Chef luigi Ferraro takes Shrabasti Mallik on a gastronomic trip to south Italy with traditional Neapolitan cuisine in Sorrento at Shangri-la's. He explains that the cuisine is known for using a lot of tomatoes and buffalo mozza-rella cheese
Pizza is to Italy what a Peking duck is to China or butter chicken is to India. But did you know that the pizza that we are familiar with, courtesy the several retail chains, are not exactly how the Italians make itIJ In fact, different places in the country have their own way of baking a pasta and we, in particular, are going to talk about the Neapolitan pizza, from the Neapolitan area of southern Italy.
Niche places in Delhi, offering the taste of real Tuscany and Sicily are a few, but none bring to the table authentic Neapolitan cuisine. That is where Sorrento, the Italian restaurant at Shangri-la’s Eros Hotel came in.
The place had a familiar feel, with open kitchen counters, pasta making machines, bottles of olive oils, quite a number of them and tomatoes plenty of tomatoes. We knew that it was one of the prime ingredients of pizza making but never had we seen so many. “There are almost six to seven types of tomatoes here, all flown in from Italy,” luigi Ferraro, the Italian chef, told us.
We found the best place for ourselves, overlooking the stone oven wood fired open counter, with small logs of mango wood stocked at the bottom. We had to credit the restaurant’s aim to stick to the old-methods of baking a pizza with mango wood. We were joined by the chef as he took us on a culinary journey through the lesser known flavours of Southern Italy.
like a typical Italian meal, we started ours with an assortment of breads ciabatta (white bread made from wheat flour, water, salt, and yeast), focaccia (flat oven-baked Italian bread, similar in style and texture to pizza doughs, topped with herbs) and grissini breads (breadsticks). They were accompanied with sundered tomato pesto dressing. The breads were baked fresh and we knew because the crust gave in to the slightest pressure. The pairing with the tomato pesto dressing worked quite well because the oil and the tomatoes enhanced the flavour of the breads.
Chef Ferraro told us that Neapolitan cuisine uses plenty of tomatoes and buffalo Mozzarella. “That is the base for most of our dishes. But you can also try the breads with olive oil, too. It goes really well,” he said.
Next we tried their seasonal tomato basil and rocket salad with crispy fried shrimps in spicy tomato dressing, caper and garlic chips. The dish was quite filling, the prawns nicely cooked and everything tasted quite delectable.
Slowly we made way for what we popularly picture Italian cuisine as pastas and pizzas. We tried the fagottini, stuffed with rocitt and lemon, and the strozzapreti with Italian sausage, onion and fennel seeds. “These are dishes famous in the Amalfi region in Naples and are the best of southern Italian food,” said the chef pointing out that it was a deliberate to steer clear of popular pasta shapes like penne or spaghetti. The pastas, like the breads, are freshly made everyday. “Commercial pasta does not contain eggs in them but it is supposed to me made with eggs and we use it,” he added.
They say that the best parts of anything are always reserved for the end and chef Ferraro waited till the end to roll out the special Neapolitan pizza. He placed himself at the pizza counter and kneaded a dough with flour flown in from Italy. As a matter of fact, he makes sure that everything authentic and restricted to Italy is flown in fresh. We were surprised when he started to stretch the pizza dough by hand rather than using a rolling pin.
“Real pizzas are rustic pizzas which are neither too thick nor thin. There is a wrong perception. People say that the pizza should be very crisp but that is a wrong notion. They are not supposed to be crisp otherwise they would be dry. The pizza dough should be made with strong flour, so that it does not break during the stretching, and good mother yeast. Mother’s yeast is Italy’s oldest yeast and here we use a 10 year old mother yeast,” the chef elaborated and mentioned that every house in Italy has its own mother’s yeast because they make fresh pasta and bake bread everyday.
The chef prepared for us two Neapolitan pizzas grilled eggplant, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms and buffalo mozzarella, and mozzarella, fried egg, cooked ham, artichokes. “Buffalo farming is big in Naples and that is why we have the best mozzarella cheese,” he smiled. Being hand stretched, the crust was not even and that added a rather smoky flavour to the pizza slices. The pizzas were delectable and much different from the versions we generally gorge on — the bottom of the slices were still floury while it was baked just about to the right amount. And no, the cheese did not stretch from where we took a bite, as is so often depicted.
All this while we had with us sunrise, an orange and mango mocktail from Grappa, the Italian liquor section of the restaurant. Chef Ferraro insisted we try his signature plated dessert tiramisu tender biscuit moistened with coffee and amaretto, mascarpone cream, coffee gelée, bits of almond biscuit.
Well, it was the perfect end to a trip to South Italy, to say the least.