Pizza Napoletana
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A company in sheffield called Keylink specialise in all things chocolate and definately do acitate. I'm think their web address is www.keylink.org but not sure. they do mail order, but I think they have a minimum amount.
Alex
Thanks Alex.
Any other sources? High Street retailers?
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Hi,
I am trying to find where to buy a food grade PVC/Acetate rolls (not sure how it is called here) to make my own custm made mould.
I am looking for the type that can be seen in "The Cooks Book" used by Ferran Adria to make a frozen choccolate mousse and can also be seen here http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2007/09/top-cooking-tip.html (7th or 8th topic in the video.
Can someone help me with the name it is known in UK and/or where I can source it?
Many thanks,
Marco
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Yesterday was a great day!
I have received, in three enourmous boxes, the following books:
The Big Fat Duck Cookbook
Alinea
A Day at El Bulli
All three are great and never were money more well spent! All three highly recommended for both Homecooks with an interest in new techniques and surely for professional cooks.
Will you be getting Albert Adria's Natura?
This has been quite the fall for big Technoemotional Cooking books!
As someone else already noted, it is only available to pre-order on the El Bulli website.
Although interested, some of the same methodology and technique may have already appeared on previous El Bulli's books (like the microwave sponge/foam demonstrated on Bourdain's No Reservations Spain episode).
For me those books serve as an inspiration and training rather then necessarily replicating the same recipes.
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Yesterday was a great day!
I have received, in three enourmous boxes, the following books:
The Big Fat Duck Cookbook
Alinea
A Day at El Bulli
All three are great and never were money more well spent! All three highly recommended for both Homecooks with an interest in new techniques and surely for professional cooks.
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I have just been working on a new Restaurant in Las Canitas, 390 Baez, where we will be serving Pizza Napoletana in a Forno Napoletano oven and authentic Italian food. The Menu has a strong Neapolitan influence but contains also dishes from other regions. The Grand Opening is this coming Saturday, 13th July 2008.
This is the Website
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I found this one for now, but I will need to look as I have more:
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And, sorry, saying that a 20 plus hours dough....has less flavour then a 6 hours dough is incredible.
in good artisanal bread dough, which while not pizza dough goes on similar flavour notes and textural possibilities, I suggest there is no bonus to having more than 6 hours for the mixing, rising, etc. The important thing is to do it right, not necessarily long.
"Six hours is about right....there is no point to making the dough more slowly. Here, feel this, smell it.....we'll put it into the oven and then you can taste what I mean"--the late, very great, and sadly gone-too-soon, Lionel Poilane, bread master extraordinaire, whose love of yeasted dough enriched my culinary life as much as his friendship enriched my life in general......
L'Europeo's crust was: very crisp on the very outside, very tender and moist within, just the right thickness/thinness to get the right balance of the two textures, and the flavour was perfect balance: it had great flavour, was not merely crust, was delicious without anything, one could taste wheat, natural levain, water, salt, fire from the oven......
I thought it better than Da Michelle's. Have not been to Salvo however. Thought it better than many other places in Napoli.
i went to chicago with a group of napoletanos recently and we ate our way through a pizza tasting at a resto, spaccanapoli....it was pretty good. the neapolitans loved it in fact. they did bring their own mozzarella di bufala, and their own tomatoes san marzano, so we were halfway to pizza already. the crusts were technically faultless, but in my opinion lacked full flavour. i'd go again, but would prefer going to napoli.
i'm open to other pizzerias, don't get me wrong. its just i often get dissappointed, even in napoli,
and i have not been dissappointed at l'europeo ever, not ever, not yet!!!!
marlena
Marlena,
Each flour should be used appropriatelly. I work as a pizza and breadmaker consultant and have studied baking science and technology.
A flour with a low enzymatic activity needs more hours to fully mature so that as much sugar are released, most of the proteins have been boken down and many flovour compounds have developed. Both for bread and pizza the baker should aim to reach the optimum maturity for that type of product. More importantly, Bread dough is substantially different as in many case is made in a 2 stages fementation where a preferment (oftent acedic and already developed) is added in large percentages to the final dough. This make the process of the final fermentation much faster and that is where a comment like "Six hours is about right....", may have come into place. The problem is taking such comment out of context.
Ciao
PS I will look in by HD back up to see where I got some pictures..
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In speaking with another Napoletana woman , I asked her about Da Michele and she said it was only for tourists!
Yes is well know to turist but is not a touristy place. It has remained the same as before it was known to turist. The price are the same and it is still packed with locals and people coming from all other area of Naples. At lunch you can find almost all the lawyers and judges from the nearby courthouse eating there.
A tourist trap for me is who offers regular food at incredibly high prices, the same food you can have in a trattoria for half the price.
Brandi for example serve a substandard pizza at incredibly high price for Naples. What is more, for the record, the Pizza made with tomato, mozzarella and basil was made in many other places in Naples many years before Queen Margherita actually visited the city. Brandi was just a good marketeer and exploited the positive feedback form the royals to actually name one of the most popular pizza after them. So they are not inventor of the pizza, but just of the name which however few used until recently). What upset me the most (I have also done a 2 days stage there when Mr Vincenzo Pagnani was still alive), is that they have the potential of creating something really unique and superior but through poor management create one of the worst pizza among the famous/ancient pizzeria.
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Divina,
Your picture shows everything. The pizza are dry, cooked at a low temperature and almost crunchy on the exterior crust. This is not what pizza napoletana should be. And, sorry, saying that a 20 plus hours dough (Da Michele) has less flavour then a 6 hours dough is incredible.
L'Europeo pizza is a very different pizza. You may like it more because it suit your taste, but it is not better from a technical point of view and neither versus a general neapolitan standard.
I am not sure if either of you (Divina/Marlena) have tried Salvo's one, but again you may not like pizza at his best from a Neapolitan point of view. There is nothing wrong in liking certain type of food rather then others, but as a Neapolitan eating there, I was ashamed that his pizza was sold as Neapolitan to some tourist (It does appear in guides, and for example NYC PIZZA fanatic and writer, Ed Levine, found it to be his best in Naples as it is crispier and dryer (basically more similar to NYC) then the rest of neapolitan pizza).
Ciao
Divina is the best pizza-chum and all round party girl i know!our afternoon of pizza madness at l'europeo consisted of one delicious pizza after another, each one better than the next, and then you wanted to go back and taste the first and then the second, and it was all a haze of pizza deliciousness.
L'Europeo's pizza dough/crust was exquisite. my fave possibly the one of only dough, used as bread and topped with cured meats. on the other hand, the one with the cooked tomatoes, the margharita, the calzone filled with friarelli and cheese and olives, the raw tomatoes, it was never ending deliciousness.
i've eaten a lotta pizza in napoli. l'europeo surpassed them all.
pizza napoletana is right in that its all about the crust. this crust was fabulous. but so were the toppings.
ps anyone out there as crazy as i am about the little seaweed doughballs, zeppole di mare? Rosiello restaurant makes my fave ones, hot and salty and oily and doughy. oh fabulous. bliss!
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Hi Marlena,
I am not questioning the topping of the pizza. Pizza Napoletana is the dough (or crust/skinn as some call it in US).
L'Europeo pizza (and I mean dough) was substandard under many point of view. It was small, tick, dry, crunchy...dead!
Have you had pizza at Da Michele, Salvo, Gino Sorbillo???? Can you compare the pizza you had at L'europeo, even visually, with what seen here: Salvo's Webpage (go to Galleria, and then FOTO PIZZE and DETTAGLI PIZZE).
I am sure they use quality ingredients for the pizza topping and for many of their menu items, but at those prices is the bare minimum.
Regards,
Marco
PS: If you pass by London, I would love to make you try my pizza at Franco Manca, please see Review 1 and Review 2. I am there most Saturdays but for thelast in June and the first in July.
Hi Marco and egullet-pizza-teers,
I have gone back to L'Europeo many times since this interaction wondering what i missed, but it is always so good, and never ever filled with tourists!
since i hadn't eaten the pizza when i tapped out the original posting, last time (ie a few days ago) i had a pizza tasting, a virtual buffet of pizza-ness, with cured meat and no sauce, with raw tomatoes and basil, with cooked tomatoes, with tomatoes, garlic and basil, calzoni with bitter greens and provolone, i am sure i have forgotten one or two. they were all fabulous!
maybe its time to revisit the place, Marco, really its always terrific, both cooked dishes and pizza......and i want you to enjoy it as much as i do.
i'm sure its in the guidebooks, though i haven't read a guidebook, but regardless of where its listed perhaps its not on the tourist path, because whenever i've gone its full of italians, eating lunch, eating dinner, eating pizza. and eating well indeed. desserts (pastries: a cherry and almondy custard tart, baba, that sort of thing) were luscious too.....
ciao, for now,
marlena
Marlena,
I am from Naples, so I know which places get tourist attention (and prices to reflect that) and which instead are visited by local and have the best value term.
The food at l'europeo is just traditional stuff overpriced. I did say it seams excellent, but on the other hand the Pizza is disgusting and that place was born as a Pizzeria first and then a restaurant. Now it is the way around.
Take care
Marco
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pizzanap - can you give me an idea of the cost of the ovens? have been thinking of installing one next to my bbq!
thanks.
-che
edit: btw the pizzas look very good
I am glad you like the pizza.
I have sent you a pm. It is important to note that these are unique ovens and there are only two families that makes the authentic pizza oven and many others bad imitators.
It would not normally be suitable for the home baker, it is a bit like someone buying a Formula 1 car to drive around the city...
Ciao
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Joesan,
Thanks for your message.
I would agree with most of what you are saying, and would like to make a couple of further points:
Starting with Salame Tipo Napoli, this is now mostly commercially produced by north Italian corporate companies using commercial pork breeds. The one produced by local producers in Campania comes with little consistency in quality and with no many guarantee or traceability, which in light of the recent event in the area, would be even more worrying. Both the owner and I are in agreement that if we could use an ORGANIC (must) Salami made by a small producer with the right attributes, using meat from the local Campanian black pigs, we would immediately do so.
Back to the Chorizo, having considered the above, we have found it to be a good alternative that could be sourced from a local distributor (we would instead need to create an importing channel once we find the suitable Campanian alternative).
In terms of authenticity, it is not a goal of this concept. The reason I was hired and brought into this project is that the owner recognise the Pizza Napoletana model I promote as the best in terms of dough and final baked product (in Naples we say pizza is the crust!). To produce this type of dough and obtain certain characteristic in the final baked pizza base, it is a must to source a traditional oven made in th Neapolitan tradition and use a certain type of mixer, and that is what we did. Franco Manca want to offer top quality organic pizza made in the Neapolitan ways, but does not want to be seen as an authentic Neapolitan place.
Also for the record, in Naples is quite common now to find pizza like "Wrustell e Patatine" (Hot Dog Sausage & French Fries) and Mais, Prosciutto Cotto e panna (Sweet corn, Ham and double cream).... Would I have offer it on a pizza because is also offered in Naples? Not at all!
In any case I will feedback your thoughts to him with no problems, and I am most positive about yours and any other comments that will come through.
Saluti
Marco
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The pizzas look wonderful, very tasty, but honestly Chorizo? What's next Ham and Pineapple?
Seems a shame to go to lengths to get an authentic product and ruin it with suspect toppings.
Fair comments, and let me say first that the menu choice has been the owner own. However, I do not see anything wrong with using Chorizo. Cured Pork meat has always been used on pizza. The meat is sourced from Brindisa and is not a cheap chorizo from a supermarket, it is just a quality cured "salami" flavoured with pepper... (it is not the chilli/spicy type). We are not talking about ingredients that you would not find normally at a Neapolitan pizzeria or that we would think not appropriate. As far we are using cured pork meat, Cheeses, tomatoes, olive oil, wild mushrooms and even some types of fish, then we are keeping in line with what should be topping a great Neapolitan Pizza Base.
The cheeses are made by an organic farm in Somerset which has been trained by a cheese maker from Naples.
The idea was to create the best possible pizza using the most suitable topping, not necessarily being 100% authentic for the sake of it, but where it was necessary then we went the extra mile. To produce that type of crust, we had to source a suitable flour, the best possible oven and mixer (baking on an average of 45 seconds yesterday) and so on. Instead of sourcing a low quality commercial organic Salami from Italy, or field tasteless mushroom, the owner has decided to source top quality ingredients, whenever possible from local sources. We are using Porcini and Chantarelle ...
We are still working on the possibility of sourcing a high quality Salame Napoli from a small producer, but could not find a suitable product yet.
You obviously entitled to your opinions and views, but I would like to invite you to taste it and the feedback on the actual flavours, lightness and total quality.
Ciao
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Hi Guys,
Just a brief update from Franco Manca in Brixton to show you few pictures of some pizza baked today:
Here a Tomato, Fior Di Latte (cow milk mozzarella), wild Mushroom & Rocket:
Here a Tomato & Fior Di Latte
Here as above + chorizo:
And Finally, as above + ricotta:
All comments are welcome.
Ciao
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Sounds good, will try to give it a go soon. Are your opening hours constrained by the market hours as for Ecos previously? For example, will you be open Wednesday lunchtime when the market has half day closing?
It will have the same opening hours as the previous management, therefore closing on Wednesday and Sunday. I believe the Market is exploring the possibility of being open on Fridays Eve in the future.
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please do...very curious to see if anyone can reproduce pizza outside of Italy in just the same way.
Franco Manca Pizza - Brixton Market -London
We had the soft launch yesterday and had great interest, we have been pretty busy. It is a real shame we did not take pictures of the pizza but the comments we have received were all very positive.
The place will commercially launch next Tuesday.
So let me tell you more about this place:
It was formally a gourmet pizzeria offering Electric Oven made pizza with good ingredients but with crispy crust and dead toppings..
The new owner wanted to operate as a brand new concept, recreating the Neapolitan crust and using almost 100% organic ingredients and seasonal produce.
I was recruited to look at the dough recipe/methodology and consult on various aspect of the operation.
We have sourced two Forno Napoletano (one will operate in the place opposite that will open at the later stage), a mixer and other machinery that will help achieve the desire product.
We have also sourced an Italian Organic Flour of the desired strenght and the owner has flown in a cheesemaker from Sorrento that has worked with an organic farm in England to produce the fior di latte to use on the pizza. The menu is very simple, and at the moment contain about 5 pizza. Wine and beers are also organic.
If you are in London and want to visit let me know. I will be in Italy for two weeks but after that I should be there every Saturdays.
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Is this in the old Francos/Eco site in the market? Or are you from Eco?
It is in the old Eco's site, but it has been bought by a new neapolitan owner
I will give you more info once the opening is confirmed
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I have been involved with a new project that should open next Saturday in Brixton.
We have worked on the dough recipe, sourcing an authentic neapolitan oven and mixer from Forno Napoletano and consulted on other aspects of the concept.
I will give you further info later in the week, but I am pretty confident that this place should shoot up at the very top of the Neapolitan Pizza offer in London
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New Review by Marina O'Loughlin on the metro todayClick here
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All interesting comments.
I think that high end restaurants have indeed to offer something more then what you would get at an average Italian home. Yes Italian cusine is based on great ingredients, simple but at the same time great preparations... However I believe that the restaurant scene in Italy is quite tired and I personally welcome innovation. There are hundred of thousand of trattorias where you can have great traditional Italian meals. If you decided to go to an high end restaurant and what you get more is only the presentation and wine list, IMO is not worth the it.
About Bread, this may be true in some restaurants, but great bread is widely available in the south of Italy and also in many bread basket of high end southern italian restaurants. I do not believe we have anything to envy the French on Bread. Same goes for Patissery, in the south at least (probably were we had French influence anyway ).
I agree that Italian Catering Schools may be lacking enphasis on basic techniques (knives, preparation & presentation) and adoption of more innovative techniques and tools compared to the German and French for example, but I still believe that in the actual cooking we do achieve great results.
Going back to my initial point, basically I would welcome a restaurant that in a simple example, present a reviseted Neapolitan Ragu (clearly advertised as reviseted), were the meat has been cooked saus vide for hours, and the ragu sauce has been prepared using stock made with with the bones of the same meat)
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Wine glasses
in Wine
Again, I reccommend the Riedels. I started with a gift set containing four each of the Chianti Classico and Bordeaux glasses, and a simple decanter. This covered most wines pretty well, though if you are a Burgundy fan, you really will benefit from the Burgundy glass. Contrary to all the advice, we put ours in the dishwasher (on a low temperature setting) without ill effects.I do agree on the Riedel Vinum. I have The chianti as all rounder and general testing. I have the chardonay for whites, the Vintage champagne for sparkling, the shiraz for great reds and the Hennesy for spirits (they did cost me a bit obver time but have always bought them on sales at selfridges and harrods at 25% off).
I also have fiew Spiegelau and Schott zwiesel, good but not the same
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I have just cancelled my reservation and have booked Bacchus for this coming Friday.
It is a shame Ducasse has started with the wrong foot here, but he should also have know the London market have been previously present with Spoon at Sanderson (now closed).
Well if they get their act together I may pay them a visit at some time in the future.
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You might try Italy for Thermomix – I think read somewhere that they are very popular.
Indeed!!!
My unti had one for years and cook/prepare evrything with it.
The company behind the Thermomix has produced for years one of the most popular vacum cleaner in Italy, only available by door-to-door sales.
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Very common to marinate the meat in wine.
Salt and black pepper are the minimum seasoning.
Fennel and chilli are also often used.
Salsiccia and Cervellatina (in a lamb casing) are the two types of italian sausage that are then filled as "Punta di coltello" (chopped meat) or "macinata (mince).
Ciao
Little Chef Popham
in United Kingdom & Ireland: Dining
Posted
I stopped there this past Saturday. I had the Prawn Cocktail, Braised OX cheeks and Trifle. The food was overall good to the level you would expect in a gastropub and would love to see the concept roll out across our motorways...
The highlights were the braised beef and the trifle (and I agree with the Bloomberg's comments on this).
Service was a bit slow and I noticed a couple of tables sending food back (Coq au Vin and Garlic bread) for being cold or stale.