Cooking For Italians

Foodie International 

We headed up to Elyse’s place (from Foodie International) for a welcome glass of wine and to see her recently renovated 200 year old stone house. Perched a couple of hundred feet up from the agriturismo her amazing Italian home has even more stunning views than our sweet accommodations below.

A quick tour of the house ended, as usual, in the kitchen, a modern beauty integrated into the original building.

Agriturismo

Since it was Elyse who had set up our stay at the agriturismo and brought us down to this stunning part of Tuscany, I offered my chef’s services to cook for her and her visiting friends. Admittedly being more of an eater than a cook she took me up on my offer and we left it with her to decide on a day and time.

It was over the fantastic birthday lunch that inspiration hit and she decided that we should have a pizza party and as a thank you for the wonderful lunch she would invite the Toppini family, fifteen to twenty people in all.
Suddenly I got a little nervous, making pizza for a large group is fine but for a large group of Italians, it’s intimidating. Her kitchen was nice but that’s a lot of pizza from a home oven!
I calmly voiced my concerns and then she said the magic words.

“Oh, I don’t think I showed you the wood-burning oven!”.

Turns out that this is not just any old wood-burning oven but the original 200-year-old oven that they saved.
They built a small open-air kitchen around this beautiful oven, adding an awesome gas grill, a sink, a huge wooden board and rolling pin and all the equipment needed to turn out pies like a real pizzeria.

“Now you’re talking!” I said, “Let’s do it!”

The day of the party, was in the high thirties if not 40C and I imagined I would wither away in front of a roaring fire but thankfully it wasn’t that bad. We arrived plenty early so I could start the fire to make sure the oven was super hot when it was time to cook some pizza. How hot I’m not sure, all I know is that when the bricks turn white she is ready to go, hot! A large pile of bone-dry olive wood waited for me in the shed and with the strike of a match, I had a roaring fire in the middle of the domed oven. The flue is actually outside the oven door so all the heat stays inside and the tiny amount of smoke (most is burned up) whips up a small slot over the door.  Once I had the fire good and stoked the metal door was put into place for maximum effectiveness.

Meanwhile, Nat got busy making a huge batch of dough on the large wooden board.

Such a large working space made it a lot easier to knead and turn the dough until it was ready to let sit and rise with a floured cloth covering it.

Fresh pizza sauce

Next, we went to work whipping up a batch of fresh pizza sauce loaded with garlic, oregano, pepperoncini and olive oil, not just any olive oil but Elyse’s own oil made from trees just outside the door, sweet! Next, we needed toppings and she brought the goods; prosciutto, bresaola, spicy salami, artichokes, olives, basil, fresh mozzarella and a crate of fresh arugula. Elyse had also picked up a few pounds of fresh sausages that I could grill up and enough fixings to make a huge mixed salad.
The wine for the night was an incredible red from Montalcino called Pomo and with another year in oak, it would have been labelled a Brunello.
Dessert, a cherry crumble, would be handled by Elyse.  Earlier that day she and Nat picked a huge bowl of ripe Amarena cherries from the tree outside our apartment door.

While Nat and I were busy out in the pizza kitchen Elyse and her friends pitted up all the cherries inside. Elyse’s plan was to make a traditional crumble with rolled oats but they didn’t have any at the store so she substituted ground walnuts, which worked wonderfully.

Before long it was show time and the first of the guests started to arrive. A couple of bottles of Prosecco had been chilled and with the addition of some extra cherry juice from dessert, an impromptu aperitif was created.

Pizza kitchen 

The pizza kitchen opened onto the outdoor dining table shaded by a lattice of wisteria with a view of the pool and out across the stunning landscape below.
The guests had now arrived and checking the oven I was happy to see a dome of glowing white bricks.
“Showtime!” I said to Nat and on that cue, she cut off a chunk of dough and started rolling.
In the oven my hard work had paid off with a huge pile of red-hot coals which I pushed to one side with a long metal scraper, making room to slide in the pizzas.

Nat now had two or three crusts rolled out and was saucing them up and decorating them with the prepared goodies.

Being somewhat experienced pizza makers, we know that the key to a great pizza is not overloading them so each got their own treatment. One with just mozzarella finished with basil (margarita), another with bresaola piled with arugula as soon as it came from the oven, one with artichokes and spicy salami, a couple with just cheese for the kids and all got a drizzle of house olive oil before serving.

Long metal pizza peel

Scooping each up with a long metal pizza peel I could slide three or four pizzas directly onto the oven floor. Soon we were in the rhythm and were turning out pizza after pizza that only needed about 5 minutes in the oven before I would shovel them onto a cutting board that would be brought to the table.
Off to one side, I had the grill fired up too, which made short order of the sausages that I then piled onto a platter and sent to the table.
The moans of delight and the silence of full mouths needed no translation, people were happy.
Taking a moment Nat and I ripped a piece of hot pizza apart and sampled our work, wow! Crispy thin crust perfection, smoke-kissed and sweetened with that oil. We did it and even the Italians were impressed.
Calls from the table let us know they had hit their limit and we could stop.  Putting down the peel and rolling pin we grabbed our wine and took off our aprons. I would guess we turned out over twenty pizzas that night.

Slipping into a chair at the table it was our turn to eat, relax and enjoy the party. A cool, nighttime breeze blew across the patio while village lights flickered across the valley under a clear starry night. Content, we finished the night with a piece of that incredible cherry crumble, lots more wine and joked about opening a pizzeria in Tuscany.