2017 | No. 100

Pizza di Scarola
Neapolitan Light and Skinny

By Tony Mastroianni
Photographs by Tony Mastroianni

 

Like the great aunt that remained in the old country, pizza di scarola has stayed put under the shadow of Vesuvius, in the narrow, cobbled vicoli and overpacked kitchens of Naples, while its relative, pizza napoletana, has made its home across the world, adapting to new cultures and ingredients. Despite its low profile, pizza di scarola is dynamic yet at the same time extremely simple. It’s light, but filling. It can be eaten hot or cold. It holds up well without taking precious fridge space. And escarole, its main ingredient, is good for you.

The origins of pizza di scarola aren’t entirely known, though it appears as far back as 1838 in Duke Ippolito Cavalcanti’s renowned cookbook, Cucina Teorico-Pratica, which is written partly in Neapolitan dialect. On top of Cavalcanti’s early version of pizza di scarola, which he referred to as gattò di scarola, his book hints at the dish’s original function. According to Cavalcanti, a traditional Neapolitan Christmas dinner is a ten-course meal, including boiled beef, sausage, fried fat, and roasted pork. Christmas Eve and New Year’s dinners were only nine courses, but equally heavy and meat-oriented. Few families would have been able to afford such extravagant dinners, but Christmas and New Year’s, like Easter, have always been occasions to feast. And this is where pizza di scarola comes into play. As they say in Naples, during the short period between the two end-of-the-year festivities, you need to eat magro e leggero (“skinny and light”) and pizza di scarola, because of its lightness and its ability to keep well over a period of days, became a natural choice to be served then.

Washing the escarole is as important as cooking it. Peel off the outer layer of leaves, which have the most soil stuck to them, and chuck them. Then hold the head of escarole by its stalk over where you plan to wash it (be it in a bucket with a hose on a terrace in Naples or your kitchen sink) and cut the head into short strips, which will be much easier to eat. Wash the strips in cold water, as escarole has a propensity to retain its grit.

Once cleaned, the escarole is boiled in salted water, strained, and put into a large saucepan to be cooked with oil and garlic. Traditionally, the garlic is not cut, but smashed, crushed under the weight of your palm (though the flat of a knife will do the trick). From this point on, tradition splits itself into two schools, identifiable to some extent with the two so-called bibles of Neapolitan cooking.

On one hand, you have the more precise, typical recipe book, Jeanne Carola Francesconi’s 750-page La Cucina Napoletana, published in 1992. It calls for a filling of escarole, garlic, capers, pitted black Gaeta olives, anchovies, salt, and pepper.

Where Francesconi is precise in her measurements and procedures, Frijenno Magnanno (“frying and eating,” in Neapolitan), first published in 1990, edited by the Neapolitan writer and film director Luciano De Crescenzo, is her antithesis, with each recipe explained in one simple paragraph. But Frijenno Magnanno is the much more common cookbook, practically issued to every Neapolitan household along with amulets and photos of the Madonna. In place of anchovies in its recipe, we find pine nuts, which today are more standard.

Also common, though not found in either of those two books, are raisins, mixed into the pan along with the olives and pine nuts toward the very end of the cooking. If you opt for this sweeter filling, turn off the flame only once the raisins have absorbed water and the wrinkles can no longer be seen. Without raisins, simply watch the escarole and the clove of garlic, waiting until it is golden and the escarole is dark and limp; the filling should be completely cooked before it touches the dough.

As for the dough, La Cucina Napoletana and Frijenno Magnanno have distinct methods, both of which seem to have fallen out of favor. Francesconi actually has two different methods, one calling for 150 grams of lard plus fresh yeast and the other for only 30 grams of lard and no yeast at all. Frijenno Magnanno doesn’t include any lard but mixes mashed potato into a dough raised with fresh yeast. Nowadays fresh panetti of yeast, as opposed to the dry yeast generally found in the US, are easily available in the refrigerated sections of Italian supermarkets. Then again, in Naples a popular way to get around making the dough is to simply buy it from a pizzeria, either by the fresh loaf or by the kilo.

As far as baking tins go, there is no standard shape or size for a pizza di scarola. They can be done in a deep, square bread pan as easily as a shallow round cake pan, such as 28-cm (11-inch), if you have a choice. But you can opt for a smaller pan, resulting in a thicker dough, or a wider pan conducive to a thinner, more typical pizzalike dough. Both the size of the pan and the amount of ingredients go back to the first and foremost rule of Neapolitan cuisine: Use what you have.

Once the dough and filling are ready, stretch the dough thin, until it’s almost double the size of your baking tin. It’s important to stretch the dough by holding it in the air and letting gravity do the work as opposed to stretching it out on a flat surface, as that way you risk having holes appear in the dough when you spread it out in the pan. A coating of oil helps prevent sticking.

Let the dough cover the pan, with the excess hanging over the sides, and add the escarole filling. Ideally, it should almost reach the brim of the pan, however if there isn’t enough escarole for that, it’s not a problem. The only consequence is a flatter pizza with a thicker dough on the top, a style that is actually preferred by some people. If there’s any break in the dough, it is imperative to patch it with some of the excess, or the filling will leak and the tear will become a hole and the hole will become an abyss and when it comes out of the oven, your pizza di scarola will no longer be a pizza di scarola. Use the dough hanging over the sides to cover the filling. Tilt the stuffed pizza carefully from side to side, back and forth, to be sure it’s loose and won’t stick in the oven. Bake at 175 degrees C (350 degrees F) for 30 to 40 minutes, keeping an eye on the color of the dough. For a more delicato taste, as Neapolitans say, meaning it gives a dash of elegance, brush the top of the pizza with olive oil once the dough starts to look more solid, turning a shade of gold. Once the dough has taken on a 24-karat color, the pizza is done. Let it cool. Eat magro e leggero. ●

From issue 100

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