Snack

This zesty salsa is high in protein and fiber and low in fat, and it makes a great accompaniment to grilled meat, chicken, or fish. It’s quick work to make your own baked tortilla chips, and they are so much more healthful than anything you can buy from the store.

Vegetables, of course, make healthy snacks, and are especially appetizing when served with flavorful dips. Yellow split peas are the protein-rich basis of one spread; tarama—cured carp or cod roe, used in Greek and Turkish cooking—flavors the other. The roe is soaked in water to remove much of its saltiness, then squeezed of excess moisture. Look for tarama at specialty food stores. Serve dips with crudités and toasted baguette or whole-grain bread slices.

A mandoline makes easy work of slicing beets paper thin; if you don’t have one, you can use a very sharp knife, but the slices will take longer to dry out in the oven and won’t be as crisp once cooled. You’ll need four rimmed baking sheets to make the chips, or you can bake them in batches.

Goat cheese may be a good option for those who can’t tolerate cow’s milk, and when combined with tart raspberries on toasted bread, it’s hard for anyone to resist.

Avocado provides folic acid, fiber, and monounsaturated fatty acids; pear adds extra soluble fiber and sweetness.

These fried filled taco tubes are actually more Tex-Mex than Mex, but have become a popular Mexican street snack and restaurant favorite. Flautas (flutes) are larger, about the diameter of a cigar—about 4 to 5 inches long, and about 1 inch in diameter. Taquitos are smaller, more like a cigarillo—about 3 to 3 1/2 inches long and 1/2 to 3/4 inch in diameter. Both flautas and taquitos are great choices for entertaining. Serve either as finger food, figuring 2 to 3 per person as an appetizer, or include them as part of a main course combination plate. In Mexico, both flautas and taquitos are usually made with corn tortillas, rarely with flour. For taquitos especially, it’s very difficult to find flour tortillas thin enough to roll up into the proper tight little tubes and seal them securely. At the end of many of the recipes in the book is a feature called Tortillas that notes fillings that work well as flautas or taquitos. Among the many delicious choices are all-vegetable Squash Blossoms with Green Chiles and Cheese (page 23) or Wild Forest Mushrooms with Garlic (page 25) to meat-based Yucatán Chicken with Achiote (page 48), Turkey with Mole (page 52), Pork Carnitas (page 78), or Braised Beef Short Ribs (page 96). In general, the best fillings are cheese based as they hold together and cook evenly. Meat or chicken should be shredded, rather than in big chunks, which can take too long to heat up, causing the tortilla to overfry and burn.

This is a basic three-cheese pizza, the only surprise being the truffle-infused sottocenere cheese. Friend-of-Mozza Michael Krikorian orders this pizza with Fennel Sausage (page 137) on top. His version has become so popular that regular customers now know they can order the same thing if they ask for the “Michael.”

Years ago I discovered a little place in San Francisco that made the most delicious green onion focaccia that I loved and never forgot. When the Pizzeria was conceived, I knew I wanted to offer one with green onions in memory of that one. In trying to invent my green onion pizza, I remembered my days at Spago, where they made a goat cheese and red pepper pizza that was really popular. Goat cheese and bacon is a great combination, as is goat cheese and browned garlic. And then there were those green onions . . . That mishmash of inspirations is how this pizza came to be. The garlic is the same that we use in the Olives al Forno (page 37). While you’re at it, you might want to make enough for both, since the olives would be a great accompaniment to a pizza party.

If we were one of those pizzerias that give wacky names to each pie, this mixed mushroom pizza would be called “The Vegas Guys,” or “Peter’s Pizza.” Our editor, Peter Gethers, has a group of guys he goes to Las Vegas with every year for some sort of guy reunion weekend. They meet in Los Angeles and the tradition is that they choose a different restaurant to eat dinner in the night before they leave for Vegas. I’m flattered that for the last few years, they’ve quit chowing around and held their dinner consistently in the private dining room in the Pizzeria, called the Jack Warner Room. They were particularly excited about this pizza. It’s a pretty straightforward mushroom pie, but the fact that we roast the mushrooms before adding them to the pizza, and the combination of taleggio and fontina cheeses that top it, make it especially flavorful.

Long-cooked broccoli is one of my all-time favorite vegetable preparations, so I had to find a way to work it onto a pizza. Normally I don’t like broccoli on pizza because whenever I’ve seen it, it’s just been dropped onto the pizza raw, and often with a whole mix of other uncooked vegetables that don’t go with each other or with pizza. Here, the broccoli is cooked until it has a buttery texture, so it works with the crust instead of just sitting on top of it. We use a mix of mozzarella and caciocavallo cheese, a Sicilian cheese similar to mozzarella that has been dried and aged for a few weeks, so it has a funky aged flavor that goes well with the broccoli. If you can’t find caciocavallo cheese, look for scamorza, or use all mozzarella in its place.

This is my number-one favorite Pizzeria Mozza pizza, and it’s a direct rip-off of the Norcia pizza they serve at Pellicano. Sausage and panna, or cream, is a classic combination in Umbria. The summer I discovered this pizza I ordered it every time I went to Pellicano, in an effort to figure out what was in the white sauce that was smeared on the crust. When I asked, they told me “panna.” I knew panna was cream, but I couldn’t understand how they could put cream on pizza. Finally, I went back to the kitchen to see for myself, and what I saw was that the cream had been whipped, making it spreadable. Whipping cream for a pizza was such a foreign idea to me that when I started playing with pizzas for the restaurant, I tried to avoid it. I made this pizza with crème fraîche and later with mascarpone—anything not to put whipped cream on a pizza—but the whipped cream was definitely the best.

This was one of the original ten pizzas we served at the Pizzeria. I knew I wanted to offer a potato pizza, and I love the combination of potatoes and Gorgonzola.

No matter how creative we like to be with our pizzas, we also have a big place in our hearts for the classics such as this—essentially a pepperoni pizza with roasted chiles added for extra kick.

Marinara—pizza with tomato sauce and oregano and without cheese—is one of the two kinds of pizzas approved by the Assocciazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. At the tiny bakery in Panicale, they always have a sheet pan of tomato pizza and one of zucchini pizza on display, both sold at room temperature. It’s so simple, but made with good sauce and fragrant oregano, it’s delicious. Prepare and stretch the dough and preheat the oven according to the instructions given in “Nancy’s Scuola di Pizza” (page 128). Brush the rim of the dough with olive oil and season the entire surface with salt. Ladle or spoon the sauce onto the center of the dough and use the back of the ladle or spoon in a circular motion to spread the sauce out over the surface of the dough, leaving a 1-inch rim without any sauce. Scatter the pieces of cheese over the pizza, slide it into the oven, and bake until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden brown and crispy, 8 to 12 minutes. Remove the pizza from the oven and cut it into quarters. Drizzle the pizza with the finishing-quality olive oil, scatter the tiny basil leaves or snip the large leaves over the top, and serve.

Just as you would order a baguette to judge a bakery, Margherita is the pizza to order to judge a pizzeria. Not only is Pizza Margherita the original pizza Napoletana but it has all the elements you want to look at: the sauce, the cheese, and of course, the crust. It’s our biggest seller.

Pan con tomate is a Catalan creation of grilled bread rubbed with garlic and raw tomato pulp, doused with olive oil, and sprinkled with coarse salt—and one of my favorite things to order at a tapas bar. So how do you serve your favorite Spanish snack at an Italian mozzarella bar? Add mozzarella, of course, or in this case, burrata, and give it an Italian name. We offer this dish only during tomato season. If the tomatoes have no flavor, the tomato bread will also have no flavor. And despite all the other delicious components, which include speck, pickled shallots, and tomato vinaigrette, the bread is, without question, the star. The recipe for the shallots makes more than you will need for this recipe, but they will keep for several weeks. Use the leftovers to make this recipe another time, or on sandwiches or grilled meat.

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.