Growing up I spent most of my summers in a small railway town really far north of the city. The town itself grew up around two different industries and two different populations; the railroad and the Italians, and logging and French Canadians, the two were, and still are, divided starkly by the Chapleau River and the CPR Tracks. This division isn't important to this post, it is just an interesting fact, and as another aside, as both these industries are dying a slow death so is the town.
My grandparents lived on the Italian dominated side, not to far from the tracks. I have to say that I only vaguely remember our next door neighbour, Tony Principe, except for 2 things, he had a glow in the dark light switch where the toggle represented a pantless trucker's penis, and he made the best pizza I have ever had. According to the legend the secret to Tony's pizza, was the pan, he brought it from The Old Country; the copper relic had belonged to his grandmother, and perhaps even to her grandmother.
Pizza is the second food that I learned to how to make, and it was all in an attempt to recreate his recipe. Since then only twice have I ever found something close (and both lacked the chili pepper heat), at a little pizza shop on Prince St in NYC, and at a long gone bakery at Kane and Eglinton, an area once settled by Italians, slowly shifted to Jamacian and West Indian, as each community improved their lots.
Like all good food, Tony's pizza was perfect in its simplicity; thick crust baked in a lake of olive oil, which would soak into the dough as it baked, topped with whole canned tomatoes, broken up with a fork, season lightly, heavly spiced with hot pepper flakes and nothing else. The mouth numbing tomatoes would collect in divots in the lightly sweetened dough making each bite a sweet infernal heaven.
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