Sophia Loren & NYC's Best Pizza

A Vittorio De Sica movie from the 1960s, called L'Oro di Napoli, features a young, voluptuous Sophia Loren sensually flattening discs of pizza dough while her cuckold of a husband drops them into a primitive vat of very hot oil. They promptly inflate and are sold without embellishment to be eaten as a snack, or as what today we call "street food." The set for that movie was a real-life restaurant called Starita, where they've been baking or frying extraordinary pizza since 1910. But about 10 years ago, Antonio Starita, the shop's third-generation pizzaiolo, hit upon an ingenious third-step -- first frying the dough, then decorating it and popping the pie into an oven to warm the toppings and melt the cheeses.

Last summer in Naples, we forked over a fistful of Euros to a clueless cab driver while searching for this legendary pizzeria in the twisty-curvy district of Materdei. Like many pizzerias in Italy, it was closed for lunch. But a version of it recently opened on Manhattan's easy-to-locate West 50th Street -- and there he was, Don Antonio Starita himself, overseeing a grand parade of classically Neapolitan pizzas coming out of his wood burning oven and, oh, yes, out of his deep fat fryer, at the new Don Antonio by Starita.

His specialty is called montanara in New York and simply pizza fritta in Naples. The fried dough puffs into an amazingly soufflé-light disc and topped with an intense tomato sauce and imported smoked mozzarella di bufala known as provola, and then popped briefly into a volcanically hot oven. It is like eating an exceedingly flavorful pillow.

The secret? Palm oil. The palm oil is important because it can withstand the rigors of high temperatures without breaking down, adding a delicate crispness to the dough's exterior. The dough downright floats with a bearable lightness of being.

We were a party of six celebrating culinary maven Arthur Schwartz's birthday, (he is the author of the award-winning cookbook Naples at Table), and I can tell you that every dish was its own celebration. We began with a huge platter of angioletti, which are fried puffy thumb-sized strips of dough topped with marinated cherry tomatoes, garlic, excellent oregano, and arugula, which was, for me, one of the most original and delicious dishes I've had anywhere recently! Then onto pizzas chosen by Antonio, not all of them on the menu.

We went nuts over a two-layer affair stuffed with mix of sautéed escarole, pine nuts, raisins and ricotta, then topped with wafer-thin dough and fresh mozzarella. A splendid pie with grape tomatoes in tomato sauce with mozzarella and basil stopped all table conversation for a short moment. And for dessert there was a pizza slathered with ricotta, honey and almonds, punctuated with a lit birthday candle.

Fat be damned, you're looking at a trend here, mark my words. I've run across a sushi bar selling slices of pizza dipped in tempura batter and deep-fried. Fish-and-chips shops have been doing downmarket versions for years in (of all places) Scotland, but they've kept it a rather well deserved secret. Out in Denver, Marco's Coal-Fired Pizzeria has a montanara and a ricotta-honey dessert pie, but they'll also fry any of their numerous pies in the same manner as Starita, right down to using palm oil.

Of course if you pile some mozzarella, salami, ricotta and tomato sauce onto a round of pizza dough, and fold it into a turnover, then you have a makings of a deep-fried calzone -- which is what you get at Locanda Positano in San Francisco and numerous other pizza joints around the country -- but these miss the point of crisping all the dough's surfaces, making for an amazing depth of flavor.

In Naples where they've been frying dough for centuries, you get it Starita's way or occasionally you run across a decorated thin-crust pizza that's topped with a second layer of dough, the edges being pressed together and the entire affair gently submerged in hot oil. This is not an obscure product in Naples, but it sure has taken its time crossing the Atlantic.

Now a restaurant named after the dish itself, La Montanara, has just opened on New York's Lower East Side. There, Giulio Adriani, who owns a restaurant in Rome and two places called Forcella in New York, is serving only fried pies, but he's using sunflower oil.

Locating Starita in New York may be easier than searching the curvaceous streets of Naples hoping to find either Sophia Loren or great pizza, but getting in isn't easy since they take no reservations and crowds form early, often waiting on the sidewalk for one of the restaurant's 70 seats. Bring a bunch of friends so you can try several of the 70 varieties available. Or, you might consider that long-awaited trip to Napoli.

Tell them Don Antonio sent you.

Tastes of the Week

March 19 to March 26, 2012 It was all-Italian all-the-time last week with three indelible meals. So here’s an homage to pizza, to pizzazz, to posterity, and to the maestri behind the magic:  Antonio, two Frankies, and Pepe.

Last summer in Naples, we forked out a fistful of Euros to a clueless cab driver while searching for the legendary pizzeria named Starita in the twisty-curvy district of Mater Dei. Of course it was closed. But a version of it recently opened on Manhattan’s easy-to-locate West 50th Street, and there he was, Don Antonio Starita himself, overseeing the grand parade of pizzas in and out of his wood burning oven and, oh, yes, his deep fat fryer. I’ll come back to the fried stuff in a moment.

Antonio has partnered with a former student who also runs the pizzeria Keste in New York and the new place is called Don Antonio by Starita.” We were a party of six celebrating dear friend Arthur Schwartz’s birthday, and I can tell you that every dish was its own celebration. We began with a huge platter of angioletti, which are fried puffy strips of dough topped with marinated cherry tomatoes and arugula, and then onto pizzas chosen by Antonio and not necessarily on the menu.

We went nuts over a two-layer affair stuffed with a mix of sautéed escarole, pine nuts, raisins and ricotta, then topped with wafer-thin dough and fresh mozzarella. For dessert there was a pizza slathered with ricotta, honey and almonds.

But in between these pies came Starita’s justly famous fried pizza – called montanara -- invented there about ten years ago where it simply is called pizza fritte. They drop a round of pizza into hot palm oil and it puffs up into an amazingly light disc (light as in texture; caloric like the dickens), which they top with an intense tomato sauce and imported smoked mozzarella di bufala, and slide it into their oven for finishing. You’re looking at a trend here, mark my words.

We all rolled home to sleep off dinner because there was another the following night, celebrating another friend’s birthday…Erica Marcus, former honcho cookbook editor and now ace food reporter for Newsday. That feast took place at Frankies (no apostrophe – there are two guys named Frank) in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens. We sat at two long tables in a romantically refitted old stable behind the restaurant and took our food from huge platters of antipasti; crostini of chicken liver mousse, delectable eggplant caponata, split fresh sardines en saor, followed by platters of  homemade cavetelli and hot sausage in brown butter;  of ethereal meatballs with pine nuts and raisins;  and robust braciola marinara -- all washed down with an infinity of excellent Barbera.

My husband especially liked Frankies’s opening aperitif, made with gin, Cointreau and lemon juice topped off with prosecco. He reminded me the following morning precisely how many he’d had as we got into the car for a two-hour drive to Yale where our daughter will be attending a high school summer program.  I knew he was worse for wear when he popped a couple of Tums on I-95, which he blamed merely on two days of feasting.

Now Yale is in New Haven, and you don’t drive there without stopping either at Sally’s or Pepe’s, both of which are the town’s equivalent of Starita, both of which bake a thin-and-crispy crust in coal-fired ovens. Yale could wait because we had just enough time for a pepperoni pie (pretty good) and for New Haven’s gastro-gift to the world – the white clam pie, which we had at Pepe’s (Sally’s being closed for lunch). This is a fairly affable assemblage of chunks of chewy clams, a sprinkling of cheese, some oregano, copious dousings of olive oil and enough garlic to eradicate all the witches in Transylvania.  It was an ultimate umami assault on our tastebuds, and while some folk make pilgrimages for the white clam pie, I think it is OK just to make it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Tonight we’re having broccoli.

Tastes of the Week

August 1 through August 7 A transitional week of tastes and flavors from Rome (bottom up) to Callicoon Center, New York!  Fun!

A wonderful, congenial and perfectly cooked pancake breakfast at the Firehouse in Callicoon Center, New York. We joined what must have been 600 breakfasters, from 7 a.m. till noon, for orange juice, fabulous pancakes cooked by fireman Bill Murray, over-easy eggs, flat round peppery sausages the size of bread-and-butter plates, and good hot coffee.  All for 6 bucks.  Nice gun raffle, too.

Visiting our daughter in camp near Jeffersonville, New York we fell in love with a cafe and inn called Samba, run by a Brazilian woman and her husband, an actor, director and former captain at the Rainbow Room.  Her food is exquisitely comforting and for dinner we enjoyed a fabulous salt cod brandade topped with sunny-side up quail eggs, thick slices of juicy pernil (pork), a wonderful seafood stew made with leeks, cream, clams, mussels and pollock.  Dessert was vanilla ice cream with a warm Brazilian sugar-banana caramel. Fab! Steamed broccoli and chopped green cabbage tossed with flaked salt, extra-virgin olive oil and hot pepper flakes. So simple and satisfying -- the vegetables tasted almost sweet.  This was dinner at home one night.

Really good warm chocolate chocolate-chip cookies on the plane home from Italy.  Added cocoa powder to my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe this week and voila!

The definitive cacio e pepe (homemade pasta with pecorino romano and lots of cracked pepper) in Rome at the famous Antico Forno Roscioli.

One of the best meals in Italy was at the contemporary l'Antico Arco with a promising young chef who could really make it on the international scene.  From Albania, and only 29 years old, Fundim Gjepali respects the cooking of the famous chef Arzak in Spain and himself is cooking pretty sophisticated stuff:  fresh mozzarella with bottarga (a new trend in Italy), a warm elixir of ricotta and yogurt topped with asparagus, truffles and poached egg yolk, perfectly cooked risotto made with a local fish, and "meatballs" made from suckling pig.

"Trappizzini" -- made at Pizzeria 00100 on Via Giovanni Branca -- it is a fabulous stuffed bread (better than pizza dough) filled with the best tripe we've ever had (there are a variety of fillings to choose from including chicken cacciatore.)  It is a made-up dish -- between a sandwich and a pizza -- and it could become very popular.  It's a little hole-in-the wall place that has already been discovered by everyone!