Quick

Our prettiest pizza, this is the one that customers are most likely to point to when they see it being carried through the dining room. The squash blossoms are laid out over the surface so they bake into the crust, and the pizza ends up looking like a painting. We put the burrata on after it comes out of the oven, and I love the cool creamy cheese on the hot, crispy pizza.

Cavolo nero, a variety of kale, means “black cabbage” in Italian and is a staple of Tuscan cooking. It has a distinct, earthy flavor that I love and that complements many of our heartier preparations.

Using vinegar and chiles in an aggressive way is something Matt picked up from Mario, and I love it. I have a thing for acidic food in general—vinegar in particular. If you were to follow me around the kitchen at Mozza as I tasted various sauces and condiments, what you would hear most often is, “It needs salt” or “It needs acid.” This needs neither. Broccolini, also called baby broccoli, looks similar to broccoli but with longer, thinner stalks and smaller florets. It’s a hybrid between conventional broccoli and Chinese broccoli and is slightly sweeter than broccoli. We also make this dish with Romanesco, an Italian heirloom variety of cauliflower.

What I like most about this mussels preparation is that they are not simply steamed in white wine, like the vast majority of mussels you see in restaurants. We cook them with a light tomato sauce—and, yes, also white wine—and toss in piles of herbs after the mussels are cooked, so the herbs wilt only slightly. The finished dish manages to be original and familiar at the same time. It also couldn’t be easier to make.

The perfect example of how good a few simple ingredients, combined and prepared correctly, can be. When we can get it, our preferred variety for this is radicchio di Treviso, which has an oblong head. The roasted heads look so pretty lined up on a platter that they make the perfect addition to an outdoor meal served family or buffet style. As always, the quality of the balsamico you use is essential to the quality of the finished dish.

The first place I was served fava bean pods, as opposed to shelled beans, was at Zuni Café in San Francisco. When they came to the table, I thought it was such an interesting idea, and when I tasted them I found them delicious. When you serve them this way, you want to use only tender, young, small pods, as larger pods will be tough and fibrous. If you can’t get young fave, use jumbo asparagus instead. In either case, this is a spring dish.

Whipping cream is all about the details. Perfectly whipped cream is cloudlike and light, but if you go just a little too far, it becomes too stiff—on its way to turning into butter. I fold in a bit of crème fraîche or sour cream when serving whipped cream on desserts because I love the tang that it adds, and it guarantees a smooth, dense, and shiny cream. If you are whipping cream to put on a pizza, do not add the crème fraîche; simply continue whipping the cream until it is thick and mousselike.

This mountain of arugula is layered with thinly sliced mushrooms and long thin shards of Piave, a hard cheese similar to but sweeter than Parmigiano—and much less expensive. It’s important to use fresh, firm mushrooms; look for those with closed caps and no blemishes. If you can’t find Piave, Parmigiano is a fine substitute.

The red, green, and white tricolore salad, traditionally composed of radicchio, frisée, and endive, is just one of the many ways that Italians celebrate their flag. I like tricolore salads, but this version, which is tossed in an anchovy-enhanced dressing with lots of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, was my way of sneaking the flavors of a Caesar salad onto the Pizzeria menu without calling it a Caesar. In the rare instance that a Caesar salad is done well, it is one of my favorite salads, but Caesar salad is such a cliché on Italian-American menus—and it’s not even Italian; it was invented in Tijuana—I could never have put it on my menu as such.

We use this seasoning mix for the Pan-roasted Pork Chops with Olives and Sambuca-braised Fennel (page 241) and the Pork Ribs with Fennel and Apple Cider Vinegar (facing page). It will keep for months, so if you like pork with fennel, make double (or more) of this recipe.

We put so much dried oregano in this vinaigrette that you might think it’s a typo. It’s not. Because the oregano is so prominent, look for sources such as Penzeys that specialize in dried herbs.

Pain de mie is a French-style bread shaped like a traditional, square-edged slicing loaf similar to a Pullman loaf. Mie means “crumb” and is a breadbaker’s term that refers to the inside of bread—that which isn’t the crust. This bread is so named because, baked in a loaf pan, it doesn’t have a crust. Pain de mie contains a touch of sugar and butter so it makes for the most flavorful bread crumbs. If you can’t get pain de mie, substitute brioche, which is even more buttery.

I’ve been making a version of this condiment for as long as I can remember. Currants and pine nuts are a traditional Sicilian combination, so anytime I use this I feel like I am making a Sicilian dish.

This is a simple and foolproof recipe for the creamiest, lemoniest curd you’ll ever taste. It makes more than you will need for the Bombolini with Berry Marmellata, Lemon Curd, and Vanilla Gelato (page 293), but you can use the leftovers in countless ways: serve it atop Greek Yogurt Gelato (page 313) or as a dessert sauce for Cannoli di Gelato (page 287), or do the English thing and spoon it onto warm scones.

When we first opened the Pizzeria, we made a choice not to offer bread, but we often had customers who requested it. We served breadsticks, but we didn’t want to get involved with bread service. We asked Mario for his advice about people wanting bread, and he said, “They want bread, give them bread. But make it into something and charge them.” And then he told us about fett’unta, sliced bread that is grilled and then drowned in olive oil. The word comes from fetta, or “slice,” and ’unta, which means “oily.” Matt made some in the pizza oven, we both loved it, and we added it to the menu immediately. Today, we offer fett’unta at both restaurants. At the Pizzeria, we suggest people order it when they want items that have sauce to sop up, such as the Eggplant Caponata (page 104), Mozza Caprese (page 66), or to accompany a plate of prosciutto. At the Osteria we serve it with a sampler of mozzarella. We serve this bread year-round, but my favorite time for it is late fall and early winter, just after the olive harvest in Italy, when olio nuovo—green, peppery “new olive oil”—is released. If you happen to have a charcoal grill lit, that is my first choice for making this, but you can also make it in a grill pan or sandwich press—but be prepared for a bit of smoke. At home it’s always part of my Umbrian tavola.

Toasting pine nuts brings out their subtle, nutty flavor. Because they are so small and oily, they go from toasted to burnt in no time, so keep a close eye on them. Pine nuts turn rancid very quickly so try to buy them from a source with high turnover and store them in the refrigerator.

Bacon-wrapped dates—a more elegant version of rumaki, the 1950s appetizer of chicken liver wrapped in bacon with a water chestnut in the middle—have taken Los Angeles by storm ever since Suzanne Goin started serving them at her restaurant, AOC. I didn’t want to copy hers, but I like them so much that I wanted to make a version for Mozza using figs, which are so abundant in my town in Italy that you almost forget they are a delicacy. Although I’ve never been served anything like these in Italy, I certainly didn’t invent the idea of contrasting the sweetness of figs with something piggy and salty: figs and prosciutto is a classic. At the Osteria, we serve these as an antipasto on a tangle of wilted dandelion greens, but they also make a great bite-size snack for cocktail hour, which is how we have presented them here.

Matt got the inspiration for this dish from the Whole Hog Dinner that the restaurant Oliveto, in Oakland, hosts every year for chefs, food professionals, and friends from all over the world. One year they served pasta with cured pork, pickled peppers, and tomato sauce, which was so good that when we got back to Los Angeles, Matt decided to make his own version. Fiorentini means “Florentine,” but here refers to a twisted short pasta shape made by Setar, an artisanal pasta producer in Napoli. If you can’t find it, use another dried, artisanally produced pasta in its place, such as maccheroni alla chitarra, a big tube-shaped pasta from Napoli. The tubes collapse when they cook so they’re like empty ravioli.

This is a very simple Roman pasta dish made with nothing but black pepper and pecorino romano cheese. We believe in leaving traditional dishes alone, but we did make a couple of changes to this dish. We use bavette, in place of spaghetti, which is the shape traditionally used. And we cut the pecorino with Parmigiano because pecorino is so pungent that it can be overwhelming on its own. The pepper for this dish must be coarsely ground. I recommend you use Tellicherry peppercorns, a fragrant, flavorful variety from India. Coarsely grinding or cracking the pepper for this dish is the perfect excuse for breaking out the mortar and pestle.

These crispy toasts are a staple of our kitchen. If you have a sandwich press, you can use it instead of the oven to toast the bread slices.