Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It (16 page)
Read Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It Online
Authors: Teresa Giudice,Heather Maclean
Tags: #food.cookbooks
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To save time later, make two batches of pesto at once, and freeze half of it. Pour the pesto into an ice-cube tray, and once the cubes are frozen, pop them out into little zippered freezer bags. That way, they are easier to store, and you always have pesto ready to go. (Especially great when you want to pop some pesto in a great soup!)
Sauce vs. Gravy
It’s a hot debate in the Italian-American community as to whether you call stuff we put over pasta “sauce” or “gravy.” There’s even a group on Facebook with eight thousand members called “Real Italians call it gravy, not sauce.”
As you know, I’m a real Italian, and I can settle this once and for all. Real Italians don’t call it either one. The Italians use either the word
sugo
or
salsa
. Somewhere during the trip across the Atlantic to our wonderful American melting pot, the words got translated into “sauce” in some households, and “gravy” in others. There’s really no difference between the two words. We’re all referring to the same thing. It’s just a matter of personal preference what you were raised calling it.
Still, I’m always asked which word we say in the Giudice house: sauce or gravy. People especially wanna know since most Italians in New Jersey call it “gravy.” Well, in case you couldn’t tell from the eighty-five times I used the word in this chapter, we call it “sauce” in my house.
You say tomato. I say tomato. It’s all the best topping in the world!
Pizza is one of the most loved foods on the planet because it can include all the food groups (and then some!); it fills you up; you can personalize it with what you like (or pick off what you don’t); it’s good hot or cold, fresh or leftover; it’s easy and cheap to make; and it’s very transportable. Almost every country in the world has its own version of pizza, even Pakistan. In Japan, they eat eel pizza. They put sweet potatoes on it in Korea. Coconut goes on pies in Costa Rica. And in Australia, I’m not even kidding, they eat their pizza with kangaroo and crocodile on top.
But no one does it like the original creators: the Italians. If you’ve ever been to Italy, to Naples specifically, and had true, authentic Italian pizza, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve never been, Italian pizza is beyond the best; it’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted. It melts in your mouth; it’s light and crispy, yet still doughy and chewy. It’s mind-blowing. The good news is my parents brought a lot of their pizza secrets back from Salerno,
and we’re going to teach you how to make the best Italian pizza this side of the Atlantic.
Beware the Mascot with a Fat Ass
Before we begin, a quick word on what pizza is, or, more importantly, what it isn’t. True Italian pizza is a thin, rustic flatbread with fresh toppings on it, very little cheese, and rarely fatty meats. The American version is a little different: it’s an orgy of processed cheese, artery-clogging grease, and more bread than you should eat in a month. Yes, it might taste good, but it’s not good for you. Even the mascots of American pizza companies are little fat guys. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to eat something that advertises right on their neon sign that I’m going to get a fat ass from it. Let me teach you how to make something just as delicious that won’t actually take years off your life.
A Brief History of Pie
The first thing you must know is pizza was invented in Italy. I don’t want to hear any of that garbage about its being invented in China or Greece. Every civilization since Moses has had a flat bread. It’s a pretty simple thing to invent, and very good for an age without refrigerators but with plenty of fire. People used to bake dough on hot rocks. Soldiers in ancient Rome cooked flat bread on their shields in the sun. Greeks had the pita. And they did have this green-onion pancake thing in China. But Marco Polo didn’t take it back to Italy with him. Italians already had their own flat breads, and, like everywhere else in the world, were covering them with local ingredients.
The modern pizza as we know it (not the American version, but the Italian version) was first created in Naples, as a food peddled to poor people in the streets. Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba in Naples began making pizzas for the street vendors in the early 1700s and finally opened their own restaurant in 1830, the world’s first pizzeria. (It’s still open, serving pizza today. If you can get there, it is definitely worth it!
Madonna mia
, is it good!)
Even though we call this first modern pizza a Neapolitan pizza, in Naples, they only consider two kinds of pizza to be true Neapolitan: Marinara and Margherita. There’s even an association with specific rules about how to make it if you want to call it a Neapolitan pizza: the dough has to be kneaded by hand, no machines or even rolling pins can be used; it has to be baked in a domed, wood-burning oven at a scorching 905°F for no more than ninety seconds; and the pizza can’t be larger than 13.7 inches in diameter, or thicker than 3 millimeters at the center. Thankfully, I’m not that picky. Let me show you how my parents, Antonia and Giacinto Gorda, made it in the Old World (and how they still make it my kitchen today).
Four Steps to Great Homemade Pizza
Just like a good red sauce, you’ve got to know how to make your own pizza from scratch. This might look like a lot of information, but that’s only because I want to give you every single tip for preparing it the first time. Once you’ve done it, you’ll be able to whip up a pie in your kitchen, no problem!
Step 1
•
Preheating the Pizza Stone
At least thirty minutes before you’re ready to bake your pizza, place a pizza stone on the lowest rack of your oven, and heat the oven to 475°F. (If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can cook the pizza on the back of a baking pan, but you don’t need to preheat the pan. Only the stone needs to get good and hot.) You can leave the pizza stone in the oven, even if you aren’t baking pizza. Just be careful not to spill on the stone, as once it gets dirty, it can smoke and smell up the kitchen. It’s a good idea to place the baking dish on a baking sheet to catch any drips.
J
UICY
B
ITS
FROM
Joe
I’ve been in construction and working with stone from Italy for some years now. And a pizza stone is literally just that: a stone. So, do you need one? It depends. All pizza used to be cooked on stone, so if you’re looking for a really good Italian pie with a nice crisp crust, then the pizza stone’s the way to go. The stone works because you get it hot in the oven before you put the pizza on it, and the stone has little holes in it, so it can suck out the moisture of the dough and give the crust a nice, crispy bite. There are a couple of “nevers” with pizza stones, though:
• Never put a cold stone in a hot oven
• Never put a hot stone in cold water
• Never use soap or any kind of detergent to clean it; just water and scraping
• Never think you can just pick up a hot pizza stone with an oven mitt. It’s way too hot, and some of ’em are so heavy, you might end up dropping it on your oven door, and then you have a mess. Best just to leave the stone in the oven all the time.
• Never let your wife talk you into buying an expensive one because a stone is a stone is a stone. Even the cheaper ones will work just fine. And besides, when your wife cooks something goofy on it, like a caramel bread, and burns it into the stone, it’s ruined and you have to go buy a new one anyway.
Step 2
•
Shaping the Dough
Pizzas should be baked one at a time, so only form the dough when you are ready to cook it. You can roll out the dough with a pin, or toss it in the air, just like a Neapolitan pizza maker.
After the dough is shaped, you’ll need to put it down somewhere, put the toppings on it, then slide it into the oven without the pizza falling apart. Some people use a fancy wooden baker’s paddle (also called a pizza peel), but you can just as easily use the back of a large baking sheet. Or, you can place the rolled dough onto large sheets of parchment paper. Whatever you’re going to use to slide the pizza into the oven, sprinkle that surface with cornmeal. The cornmeal acts like little wheels and will allow your pizzas to slide right onto the stone safely.
To roll out the dough, flatten the ball into a disk on a lightly floured work surface. Dust the top of the dough with flour, and roll it into a 12-inch round.
If you want to try your hand at tossing the dough, dip both sides of your hands in flour, even your knuckles (because that’s where the pizza dough will rest). Lift out a dough ball, and place it on a floured surface. Press the dough into a flat disk about ½ inch thick and 5 inches wide. Sprinkle more flour on top of the dough, and now gently pick it up. Make a fist, and place the dough circle on your fist. Now make your other hand into a fist and slide it up next to the first fist, to help pull out the dough. Gently bounce the dough on your knuckles to spread it out. Give it a few tiny tosses,
moving your hands apart to propel the dough into a spin
. (If the dough keeps springing back and refusing to expand, set it down and let it rest for 10 minutes; then try again.) Keep tossing and spinning the dough until it is about 10 inches across.
Transfer the round of dough to a cornmeal-dusted paddle, baking sheet, or sheet of parchment paper. If the round loses its shape, just reshape it on the paddle. Repeat with the remaining dough.
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If your dough isn’t playing nice, and is instead sticking to your hands and refusing to stay in a ball, put the dough in time-out.
Leave the dough on the floured surface, and place your empty bowl upside down on top of it. Now walk away and leave it to think about what it did wrong for three to five minutes. When you come back, you’ll find the dough to be a lot better behaved.
This also works well with kids (minus the bowl thing). Now if only it worked for husbands or boyfriends, right? Or mothers-in-law. Or ex-prostitutes who live around the corner . . .
Step 3
•
Topping Your Pizza
The key to a great Italian pizza is to go light on the toppings. You don’t want to overload your precious crust, or pile ingredients on it that will break down and make a soggy mess. You should spread no more than 1/3 cup of sauce over the dough (you should be able to see the crust through it in places). Vegetables can give off lots of juices that will make your pizza soggy, so give them a quick sauté first so most of their moisture is evaporated before using as a topping. When you add the ingredients to the top, leave a ¾-inch-wide border around the perimeter of the dough.
