1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (57 page)

To roast peppers successfully, choose specimens that are a dark, almost bluish red; they’ll be riper and easier to peel. But perhaps more important is uniformity in color and size, which allows for even cooking. Oven-roasting is the most common method. Each pepper should be washed, dried, and, if possible, stood on end on a baking sheet, with one holding the next erect (but not crowded in). Depending upon the size and ripeness of the peppers, 20 to 25 minutes in a 400°F oven, with occasional rotations of the peppers, should result in skins that are wrinkling off the flesh and charred (but not burned) on all sides.

An alternative road to a nicely charred flavor and a firmer flesh is to roast the peppers over an open flame. They can be handled one or two at a time, held over the flame with a set of tongs or a long, wood-handled fork that does not transmit heat (or use a heavily insulated pot holder). They must be turned constantly until charred on all sides.

The roasted peppers must be peeled to gain their supple, soigné appeal. While still very hot, they should be placed in a paper bag, or enfolded all together in a big sheet of aluminum foil, and then sealed off and left to stand for 5 to 8 minutes. In their hothouse packets, the rising steam loosens the papery skin for efficient removal with fingers or a paring knife. Each pepper should be split and cooled just enough to be handled before it is seeded and trimmed of any soft, yellowish rib edges.

Place sections of peeled peppers on paper towels to dry, salt them lightly, and layer them into a jar or bowl before covering them with the best available olive oil. Although most adaptable when simply seasoned with salt and olive oil, the peppers can be flavored with a crushed clove of garlic or a sprig of fresh thyme or oregano added to the jar. In southern Italy, raisins and pignolis are often included.

Delicious warm, especially with grilled meats, roasted peppers are most often served slightly chilled or at room temperature as inspired accompaniments to sliced mozzarella cheese, good oily Mediterranean canned or jarred tuna, or in an antipasto assortment along with cold sliced meats and sausages.

If resorting to jarred peppers, rinse them under cold running water until all of their packing liquid is removed and they lose their slippery feel. To serve, dry them on paper towels, salt lightly, and stack them in a jar or serving bowl before covering them with oil. Although jarred peppers seem extra oily, it is their own natural viscosity that accounts for the slippery effect.

Where:
In New York and Chicago
, Eataly,
eataly.com
.
Mail order:
Rao’s,
raos.com
(search roasted peppers with pine nuts);
delallo.com
(search roasted red peppers).
Further information and recipe:
Rao’s Recipes from the Neighborhood
by Frank Pellegrino (2004).
Tip:
At the supermarket, look for DeLallo and Mancini brands.

Fresh ingredients mixed by hand yield the best results.

Green, aromatic pesto has a way of evoking the most indolent, bosky summer days. A first cousin of Provençal
pistou
by way of Genoa, the sauce is composed of fresh basil (with luck, just picked), garlic, pignoli nuts, Liguria’s sunny, sweet olive oil, and Parmesan, the latter often combined with an earthy sheep’s milk cheese such as sardo or pecorino. Only parsley and walnuts are traditionally permitted as substitutions, and the pesto must be mixed by hand in a stone or ceramic mortar with a wooden pestle. The more convenient blenders or food processors may render the basil bitter. Skip overworked inventions laden with arugula, cilantro, cream, or who knows what, in favor of the spare, basil-pure original.

The paste is best appreciated folded into Liguria’s tiny handmade corkscrew dumplings,
trofie
, stirred into slender strands of the local, linguine-like pasta called
trenette
, or spooned into bowls of steaming minestrone. It can also add elegance to baked or boiled new potatoes. In Genoa, tender green beans and chunks of potato, cooked right in the pasta water, are tossed with the pasta and sauce in the classic preparation known as pesto Genovese. Sprinkle lightly with additional cheese and twirl in.

Makes enough for 1 pound of pasta; serves 6

½ teaspoon coarse salt, such as kosher or sea salt, or more to taste

3 cups loosely packed basil leaves, preferably direct from the garden

2 large cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed with the side of a chef’s knife or chopped

2 tablespoons pine nuts (pignoli), or to taste

¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan, or ½ cup Parmesan plus ¼ cup grated pecorino Romano cheese, plus more Parmesan for serving

⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil, preferably Ligurian

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted

Place the salt and basil leaves in a large ceramic or marble mortar and, using a pestle, gently crush the basil against the salt. Add the garlic and pine nuts and grind the mixture to a fine paste, working in the cheese at the end. Slowly trickle in the olive oil, beating with a wooden spoon to incorporate the oil into the basil puree. When all of the olive oil has been added, stir in the melted butter. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt as necessary. The pesto can be stored, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for a week and can be frozen for a month after ½ inch of olive oil is poured over the surface of the pesto. Before serving, let it come to room temperature.

Variation: Pesto Presto
(if you must). Place the salt, basil leaves, garlic, and pine nuts in a blender or food processor and gradually trickle in olive oil as the mixture thickens. Then, puree at top speed. Add the cheese and process for 1 second. Transfer the pesto into a serving bowl and stir in the melted butter. Don’t invite a purist to dinner.

Further information and recipes:
Italian Food
by Elizabeth David (1999);
Flavors of the Riviera
by Colman Andrews (1996);
bonappetit.com
(search classic pesto).

Italian bakers take great pride in their lovingly crafted pizza.

It’s hard to believe that before World War II, pizza was virtually unheard of in the U.S. outside of the Italian communities, where it was known to many as
a’beetz
, as in “a pizz’.” Prepared in pizzerias belonging mostly to Neapolitan immigrants who spoke a soft, casual dialect and tended to drop their final syllables, the pie zoomed to worldwide prominence as soon as once-parochial American eaters took a chance on it. (They even learned to negotiate the scalding-hot cheese and sauce by folding big handheld wedge-shaped slices in half before biting into them.)

While its origins are somewhat hazy (some credit the Greeks), it’s generally thought that the practice of spreading tomatoes over flat bread was a quick snack prepared by wives of Neapolitan fisherman as they returned from sea. But the pizza we know as the basic classic—the Margherita topped with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil—was created by Raffaele Esposito. He was a baker in a
panificio
or bread shop on the side of the Vomero—the mountain perched over the Bay of Naples with a clear view of the volcano, Vesuvius, a scene that has inspired many a pizzeria mural. He presented the combination in 1889 and named it after Queen Margherita of Savoy, honoring her state visit to Naples by dishing up the colors of the Italian flag: red, white, and green. The city remains the world capital of pizzas, their crisp, wood-fire-charred dough topped by succulently melting mozzarella and a glossing of oregano-scented tomato sauce.

To the most serious cognoscenti, the Margherita is still the only pizza worthy of the name. But even for nonpurists, things may have gone too far: Toppings like fried eggs, pineapple, shrimp, clams, and many more crowd our pies, making them modern-day trenchers, the plates cut from stale loaves of bread on which food was served in medieval times. Not that there’s anything wrong with pizza topped with moderately apportioned crumbles of garlicky, grainy pork sausage, slices of meatballs, seared green peppers and onions, or mushrooms. (The popular pepperoni salami slices are intrinsically flawed as a topping as they dry out and harden while the pizza bakes.)

As with any popular food item, pizza begets opposing tastes. Some people favor the New York style, with a crisp crust and a drier topping achieved via the aged mozzarella cheese known as
scamorze
; others go for the Neapolitan way, with thinner, wetter crusts and juicier toppings resulting from the use of fresh, cream-oozing mozzarella or the even creamier buffalo milk mozzarella. Both iterations will hopefully be baked in a wood-or coal-fired oven, directly on the stone oven floor.

And then there is the calzone, in which pizza dough is stuffed with ricotta cheese and dicings of mozzarella, possibly along with mortadella or salami, and folded into a semicircle, which conceivably looks like a trouser leg, which is what
calzone
means. Whether baked, as in pizzerias, or deep-fried, as at street festivals, the sandwich-pizza compromise wins its fair share of devout followers.

Where:
In Naples
, Pizzeria Trianon da Ciro, tel 39/081-553-9426,
pizzeriatrianon.it
; Pizzeria La Notizia, tel 39/081-714-2155,
pizzerialanotizia.com
; Pizzeria da Michele, tel 39/081-553-9204,
damichele.net
;
in New York
, Numero 28 at three locations,
numero28.com
; John’s Pizzeria at three locations,
johnspizzerianyc.com
;
in Morton Grove, IL
, Burt’s Place, 847-965-7997.
Further information and recipes:
Pizza: Easy Recipes for Great Homemade Pizzas, Focaccia, and Calzones
by Michele Scicolone (2007);
saveur.com
(search pizza margherita; pasta da pizza; gold of naples).

Pizzoccheri is traditionally cut by hand.

Somehow, the toasty, grainy specialty of the high Alpine regions of Valtellina remained a well-kept secret.
Pizzoccheri
, the name for both the rustic, sand-beige pasta and the luxuriously creamy, colorful dish made with it, is based on flour ground from buckwheat—in Italian,
grano de Saraceno
, or Saracen grain.

Technically not a grain, buckwheat is a grass (and the basis of Eastern European kasha, see
listing
). It boasts a nicely gritty texture and a delicious nutty flavor, along with a high content of the essential amino acid lysine. Because it is heavy and absorbent, it is combined in this case with the lighter wheat flour to make a pasta dough more suitable for saucing.

Rolled out and cut into narrow fettuccine-like strands, the pizzoccheri is briefly cooked while still fresh with diced potatoes and shredded Swiss chard or savoy cabbage. (If the pasta has been purchased dried and packaged, it must cook a bit longer to achieve the same relaxed silkiness.)