Pizza Puttanesca
Adventures Of A Black Belt Sommelier
my recipe for the best homemade pizza ever
You're welcome back to adventures of a black belt so yay appreciate your joining us today. I am going to share a recipe more my recipe today with you for just the absolutely best homemade pizza you've ever eaten. I call it pizza puttanesca. I recently asked a well-known chef friend of mine why pizza puttanesca is another thing and he said I don't know but it should be and I agree with it. Puttanesca is a legendary pasta dish that restaurants in Rome would make for the ladies of the evening early in the morning and they would just you know use everything that was kind of left in the kitchen to whip up a pasta dish for them. So this has a lot, it's not a hard recipe but it does have a lot of ingredients kind of all the all the ingredients in a typical trotteria kitchen kind of combined into one dish but it is it is it makes it's just going to make it if you try this you know make the best pizza you've ever eaten. I'm not going to get into the pizza dough part you can either buy one of those at the grocery store that are already made and flatten it out or you can make your own pizza dough that it's you should it's simple it's easy and it makes a big difference if you make it yourself and the one thing I will say that a lot of pizza dough recipes don't suggest which I think that should is that you season after you make the pizza dough and roll it out into whatever shape you want it to be that you season a little bit with a little bit of salt and pepper before you start adding the toppings because you know like like always each step in a recipe needs to be adjusted for flavor and a little salt pepper on the pizza crust pizza dough before you start adding green beans makes a big difference. So here here are the ingredients in the poutinesque sauce a quarter cup of extra virgin olive olive oil be sure to use really good olive oil cusco's you know private man olive oil is actually really good but use a good one don't use don't skimp on the olive oil three garlic cloves peeled six anchovy flakes don't leave out the anchovy flakes if you're going to leave out the anchovy flakes because you think you don't like anchovies don't make the recipe it's not the same without them but make it one time with the anchovy and I think you'll find that it's really really good anchovies add a really deep umami flavor to the to the pizza to the sauce which is needed it's not the same without the anchovies same thing for Caesar salad dressing by the way don't make it a salad dressing with that anchovy flakes because then it's just this is ranch dressing um the quarter teaspoon of crushed red pepper you can if you like thanks spicy you can increase that or you can add crushed red pepper after it comes out of the oven a tablespoon of tomato paste a 28 can ounce can of whole peeled Italian tomatoes and you want to crush those up with your hands and again use good quality uh Italian whole tomato plum tomatoes don't skimp on that the pinch of salt granulated sugar two basil sprigs a quarter cup of chopped cholomata olives you do want cholomata olives don't use those canned ones to taste like cardboard um a tablespoon of capers drained of the juice uh of the oil uh some you know kosher salting freshly ground like pepper to your taste so here and then using those recipe those ingredients here's the recipe you know large saucepan it needs to be pretty big add the oil and get it hot when it's hot add the garlic anchovies and fresh red pepper and cook over moderate I'd say medium minus eat you want to be don't want to be hot because you want to don't want to burn the garlic uh stirring occasionally until it's golden and really really fragrant that'll should take about five minutes um it should really fill your kitchen with a wonderful robot of the anchovies and garlic and pepper and oil um add the tomato paste and cook stirring it for a minute you want to really caramelize the tomato paste so you cook it in that oil for about one minute so that it gets really caramelized then stir in the sugar the basil the olives and capers season with a little salted pepper to to your taste however much salt and pepper you'd like and bring it to a boil and then lower this uh heat to low and let it just simmer stirring occasionally until it thickens it and you wanted to reduce it to about three cups that should take about 30 minutes taste it and season it with salt and pepper again and discard the basil sprigs in garlic um so that's why you didn't chop up the garlic in the in the beginning because you want to be able to find it or remove it um that should that step should take about 30 minutes and then it's ready to go so then you've got your pizza crust spread the sauce the panache sauce upon the pizza pizza dough um i like to use grana grana pedano cheese because i think it is better for pizza than parmigiano but if you like parmigiano you can use it too or you can use a combination of both so just great good quality again good quality not the stuff that comes shredded in one of those little plastic tubs uh by good quality parmigiano or grana pedano i like to use g-r-a-n-o p-a-d-a-n-o um and grate that on top of the pizza um you want it to be pretty good quantity of cheese but you don't want it to just completely you know over completely overwhelm the sauce you want it just be kind of a topping on the sauce pop that in the oven at 425 degrees i think it it should take in my oven it takes about 21 minutes for it to be ready but i'd check it after 18 minutes you want this sauce to be bubbly and you want the edges of the pizza dough pizza crust now but to be brown and crisp and and you want the bottom of course to be crisp uh put by the way put it um what i usually do is i have a pizza stone and i put a piece of flat and i put it on that put it in the oven for about 10 minutes and then i take it off out and i slide it off of the pizza flat onto the uh the rack in the kitchen in the oven so that that gets the crust um uh good and nice and crisp um but it doesn't fall yeah it doesn't make a big mess falling through the the oven rack um so that's that's what i do and that works pretty well is about 10 minutes on a pan of some kind and then uh the rest of the time directly on the oven rack because then the crust gets really really brown and browning and uh crisp if you'd like add a low red pepper flakes on top and if you like it really spicy and i gotta tell you it'll be bad news server i like to drink it with narrow doublum which is a dark red robust full bodied uh Sicilian red wine but uh well that's the best thing i just say you can drink a narrow double or primitivo which is uh a relative of zinfandel also from pulley and uh the which heel of the boot of edaly primitivo is always also really good with this this pizza but narrow double is my favorite um it'll be fantastic i promise you it'll change your life thanks for tuning in for adventures of the bite well so you'll never go to domino's again i promise uh thanks for tuning in for adventures of bite well so may be sure to comment let me know if you tried this recipe and how it turned out thank you very much [BLANK_AUDIO]