Starter

The first thing I need to tell you about this pizza dough recipe is that it is not an exact replica of the pizza dough we use at Pizzeria Mozza. What I can promise you, however, is that when you make this dough at home, your pizza will be just as delicious as the one we serve. Dough reacts differently in different ovens, and when our restaurant dough is baked in a home oven the result is a thick and doughy crust—not at all like those that come out of our extremely hot wood-fired ovens. My challenge for this book was to come up with a recipe for a pizza dough that, when baked in a home oven, resulted in a crust that was as close to what we get out of our pizza ovens as possible. And with the invaluable help and relentless persistence of Jon Davis, a breadbaker whom I’ve worked with since I hired him at La Brea Bakery more than twenty years ago, we came up with this recipe. The dough is made with a sponge, which means that half of the flour is fermented, or aged, for a period of time—in this case, for an hour and a half—before being mixed with the remaining ingredients. This is a breadbakers’ trick to coax the subtle flavor characteristics from the flour in a relatively short period of time. I have also made this dough without the sponge, adding all of the flour and water at once and saving that hour and a half of fermenting time. If you are pressed for time, you can do this, and though you might lose a bit of flavor, it will still be better than most pizzas I’ve been served in the States. You will need a scale to make this recipe. Bread making, or in this case pizza dough making, is so specific, there is no way around it. When making the dough, it’s important to time it so that it’s ready when you want to make your pizzas.

Cavolo nero, a variety of kale, means “black cabbage” in Italian and is a staple of Tuscan cooking. It has a distinct, earthy flavor that I love and that complements many of our heartier preparations.

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.

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.

The perfect example of how good a few simple ingredients, combined and prepared correctly, can be. When we can get it, our preferred variety for this is radicchio di Treviso, which has an oblong head. The roasted heads look so pretty lined up on a platter that they make the perfect addition to an outdoor meal served family or buffet style. As always, the quality of the balsamico you use is essential to the quality of the finished dish.

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.

When I was building the Pizzeria menu, I wanted it to be a true Italian pizzeria experience with a nod to the Italian-American pizzerias that I grew up eating in. With those American pizzerias in mind, I felt that we had to offer meatballs. What I really wanted to serve was a meatball sandwich, but as strongly as I argued for it, Matt argued against it. He softened over time and finally, two years after the Pizzeria opened, I got my meatballs—not as a sandwich, but as an antipasto: a bowl of meatballs served with buttered semolina toast on the side. Today they are the most popular antipasto in the restaurant.

The first place I was served fava bean pods, as opposed to shelled beans, was at Zuni Café in San Francisco. When they came to the table, I thought it was such an interesting idea, and when I tasted them I found them delicious. When you serve them this way, you want to use only tender, young, small pods, as larger pods will be tough and fibrous. If you can’t get young fave, use jumbo asparagus instead. In either case, this is a spring dish.

Caponata, a traditional Sicilian eggplant preparation, is the perfect example of agrodolce, the Italian word for combining sweet and sour flavors in savory dishes. When people order this antipasto at the Pizzeria, we suggest they also get an order of Fett’Unta (page 65) to absorb the delicious flavors of the caponata. Caponata is an ideal dish to serve at a party, because you can prepare it in advance and serve it at room temperature.

The red, green, and white tricolore salad, traditionally composed of radicchio, frisée, and endive, is just one of the many ways that Italians celebrate their flag. I like tricolore salads, but this version, which is tossed in an anchovy-enhanced dressing with lots of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, was my way of sneaking the flavors of a Caesar salad onto the Pizzeria menu without calling it a Caesar. In the rare instance that a Caesar salad is done well, it is one of my favorite salads, but Caesar salad is such a cliché on Italian-American menus—and it’s not even Italian; it was invented in Tijuana—I could never have put it on my menu as such.

I put this on the Mozzarella Bar menu following a visit to Chez Panisse Café, after which I became obsessed with ricotta toast. At the café, they served a garlic crostini with mounds of fresh, fluffy ricotta piled on top, and I just loved it at first sight. I was so excited about that toast that I had to find a way to work it into my repertoire at the Mozzarella Bar. I had been wanting to find a way to work peperonata—stewed peppers—onto the menu, since mozzarella and roasted peppers are a classic combination, but I just hadn’t known how I wanted to serve it. The ricotta toast, or crostoni, offered the perfect solution. While I drifted a bit from tradition, I feel I did that pairing justice. We serve the crostoni with the peperonata on the side, so guests can assemble the combination one bite at a time, with the toast in one hand and a forkful of peperonata in the other. I like being a two-fisted eater, and I just assume other people do too. Because the peperonata makes such a large amount, this is a great antipasto for a crowd. We gave you directions for serving this dish family style, but you could also spoon the peperonata onto individual serving dishes and give one to each guest.

Peperonata is a classic Italian contorno, or side dish, of stewed sweet peppers. This version, which we serve with ricotta-topped crostini at the Osteria and to dress the Buricotta with Peperonata and Oregano (page 152) in the Pizzeria, is unusual and especially delicious because after the peppers are stewed, they are baked—an idea I got from Gino Angelini, a wonderful Italian chef in Los Angeles. Baking the peppers further caramelizes them, making them even richer and sweeter than you ever imagined a vegetable could be.

When I opened the Osteria, Joe Bastianich told me that one of his favorite combinations was fried mozzarella stuffed with anchovies—while I certainly trusted the guy and know he has great taste—let’s just say that the combination sounded less than delicious to me. But since Joe said so, I tried it—and I loved it. What I didn’t know is that bufala and anchovies are actually a classic pairing. Here, the anchovies are in the bagna cauda, a delicious sauce from the Piedmont region and whose name translates “warm bath.” In addition to anchovies, garlic, and olive oil, my version contains lemon and butter. Bottarga, a delicacy of Sicily and Sardinia, is cured pressed fish roe (usually from mullet or tuna) that has a pungent, fishy taste and is used sparingly, finely grated or very thinly sliced over dishes. You can purchase bottarga from specialty food stores and online food sources. This recipe for bagna cauda makes 1 cup—more than you will need. Spoon the leftovers over grilled fish or vegetables.

Pan con tomate is a Catalan creation of grilled bread rubbed with garlic and raw tomato pulp, doused with olive oil, and sprinkled with coarse salt—and one of my favorite things to order at a tapas bar. So how do you serve your favorite Spanish snack at an Italian mozzarella bar? Add mozzarella, of course, or in this case, burrata, and give it an Italian name. We offer this dish only during tomato season. If the tomatoes have no flavor, the tomato bread will also have no flavor. And despite all the other delicious components, which include speck, pickled shallots, and tomato vinaigrette, the bread is, without question, the star. The recipe for the shallots makes more than you will need for this recipe, but they will keep for several weeks. Use the leftovers to make this recipe another time, or on sandwiches or grilled meat.

Peas, Parmigiano, and prosciutto are a combination that you see often in Italy, and one that, to me, says spring. The way we plate this dish it looks like a bird’s nest, with half of a ball of burrata nestled into folds of speck, topped with a pile of peas, and then covered with a light dusting of Parmigiano that looks like fresh fallen snow. Although I prefer the smoky flavor of the speck, prosciutto is a fine substitute.

When the media review the Mozzarella Bar, they almost always mention having eaten this dish. It is composed of two special ingredients—large hazelnuts that we get from Trufflebert Farms in Eugene, Oregon, and sheep’s milk ricotta imported from Italy—paired in an unusual way. Aillade is a French condiment of garlic pounded with some type of nuts, usually served as a condiment for duck or other meats. We make ours with hazelnuts; it’s one of the few condiments that we make at the restaurant using a mortar and pestle because otherwise it comes out too smooth, like peanut butter.