REAL PIZZA WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
No, not those faux-’talian discs served up with a cardboard tang, courtesy of your local pizza chain. We’re talking about pizzas with flame-licked crusts puffed to perfection. Pizzas with pools of earthy olive oil and a slather of savoury tomato sauce. Start here and you may never wait for the delivery man again. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
“Authentic pizza is simple, yet it does amazing things with tastes and textures and aromas,” says Mathieu Palombino, chef and owner of Motorino, a Naples-style pizzeria in New York. “The best pizza satisfies the soul.”
After moving to New York in 2000, Palombino worked for Laurent Tourondel, a prestigious French chef. But Palombino couldn’t shake his taste for the homemade pizza he ate as a child in an Italian family. So two years ago, he opened Motorino, where the pizza ovens run on wood and his burning passion.
He pulls a margherita pizza out of the 480°C oven. Molten mozzarella bubbles, fresh basil melds with tomato sauce and steam rises from the puffed, crackling crust.
“This doesn’t look like Pizza Hut, does it?” he says.
But you don’t have go to Naples or even New York for a taste of old-world pizza. Try your backyard.
“Besides an authentic brick oven, your barbecue is the best way to cook a pizza,” explains Palombino. “It’s much faster than your home oven, there’s less mess, and you have more control over the quality of your pizza.”
With Palombino as your sous chef, you’ll be flinging dough and melding delicious toppings like a true pizzaiolo. Why tip the delivery guy when you can do it better yourself?