Mario's Sicilian Pizza

Mario's Sicilian Pizza

Recipe by Mario Batali

We caught this recipe on The Chew the other day and decided to adapt it for a 2 person household. I used the wonderful all purpose pizza bianca dough recipe from Gabriele Bonci and cut the other ingredients back proportionately. We also used the tuna we canned a couple months back.

Ingredients

• 1/2 Recipe Pizza Bianca dough
• 1 cup Crushed tomatoes
• 4 oz. Fresh Mozzarella, sliced thin
• 1 Tbs Salt Packed Capers, rinsed
• 1/2 cup Sicilian Olives, chopped
• 1/2 cup Tuna packed in oil
• Oregano
• Red Pepper Flakes

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.
2. Make the pizza dough according to the recipe and allow to rise for about an hour.
3. When the oven is heated, turn the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper and spread it carefully into a large oblong. 



4. Spread the tomatoes evenly over the dough then add the other ingredients: tuna, olives, capers, mozzarella, oregano.
5. Slide the pizza into the oven and bake for about 15 minutes or until it's nicely browned.
6. Slice and serve!

As mentioned we used the tuna we canned a few weeks back on this pizza. If you can possibly do it can your own tuna! The big chunks were firm and moist and the oil, rather surprisingly was not overwhelmed by the tuna. It was a complete success.

We also opened a jar of the melanzane sott'olio from last week and it too was wonderful. The strips of eggplant were tender, with just a hint of acid from the vinegar boil, a breath of garlic and tiny hint of heat from the peperoncino.

Preserving: Tonno Sott' Olio

Tonno Sott' Olio

Recipe by Rosetta Costantino

Recently I've been favoring recipes that call for tonno sott' olio - tuna preserved in olive oil. The commercial product available here in the USA is very expensive. Fortunately, it turns out to be pretty easy to make. The tuna still ain't cheap (my tuna was $17.99 a pound so I'm "saving" about $15 versus buying the imported product) but for anyone with a pressure canner or two, it's an interesting change from the annual cycle of vegetable canning that culminates with an orgy of tomato processing in late summer.

There are (at least) three main approaches to making tonno sott' olio at home. One involves a pickling brine with vinegar, salt and various aromatics. Mario Batali has a representative recipe of this type, Fresh Canned Tuna, as does Lidia Bastianich. Note that both these recipes produce a product meant to be refrigerated.

The second approach uses a simple brine: water and salt; the versions differ mainly in the amount of salt used. This is the approach I'm using, as described by Rosetta Costantino in My Calabria: Rustic Family Cooking from Italy's Undiscovered South.

The third approach involves pressure canning fresh, uncooked fish with a little salt and olive oil. Some sources recommend this approach for any fish except tuna, others apply it to tuna as well.

This being SAI's first pressure canning recipe of the season, now would be a good time to drag out your equipment and check it over. I found that the over pressure plug on mine and gotten a tiny cut sometime over the winter - that would have made quite a mess had it blown out.

And for more exciting canning blogification: