of cocoa on top.❖

A Unique Twist
Gnocchi is a little dumpling that is usually made with potato. I find it so much easier to make with ricotta cheese, which yields a light dumpling. Simply add a few ingredients together to make a soft gnocchi dough. Here’s a recipe that’s quick and easy.



Ricotta Gnocchi

1 pound ricotta cheese
1 egg
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¾ cup fl our
1 teaspoon salt

Mix the ingredients together to form a soft dough. If it’s too sticky, add a little more fl our — a little at a time — until you can roll the dough out on the counter.

Roll it out into a rope form and cut even pieces. You can press them with your thumb, roll them over the back of a fork with your finger or roll them over a gnocchi board that puts lines on them. Boil them in salted water for about 4 to 5 minutes. Drain them and immediately toss them in your favorite sauce and serve.

There are virtually hundreds of sauce options. Garlic butter would be great, but if you really wanted to stick with a ricotta theme, you could mix some ricotta with marinara to make a tomato cream sauce. You can even make an untraditional Alfredo sauce by draining the gnocchi, tossing it with some melted garlic butter, a cup of ricotta, ½ cup of Parmesan and ½ cup of cream.

Jeffrey Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, and is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and the Pizza Expo trade show family.

By Chef Jeff Freehof
Photos by Rick Daugherty

Love it or hate it, spinach has the potential to be a big hit on your menu and can be utilized in appetizers, pizza, pasta and entrées. I have loved spinach since I was a kid. In sixth grade, at recess, when most kids went across the street with their pocket full of change to buy candy, I would cross with them but then go to the bakery next to the candy store to buy a spinach pie. Yes, it’s the truth ... that’s how much I love spinach.

And, I love my spinach pies as well. They’re like a mini calzone made with bread dough. Here’s the awesome thing: my kids love them, too. I just made them 24 spinach pies to enjoy during their week off from school and they gobbled them up. To prove even more that I’m a true spinach geek, when I got my first car, a ’72 Ford Pinto and then got a CB radio, my handle (radio name) was actually “Spinach Man”. While cooking in an upscale restaurant when I was a junior and senior in high school, I’d look forward to going out after work at one in the morning, sharing a spinach pizza with my buddy, Sean. Yep, spinach is the life for me!

I get so happy when I can convert others who claim to hate spinach but then love one of my spinach creations, like a sampling of my Spanikopita. Spinach is like artichoke hearts in a sense that it doesn’t have a pile of flavor on its own, but really becomes a wonderful ingredient when it’s seasoned well or mixed with other ingredients. I’ll tell you right now that spinach and garlic is a match made in heaven. They belong together with a pinch of salt (of course). Now, keep one thing in mind. Don’t ever, ever use canned spinach for anything. I need you to promise! Canned spinach has no value to me whatsoever. It’s brown and mushy and doesn’t do spinach any justice. The people who claim to hate spinach, I’m convinced, are the same people whose parents tried to force canned spinach on them as a child. The two ways that I would suggest you buy spinach is either fresh or frozen. I prefer fresh, and for the last couple of years I’ve been buying the baby spinach. I like the baby fl at leaf for two reasons: it’s already washed and because the stems are so small the spinach is totally ready to use. I used to use washed spinach that was leafier, but there were lots of places for dirt and sand to hide and it usually needed extra washing.

Most people don’t realize what high water content spinach has. So, if you’re going to use fresh spinach in cooked dishes like pasta and pizza, understand that it really cooks down, wilting in volume about 80 percent. Frozen chopped spinach is a good alternative, especially if you’re going to offer hearty spinach pizzas. I’ve ordered a spinach pizza before and it looked like a sprinkling of parsley. Know that if a spinach lover orders it on their pizza, they really want some spinach.

Here’s the best way to handle and prepare frozen chopped spinach to top pizza or to add to an Alfredo dish: First, thaw the spinach under refrigeration, and then drain it very well by squeezing the excess water out. It’s important to add a little bit of vegetable oil or olive oil to the spinach to make it easier to work with. I like to add some salt and either fresh chopped or granulated garlic. For a two-pound box of thawed and drained spinach, I’d add ½ cup of oil, 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of garlic. This mixture can also be used perfectly well in calzones and the spinach pies that I love so much. If you really want to use fresh uncooked spinach on a pizza, you need to make sure it is placed on the pizza before the cheese. If you add fresh spinach on the top of a pizza, it will first wilt and then burn.

If you order fresh spinach, you want to check it to make sure none of it is wilted or slimy. If it is, refuse it. Even a little bit of slimy spinach in the corner of the bag can contaminate the rest of the spinach very quickly. If your spinach comes in real fresh and your refrigeration is working properly, your spinach should last a week. As I’ve shared when talking about menu development, if you’re going to bring in a new ingredient, make sure you use it in more than just one dish. I use spinach on my menu in five different dishes. ❖

Roman Vegetarian Pizza

1 16-inch pizza dough
6 ounces of Alfredo sauce (hot or cold)
10 ounces frozen chopped spinach, drained
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon granulated garlic
2 plum tomatoes sliced
2 ounces sliced black or Kalamata olives
8-10 pieces of artichoke heart quarters 1½ tablespoons of chopped garlic
8 ounces of your favorite pizza cheese blend

Stretch your dough, spread the Alfredo sauce. Mix the spinach, oil, garlic and salt, then kind of dollop the spinach onto the pizza, spreading it out as much as you can for the best coverage. Spread the sliced tomatoes and artichoke hearts. Sprinkle the olives and chopped garlic with the pizza cheese on top. Bake (the average deck oven at 550 F will take approximately 8-12 minutes).

Jeffrey Freehof, owner of The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, is Pizza Today’s resident expert.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photos by Rick Daugherty

No member of pizza’s holy trinity — dough, sauce and cheese — should be overlooked. Without hitting all three out of the park, your pizza easily gets lost in the crowded foodservice landscape. So why do so many operations simply open a can of tomato sauce and roll with it? In my opinion, giving your customers the very best sauce should be a top priority. And one way to do that when working from a canned sauce base is to take matters into your own hands with a little “sauce doctoring.”

With that said, here’s my advice to you: do some research to find out what people like in your area. What I served in Massachusetts helped put me in the top 100 independent pizzerias in the country about a decade ago. But I needed to tweak that recipe a little bit to please the diners here in Georgia, where I now live. Lesson: we must be willing to understand what our customers want if we plan to succeed.



In my years of working in foodservice, I have met more than my fair share of arrogant chefs and operators who insist that their way and their recipe is the best. Regardless of what kind of feedback they receive, they aren’t willing to alter their recipes for anyone. While that approach actually does work for a select few, I can promise you that the demise of many a restaurant has come about as a result of this stubbornness.

That’s why it’s important to learn the most loved flavor profiles in your area. Some regions tend to favor sweeter sauces, while others spring for spicy, chunky, zesty, herbladen, etc. There’s an audience out there for each type … which audience lives in your town?

In my restaurant, I take a centrist approach and go for the middle ground when it comes to the flavor profile of my sauce. My sauce is mildly sweet, but with a rich and fresh tomato flavor that isn’t overpowered with herbs. I find this has an appeal to a wide audience. Those looking for a zestier sauce or something with more herbs can shake on some crushed red pepper and oregano or basil at the table.



Knowing that the quality and flavor of your pizza sauce should be amongst the highest priority in your business, it’s crucial to understand some important principles. Let’s start at the beginning. I can’t stress this enough, so listen up: it is nearly impossible to take an inexpensive, inferior product and make something superior out of it. Let that sink in. Reread the sentence again if you have to. If you are starting with a substandard sauce, you are already losing.

Let me share an anecdote with you. Recently, I went to a pizzeria and was excited to see Veal Parmesan with spaghetti on the menu. Much to my surprise, the sauce that smothered this dish was so horrible that I couldn’t eat it. It had to have taken great effort to make any sauce taste that bad. The operator obviously started with a cheap, inferior sauce and tried to doctor it up. But, like I said, you can’t make a superior end product if you start with inferior beginnings.

If you aren’t pleased with the sauce you’re using for your base, start by getting samples from your vendors so that you can experiment with different brands. Or if you’ve heard of a company or have seen sauce ads that appeal to you in Pizza Today, call that company directly and ask for a sample and who you can purchase their product from.

Once you have a base and are ready to alter it to your specific needs, there are several options. Let’s say, for example, that you are using an extra-heavy pizza sauce, but you want to cut the heaviness a little. You can do this by adding some ground tomatoes and puree, but that will dilute the flavor. So you’ll have to compensate by adding ingredients such as sugar, salt, garlic and Italian seasonings. Treat this process like the Colonel did with his 11 herbs and spices for his secret recipe chicken. You need to first measure precisely. Secondly, make sure your employees understand the importance of following the recipe and do not alter it.

If your sauce is too acidic, add just a little bit of sugar to cut the acidity. If your sauce is too thin, add either some extra heavy pizza sauce or even a little tomato paste to thicken it.

Some people get confused about whether or not to cook pizza sauce like we do when we’re making a marinara. The short answer: don’t do it! It is not necessary to cook pizza sauce during its preparation. In fact, cooking it can be highly detrimental.

Just keep in mind that basic is better when it comes to your pizza sauce. Keeping it simple will result in a better sauce and fewer operational headaches for you. ❖

Jeffrey Freehof owns the Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, and is a frequent speaker at the Pizza Expo family of tradeshows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photos by Josh Keown

Whether topping an inventive pizza, used in pasta dishes or on sandwiches, sweet peppers are a fresh, healthy and delicious hit with customers. While bell peppers are widely used in the pizza industry, banana peppers, cherry peppers and other varieties are great options for operators looking to expand their selections.

I love to reminisce about days of old and think it’s funny how certain things we see or old friends we talk to take us back to a different time and place. What amazes me even more is when the taste or smell of food brings me back to my childhood. There’s nothing like the aroma of grilled fresh pepper mixed with onion. Doesn’t that bring you back to every fair or carnival you ever went to?

One of my all-time favorites is fi re-roasted peppers. Roasted red peppers make the top of my list. There are so many different things you can do with them for just about every segment of your menu. In the same way when caramelizing onions, fire-roasting peppers bring out more of their natural sugars giving them a nice sweet characteristic. Peppers are grown in so many different colors now that adding orange, red, yellow, purple and green peppers will make any dish visually stimulating.

Whether you use your peppers raw, sautéed, fire-grilled, on skewers or cut into a mince, chop, chunk or strip, they can really bring your menu to life. Let me give you several successful ways that I have used a variety of sweet peppers on my menus and on catered events:

❖ Cherry peppers are great simply added to salads or even your salad bar, but why not take these delightful small peppers and stuff them? The sky is the limit, but prosciutto with provolone, mozzarella or even feta cheese makes a great start! Cutting cherry peppers in half and stuffing them instead of mushroom caps adds a whole different dimension to hot or cold appetizers.

❖ Banana pepper rings are sweet in comparison to a jalapeño or even a pepperoncini, but still offer a tiny bite to them. Again, on salads and salad bars these delicious peppers are irresistible. Don’t stop there, however. When you take your fried calamari rings out of the hot oil, add a dozen or so banana pepper rings to them and toss them together with shredded Parmesan to really enhance your presentation and munchability. I serve Italian nachos in my restaurant, and besides diced tomatoes and sliced black olives, banana pepper rings proudly sit atop of this amazing appetizer, along with Alfredo, meat sauce and mozzarella cheese.

❖ You can create a beautiful Fra Diavlo sauce by using any blend of your favorite peppers cut into chunks and sautéed with garlic and crushed red pepper, then simmered with a great marinara. This sauce can be used for many different pasta dishes. Penne and sausage Fra Diavlo or a Seafood Fra Diavlo with shrimp, scallops and mussels are just two amazing choices.

I know I shared with you that fire roasted red peppers are my favorite, so let me tell you how to fire roast a pepper. First of all, this should be done in a restaurant under an exhaust hood or outside, but not in a household kitchen. I like to rub my peppers very lightly with a little bit of vegetable oil. This will help them burn easier. You then want to place your peppers over an open fi re. You want to burn the outside of your peppers just until they are black. You’ll need to turn them to achieve this consistently over the whole pepper. Don’t be fooled by its outside appearance. Simply set them aside for about 10 minutes until they cool just enough to handle them. Placing the burnt pepper in a bag will help steam the outside of the skin, which will help it peal easier. I then peel the black skin off of the pepper under cool running water. Next pop the core and seeds out and you’re left with a beautiful roasted red pepper that can probably be used in a hundred different ways. Use them on an Antipasto salad or any other variety of salads.

How about chopping that roasted red pepper up finely and mixing it with a cup of ricotta cheese and 3 ounces of gorgonzola cheese to make a ravioli filling? Wow –– now that would be an awesome appetizer or entrée tossed with your guest’s favorite sauce. I’d suggest a nice Alfredo or perhaps a garlic and sage butter with fresh chives.



Roasted Red Pepper Pesto

1 roasted red pepper
¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons pesto
¼ cup Parmesan cheese

Place all ingredients into a food processor and blend.

To make a roasted red pepper mayo, take ¼ cup of your new red pepper pesto and add it to ½ cup of mayonnaise. One great wrap that I created several years ago using that very spread was called a Tuscan Club wrap. I used a tomato basil wrap with the roasted red pepper pesto, sliced turkey, ham, Genoa salami, provolone cheese, lettuce and tomato. Give it try, because it was a huge hit with my customers.

Don’t forget to be creative with blending an array of sweet pepper throughout your menu. If you want to start with something simple, try a Pepper Palooza Pizza: using your traditional crust, sauce and cheese, add an array of different colored peppers. The look of this pizza alone will invoke others to try this treasure of a pie. So go ahead, pepper things up a bit! ❖

Jeffrey Freehof, owner of The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, is Pizza Today’s resident expert.

By Jeff Freehof
Photos by Josh Keown & Rick Daugherty

Good, old-fashioned hamburger has adorned pizza across America for decades now. Using ground beef is simple, but bear in mind that there are different levels of leanness to consider when purchasing the ingredient. The leaner you go, the more expensive it gets.

It’s important to figure out how to cross-utilize all the ingredients on your menu. For example, would it make sense to add hamburgers to your sandwich section? Could you use the ground beef in a marinara meat sauce? These are just options to keep in mind. But for this story, let’s focus on ground beef as a pizza topping.

Regardless of the lean-to-fat ratio you use, make sure you buy real ground beef. There is no need to use beef that has fillers. Trust me, that inferior product won’t really save you a buck in the long run because it will cost you customers.

Once you’ve decided on the ground beef that you’re going to purchase, you need to cook it off in a big skillet. I prefer to season my ground beef slightly with a little salt and pepper while I’m cooking it to give it some flavor. Once it’s cooked, drain well and then cool it as quickly as you can for safety reasons. Laying it out on sheet pans and cooling it in the refrigerator or freezer is a great way to achieve this. Next, you want to portion the ground beef in appropriate size containers or bags. If you want to prepare plenty in advance, you may freeze this product and thaw it as you need it.

If you want to spice things up a little, no problem! Just like we take plain wings and toss them in different sauces, we can do the same thing with our ground beef to create new masterpieces on a pizza crust for our guests. Consider the following options:

Mexican pizza: Right after you drain your beef, set some aside and add taco seasoning. Use this both for an amazing taco salad and a Mexican pizza. To create the latter, use salsa on crust instead of pizza sauce. Top with peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives and taco beef, and blend some cheddar cheese with your pizza cheese for extra oomph. Also, garnishing with a little bit of shredded Romaine makes for a great finishing touch.

BBQ beef pizza: Mix a little BBQ sauce in with your ground beef. Top your dough with BBQ sauce, bacon, ham, BBQ beef, onions, cheese and bake to perfection. BBQ lovers will praise you for this one.

Buffalo beef pizza: Buffalo chicken has been popular, but there’s no reason not to season some cooked ground beef with spicy Buffalo sauce. Use this as a topping, along with peppers, onions and cheese. Serve this with celery sticks and ranch dressing for dipping and you’ve got a hot seller. u

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

“Desserts are a missed opportunity,” says Jeffrey Freehof, owner of The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, and a resident expert at Pizza Today. In our September 2010 issue, he called out desserts as one of the five things every pizzeria should be making in-house. His advice is worth repeating: “Sure, there are a lot of great items you can purchase already prepared with a built-in profit margin,” he says, “but you can usually double your profit (or more) if you can make it yourself.” So, Pizza Today put out its feelers, looking for insight from operators who have created successful dessert programs by either going 100-percent homemade or, more commonly, using a clever combination of homemade, convenience products and prepared desserts.

At 75-seat Bella Vista Trattoria in Wilmington, Delaware, chef/co-owner Candace Roseo offers a rotating dessert menu of 12 Italian favorites. “We stay true to our brand and to our high standards, and to the way of life we knew growing up outside of Naples,” she says. Much of Bella Vista’s menu is produced in-house — from the bread and pizza dough to the pizza sauce and biscotti. “We have a weekly back-of-the-house prep already in place, and it’s manageable,” adds Roseo. “If you have the system set up, then homemade desserts can be much less expensive than those purchased from a purveyor.” But Roseo does rely on convenience products where appropriate. For the very popular cannoli, she buys the pastry shell, but makes the filling. “It’s just not practical for us to make the shells. We don’t want to fry them in the same fryers that we use for chicken and eggplant,” she says. For the restaurant’s traditional Calabrese cannoli filling, she combines ricotta with vanilla, confectioner’s sugar, candied citrus and mini chocolate chips.

Bella Vista’s tiramisu is made from scratch, but Roseo admits that it took them a while to get the system down pat. “We had to figure out packaging and storing, but we landed on the right equipment and method, and we’re really happy with the result,” she says. The prep cooks make the tiramisu in batches, then use a 13-inch by 9-inch heavy-duty resin sheet pan with a lid for storage (similar to a catering tray), freezing them until needed. They prep six trays a week, with each tray holding 15 individual servings. They thaw one tray for service, defrost one in the walk-in and have the rest on hand in the freezer.

Bella Vista tried making its granitas and ices in house, but decided to source them from an Italian purveyor instead. “It was a little more work than it was worth,” says Roseo. And with the sfogliatelle, Italian pastries that look like seashells, Bella Vista moved from making them in house to bringing them in unbaked. “You make them by hand,” says Roseo. “They’re hugely labor intensive. We had quality-control issues — for mass production it just wasn’t working.” They now bring them in frozen and bake them off for service.

At Piece Brewery & Pizzeria in Chicago, most of its desserts, such as the Supreme Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce and the Chocolate Extreme Cake, are out-sourced. But, the signature Chocolate Pizza is homemade. “We don’t make most of our desserts, because they’re not a big part of what we do,” says Bill Jacobs, owner of this 220-seat eatery. “We sell pizza and beer.” Indeed, Piece has an onsite brewery and serves very popular New Haven-style pies. The chocolate pizza, inspired by silent partner Rick Nielsen’s (of Cheap Trick fame) trip to Italy, features pizza dough topped with Nutella 9 (chocolate-hazelnut spread) and mascarpone. Piece bakes it, slices it, and serves the whole pie for $11.95. It runs a 20 percent food cost. “It does really well for us and is so easy to execute,” Jacobs says.

For the staff at San Francisco’s Pauline’s Pizza, the homemade-dessert menu is a heartfelt extension of their core branding and mission statement. The eggs used in the desserts? Sourced from the chickens raised on property. “We also grow our own produce, source organic and make everything in-house,” says Mike Green, sous chef and chief ice-cream maker. “It’s who we are and our customers love us for it.” That customer base has been steady for the last 25 years. “Word of mouth keeps us successful,” says Green.

For Pauline’s seasonal sorbet trio, diners might find an expression of the season’s best melons with scoops of ambrosia melon, heirloom melon and kiwano melon. This pizzeria, which serves Californian-style pizza, runs a core dessert menu of five, including chocolate mousse and butterscotch pudding. Homemade ice cream is a star at Pauline’s, with seasonal favorites featuring homegrown fruits and nuts from the organic garden and ranch. “When you make homemade desserts, your customers know that you care what you’re putting on the plate,” he says.

Chocolate Chip Pizza

1 pound homemade pizza dough or purchased pizza dough
2 teaspoons butter, melted
¼ cup chocolate-hazelnut spread
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons milk-chocolate chips
2 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts, toasted (optional)
Powdered sugar for dusting

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Roll out the dough to a 9-inch-diameter round. Transfer the dough to the prepared pan. Brush the dough with butter, then bake in a 450 F oven until crisp and golden, about 18 minutes. Immediately spread the chocolate-hazelnut spread over the pizza; sprinkle chocolate chips over top. Bake just until the chocolate begins to melt, about 1 minute. Sprinkle hazelnuts over the pizza. Dust with powdered sugar. Cut into wedges. Serve.

Katie Ayoub is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today. She lives in Naperville, Illinois.

BY JEFF FREEHOF
PHOTOS BY JOSH KEOWN

A neat, clean and organized kitchen is always a happy kitchen. Life in our pizzerias can be hectic. When compared to other restaurants, I think we put out a larger menu with a much smaller space, for the most part. It creates a lot of work and a lot of prep –– all in tight spaces. We want to make sure that we’re also keeping up with board of health regulations. That’s why it’s so important that we are organized in everything we do. Not only does everything need to have its own place, we as leaders need to make sure our staff is aware of it and follows the plan.

The one thing I’ve learned in my 30-plus years of doing this is that even though we may try to find responsible and mature individuals to work with us, we still need to bring our procedures to an elementary level. It’s really the best way to make sure things get done properly and consistently. First and foremost, daily prep lists and checklists are critical to ensure everything gets done properly. Also, closing checklists have saved me from so many headaches. Sure, we can assume that our staff should know what to do by now — but the checklist is king! Have a place for them to initial each item that gets done.

Once we know those tasks are being completed thoroughly, we now want to take a look at the streamlining of our operation. I’ve actually designed menus around equipment that I had at a restaurant that I would take over, and I’ve had the opportunity to move some equipment around to better suit the flow of the operation. Look at your menu mix and the tasks that need to be done during high volume. Do you find yourself running around like a mad man or woman from one end of the kitchen to the other just to complete a dish? Where do you keep your plates or to-go boxes? Are they at your fingertips, or are they around the corner? Here are some ways to streamline your actions:

u Add inexpensive shelving in your work area to put things like plates, to- go boxes, bags, dressing cups and fork kits. This can save hundreds of steps per shift, which increases productivity drastically. When everything is at arm’s length, ticket times speed up. I promise your customers will love getting their food quicker.

I was a chef at a restaurant many years ago where the kitchen was actually way too big for the volume we were doing. On a slow Monday night, I felt like I was running a marathon because things were spread out too far. The most efficient kitchen I ever worked in was a small, tight kitchen where I could practically reach everything with a little side step to the right or left. Whatever your space is, make sure you design your space where everything is stocked and at your fingertips!

u How about your reach-in refrigerators? Are they neat with everything accessible, or do you have to move everything around just to find the anchovies? Having smaller containers for all the ingredients needed for the menu is an excellent choice so that you’re not fumbling around looking for what you need. Obviously, you’ll need large enough containers for the items that you go through more of, like a small container for pineapple and anchovies and a larger space for mozzarella. Set it up so you have enough for the shift. I think it’s better to have to restock for each shift because it allows you to clean your containers and shelves while you’re re-stocking.

u Think of your kitchen set-up in the same way you have your pizza make station set up. You certainly wouldn’t have your pizza makers put the cheese before the sauce. You want a nice, continuous flow. Every aspect should be prepared in the same way from start to finish when making the dishes on your menu. It also helps tremendously when it’s time to have a co-worker step in to help during peak times.

u Once you have figured out where you want everything, make laminated labels. That keeps everyone on the same page.

Now that you’ve created your daily prep lists and check lists and you are ensuring they are getting done daily, and you’ve got your shop neat, clean and organized with everything in its place, there’s just one more philosophy I want you to adopt: “close to open.” As the end of the night approaches, what’s on everyone’s mind is usually, “how quick can I get out of here?” So many times the day crew will come in and have to re-stock everything, along with their prep, and that starts the shift with a less-than- perfect attitude. Once the night crew understands that before they leave the entire store needs to be stocked and ready to open the next day, the faster they’ll get it done. They will learn to stock as they go during their shift, which saves labor dollars. Now, the day crew can focus solely on prep and get off to a very quick and happy start. This can even allow you to bring some morning crew in a little later, saving even more labor dollars.

Hang the NCO –– neat, clean and orderly –– signs up around the restaurant. Make it a priority and make it happen. Then you, as a leader, will be able to focus on other important areas of your operation. u

Jeffrey Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent speaker at the Pizza Expo family of tradeshows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photo by Josh Keown

Cheese-filled ravioli is an Italian staple that we’ve seen on menus for decades. Over the last several years we’ve seen these delightful stuffed pasta pillows get a delectable makeover. As we culinary folks have come to look at stretched pizza dough as an empty canvas where almost anything goes, we have realized the same is true when it comes to stuffing our ravioli. Meats, vegetables, a wide variety of cheeses or any combination of them all is what is thrusting ravioli into the culinary spotlight. Besides amazing fillings, chefs around the globe are creating wonderfully flavored dough as well to use as the outer pasta layer.

A traditional pasta dough is made with 100-percent durum semolina, which is the hardest part of the wheat. When I make ravioli, I usually use the semolina, but on occasion I have simply used flour and eggs, making my dough soft enough to go through the roller but stiff enough that it isn’t too sticky. I love using a food processor to blend my dough quickly. I also have moved from my counter top hand crank unit with the attachable motor to my pasta attachment that provides an awesome strong motor that allows me to zip through rolling out my dough so much faster.

Now, once you’ve decided what kind of dough you’ll make and you’ve chosen your filling, you’ve got so many different ways to
assemble the ravioli. If you’re using a dough roller of some sort, you’ll have a nice even sheet of pasta, which of course is a plus. There are ravioli trays you can use by placing the bottom sheet of dough on them and then spooning your filling over the spots with indentations on them (which are for the filling). You can make the ravioli in the exact same way without using the tray by simply laying the sheet out on your workbench. Now remember some important tips: you must brush some egg wash on the inside of one of the layers of pasta (top or bottom), but not both. The egg wash will act as the glue. Once you placed your filling on the dough and one of the sheets of pasta is egg washed, place the top layer over the bottom layer with the filling. The other important tip is to ensure that there are no air bubbles trapped inside the ravioli. This will almost guarantee the ravioli ripping and letting the filling seep out during the cooking process.

If you’re using a ravioli tray, you’ll roll over the tray with a rolling pin, which will cut and separate the ravioli. If you are not using a tray, simply use a knife or a pizza cutter to cut and separate the ravioli.

I went to a nice restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, several years ago and ordered the Raviolo, which is a huge jumbo-stuffed ravioli. There were four to my dinner portion, but there was plenty to eat because they were so huge. The chef simply took some four-inch by four-inch pasta squares, egg washed two of the edges, filled the center with a chicken and spinach mixture and folded them into a triangle. This seemed to be an easier process and less time consuming, but I can assure you they did not fall short in the satisfactory department!

Another secret to successful ravioli cooking is to really chill your ravioli well. If the filling is still warm or too soft, the ravioli will tear during cooking and you will lose some of your hard work.

Now that we’ve got some techniques down in regards to the dough and assembly process, let’s talk fillings. You can keep ravioli simple with a ricotta filling, or you can blend many different cheeses together. I have used a six-cheese blend of ricotta, Romano, Parmesan, Asiago, mozzarella and provolone. I love using spinach in ravioli. A smooth Gorgonzola or goat cheese gives a nice touch to ravioli — but you must be aware of how you are blending your fillings. If you use something with strong flavors, like a Gorgonzola or bleu cheese, you really shouldn’t use them straight. Cut them with something smoother and milder like a ricotta, farmer’s cheese or even a mascarpone.

Also, if you’re using proteins or large vegetables in your filling, make sure they are chopped well without any sharp edges that could potentially rip the ravioli. Here’s a list of ingredients that will make awesome ravioli filling:

crab meat
lobster
shrimp
chicken
sausage
sun-dried tomatoes
spinach
portabella mushrooms
ground veal
braised beef
pumpkin
butternut squash

Once you figure out what kind of ravioli filling you want to make, you have the next culinary task of deciding what sauce will best
accompany your pasta. Keep in mind there may be many different sauces that could be a great fit. For example, I love to make a nutmeg and cinnamon cream sauce to accompany my butternut squash ravioli. But an awesome brown sage butter is also amazing with it. Marinara would be a great sauce with a chicken, spinach and cheese ravioli, but so would a creamy pesto sauce or a roasted red pepper and garlic Gorgonzola butter.

As you can see, the possibilities are really endless. u

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at International Pizza Expo.

BY JEFF FREEHOF
PHOTOS BY JOSH KEOWN

It’s certainly important to consider and sample new items to incorporate into our menu to keep our customer base excited and interested. Although I do think it’s critical to periodically introduce new dishes, it’s not always necessary to bring in new ingredients. All too often we overlook the obvious –– existing inventory we already have. I know that I’ve said it over the years that when creating a menu, try to use your ingredients in as many places as you can, but now I want you to take a look at some of your basic ingredients and together, we’ll find new and exciting ways to create something fresh for your menu while increasing your rate of return with your current customer base.

Let’s take a look at some everyday ingredients and see what can be done with them. I’ll bet you use garlic in your restaurant. I use so much garlic and love it so much that I named my restaurant after it –– The Garlic Clove. I know it’s easy to use granulated garlic and I use some as well, but purchasing peeled garlic cloves adds a greater flavor. We chop some pretty fine in the food processor with a little bit of oil and use it in so many different recipes. I process it fine enough to then put into a squeeze bottle with a large enough opening to use on pizza and in sauté dishes, soups and sauces. You can also lightly coat garlic cloves with olive oil and slowly roast them in the oven. The first benefit is the aroma for all to enjoy; but, once garlic is roasted, it becomes tender and the natural sugars come out, so it’s not as abrasive as raw garlic. We served three cloves of roasted garlic in some olive oil to our guests for them to mash into the oil with their fork and dip their bread into. Customers feel like you’ve given them a pot of gold! The roasted garlic can be blended with butter to make a roasted garlic butter for use on bread, grilled chicken or steak, and it’s awesome as a pizza topper.

Spinach is also a favorite ingredient, and I don’t think it should ever be sautéed without garlic. They belong together. Most operators use spinach as a pizza topping, but I have come to find out that many use frozen chopped spinach. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’d like you to consider switching to fresh baby spinach. This product is so much more user friendly than the spinach we used to buy with big thick stems that had to be removed, and was very sandy and needed to be thoroughly washed. Now it comes washed and ready to use. I love using fresh spinach on pizza (it’s important to make sure that it is under the cheese so it doesn’t burn). It’s a great addition as a spinach salad, or to add to our normal offerings like garden, Caesar, chef and Greek salads. I top our spinach salad with sliced red onion, crumbled hard boiled eggs, fresh bacon bits, dried cranberries and goat cheese rolled in crushed pistachio nuts and finely minced sundried tomatoes. Serve it with the customers’ dressing of choice. We recommend our slightly sweet honey–poppyseed dressing. Spinach is great in a spinach artichoke dip, in sauté dishes, pasta dishes and even on sandwiches. We sell an eggplant Florentine with breaded or grilled eggplant, sautéed spinach and roasted red pepper with honey mustard on our homemade focaccia bread and melted provolone. It’s an amazing sandwich, even if you’re not a vegetarian!

What are you using for bread in your restaurant? Even if you’re simply using sub rolls, you need to stretch that beyond sandwiches. Like me, I’m sure you want to use the freshest bread, and we all get frustrated when an employee forgets to close the package or container or when it simply gets a day or so too old and they lose their freshness. Don’t make the mistake of throwing away the bread and spending money on croutons for salad. With a serrated bread knife, cube it, drizzle a little melted butter or oil over them with a little garlic salt and bake them at about 300 F until they are dried out and crisp. These make perfect croutons for salad and soup. Also consider drying out your bread and then grinding it into breadcrumbs to be used for breading your eggplant or chicken, or even to be used in your homemade meatball. I used to have so much leftover bread that I started making bread pudding, which added a brand new top-selling dessert! Fresh tomatoes are certainly ingredients we all use in salads and on our sandwiches, but why stop there? Why not alternate sliced tomatoes with fresh soft mozzarella on a bed of spring mix with some fresh basil for a wonderful Caprese salad? How about dicing your ripe tomatoes and tossing them with some freshly chopped garlic, a drizzle of olive oil salt, pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar and a dollop of pesto for a simple bruschetta to be served with some toasted or grilled bread? This is yet one more use for your day-old rolls.

Great northern or cannellini beans are very inexpensive and may be kicking around your pantry. Yes, they are perfect in soups, but why not use them for something I call Italian hummus? Drain your beans, place them in a food processor, drizzle a little olive oil and add minced fresh garlic, salt and pepper. Blend it until it is smooth and serve with toast points. This will be great to accompany our bruschetta tomatoes.

One more quick idea: Take the green, black and kalamata olives you have and add some capers, fresh garlic and a drizzle of olive oil. Course chop in the food processor — and you now have a homemade olive tapenade, which can also be served with toast points, spread on a sandwich or tossed with a pasta dish. Use these easy ideas to quickly add to your menu and take it to the next level! u

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Jeff Freehof Photo by Josh Keown

Have you ever thought there was something nutty going on in your pizzeria? It’s definitely some­thing to consider when it comes to incorporating nuts into your menu. There are so many varieties of nuts that can be used in various ways and in so many dishes.

Now of course, nuts come in a variety of sizes, textures and flavors. The nuts you use anywhere on your menu should be cooked and not raw. When you toast nuts ––whatever type it is –– the flavor profile becomes more enhanced with a much more desirable flavor, and, yes, it even changes the texture slightly.

Before I go any further with some creative suggestions, I want you to understand how serious nut allergies can be. In 1995, a wrongful death suit was filed against a popular pizza chain after a New Hampshire woman died following consumption of a chicken pesto sandwich. The woman had reportedly asked the server if the sauce contained nuts, and the server failed to mention that it did. Following consumption, the woman fell into anaphylactic shock and died a week later, prompting a $10.4 mil­lion lawsuit filed by her family.

If you’re going to use nuts in your recipe in any capacity, however slight, you need to clearly state your use of nuts on your menu. Further care can be taken through proper labeling, staff training and repeated warnings. Take precautionary mea­sures so that cross contamination is not taking place within your own restaurant. The safety of our staff and customers must be our priority.

Cautions completed, let’s take a look at a variety of nuts and how they may be incorporated into your menu. Keep in mind that different nuts have different price points, so make sure you pay close attention to what kind of nuts you’re bringing in and how they’ll affect your food costs. For example if you want to kick up your Hawaiian Pizza by adding some macadamia nuts, it’s important to know that you’ve picked an appropriate nut for that pizza but you’ve also picked a expensive nut as well. Don’t let that stop you from using macadamia nuts just because they’re expensive. Either change your price point to accommodate the costly macadamias or think about coarsely chopping or crushing the nuts and give the pizza a light dusting instead of scattering whole macadamias over the pizza.

You also want to keep in mind, that it may be better to sprinkle any nuts on your pizza after it comes out of the oven. Otherwise, they may burn especially if they are on top of the pizza as it bakes.

I’ve used pine nuts not only in my pesto but also on a pizza called “the Amazing Bangkok.” It was quite an intriguing pizza with a coconut and curry base for the sauce with roasted chicken and red and green peppers, garlic, scallions, Mandarin oranges and pine nuts with a teriyaki drizzle over the pizza just before it got served.

You can get as creative as you want with different kinds of nuts on your pizza. If you decide that you want to add almonds, you now need to de­cide between whole, crushed, sliced or slivered. Each option fits various menu applications.

Obviously nuts are great on sal­ad. In a salad demo that I did both at Pizza Expo and on the Pizza Expo and on the Pizza Today Web sites a few years ago, I showed you how to take a simple and freshly made garden salad and quickly transform into an upscale salad that can literally be made in seconds and they are both made with nuts. The first is a lemon pecan chicken salad. Simply add to your freshly made garden salad a crumbled hard-boiled egg, a scoop of homemade chicken salad, two ounces of toasted chopped pecans and a honey lemon dressing or a dressing of their choice.

The second salad I recommend is a Honey Ginger Almond Chicken Salad. Start with a freshly made garden salad, add a crumbled egg, some grilled chicken breast and two ounces of toasted almond slices with a nice honey ginger dressing. Walnuts and candied walnuts have become a popular salad topping and are something to consider.

Obviously, Pad Thai is an ethnic pasta dish made with rice noodles which is far from the spaghetti or fettuccini that we serve on a daily basis, but it is a nice alternative to our every day menu and a gluten free alternative as well. I mention Pad Thai because it has crushed peanuts with its other wonderful ingredients like cilantro, carrots, bean sprouts, scal­lions and chicken or other protein, and these flavors can be combined on pizzas and salads, and even sandwiches.

I think pistachios and cashews are great nuts to add to your meals as well. In a previous article, I shared that I like to finely chop pistachio nuts with sun-dried tomatoes and then roll some one-ounce goat cheese balls into the mixture. These pistachio and sundried tomato encrusted goat cheese balls are the perfect garnish to any salad or meat and cheese platter.

Now you can introduce nuts to your pizza, pasta and salad menu. There’s NUTTin’ to it!

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

WILLOW STREET'S
COCONUT PRAWN PIZZA

1 dough ball
3 ounces sweet chili sauce
1/3 cup mozzarella
1/4 cup smoked Gouda
15 prawns, sliced in half
2-1/2 ounces red onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons fresh shredded coconut
2 ounces rough chopped peanuts
1-1/2 ounces cilantro, picked leaves
1-1/2 ounces fresh mint, picked leaves
Roll out dough ball to 11 inches in diam­eter. Use fingers to create 1/4-inch crust. Spread sauce out from center of dough. Evenly cover with mozzarella and Gouda cheese. Lay red onions, prawns (ridged side up) and coconut evenly across pizza. Sprinkle with peanuts and bake in wood-fired oven until cheese begins to golden and edges crisp. Turn pizzas 2-3 times while cooking to ensure even browning. When finished, garnish with cilantro and fresh mint. Slice and serve.


CANDIED PECANS
1/4 cup pecans
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water
Combine ingredients in a small sauce­pan. Bring to a boil. Turn down to simmer for 5-7 minutes until coated and golden. (If too runny,continue to simmer). Let pecans dry on parchment paper.

BY JEFF FREEHOF
PHOTO BY ART DEPT.

There are two times of the year that salad sales in restaurants spike. The first spike is a short-lived one, and that’s the first week in January when people are making their New Year’s resolutions. The second one is now and lasts all summer! With great salad options on your menu, salad sales can be very strong all year. If you’re smart, you’ll make your way to the drawing board or, in our case, the cutting board and create some amazing salads that your guests will fall in love with. Take a look at your existing inventory and see what you have that will be the perfect addition in creating some fresh and vibrant new salad options.

Making your own salad dressing might seem like too much work, but you’ll be amazed when you find out how incredibly fast, simple and cost effective it is. So many pizza operators use dressing packets or cups, and I’ll admit that they are very convenient. The reality, however, is that premade dressings will always cost more and will never be as good as what you can make yourself. Premade dressings are required to include in its long list of ingredients (that most people can’t even pronounce) some type of preservative, which is not generally delightful to the palate.

Once you get your salad menu down, we can get to the component that ties it all together and gives the salad life. I always thought it was lame that a restaurant will have only one house dressing. Impressive? Hardly. To me, it’s stating that we’re either too lazy to make the rest of them or we simply are not talented enough. Not only is it cheaper and tastier, it’s a no-brainer. To add to the awesomeness of house-made dressing, you now need to find some nice little pint-sized containers to fill and sell them! Make sure you put a sticker with your restaurant’s logo and phone number on it. Think of the advertising dollars you have spent over the years trying to get your name in front of your customers to remind them “We’re ready to serve you!” When your customers open their refrigerator at home and see your logo 6-10 times a day, that’s a really good thing. Let me give you some of my favorite dressing ideas that are simple and very popular with my customers.

Many of my dressings start with mayonnaise as the base and I build from there. Honey Lemon dressing is one that I use on a Honey Lemon Pecan Chicken Salad or simply as a choice of dressing on any salad.

For a small batch, mix: 2 cups of mayo 1/3 cup of honey ¼ cup lemon juice ¼ cup of water 2 tablespoons of fresh or freeze-dried chives That should take you about 60 seconds to make. Once you tweak the recipe, you’ll want to multiply the recipe to start with a gallon of mayo.

Here’s another great dressing called honey ginger dressing. Besides being a choice for all salads, I use this one on a honey-ginger almond chicken salad.

You can use the exact recipe for the honey lemon dressing, except you want to eliminate the chives. Once you have that base mixed up, add 2 teaspoons of ground ginger and ¼ cup of teriyaki sauce and it’s as simple as that.

We make our own creamy Caesar that our guests rave about and here’s how we do it.

Again with a small batch to get you started, mix: 2 cups of mayo 2 cups of zesty Italian dressing ½ cup grated Parmesan 1½ teaspoon granulated garlic ½ teaspoon ground pepper 3-4 shots of Worcestershire sauce Toss this dressing with your chopped romaine leaves and garnish with croutons and shredded or shaved Parmesan for an amazing Caesar Salad. Offer grilled steak, chicken, salmon or shrimp as an easy add-on.

Ranch is such a popular dressing, and once I realized how fast it is to make and that what I make is better than any ranch on the market (customers repeatedly let me know it’s the best ranch they’ve ever had), I just had to make it myself.

The funniest thing is that my buttermilk ranch doesn’t even have any buttermilk in it. The first time I decided to make it, I wanted to use buttermilk but didn’t have any. I realized that I can emulate buttermilk by using half & half with a little vinegar, so here’s my recipe. This time I’m giving you the large batch version:
1 gallon of mayo 1 quart half and half cream ½ cup white vinegar 1 cup water ½ cup granulated garlic 1 cup onion powder 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon pepper ½ cup finely chopped parsley or freeze dried It’s really that simple! You can use this ranch as a base for an Avocado ranch or a Chipotle ranch. Be creative.

Now get in the kitchen people and make your own dressing. Pour them into two-ounce soufflé cups with lids for side salads and four-ounce cups for large salads. You can use pint-sized containers for jumbo catering salads and for customers to take home your freshly made dressing to enjoy. Get your name and logo on it so you’ll get some extra advertising.

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photos By Josh Keown

Breadsticks equal big profits for pizzerias. They are cheap to produce with an almost endless supply of ingredients and are a perfect appetizer add-on to just about any menu item. Take it up a notch by stuffing them and really see them fly out the door. What can they be stuffed with? Just about every pizza topping you have in your kitchen!

I remember one of the best piz- zeria television ads I’ve ever seen that stuck with me all these years. It was a Little Caesars ad back in the ’90s. I’ll set the scene: There’s a 5-year-old little boy wearing his X-ray vision glasses, attempting to see through things. Now enters the scene a voluptuous woman with a
bag of pepperoni stuffed breadsticks clutched to her bosom. We see the little boy stop in his tracks, looking toward her chest with his X-ray glasses, and of course, our imagination brings us to all the wrong places until he utters these words: “Wow, you got a lot of pepperoni in your bread.” They sold tons!

Let’s get started with the basic bread- stick and progress from there. One of the easiest ways I made basic breadsticks in my pizzerias was to lightly flour a 12-ounce dough ball and pat it out, but not all the way as if I were making a pizza. I’d stretch it as close to a rectangle as I could. Using a pizza cutter, I cut the rectangle shaped dough into about 12 strips. I’d then place them on a pizza pan or screen leaving a little space between them, as they will rise slightly. They are ready to bake. If you have a conveyor, you want to start them in the middle of the oven. you want to make sure you have melted butter or liquid margarine (which most restaurants use), ready with a pastry brush so you can brush them as soon as they come out of the oven. They should only take a few minutes to bake.
Go ahead and brush them generously with the butter or margarine and then sprinkle them with a topping. Parmesan is a great start. adding some garlic and parsley really enhances them, creating a Parmesan garlic breadstick appetizer that’s hard to resist. Consider a powdered ranch sprinkle or even a cinnamon sugar sprinkle creating more of a dessert breadstick.

If you offer a variety of sprinklings for your breadsticks, you may want to have a separate container of the butter and separate brush for the cinnamon sugar breadsticks only because some how the garlic and Parmesan always seem to find their way into the butter blend. adding a cinnamon sugar sprinkle to a buttered bread- stick that has a little garlic in it would be a culinary clash that would be less than pleasant to any palate. I love garlic and cinnamon, but together? Not so good.

If you have mastered the basic bread- sticks, it’s time to go a little wild. There’s a couple of different ways to make stuffed breadsticks. The easiest way is to actually make a separate batch of dough adding different ingredients to the dough and then simply portioning the dough out into the same 12 ounce balls and preparing the breadsticks in the same manner that I have explained. years ago I was at a community event where there would be tasting of different restaurant food, with attendees voting for their favorite. I was so excited to win best bread against large chain Panera Bread. I called it Tuscan bread and these can perfectly be made into breadsticks.

Take a smaller batch of your pizza dough and mix into it some sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil or a little pesto, some chopped garlic, chopped Kalamata olives and some Parmesan. (I think Feta would a perfect cheese alternative to the Parmesan.)
These are amazing by themselves, but would be great with a little olive oil blend with some roasted garlic cloves in it. Marinara would be another great sauce to dip these Tuscan breadsticks in. so you have the concept of mixing ingredients into your dough. Look at all of your pizza toppings and use them as your options for either mixing them into your dough or actually stuffing into the breadstick. some great options for either technique are:

• Sausage and peppers
• Sausage and pepperoni
• Pepperoni and black olive
• Spinach, pepperoni & black olive
• Vegetarian with mushrooms, peppers & onions
• Broccoli, ham & cheese
• Cordon Bleu with chicken, ham and swiss
• Steak & cheese breadsticks

When creating stuffed breadsticks, roll the dough out into a very long and nar- row strip about 6 inches wide as though it were a long and skinny calzone. evenly place your minimum amount of fillings in the middle of the dough. Fold the dough from the bottom to the top creating a long, skinny stuffed breadstick. With a pizza cutter or bench scraper, cut it into 6 to 8 sticks and bake them in your pizza oven for 3 to 4 minutes. Brush and sprinkle them in the same way and serve them with Marinara, Pesto, ranch dressing or buffalo dipping sauce.

The combinations can probably go on forever. That’s where you come in. Just be careful when actually mixing your fillings in with the dough. you want to chop or dice your fillings fairly small and don’t over mix the dough; otherwise, you won’t be able to identify the fillings. also don’t put too much soft meltable cheese as it will make a mess when baking. Parmesan and Feta are great choices for this technique.

Jeff Freehof owns The garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. he is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza expo family of trade shows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photos By Josh Keown

Lasagna is a staple in many pizzerias and restaurants across the nation. It rounds out your menu and accompanies your pizza, pasta and salads perfectly. Great lasagna can be a feature on your menu that can truly set you apart from your competitors.It really surprises me how many restaurants serve less than mediocre lasagna with watery or grainy textures, leaving customers highly disappointed, let alone wondering if they even want to come back at all. Get creative with some tantalizing ingredients and let your culinary chops take your restaurant to the next level.

The good news is that it’s actually easier, in my opinion, to assemble great lasagna than it is to put together a bad one. It all starts with quality ingredients. You’ve got to have a great ricotta. Find a firm and smooth ricotta that is not too watery with a grainy texture.
Your lasagna noodles may seem to be less expensive if you’re buying dry lasagna that you’ll need to boil, but I prefer using fresh/frozen pasta sheets. It makes the preparation time and assembling super fast.Remember when you have to take the time to boil lasagna noodles, it costs money and takes longer to assemble, so consider full pasta sheets. The lasagna sheets fit into a two-inch half pan perfectly. You just layer them with your lasagna cheese mixture and marinara. When I make a larger lasagna, I use a two-inch full pan instead of a half pan and simply lay two pasta sheets side by side and assemble it in the same way. I like to use a large ice cream scoop to portion my cheese so it is always consistent.
When I make my Four-Cheese Lasagna, I simply mix my high quality ricotta, mozzarella, provolone and Parmesan, with my raw eggs, garlic, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. Once that is complete, it’s easy to whip together a pan of lasagna. Since we sell quite a bit of lasagna, we actually make four full size pans at a time which will last three to four days under refrigeration.

Before you cover your pan of lasagna with foil to go into the oven, I put a couple of deli sheets between the sauced lasagna and the foil. This will prevent the acid from the tomato sauce from eating through the alumi- num leaving bits of it on top of your lasagna. I know a little extra iron in the diet can’t hurt, but I’ve never heard that aluminum is a healthy alternative. I bake my lasagna fairly low at 325 F for 45 minutes to an hour, or the inter- nal temperature reaches 165 F.
Another important tip: if you try to serve your lasagna right when it comes out of the oven, it will be very difficult to cut and serve without it kind of fall- ing apart.
This is why I like to let my lasagna cool and set up under refrigeration. Once it’s cool, I cut and portion it, heating four to six pieces at a time. This ensures that I don’t have lasagna sitting on the steam table too long.
If you want to serve lasagna in your restaurant and it’s a slow start, consider reheating each piece to order. If it is very thick, you may want to microwave it in an individual casserole dish for three minutes and then finish it with some marinara, mozzarella cheese and then into the oven for two minutes. As I’ve shared, I make a four-cheese lasagna and then offer meat sauce as an add-on for an extra fee. This alleviates the need to make both a cheese and a meat lasagna.

Now it is time to put on your chef hat and think outside the box. Now that you’ve mastered making great lasagna with the techniques that I’ve shared, it’s time to think about chang- ing things up a bit. Feel free to change out your sauce and even add some dif- ferent ingredients. Here are some great crowd pleasers:
Chicken & Sausage Florentine Lasagna. This is an all white lasagna, meaning it is made with the cheese blend and Alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce. I place cooked sausage (sliced coin-shaped or crumbled) sautéed spinach and diced or shredded cooked chicken breast in between the layers of the lasagna when I assemble it. When ready to serve each piece, make sure it’s hot and then top it with a little more Alfredo and some of your mozzarella cheese and give it a two- minute bake in the oven.

Eggplant and Roasted Pepper Lasagna. You can layer either some of your breaded fried eggplant or grilled eggplant and colorful roasted peppers in with your lasagna, or you can make a lasagna layering just the eggplant, peppers, sauce and lasagna cheese and leave the pasta out altogether. This is more of a layered eggplant Parmesan but because of having the layers of the ricotta cheese blend, it can be consid- ered a pasta-free eggplant lasagna.

Here’s an outrageous appetizer that I created about 12 years ago: fried lasagna sticks. You’ve got to start with cold baked lasagna. Cut some squares carefully into planks and then the planks into sticks. Lay them out on a sheet pan with parchment paper ensuring that the sticks are close, but not touching and freeze them solid. With the standard breading proce- dure, (flour, egg wash and then bread crumbs) bread them and flash fry them for about 60 seconds. Carefully layer them in a pan with deli paper between each layer. You can keep them frozen until you fry them to order or keep them under refrigeration. They fry fairly quickly. I serve them with a side of marinara and Alfredo sauce. I showed this idea to Olive Garden in their culinary center in Orlando about 15 years ago and they implemented it a few years ago. This is one of my best selling appetizers of all time!

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to PizzaToday and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photos by Rick Daugherty

When considering moving your restaurant from one location to another, there’s a lot at stake. As the owner of an established Italian restaurant here in Georgia, we wanted to make the right decision for both our business and our customers. Questions to ask yourself before moving:

Have you outgrown your existing space?
Is your rent headed so high that your business can’t even afford it?
Do you have a better opportunity in a nicer space?
Is your landlord easy to work with?
Has business declined and it’s time to downsize?

These are just a handful of reasons why operators consider relocating their business.

Of course, with any deal, there’s a catch: the above questions are all the very reasons why some operators have moved and gone out of business, while others have had great success. I moved my 100- seat Italian eatery just a half-mile away into a slightly bigger space which added 35 seats, a bar area and dining room space that can be sectioned off for private parties.
Originally, when I started looking at available spaces we found one we liked, but it was four miles away. I knew we’d lose some of the customers that we worked so hard to win over. The space was also too raw and needed many costly renovations. We shopped around. The process I went through was extensive and honestly exhausting, but ultimately brought me to the best decision I could have made for my business.

The most important thing you’ve got to do when considering moving your operation is to be very organized and thorough in your research. Create a list of all things to be considered.

The space in which I had built my business worked well for us for five years and I knew it would actually be easier to stay where we were, especially since we had built a great clientele. Remember that easier is not always better! But, we were at the end of our lease and it was time to renew. For some reason the landlord wanted to hike the rent so high that my company would not have been able to afford it. That’s when I knew I needed to start looking at other spaces while at the same time attempting to negotiate a lower rent structure to try and stay put.

This process can take eight to 10 months or longer. Don’t think you can make a last-minute decision down to wire at the end of your lease. If you wait too long, you could be locked into signing a long-term lease somewhere you don’t really want to be or worse –– have no lease at all to operate your restaurant.

I think it’s to your advantage to let all parties know that you are looking at several locations, so you’ll get the best possible rent structure available. I was planning on moving all my furnishings and equipment as well as my hood and exhaust system and walk-in cooler, and it was necessary to get quotes from several companies to do the big work. It’s critical to create a timeline for a big move. If you don’t, the project can take so much longer than you anticipated — which will in turn cost you lost revenue. You can’t move everything overnight, and you’ve got to understand –– and plan for –– the costs associated with moving. The next step is to weigh out how long it will take you to recuperate the investment. Also understand that even if you estimate your moving expense, more than likely, unexpected expenses will arise.

I was very thorough and estimated on the high side that it would cost $15,000 to move into a very nice existing restaurant space. Due to unforeseen issues, the move with improvements to the new space had a $10,000 overrun. This could potentially break somebody in the process of moving and prevent them from even being able to open due to lack of funds. Be careful.

When looking at other locations, here are some incredibly important things to consider, especially if you’ll be moving all your equipment to the new location like I did:

Have an electrician look at your current electrical situation and make sure the new location can handle your electrical load. One problem I ran into with cost overruns was that my old location had three-phase power coming into the space and my steam table, walk-in cooler compressor along with my exhaust and make-up air motors all ran on that. The new space didn’t have it, and it was cost prohibitive to add it. So I replaced the compressor, the motors and my steam table to work with the one-phase power coming into the new space.

You also want your plumber and an HVAC team to check out the new space to see what might be needed to retrofit your equipment and to ensure all things are in good working order.

It is critical to have the board of health, building inspectors and the fire marshal come before you sign a lease to let you know of any potential expenses that need to be taken into consideration. I’ve seen folks sign a lease and then find out they need to upgrade the grease trap. In my county, they are enforcing $15,000 to $20,000 grease traps that need to be installed. That’s definitely not something you want to find out after your money has all been spent on other upgrades.

You need to measure the space accurately and lay out on paper the existing equipment you have and where everything will go. Creating timelines, getting quotes and understanding all that you need to do, including new licenses to operate if applicable, will give you the smooth transition you need. You’ve got to consider your lost revenue while closed and extra advertising dollars you’ll need to spend to inform the community of your new location.

We opened our new location exactly one week after we closed the old. Within 10 weeks of re-opening, we had a 44.3-percent increase in sales, and being just a half-mile from our old location has aided in our success.

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photo by Rick Daugherty

The financial boost that comes from catering really and truly can take your business to the next level. There’s so much more to catering than one time monetary gratification. I find that each catered event I complete grows word-of-mouth. I generally get a couple of inquiries from each event. Now some of these events are small and simple, but think about this: a daily catered event for a staff of 18, at an average cost of $10 per person plus tax and delivery charge, adds more than $46,000 to my annual revenue — and that doesn’t include any large events. The good news is you already have everything you need (with the exception of perhaps catering pans) to make this all happen.

Half- and full-size aluminum pans are essentials for your entrées. Use the aluminum lids instead of foil. It’s sturdier and much more professional. Some disposable catering trays are great for sandwiches, cold cut platters and desserts. Make sure you keep them in stock for that last-minute order.

Here are some of the most popular things you can offer:
Baked ziti with meat sauce
Lasagna
Chicken broccoli Alfredo 
Chicken Primavera 
Chicken Parmesan, Piccata or Marsala over pasta u
Stromboli (sliced on a platter)
Sandwich platters with assorted wraps
Pasta or garden salad

I like to provide bread and salad with two pasta entrées. If you don’t have any kind of dinner rolls, then simply cut your sub rolls into 2-inch-thick slices with butter on the side. I price everything to serve eight to 10 people and I use the half pans for each item.
I charge:

$12.95 for a garden salad
$5.99 for bread with butter cups
$32 for baked ziti
$38 for chicken & broccoli Alfredo with penne pasta u
$38 for a pan of four-cheese lasagna
$45 for a pan of meat lasagna
$45 for a pan of Chicken Parmesa
Marsala or Piccata over pasta: $65 for a sandwich platter for 10.

Now, if you are feeding a group of more than 10, simply put your food into the full pans instead of halves (which will actually hold enough food for up to 30 people since they are deeper). I use one pound of raw pasta to cook for every 10 people I’m feeding, which initially may seem insufficient but will be enough after adding meat sauce or chicken and broccoli to it. Let me give you some creative alternatives to take your catering menu to a more diversified place than most of your competitors.

Here are some of my favorites:

Chicken Pesto Primavera is a simple variation of our Chicken & Broccoli Alfredo, which is comprised of sliced or diced chicken breast, steamed broccoli, cooked penne pasta and Alfredo sauce. For the Primavera version, simply add some of the other veggies you’ve got in the restaurant. Since we have a dinner vegetable medley that we offer with our entrées that is made up of roasted zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes and caramelized onions, we toss that in with the pasta and a little bit of our pesto. By adding these two ingredients, we’ve created an entirely new entrée.

Chicken Roma is another simple dish with slight alterations that creates a slightly lighter dish version. It’s essentially the exact same dish as the Chicken Pesto Primavera, except this dish has no pesto. Plus, instead of being all Alfredo, we use mostly piccata sauce, which is made with chicken stock, lemon, wine, salt, pepper, garlic and little bit of roux to hold it together. Add a small amount of cream or even Alfredo to bring a creamy texture to this dish.

Chicken Giordano is yet again a creative entrée that can be enhanced from your traditional chicken marsala, which is made with some sautéed chicken breast sliced mushrooms and a marsala wine sauce and chicken stock, salt, pepper and garlic with a little roux to pull it together. Now simply add a very small amount of marinara sauce, sundried tomatoes and artichoke hearts to create this new dish. This would be great served over pasta as well.

There are a couple of important things to remember with these pasta catering dishes. The first is that although it’s best to typically cook our pasta “al dente”, I like to go just one stage more than that and fully cook the pasta (but not overcook it) for catering. The reason for this is because your pasta is still thirsty, in a sense, and wants to drink up any liquid. So in essence if your pasta is al dente, and the amount of sauce on your pasta seems totally sufficient, 30 to 40 minutes later when this office is about to dig into your delicious creation it will be very dry because the pasta will have absorbed the sauce. Don’t be afraid to over compensate just a little bit with your sauce for catering without having the pasta swimming in extra sauce. I also like to use penne pasta compared to spaghetti because it is much easier to serve by the spoonful.

Take your new catering earnings and do something great! Perhaps some beautiful chafing dishes for those big events!

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Jeffrey Freehof
Photo by Josh Keown

It’s true that chickens can’t really fly, but their wings have been flying out the doors of pizzerias for a couple of decades now increasing in popularity year after year. We’ve seen the emergence of restaurants dedicated to wings like Wild Wings, Buffalo Wild Wings, Wing Stop, Wing Street and so many more. Going back 40 years, when I was a little boy in California, my dad would take my brothers and I out for a special night and we’d get chicken wings. I remember we could order them about a half dozen different ways. Today’s customers have even more options. We see gas prices rise during heavy holiday traveling time because of the demand. It’s the same way with chicken wings and the Super Bowl. Although other great foods have become part of our spread, wings remain a main attraction of our party feast!

There are different ways to buy and cook your wings. You can purchase wings either raw or cooked. You’ll find wings whole with the wing tip on or cut with the tips removed, which is my preference. Getting your wings raw is pretty basic. You have a choice in size and you can get them fresh or frozen. Then you need to decide whether you want to marinate them or just toss them in seasoning and a light breading before you fry them. When I was 16 as a fry cook in a Chinese restaurant, they marinated the wings for 24 hours and would drain them very well and then give them their first fry (no coating). This would fully cook the wings and we would then refrigerate them, but they’d still be pretty white in color. To order, we would fry them again fairly quickly and they’d get a nice crispness to them. Baking the wings is a good alternative to the first fry.

When considering purchasing cooked wings instead of raw, the variety is nearly endless and can be a bit overwhelming. When I bought my pizzerias in 1998, the original owner didn’t have any fryers but still sold a lot of oven-able wings. He bought three different varieties –– mild buffalo, spicy buffalo and teriyaki. I immediately switched to buying plain but mildly seasoned cooked wings, and when they came out of the oven we would then toss them in the same flavor choices we offered before and we added BBQ sauce as well. By doing this, we brought our inventory down to just one type of wing and were able to increase our offerings. You can toss your wings in wet marinades or sauces and can even use some dry rub style seasonings like lemon pepper or ranch seasoning. I’m always looking for great new ideas in the culinary world, especially new flavors to toss wings in, so I pay attention when I’m going out to eat –– especially when I travel –– so I can see the great innovation of other chefs.

Of course I love garlic –– after all, I named my restaurant the Garlic Clove. I was so delighted to find the best chicken wings I’ve ever had (next to my favorite sticky Chinese chicken wings) when I traveled to the Del Ray Beach Garlic Festival a year ago. Although the festival was great, I heard from someone at the festival about a restaurant around the corner called Bru’s Room Sports Grill who had on their menu grilled “Triple Threat Wings.” If you ever get to Del Ray Beach, you’ve got to try them, but if you don’t, no worries. As a chef of many years, I have learned to dissect flavors and reassemble them in my kitchen duplicating what I’ve tasted. They seem to blend their buffalo, BBQ and teriyaki sauce equally, throw in a hearty teaspoon of freshly chopped garlic and then toss in the wings. The flavor combination is just amazing, but if you’re on a date, just make sure you both have them or have some mints on hand! Just know they are worth it. It also affirms what I’ve shared with you over the years about mixing ingredients you already have to create something brand new.

You should determine what type of wings to purchase based on the size of your operation, especially when it comes to your refrigeration. Uncooked wings should always be less expensive, but handling raw poultry is one of the most critical ingredients you carry and must be stored under refrigeration at the lowest possible level (off the floor of course). Having to cook wings from a raw state can also pose problems, such as serving undercooked wings (very dangerous). Also, the possibility of over cooking them renders them undesirable.

Great, pre-cooked, lightly seasoned wings are a little more expensive. But, in the long run, they should be easier to handle and process. Offer glazes and coatings like Mild Buffalo, Spicy, Teriyaki, lemon pepper, ranch, BBQ, Honey Chipotle BBQ, Sweet and Spicy Chili glaze. Be innovative. Come up with some of your own unique flavors and make it happen. One more tip I want to share is that not everyone wants to mess with bones, so use some awesome fried tenders and glaze them in the same way to make a great alternative. Many places call them boneless wings. The opportunities are endless.

Jerk Chicken Wings

24 chicken wings, wing tips cut off, halved at the joint
½ cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup minced jalapeño peppers
1 teaspoon black pepper
8 drops hot sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce
½ cup vegetable oil

In a food processor, combine all of the ingredients except the chicken. Pulse to puree and liquefy.

Arrange the chicken wings in a single layer in a baking pan. Pour the marinade over the chicken. Let marinate, covered and chilled, for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Place the wings in one layer in a roasting pan. Spoon some of the marinade over the wings. Bake in a preheated 450 F oven for about 30 minutes, or until cooked through. Serve with celery sticks and trimmed whole scallions.

Jeff Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today and a speaker at the Pizza Expo family of trade shows.

By Jeff Freehof

The amount of varieties really depends on how passionate you are or want to be about it, as well as the volume of your business. I would not sell them all by the glass unless you have a fairly small list. Otherwise, you'll have some wines spoil after opening.

By Jeff Freehof

I know that to say “it depends” seems vague. However, it really does depend on what you are trying to create. Do you want to be known for having an incredible beer selection with beers from all over the world? More importantly, do you have the size restaurant that can support turning over that much beer without it spoiling? If you want a simple beer menu, go with 4 to 6 domestics and 3 or 4 imports. If imports move heavier in your particular area, then reverse the numbers. Check out your closest type competitor by sitting at their bar on a busy night and watching what they are selling.

By Jeff Freehof

Should I set aside a specific amount for marketing each month, or should marketing costs be a percentage of my overall sales?

When I was in the building stage of my business, I would dedicate 1 to 2 percent of my sales to advertising. Once I was well established and sales were high, I would say I spent about .75 percent of sales. It’s always a good idea to build it into your budget, otherwise you may never find the money for advertising. Also, depending on sales dip or what your competition may be offering, you could be forced into spending advertising dollars that you didn’t intend on spending.

By Jeff Freehof

I am thinking of trimming my operating hours for the summer because sales seem to slow down. I’ll increase them again in the fall. Does this sound like a smart idea?

Actually, the one thing I notice from experience, is that when you close for a certain day or close early on particular days during a slower time, that when you re-open during peak time, it takes the general public several weeks and sometimes months before they realize you are open again during those times. My general opinion is that it is a bad idea to keep changing your hours of operation. It is too confusing to the consumer and will ultimately cost you money in the long run.

By Jeff Freehof

Bruschetta is such a popular item coming straight from Italy with so many different ways of preparation that are all relatively easy.

Bruschetta is an Italian word that simply refers to toasted or grilled bread that has been rubbed with garlic and drizzled with a little olive oil. Bruschetta is usually served as an appetizer, but can also be served as an accompaniment to a salad or, if prepared with a variety of toppings, as a meal. We have generally come to serve bruschetta pomodoro-style, meaning with a tomato and basil blend served on the crustini (toasted bread). Fresh basil or freshly made pesto tossed with some diced ripe tomatoes with chopped garlic and a drizzle of olive oil and pinch of salt is such a gorgeous blend of simple ingredients that truly define the pure flavors of Italy. I absolutely love when you can take some simple fresh ingredients that are nice on their own, but when blended together as in this case, create such a textural, visual and flavorful masterpiece.

Remember, however, that creating such a wonderful topping doesn’t have quite the appeal it should unless what it sits upon is equally great!

Of course, Italian bread would be my first choice, but a great French baguette would also be perfectly suitable. Now, there are different techniques that can be used in preparing the bread crisps, and I’ll share the two most typical ways to do this.

You can slice the bread fairly thin and rub the slices with garlic and drizzle a little bit of olive oil and then bake them in a 350 F oven to dry them out to make them crispy. This is the technique I would suggest if you want to prepare the crisps in advance to be served much later. You do want to have a finished product that is crispy but fresh. Remember to let them cool completely if you plan on storing them in a container.

The other technique would be to slice your bread a little bit thicker, ¾ inch perhaps. Use the same rub of garlic and drizzle of the oil but then grill your bread over a char-grill or even a hot flat-top grill. Be sure to spin the bread while grilling it and then turn it over to finish grilling the other side. If your grill is very hot, this should only take about 30 seconds per side. If you don’t have a grill you may broil this bread in your oven. This technique is much quicker than drying the bread out in the oven to make it crisp. This style of bread will have a nicely golden charred outside, but still be soft on the inside. It’s a totally different style of serving bruschetta, and I would only suggest doing it this way if you will prepare the grilled bread just before serving it. It is truly spectacular when it is served shortly after it comes off the grill. In addition, only place the toppings on the grilled bread just before serving so the bread doesn’t get too soft and soggy.

Now, let’s talk toppings! Bruschetta can be created with virtually anything your culinary imagination can concoct. Olive tepanade is a great choice along with roasted vegetables (zucchini, eggplant and red peppers), artichoke pesto, goat cheese with sun-dried tomatoes and sautéed baby spinach. A Mediterranean blend of Feta cheese, Kalamata olives, roasted garlic and artichoke hearts is a real crowd pleaser. To go the cold route, how about piping on some herbed cream cheese topped with thinly sliced proscuitto ham, smoked salmon or even cooked shrimp. If you want to use a cold cheese like this, I would recommend using the crisp version of bruschetta. The list of toppings and combinations can literally go on forever.


Margherita Bruschetta

3 ripe plum tomatoes, finely diced

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1 ounce fresh basil, finely cut

4 ounces fresh buffalo style mozzarella cheese diced.

1 loaf of French or Italian bread sliced horizontally

Toss the diced tomatoes, cheese, oil, salt and pepper together and place a tablespoon of the mixture on each slice of toasted bruschetta. Bake the topped crustini’s in a 450 F oven for about 4 minutes. Just before serving, garnish each crustini with the cut basil and serve immediately. 

Chef’s Note: If you make your tomato and fresh mozzarella mixture a little bit in advance, the salt will extract some water from the tomatoes and you’ll want to drain that excess moisture before placing the topping on your bread crisp.

By Jeff Freehof

How do you get rid of a customer who constantly complains and is always trying to get free food from you?

It's a tricky and funny thing. Obviously, if we really keep making mistakes, we really do want to replace someone's food, along with a huge apology. Without a doubt, there is a small percentage of people out there who practically make a living at scamming businesses out of free stuff - even pizza. I train my staff that if we think someone might be scamming us, I would rather that they get away with it once or twice. Once they've made it clear that they are scam artists, constantly complaining, I tactfully speak with them or write them a letter. The letter would state our passion for getting it right the first time, and say that since we can never make them happy, we will respect their decision to start dining somewhere else. I then state that if they continue to dine with us, that we will no longer be able to replace food that they are not happy with.

By Jeff Freehof

From parsley and Parmesan to lemon slices and dustings of powdered sugar, plating food is an art form that delights guests. I want to teach you some plating techniques and let your passion for food shine through.

I’m sure you’ve heard it a hundred times: people eat with their eyes! It’s important to understand exactly what that means. I like to talk about first impressions and how we don’t ever have a second chance to make that first impression. It’s true about the entrance to our restaurants and even how we greet our guests with a warm and friendly hello — creating a great first impression will truly set the mood for their experience with you.

The same principle applies to your food — but it’s 10 times more important. What kind of message are you sending? People are passionate about great food and you can truly show them how passionate you are by making them not just happy, but overwhelmed.

Keep in mind that the first step to styling your food is determining which plate is correct for the dish being served. I’ve seen restaurants jam a side garden salad in a tiny bowl that makes it impossible to even mix in dressing. In my restaurant, I’ve taken a small salad and transferred it onto a large dinner plate or bowl — and what a huge difference. It made a much better presentation and gave the guests a better perceived value.

When it comes to garnish, don’t go old school by putting a leaf of kale with an orange slice and a strawberry on the plate. Make it practical! Making your garnish edible is always a winning move. It could be as simple as sprinkling a small amount of freshly grated Parmesan mixed with some chopped parsley around the edge of your plate. I like to use a little bit of field greens underneath some of my appetizers. If you sell calamari, think about tossing some banana pepper rings with them as an edible garnish. I started selling olive and cheese fritters. When I changed the presentation to a martini glass, the sales of that appetizer doubled, because people would watch a server walk by with them. That’s another perfect example of how people eat with their eyes.

Taking some grated Parmesan and sprinkling them on a parchment paper lined baking pan and baking it in the oven will give you some fantastic Parmesan crisp that can be used to garnish your Caesar salad or many of your entreés.

One of the reasons chefs used to use the kale, orange and strawberry that I mentioned was because of the vibrant color contrasts. When you are creating your menu and recipes, build those colors in. My Calypso pizza that won Pizza of the Year at International Pizza Expo in 2000 had just about every color on it that you could think of. When you looked at it, your eyes would become enlarged and your taste buds got ready for something they knew they would love.

I serve Italian nachos in my restaurant. For the pasta chips, I actually fry up won ton wrappers. We use both marinara and alfredo, then top them with black olives, crumbled sausage, banana pepper rings and diced tomatoes. It’s an incredible presentation because of the space the chips take up. They create height to the dish and have a built-in color contrast. That really grabs people’s attention.

Lastly, for all of your dishes, make sure you have put great care into the flavors and textures. The food is what it’s really all about, after all. It can’t be sloppy. You’ve taken the time and energy to find the right ingredients and the right products to put together your interpretation of a perfect tasting dish, so now really analyze the plates you are using, the colorful ingredients used to create the dish and the manner in which you present it.

One final recommendation that I would give you actually serves two purposes — and that is to photograph your food. It will give you a better perspective on how it looks. If it doesn’t say “wow”, then make a change. It will also show your cooks exactly how you want your food leaving the kitchen. Food styling is something that you would do to maximize the presentation value of any dish that you are to prepare and serve.

A dessert tray is a perfect example to a perfect finish. Whether you make your own desserts or buy them, put together a beautiful display of your desserts and showcase them. It’s the only way to sell desserts to someone who has already filled up on your great food.

Once you make the sale, exceed their expectation with a dollop of whipped cream, with a light drizzle of chocolate, caramel, or raspberry sauce and even a sprinkling of cocoa or confectioners sugar (depending on the dessert). Adding about a nickel’s worth of garnish will really leave that lasting impression on your guests, giving them the understanding of your passion and commitment to making their dining experience the best that it can be.

By Jeff Freehof

I'm thinking of hiring a store manager and want to know your opinion on promoting from within or bringing someone new into the company.

I've done both and it is definitely an easier transition to promote from within if you have the right candidate. One of the problems you could face occurs when the employee you want to promote has spent time partying with staff. They may have a hard time earning their respect as a leader. It's best to always try to groom an employee or two for future leadership. This way they will strive to climb to that position.

By Jeff Freehof

The thing about marketing is, what works best for me, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work best for you. I have met folks in round-table discussions that have said door hangers work best for them. They get an immediate return. I tried and got literally no response. You’ve got to try different types of marketing to find what’s best for you. There are operators that are extremely successful with e-mail marketing. Here’s when you should be comfortable trying a new marketing technique…when you don’t have to lock into a several-month contract. Long term contracts are what you should avoid at all costs.

By Jeff Freehof

There are some vegetables that you simply must peel to consume. The beautiful eggplant however, can be eaten, skin and all. It boils down to personal preference. Once you realize the health benefits from the eggplant’s skin, your peeler may never make another appearance again.

Eggplant actually ranks among the most popular edible vegetables of the world since it is enjoyed throughout the Mediterranean, the Far East, the Americas and practically in all Latin American countries. Undoubtedly, its popularity stems from the pleasantly bitter and vibrant taste, agreeable texture and endless versatility. It can be prepared in a variety of ways; pan-fried, breaded and deep-fried, stewed, baked, pureed and grilled.

When purchasing eggplant, look for plump, heavy, unwrinkled eggplant that feels quite firm to the touch. There should be no external blemishes or signs of bruising and decay. Reject any that are wilted or soft. It’s harvested ripe and best eaten soon after purchase. It can be stored for several days, unwrapped, in a refrigerator at 40 F. When cutting or chopping it, use a stainless-steel knife, since carbon-steel utensils can cause discoloration and a bitter aftertaste.

Sometimes, an eggplant can be a little more bitter than usual. One trick is to slice or dice your eggplant and then lightly salt it. Let it sit for about 30 minutes. This will remove the bitterness and extract quite a bit of water, so you’ll need to rinse then pat the eggplant dry.

There are literally hundreds of ways to prepare eggplant, but eggplant Parmesan, ratatouille and moussaka are easy to prepare and loved by many!

Eggplant Parmesan can be prepared a couple of different ways. Home cooks will slice the eggplant, lightly bread and fry it and then layer it in a casserole with sauce and Parmesan cheese then bake it like lasagna. This is my personal favorite! In restaurants, however, we will usually fry our breaded eggplant, then sauce and cheese it to order. Many restaurants today will purchase their eggplant already breaded and frozen. This is called a value-added product and eliminates the time of preparation as well as waste. Most frozen, breaded eggplant has already been partially fried. This gives the pizzeria operator some alternatives during final preparation. Deep-frying is certainly the easiest way to finish cooking the eggplant, but you can also finish cooking it on the flattop grill or in your pizza oven, if you don’t have a fryer. (As a side note, breaded eggplant can be offered as a pizza topping or on an eggplant Parmesan sub.)

Cutting eggplant into sticks instead of circles allows you to offer fried eggplant as an appetizer alternative.

A healthier choice when offering eggplant would be to drizzle it with olive oil and a dusting of salt and pepper, then grill it. You can do this with eggplant circles or planks. By cutting the eggplant into planks, this allows you to stuff and roll your eggplant or layer it with a ricotta cheese filling, sautéed spinach, roasted red peppers or whatever else you may like. Top it with tomato sauce and cheese for a wonderful dish.

Here is an eggplant dish called Moussaka that is found in many Greek restaurants and pizzerias:

Moussaka

2 pounds lean ground lamb

1 minced onion

3 cloves minced garlic

1 large can diced tomatoes in puree

½ cup red wine

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 teaspoon thyme leaves

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

1 large or 2 small eggplants

2 cups vegetable oil

1 stick butter

1/3 cup flour

3 cups milk

salt and pepper, to taste

1 cup Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Place the onion, garlic and lamb in a saucepan, then cook for 4 to 5 minutes until browned.

Add the tomatoes in puree, wine, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, fry the sliced eggplant in batches in the oil for 3 to 4 minutes, until golden. Drain on absorbent kitchen paper and set aside.

Melt the in a saucepan, then add the flour and cook for 1 minute.

Remove from the heat and gradually whisk in the milk.

Return to the heat and cook, stirring continuously until thick and smooth. Add salt and pepper and half the cheese.

Layer 1/3 of the eggplant in an oven proof casserole and spoon over 1/2 the meat mixture. Repeat the layers, finishing with a layer of eggplant.

Spoon the white sauce over the eggplant and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes until golden brown.

By Jeff Freehof

What are the advantages of portion control, or is it best to freehand?

The biggest advantage of portion control is definitely food cost control. This is an area that many foodservice workers miss out on. Over-portioning can account for a large part of high food costs second to food waste. You obviously want to start with portion control on your bigger ticket items such as cheese. Sometimes some lower cost items may take too long to portion sending the labor part of your P& L too high. It really is a balancing act. The other important factor with portion control is that your food will be consistent. This is critical in today’s business environment. Customers want consistency every time. They want to know what they can expect.

By Jeff Freehof

Love it or hate it, ricotta just may be the most versatile cheese found in pizzerias today. Not only is it used in pasta dishes, but it can also be found atop pizzas and in rich, delightful sauces and desserts.

It’s important to understand what ricotta comes from and how it’s made. Ricotta is Italian for "recooked" — it is made by "cooking" whey. It makes delicious lasagna, ravioli stuffing, gnocchi, cannoli, cheese-stuffed shells and even a great treat that both of my grandmothers used to make me called cheese blintzes (cheese-filled crepes). Naturally, I’d be a fool if I didn’t mention how great pizza is with dollops of ricotta baked on it.

Many of us who have been blessed to learn how to make our own homemade fresh mozzarella at the International Pizza Expo have learned that fresh milk has an enzyme added to it to separate the curds and whey. It’s that curd that we can buy to then make our own mozzarella. So, what about the whey? Well, it is then cooked to make ricotta.

Like types and styles of pizza crust and sauce, there are many different kinds of ricotta. There’s whole milk and part skim, with an obvious difference in the fat content. But there are also different textures you can find in ricotta cheese. Many ricottas can be a little bit grainy, and they are suitable for making lasagna, ravioli, manicotti or stuffed shells. Personally, I prefer a whipped, smooth ricotta cheese. It’s more versatile and has a much better mouth feel.

In order to use your ricotta cheese for both pasta dishes and desserts, it makes more sense to buy just one type. Ask your vendor to provide you with samples of the various ricottas they carry so that you can try them out for yourself.

For lasagna, manicotti, stuffed shells and ravioli, I like to season my ricotta with salt, pepper, garlic, and Italian seasonings. I call my lasagna “Four-Cheese Lasagna” and find it much easier to assemble with all the cheeses in the filling instead of layering each cheese as I’m making the lasagna. For that reason, I add Parmesan, diced or shredded mozzarella and provolone cheeses to my ricotta filling. I find it important to add a few eggs to this mixture to bind it together once it’s cooked. 

There is superfine ricotta cheese available with very low moisture designed for use in desserts. This cheese is designed to hold powdered or confectionary sugar well without getting too moist and loose. Mixing three pounds of this ricotta with one pound of powdered sugar and a couple of tablespoons of Almond Extract makes a perfect cannoli filling. With a pastry bag, I fill my cannoli shells and then dip the ends in mini chocolate chips. 

I even attempted Tiramisu with this smooth ricotta as a replacement for the traditional Mascarpone cheese — and it came out perfect. I like to make a big batch and freeze it. First, I whip four quarts of heavy cream. When it’s almost whipped all the way, I add two pounds of powdered sugar and three small boxes of instant white chocolate pudding powder mix (which acts as a stabilizer). 

Next, I fold in six pounds of smooth ricotta. This completes my cream filling. Once that is ready, I brew a double-strength pot of coffee and sweeten it with 3 pounds of sugar. I line two full two-inch hotel pans with plastic wrap and assemble the tiramisu. 

I start by lining each pan with ladyfinger cookies. I drizzle the sweet coffee mixture over the cookies. Next, I layer in some of the cream. I repeat the process until I have three layers of soaked cookies with three layers of the cream. This will fill two hotel pans. Then I freeze it all. 

In order to get a clean cut on the tiramisu, pop it out of the pan while it’s still frozen and cut each yield into 28 squares. Wrap each piece individually and keep them frozen. Pull a few out per shift. Thaw them in the refrigerator. Serve each piece with a sprinkling of cocoa on top.

A Unique Twist

Gnocchi is a little dumpling that is usually made with potato. I find it so much easier to make with ricotta cheese, which yields a light dumpling. Simply add a few ingredients together to make a soft gnocchi dough. Here’s a recipe that’s quick and easy.

Ricotta Gnocchi

1 pound ricotta cheese

1 egg

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

¾ cup flour

1 teaspoon salt

Mix the ingredients together to form a soft dough. If it’s too sticky, add a little more flour — a little at a time — until you can roll the dough out on the counter.

Roll it out into a rope form and cut even pieces. You can press them with your thumb, roll them over the back of a fork with your finger or roll them over a gnocchi board that puts lines on them. Boil them in salted water for about 4 to 5 minutes. Drain them and immediately toss them in your favorite sauce and serve. 

There are virtually hundreds of sauce options. Garlic butter would be great, but if you really wanted to stick with a ricotta theme, you could mix some ricotta with marinara to make a tomato cream sauce. You can even make an untraditional Alfredo sauce by draining the gnocchi, tossing it with some melted garlic butter, a cup of ricotta, ½ cup of parmesan and ½ cup of cream.

By Jeff Freehof

Sunday sales have been fluctuating recently and tapering off. I’m thinking of closing Sundays for a while and may revisit opening back up at a later date. Does that sound reasonable?

I think businesses that keep changing their hours are just shooting themselves in the foot. Once you close on any given day, your customers and the community are used to you being closed. If and when you try later to open, folks are used to you being closed and it is very difficult to build it back up. If your sales are slumping, then create a great promotion to build that Sunday shift back up.

By Jeff Freehof

I’m getting ready to open our first store next month. Do we have to have extensive training or can we just get by with a day and work out the kinks in our first couple of weeks?

The single biggest mistake independent operators make, in my opinion, is that they don’t realize that properly training the entire staff — with at least one practice day feeding the locals or friends and relatives for free — is the most important investment they can make. Most independents don’t set those funds aside or just get too anxious and want to start generating sales immediately. Poor training will create a negative word of mouth that your business most likely won’t be able to sustain. So do it right and make the perfect first impression in your community!