I find it funny when I hear someone say that a particular person cooks so well for his friends at home that he (or she) should open a restaurant. Apart from the technical side, it’s also a question of timing and assiduity. One is a professional, in every field, because everyday - whether he’s an innkeeper or a star-chef, happy or fuming, with his children at school or in bed with the ‘flu - he wears his hat and starts to cook. No excuses, Rhodes is here, here is where you jump. The amateur, the enthusiast cooks when he’s in the mood, and if he doesn’t feel like cooking, he doesn’t cook. He may well be brilliant and super-technical and knowledgeable, but he remains an amateur.
I said all this, because I had arrived at the latest edition of
PizzaUp, one month ago in Vighizzolo d’Este (Padua), heartened by the invitation received from the organisers,
Chiara Quaglia and
Piero Gabrieli, to propose my favourite pizza. Which didn’t have to be the one I order most frequently in a pizzeria, namely the one with (cooked) prosciutto and the extra addition of anchovies, but the very one that perfumes my heart and my memories. So here I was to compose the cards linked to a homemade pizza with no mozzarella and no tomato, with tinned tuna, white onions, black olives, chopped basil and parsley. For me, it was the best. But how about the professionals?
I was matched with the acid green team, formed by seven pizza chefs captained by
Lello Ravagnan from pizzeria
Grigoris in Mestre. So here, at work, were
Pablo Matias Telesca from
Der Plaz in San Pietro in Gù (Padua),
Mimmo Caporusso from
Salsadrena in Sanremo (Imperia), Italian-Brazilian
Mary Valeriano, from
Accademia del Tartufo in Spinello, a hamlet of the town of Santa Sofia, in Romagna,
Roberto Porcu from
Plume in Peschiera del Garda (Verona),
Marina Orlandi from
Slurp in Ferrara and
Argangelo Zulli of
La Sorgente in Guardiagrele (Chieti). Tutelary deity of the entire event was
Corrado Assenza, decisive with his suggestions on how to transform my memories into a super pizza.
Pizza with tuna and onion at PizzaUp 2012
To begin with, fresh tuna and a final touch of
squacquerone cheese, and starting with a thought-out base dough, as I chose the crispy stretched-out pizza with
Petra stone-milled soft wheat, using the direct method with mother yeast. A note from the official recipe: “It is a classic pizza served on the plate, a round-shaped oven product with a varying diameter of 28-32 cm with a not very pronounced amber and uniformly coloured border, and a thin and alveolate central part, friable and crispy, about 0,6 cm thick”. It’s impossible to professionally knead three different flours at home (850 g of Petra 3, 150 of Petra 5 and 100 of Petra 9) and 275 g of fresh mother yeast with a total leavening of 22-24 hours, but you just need to send an email to this address
paolomarchi@identitagolose.it to receive the complete recipe.
For the topping, lightly scalded Tropea onion, in the oven from the beginning of the baking; stoned and uncooked Nocellara olives, also in the oven from the beginning; chopped parsley and basil mixed with extra virgin olive oil, in the oven; yellowfin tuna scalded with extra virgin olive oil, aromatised with thyme, to be added at the end of the baking with some pieces of uncooked squacquerone and some more fresh thyme. At the end of the service, the comment of a master such as
Simone Padoan was: “Very good, and I really didn’t think so when I read the ingredients”. Too kind, but I must say I was really touched, seeing so many people at work over an idea that was born from the pizza that we used to make by the sea, in Liguria, when I was a kid. So, have you understood the difference between professionals and amateurs?
