Cookbooks

Matt got the inspiration for this dish from the Whole Hog Dinner that the restaurant Oliveto, in Oakland, hosts every year for chefs, food professionals, and friends from all over the world. One year they served pasta with cured pork, pickled peppers, and tomato sauce, which was so good that when we got back to Los Angeles, Matt decided to make his own version. Fiorentini means “Florentine,” but here refers to a twisted short pasta shape made by Setar, an artisanal pasta producer in Napoli. If you can’t find it, use another dried, artisanally produced pasta in its place, such as maccheroni alla chitarra, a big tube-shaped pasta from Napoli. The tubes collapse when they cook so they’re like empty ravioli.

When we decided to take on the challenge of making real Italian gelato for the restaurants, olive oil was the first flavor I knew I wanted to make. It’s one of the most talked-about and raved-about flavors at Mario and Joe’s pizzeria, Otto, in New York. Plus, I love the flavor of olive oil so much that there was no way I would pass up an opportunity to use it in a dessert. The olive oil isn’t even cooked here, so you’ll really taste the flavor. Pull out all the stops when choosing the olive oil—and use olio nuovo when it’s available.

We serve this mayonnaise alongside many dishes, including the Bacalà al Forno (page 215) and, mixed with spicy red chile paste, Mussels al Forno (page 109). The goal in making it is to form an emulsion, and there is only one way to do this: by whisking vigorously as you add the oil as slowly as humanly possible. When it looks like you have successfully formed an emulsion, you can begin to add the oil a bit more rapidly, but not quickly, by any means. If you get impatient, just remember: it’s easier to go slow than it is to fix a broken emulsion.

This is a very simple Roman pasta dish made with nothing but black pepper and pecorino romano cheese. We believe in leaving traditional dishes alone, but we did make a couple of changes to this dish. We use bavette, in place of spaghetti, which is the shape traditionally used. And we cut the pecorino with Parmigiano because pecorino is so pungent that it can be overwhelming on its own. The pepper for this dish must be coarsely ground. I recommend you use Tellicherry peppercorns, a fragrant, flavorful variety from India. Coarsely grinding or cracking the pepper for this dish is the perfect excuse for breaking out the mortar and pestle.

When the Pizzeria first opened we hosted a book signing for Lidia Bastianich’s book Lidia’s Italy, and we served Lidia’s peppers as an antipasto. I found myself nibbling on them all evening. Shortly after, I spotted tiny, bright-colored peppers in a grocery store. They were so pretty, with red, yellow, and orange colors mixed in one bag. Motivated by those peppers, I decided to put a version of Lidia’s peppers on the Pizzeria menu. For the stuffing, we start by poaching tuna in olive oil, but you could use quality olive oil–packed tuna. If you don’t want to make 48 peppers, save the excess tuna stuffing and serve it on a salad of arugula dressed with lemon vinaigrette.

Matt added pancetta to this classic dish. It’s such a perfect addition that it feels as if it’s always been there.

Mantecato means “churned,” and bacalà mantecato, essentially an Italian version of French brandade, is salt cod potato purée. We started making these crostini to use the salt cod we had left from the Bacalà al Forno (page 215) at the Pizzeria. It’s so popular that we now make extra salt cod for this dish.

Stracciatella comes from the verb stracciare, which means “to tear apart.” Italians use the word for several foods, including the inside of burrata cheese, a soup in which the egg is dropped into hot broth, and this gelato, which consists of plain gelato, known as “fior di latte,” or “flower of milk,” with dark chocolate “shreds” strewn throughout. Ariana Flores, the assistant pastry chef for both restaurants, is always happy when this flavor goes back into rotation. It’s her favorite to eat, but I also think she likes the process of drizzling the chocolate over the ice cream to make the shreds. I love how plain stracciatella is—that it’s basically just milk, without even egg yolks or vanilla, which American chocolate chip ice cream generally contains—and I like the bright white color of it. If you want to make fior di latte, an Italian classic, simply omit the chocolate portion of this recipe. I especially like it topped with toasted pine nuts (page 63).

Meyer lemons are thought to be a hybrid between lemons and Mandarin oranges. They have a sweet perfume and a sweeter flavor than regular lemons. They’re originally from China, but those of us who live and cook in Southern California consider them our own. I get so excited every January when I spot these smooth-skinned citrus at the farmers’ market.

The difference between crostoni and crostini is that crostoni are big and crostini are small. Here, both are bathed in olive oil. We use them when we want the bread to be part of the flavor of the dish, not just a vehicle for other flavors. If you have a sandwich press, you can use it to toast these instead of toasting them in the oven.

I love alcohol-flavored gelato because the alcohol cuts the richness of the dairy and also allows the gelato to get super-cold. But because alcohol doesn’t freeze, if you add too much to the gelato it won’t freeze at all. After making many versions with varying amounts of booze, we determined that the recipe below contains the maximum amount of alcohol that will freeze in a home ice cream maker. If it’s still not boozy enough for you, do as I do: drizzle a few drops of bourbon over the top.

These crispy toasts are a staple of our kitchen. If you have a sandwich press, you can use it instead of the oven to toast the bread slices.

The key to this gelato is to use super-ripe bananas—the blacker the better. Liz Hong, one of our line cooks who tested this recipe, let the bananas ripen for over a week before they were as black as we wanted them. Roasting the bananas before puréeing them is a little trick I use to prevent the bananas from turning brown when they’re added to the base.

Just when I think we have perfected a dish, I come across a version that someone has done better, and that’s what happened here. I always thought we did a great job with the chicken liver pâté we served at the Pizzeria, and it is one of the most raved-about items we serve. The combination of pancetta, lemon, and capers is delicious, and we hand-chop it, which gives it great texture, so I was totally happy with these crostini until I went to the Spotted Pig in New York City and had theirs. April Bloomfield, the chef, served her chicken livers on bread that was doused with—not drizzled and not brushed, but drowned in—olive oil, which made the chicken liver taste that much better. When I came back from that trip, we started doing the same thing, drowning the toast for our chicken liver pâté in the best finishing-quality olive oil we have. After I copied April’s bread, I think our version of chicken liver crostini went back to number one—or at least we’re tied for first place.

The difference between thick, creamy Greek yogurt and the yogurt you see most often in this country is that Greek yogurt has been strained, separating the yogurt from the whey, the liquid that often sits on top of conventional yogurt. It makes all the difference in the richness and flavor of this gelato. Fortunately you can find Greek yogurt today in most grocery stores. Unlike the commercial frozen yogurts that contain a long list of ingredients whose names you can’t pronounce (none of which is yogurt), our frozen yogurt consists of nothing but yogurt and sweeteners (sugar and corn syrup) and a pinch of salt. Yogurt isn’t a traditional Italian ingredient, but in the years that I’ve been going to Italy, yogurt gelato has begun appearing in gelato cases and is now almost as likely to be seen as pistachio or stracciatella.

I get really excited to be able to offer something that other restaurants are not offering, and that our clientele is not familiar with. So I was really excited when I was introduced to Spaghetti alla Gricia, spaghetti with guanciale and—depending on who you ask—maybe onion on a recent trip to Rome, at a trattoria known for traditional renditions of classic dishes, Al Moro. Alla Gricia is also known as “Amatriciana in bianco” because it is a “white,” tomatoless version of that classic pasta dish. This is one case where I feel that substituting pancetta for guanciale just won’t do. If you can’t get guanciale where you live, find a mail-order source for it. It’s worth it. And until the guanciale is delivered, make something else.

Another pure product, this sorbetto consists of nothing but coconut milk and sweeteners. My favorite way to eat it is alongside Chocolate Sorbetto (facing page), or with Hot Fudge Sauce (page 316) and toasted almonds, so it’s like the frozen dessert version of an Almond Joy candy bar.

The crostini selection served at just about every restaurant near my house in Italy includes toppings of chicken livers, chopped tomatoes, and white bean purée, such as this one.We simmer the beans with tons of garlic and olive oil, and drizzle the crostini with saba, Sardinian grape must. If you can’t find saba, substitute vin cotto, a sweet, syrupy condiment that means “cooked wine,” or aged balsamico condimento. It is a nice option for vegetarians.We grill the radicchio for these crostini but gave instructions for cooking it on the stovetop because it would be unrealistic to light the grill just to cook a few leaves of the radicchio. That said, if you happen to have the grill on . . .

This deep, dark chocolate sorbetto is so rich and thick, it’s hard to believe there is no dairy in it. There is so much chocolate in it that, while it’s smooth and delicious straight out of the maker, if you let it sit in the freezer for more than an hour or so, it becomes so hard you’d have to use a chisel to get a bite. Cacao nibs are the dry, toasted pieces of cacao beans left after the husks have been removed. I like them for the crunch and the bitter cocoa flavor they add. Cacao nibs are available in the baking section of specialty markets and from online sources, but if you can’t find them, your sorbetto will still be good plain and smooth.

Up until we opened Mozza I had eaten only meatless versions of arancine. Those I’d had were mostly in cichetti, the shoebox-size stand-up wine and stuzzichini bars in Venice, where cone-shaped versions are a staple, and in Sicily, where they’re much larger and round, like a tangerine. Both were made of plain risotto with cheese in the middle. In Rome, arancine are often called “suppli al telefono,” meaning telephone cords, because the ideal is that the cheese inside melts and stretches like an old-fashioned telephone cord. Matt and I worked hard to achieve that ideal and I think we did. I suggest you make these when you have leftover bolognese because, as good as they are, it would be a herculean effort to make bolognese for just the 1/2 cup you need to make these. Besides, that is what an Italian grandmother would do.