Root Vegetable

This is my number-one favorite Pizzeria Mozza pizza, and it’s a direct rip-off of the Norcia pizza they serve at Pellicano. Sausage and panna, or cream, is a classic combination in Umbria. The summer I discovered this pizza I ordered it every time I went to Pellicano, in an effort to figure out what was in the white sauce that was smeared on the crust. When I asked, they told me “panna.” I knew panna was cream, but I couldn’t understand how they could put cream on pizza. Finally, I went back to the kitchen to see for myself, and what I saw was that the cream had been whipped, making it spreadable. Whipping cream for a pizza was such a foreign idea to me that when I started playing with pizzas for the restaurant, I tried to avoid it. I made this pizza with crème fraîche and later with mascarpone—anything not to put whipped cream on a pizza—but the whipped cream was definitely the best.

This was one of the original ten pizzas we served at the Pizzeria. I knew I wanted to offer a potato pizza, and I love the combination of potatoes and Gorgonzola.

When people talk about good gnocchi, you always hear about how “light” they are, but I find that just because gnocchi are light doesn’t mean they’re good. More often than not, gnocchi taste and feel to me like boiled mashed potatoes or mushy dumplings. It wasn’t until I had good gnocchi, which, in addition to being light, had some texture and springiness to them, that I realized how good they could be. Matt worked really hard to ensure that our gnocchi had those qualities. This dough is very starchy and sensitive, so the gnocchi must be formed and served the same day the dough is made. You must use russet potatoes.

Pellicano offers a meat lover’s pizza, so I felt I had to offer one, too. Our version should be called a “pork lover’s pizza” because all four of the meats we put on it—fennel sausage, salami, guanciale, and bacon—are pork.

We use this sausage on our Fennel Sausage, Panna, and Scallions pizza (page 144), Meat Lover’s pizza (page 136), and to make our most popular pasta, Orecchiette with Fennel Sausage and Swiss Chard (page 180). It’s easy to make and keeps well in the freezer. As our longtime sous chef Erik Black used to say, “Making sausage is like making chicken stock. It takes the same amount of time to make a big batch, so why wouldn’t you? You know you’ll end up using it.”

Years ago my friend Paul Schrade gave me a wooden pasta stamp, which I never used. Since I’m a baker, I occasionally thought about using it to make a pretty cookie, but I never thought to use it for its intended use: to imprint corzetti stampati, or “stamped coins.” Then about a year after Mozza opened, when I’d run out of projects to nudge Matt about, I broke out the stamp and told Matt to get to work. Rather than follow the traditional Genoese route of serving corzetti with green beans, potatoes, and pesto, Matt came up with a version of Pasta alla Norma—Sicily’s most famous pasta dish that combines tomato sauce, eggplant, and sheep’s milk ricotta—using the corzetti in place of the spaghetti or penne traditionally used. We use Japanese eggplant and slice it into medallions, which work really nicely with the flat “coins.” No Italian in his right mind would ever take a shape from Genoa and toss it with a sauce from Sicily, but that’s one of the advantages of being American. Though we try to be respectful of tradition, we are not bound by it. Think of it as Italian fusion—and enjoy.

This recipe makes twice what you need for the Yellow Wax Beans Stracotto in Soffritto, but it is one of those things that is difficult to make in smaller quantity. Spoon what you have left over on grilled fish, vegetables, or chicken.

Currants and pine nuts are a classic combination in Sicilian cuisine, so even though I may never see carrots such as these on a restaurant menu in Sicily, the combination feels Sicilian to me. You could make many different vegetables, such as broccoli or cauliflower, using this recipe. It is an ideal vegetable preparation to serve at parties because it can be made ahead of time, and everyone loves it. This dish looks especially pretty made with a mix of carrots in different shapes and colors—such as white, yellow, red, or purple—and carrots that are round, like a golf ball.

Using vinegar and chiles in an aggressive way is something Matt picked up from Mario, and I love it. I have a thing for acidic food in general—vinegar in particular. If you were to follow me around the kitchen at Mozza as I tasted various sauces and condiments, what you would hear most often is, “It needs salt” or “It needs acid.” This needs neither. Broccolini, also called baby broccoli, looks similar to broccoli but with longer, thinner stalks and smaller florets. It’s a hybrid between conventional broccoli and Chinese broccoli and is slightly sweeter than broccoli. We also make this dish with Romanesco, an Italian heirloom variety of cauliflower.

What I like most about this mussels preparation is that they are not simply steamed in white wine, like the vast majority of mussels you see in restaurants. We cook them with a light tomato sauce—and, yes, also white wine—and toss in piles of herbs after the mussels are cooked, so the herbs wilt only slightly. The finished dish manages to be original and familiar at the same time. It also couldn’t be easier to make.

For this rich side dish, one of the originals from the Pizzeria, we simmer the cauliflower in cream and then put it in the pizza oven to brown the top. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like it. Butter, cream, garlic, cauliflower . . . what’s not to like?

Ribollita is a classic Tuscan soup traditionally made with leftover minestrone thickened with chunks of stale bread. This version is something quite different, and it’s based entirely on the one they serve at Ristorante Da Delfina, a wonderful ristorante in a tiny village nestled in the hills just outside Florence. It was described to me as a fried soup, so the first time I ate it, I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they’d turned the soup into something wholly unsouplike that I could eat with a knife and fork. The way we make it, after cooking off the liquid, we thicken the soup with bread, we chill it, and then shape it into patties that we pan-fry in olive oil. We serve it as an antipasto but it could be a side dish or, served with a green salad, a light meal. I often recommend it to vegetarians, and to make it vegan, just omit the Parmigiano rind. One of our inveterate recipe testers, Tracey Harada, tested this recipe about eight times to get the flavors perfect. Cavolo nero, a variety of kale, is one of the defining ingredients of any ribollita. You can find it at specialty food stores and health-food stores, but if you can’t find it, use another variety of kale.

When you read “Long-cooked Broccoli,” note that this is distinctly different from the soggy, overcooked broccoli that you might remember from the school cafeteria. Here, the broccoli is cooked deliberately long and slow—almost poached—in olive oil with a lot of onion and garlic. Cooking it this way makes the broccoli tender, buttery, and flavorful. It’s one of my all-time favorite vegetable preparations. We use it to top the Long-cooked Broccoli, Caciocavallo, and Peperoncino pizza (page 146), and we also offer it as an antipasto at the Pizzeria.

I order octopus every time I go to Babbo and have done so since long before I partnered with Mario and Joe, so when Mozza came about I knew I wanted to include an octopus dish on the Osteria menu. Most people’s experience of octopus is eating it raw at sushi bars, and we all know how chewy it can be, but, like Mario’s version at Babbo that I love so much, ours is tender and not at all rubbery. That tenderness doesn’t come without considerable effort, but as much effort as it is, the finished dish is certainly worth it. It’s our most popular non-mozzarella antipasto. In Italy people do all kinds of things to tenderize fresh octopus. They pound it with a meat pounder, they hit it with hammers, they throw it against rocks. Matt’s solution is to start with frozen octopus; freezing helps break down the octopus’s flesh the same way that pounding it does. He then sears the octopus, poaches it in olive oil, marinates it, and, lastly, chars it in a wood-fired grill. The wine cork in the recipe is something we do on Mario’s orders. He claims that in Italy they say the wine cork tenderizes the octopus. I think it must be an old wives’ tale, but it doesn’t hurt to throw it in there, so we do. Note: This recipe requires a huge sacrifice of oil. You can keep the oil and reuse it once to make the octopus again within a week.

The summer before we opened Mozza, Matt came to stay with me at my house in Italy. We went to a luncheon at the Tuscan winery Arnaldo Caprai, where we were served rosemary-scented potatoes that inspired these. Smashing the potatoes gives them more surface area, which means more crispy bits—my favorite part.

After we signed our lease, Mario took a critical look at the Pizzeria, and the first thing he said was “There’s no kitchen!” For a second I panicked, until he added, “It’s perfect! Everything you make in the Pizzeria should come out of the pizza oven.” With few exceptions, we have stayed true to that rule. We are always looking for creative, unexpected ways to use the oven, and these mussels, served with Salsa Calabrese, a red pepper–spiked mayonnaise, is a perfect example. The salsa recipe makes more than you will need for the mussels. Serve the rest on the side, and use what you have left on a sandwich or as a condiment for grilled fish, chicken, or meat.

I don’t like many beet preparations because they tend to be too sweet for me, but the horseradish that these are tossed with fixes that. In the Pizzeria, we present these beets as an antipasto, which is how we give them to you here. In the Osteria, we serve the same beets as part of a composed plate, spooned over burrata, topped with toasted walnuts that have been tossed in walnut oil, fried paper-thin sliced beets, and mâche. We used to dress the beets with freshly grated horseradish, but I found the spiciness to be really inconsistent. Then I was introduced to a jarred, prepared horseradish, Atomic—it really has that horseradish burn. I love it. It’s one of the rare instances where fresh isn’t best.

Cipolline are small, flat, sweet Italian onions. This agrodolce preparation of cipolline is one of the staples of my Umbrian tavola, and the most popular contorno at the Osteria, I think in part because onions go with so many main dishes, and they are also easy to share. My dad orders them every time he comes to the restaurant. I think he could make a meal of nothing but these onions followed by a perfectly pulled espresso. In the summer when I can find them, I use long, red torpedo onions in place of cipolline.

Even though eating a slab of baby back ribs isn’t an Italian tradition, I felt that, Italians being the pork lovers they are, we could justify serving ribs as long as they had an Italian sensibility. After much prodding by me and experimenting by him, Matt came up with these tender, juicy, peppery, fennely, vinegary, Italianish baby back ribs. It was his brilliant idea to saw the racks of ribs in half down the middle— something you’ll have to ask a butcher to do for you. The riblets feel a bit closer to the single rib you might be served among the unusual cuts on a mixed grill plate in Umbria or Tuscany instead of something you’d get in a roadside barbecue joint. Italian? Not exactly. Delicious? Very. The coleslaw recipe makes twice as much dressing as you’ll need to dress the slaw for four servings, but because it is an emulsified dressing made with one egg yolk, you can’t make less.

This is a simple, straightforward secondo whose flavor is 100 percent dependent on the quality of the pork you use. We use pork from heritage pigs, such as Berkshire and Red Wattle, which are the most moist and more flavorful than the pork you find at a conventional grocery store. Berkshire, also known as Kurobuta pork, is the variety most available to the consumer. You can get such pork at some butchers, at high-end grocery stores, and also by mail order from online sources. I guarantee you will find the difference in flavor worth the effort it takes to get it.