The Executive Chef at Pizzeria Ortica, Justin Miller, prepares a seasonal cotechino (a cooked holiday sausage) and cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) pizza with smoked mozzarella, spiced mascarpone, and curls of spring onion. It is a perfect balance of flavor and texture.
Have you ever fallen in love? If not, then you haven't tasted the Bianca. When the chefs at Pizzeria Mozza met the buttery, truffle-laced sottocenere, it was love at first bite. The rounds of delicate semi-soft cow's milk cheese, from the Veneto region in northern Italy, are aged in juniper and fennel ash rub, providing a subtle background for the overarching truffle flavor. Mozza's relatively long pizza cooking times (8-10 minutes) brings the high fat content of the sottocenere to its oily breaking point. So owner Nancy Sliverton and Executive Chef Matt Molina add a supporting cast of fontina and mozzarella to keep this consummate white pie velvety.
On the streets of Istanbul, Alex Sarkissian and Chef Matt Carpenter discovered the irresistible Etli Pide. This Turkish street food is practically non-existent in the US. For this edition of Top This, we learn how to make their Etli Pide, an open-faced calzone brimming with seasoned minced beef, kasseri cheese, organic farm egg and thyme spiked oven roasted tomatoes.
Vegans and the lactose intolerant get the short end of the pizza stick when it comes to finding an enjoyable cheese substitute. But Portland, Oregon's best vegan restaurant, Portobello, has a solution: stop trying to replicate cheese in the first place. Owner Aaron Adams devised a simple, easy, vegan replacement for head pizzaiolo Will Fain's delectable pies that is nothing whatsoever like mozzarella, but is totally satisfying in its own right: cashew cream.
The Shiitake Pie at Co. (bread man Jim Lahey's Chelsea pizzeria) is an unusual little number, with a walnut and caramelized onion spread forming the base for shiitake mushrooms. But one bite and you'll find that the tastes and textures of this cheeseless pie are supremely harmonious. The sweet onions and rich, nutty walnuts come together to form something similar in texture to ricotta. Top that with rosemary, bold, smokey shiitake mushrooms (or try it with Hen of the Woods), and herbaceous branch lettuce and you've got yourself one make-at-home-worthy pizza. Just click through the slideshow to find out how!
There is something alluring about a golden egg yolk running all over your pizza. At Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Greenmarket-inspired ABC Kitchen in New York, Chef Dan Kluger takes breakfast pizza to new heights by placing an oh-so-runny farm egg atop his earthy wild mushroom, Parmesan, and oregano pie. Did we mention that he throws a little homemade ricotta and tangy Tomme-style cheese in there for good measure? It's a pizza I'm definitely going to want to make at home.
The bar-style pie (that's ultra-thin crusted, crispy around the edges) at Star Tavern is awesome in every way except one: there's only one location. Here's how to recreate the same awesomeness at home.
Potatoes on pizza: way or no way? At Flying Squirrel Pizza Co. in Seattle, owner Bill Coury spits in the face of carb-counters (figuratively, of course) with his popular #6, a New York–style pie topped with chive oil, Maytag blue cheese, spinach, garlic, mozzarella, and lemon-herb roasted potatoes. Here's how to make this delicious pizza at home.
At their newest outpost in Culver City, Pitfire Artisan Pizza bakes tantalizingly topped pizzas. Using local ingredients sourced from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, each pie is crafted with the best produce the market has to offer. For this edition of Top This, we learn how to make their Pumpkin Pizza.
Williamsburg's Best Pizza has been getting a fair amount of attention for its pizza (oh, and these guys liked it, too). But head pizzaman Frank Pinello says he doesn't listen to the hype. He says that if he's doing something right—or something wrong—his customers will tell him about it personally. Seeing how we can't get enough of the Pickled Vegetable Pizza—and everything else served at Best Pizza—I'd say he's doing something very right. So right, in fact, that I raced over to Best to learn how to make the pickled veg for this awesome pie. This is a pickling recipe and pizza recipe in one—the best of both worlds!
