A pizza smack in the mouth: The accidental artichoke in Las Vegas made me rethink my life.

It happened in Vegas. I was at the world-famous International Pizza Expo at a pizza-making demo. The pizza was outrageous.
 
It was a caramelized, crazy, crunchy, Detroit-style pizza with that deep, golden, crusty crown of cheese called frico, all of it topped with a fresh and fantastic looking Caesar salad that had been julienned just for the job.
 
One of the guys at the table offered me a bite.
 
I declined.

 
Bums me right out. I love a good frico, and I love a good Caesar, and the pizza was a spectacle on a paper plate.
 
I declined it because of something that happened about five minutes earlier.
 
I told the guy offering the bite, “The last pizza I ate was so amazing, I want to keep the memory of that flavor in my mouth for as long as possible."
 
He nodded. He got it.
 
It’s possible you would’ve done it too—had you been willing to eat what I ate. 

Which might seem innocuous. 
 
 
I’ve never been a fan of the artichoke heart.
 
I find their flavor to be too rich, too dominant, and too commandeering.
 
I’ve always felt they hijack the pizza (or whatever else they’re appearing upon).
 
So why in the name of Grendel's lovely mother did I pick up that slice of pizza?
 
Because I wanted to know.
 
People love them. My wife is a fan.
 
 
I saw that gray-green greasy portion of plant matter and thought, Why not give it another go?
 
It was a “Maybe this time?” moment.
 
I had the slice in my hand and was walking the trade show floor at a brisk pace as I took a bite—and stopped dead, a dangerous move in a crowd that size.
 
I did not get rear-ended.
 
On top of the pizza was artichoke heart, mushroom and prosciutto, a little bit of cheese and the thinnest layer of sauce. The crust was a very thin, crackery, Roman-style crust. It had spots of crunchy black char in all the right places.
 
 
That first bite was a flavor bomb explosion that would've torn the head off a lesser human being.
 
(Not to brag.)

That one taste was so tantalizing, I was afraid to take another bite.
 
I took another bite.
 
It was not imaginary. This pizza really was that good
 
The mushroom meaty umami earthiness, the salty porky post-bake prosciutto righteousness, the creamy, fatty fresh mozzarella, and the little leaves of artichoke all came together in one complex, salty, fragrant, meaty, magnificent bite of pizza that said, "Stop the world and let me on!"
 
 
I’ve never used artichoke hearts, despite my wife’s enjoyment of them.
 
I’ve always figured it’s difficult to do justice to an ingredient if you have no affinity for it.
 
That belief about the artichoke has just been slapped out of me as if with a wet heart to the face.
 
As unpronounceable as the scolymus variation of Cynara cardunculus is, as daunting as its cousin the thistle looks, I’m ready to revisit the artichoke as a provision for pizza.
 
(Like I really need more reason in my life to make pizza.)
 
I will also share my pain with you as it develops over the coming weeks because such joyful misery loves good company. 
 
 
Despite being back from Vegas for a few days, I’ve yet to implement any artichoke delight on my own pizzas.
 
Upon my return, we left home almost immediately for a flight to Philly (which diverted to Baltimore because of weather on our way to an ultimate destination of South Jersey pizza and hoagies and cheesesteaks, oh my.)
 
But I’ve been researching artichoke hearts.
 
It’s boring.
 
The real mystery is how anyone looked at the artichoke and said, “Hey! This pointy, spiny, weaponized vegetable is good to eat! Let’s cultivate them!”
 
Yes, as always, I do these things so you don’t have to.
 
 
And if there’s any object lesson to take away from this experience, it’s simple piece of advice: Be open.
 
Fear of food is silly.
 
Disdain for food is even sillier. (I’m looking at you, pineapple haters who’ve never tried pineapple. I was once one of you.)
 
We live in a time and place where mere subsistence has been displaced by art and craft and enjoyment.
 
We are a culture of recreational eating.

 
Being open to surprise with our comfort foods comes with more benefits, rewards, excitement and joy than one person can even begin to anticipate.

Exciting new stuff should get everyone all aquiver. The shaking should be measurable on a seismometer at Cal State Northridge. 

I say this as I'm watching the social media posts of a friend who's in Oaxaca and just had a grasshopper omelet.

I said to him, "Grasshapper omelet? That's cool. I've had the grasshoppers from a street vendor. They're like eating crunchy little shrimp. Are they crunchy in the omelet?"

He replied, "That's a great description. Crunchy little shrimp."

Yay, crunchy little cousins of shrimp! (Both animals are Arthropoda Pancrustacea and grasshoppers are sometimes referred to as "Land Shrimp." Who knew?)

And yes, I do have some grasshoppers in my pantry, waiting for their turn upon a pizza pie. 
 
 
As the Japanese might say, “Shoshin.”
 
Such things are far more fun, exciting and surprising then yet another slice of pepperoni.
 
(And no, there's nothing wrong with pepperoni.)
 
Shoshin is a word designating openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions.
 
Shoshin flies in the face of the closed-minded hubris associated with being an expert.
 
Shoshin is literally composed of two separate words, "sho" meaning first, initial, or beginning, and "shin,” meaning mind, heart, or spirit.
 

The famous Zen Buddhist monk Shunryu Suzuki wrote a really slim, short and potent book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. (Affiliate link!)

That slim volume is so compact and charged that it can be a mind bender. 

(I'm disappointed to report that I just searched me Kindle edition, and the word "pizza" appears nowhere inside the book. That said, my buddy Dutch at Tribecca Allie Café makes a lot of pizza and bread for a bunch of Buddhists in North Mississippi. But I digress.)

Suzuki once said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are a few.” 

I only just read that quote today.

It helps explain why I cringe any time someone introduces me as an "expert."

(The only more cringe-worthy introduction is "award-winning." Ick.)
 
 
I just asked my world-famous author wife, The Fabulous Honey Parker what foods she’s continued to try despite not enjoying them.
 
She said, “There’s the vodka sauce. I’m coming around on lamb.
 
“The big surprise was the IPA. I didn’t care and wasn’t interested.
 
"But since we were sitting with the brewmaster and he poured it for us, I didn’t want to be rude.

"And I took a taste and I thought, Oh. This is what an IPA is supposed to taste like!” (It was stellar. You also can't buy it very easily. It's made by his dinky nanobrewery in Sonoma.)
 
My wife also continues to try olives, hoping to one day be part of the olive loving culture around her. We once tasted some precious olives of outer-space royalty in at a famous joint in Yountville. (We are not fancy people, but we know fancy people who tolerate us around a dining table.)
 
Those olives were glorious. Even Honey enjoyed them. If you want to buy them for yourself, you have to go to your supermarket’s unobtainium aisle. Good luck. I've tried. 
 
 
I hesitate to admit how much I’ve given short shrift to artichoke possibilities over two decades of making pizza.
 
What can I say? It took me a long time to follow my own advice of shoshin.
 
And now, based on a pizza moment in ludicrous Las Vegas, I have reevaluated the status of that weird, unattractive little vegetable part.
 
Its own, distinct, rich, earthy, nutty, buttery flavor combined in moderation with the salty, fatty umami medley of the other toppings made me look twice.
 
This was not the artichoke heart of a pizza Quattro Stagioni, or “Four Seasons,” which you often see on traditional Neapolitan pizza menus. Its “four-seasons” designation divides the pizza into metaphorically seasonal quadrants.
 
It offers artichokes for spring, tomatoes and basil for summer, mushrooms for fall, and olives and prosciutto for winter.
 
But this was most of those ingredients combined on one tiny slice of pizza.
 
It’s possible what I’d eaten was a slice of Pizza Capricciosa, which is all the Quattro Stagioni ingredients combined together, and I was just missing some, like the requisite olives.

Whatever. That's not the point. 
 
 
It all shall remain a mystery—and it is now time to adopt a new adventure.
 
I don’t know how much bandwidth I have to devote to creating experimental pizzas with artichoke hearts, mushrooms and prosciutto, much less on a Roman-style cracker crust.
 
But it will be worth it.
 
And the results will eventually end up here in this silly little blog.
 
I’ve been looking for novel toppings and it’s nice to know I can venture into the tried-and-true toppings to repurpose a path to new fun.
 
Whatever that means.
 
What was your ah-ha moment of discovery with a disliked food? Tell me here. I’d love to hear about it. (And as you know, I get enough good ones, I write about them. You will remain anonymous, of course.)
 
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