Saturday 1 March 2008 Pizza Workshop and Sardinian Degustation Lunch at Tea Rooms at Yarck with Pietro Porcu
10.30 am for 11.00 am start for Pizza Workshop. Lunch starts at 12.30.
Marieke has finally persuaded Pietro Porcu to offer a workshop to reveal the secrets and skills of making perfect, delectable, authentic, brilliant pizza and variations using the same dough in a wood-fired oven. This will be held at the delightful Tea Rooms at Yarck, 90 minutes north-east of Melbourne.
Pizza comes in many abominations and awful guises- soggy bottoms, thick crusts, commercial toppings, processed cheeses- a world away from the original, traditional, authentic crisp fragrant bread based meal that Pietro’s kitchen has mastered- wafer-thin crispest bases with restrained full flavored toppings that linger.
This will be followed by a Degustation Lunch conceived according to available produce and the season. Wines may be selected from an unusual and tempting list of Italian and regional offerings. Spaces are limited to 40 guests at tables of 10.
Email us your expression of interest for this Lunch. Please indicate how many places you wish to reserve and if you have any dietary restrictions.
A dinner at Da Noi some two years was galvinising and exciting for the sheer passion and seasonal spontaneity on the plate. A subsequent conversation with the delightfully effusive and heartfelt Pietro Porcu engendered further excitement when he spoke of his new farm project in Yarck and the world of possibility that would open with the production of his own goats, sheep, fruit and vegetable gardens. Then a more recent dinner at the Tea Rooms at Yarck- sensational, eclectic, rustic simplicity of great depth served by this native Sardinian as though you were a guest in his home redolent of the best osteria , - cemented those instincts and this new project coming to fruition has personally rallied him back to his stoves on weekends supported by a crack and devoted front of house team from Melbourne, lead by partner Bianca.
Guests are relieved of having to make any choices as they entrust Pietro to proffer well-sized dishes hallmarked by excellent produce and unpretentious surprises that culminate in a balanced and soul satisfying whole expereince. There is too a wonderful well annotated and unusual selection of Italian wines.
Pietro Porcu was born in the south of Sardinia one of 6 children in a family who were totally self sufficient, producing everything they needed including their own pasta and cheeses.
Pietro came to Australia via Germany and Holland, where he first started working in restaurants. He began experimenting and reproducing many traditional Sardinian dishes. After a couple of years he then opened the Da Noi Restaurant in Amsterdam. ("Da Noi" means "at our place".) It is here he adopted the style/philosophy that he has replicated in his Melbourne restaurant, now celebrating 10 years – no menu as such but a selection of dishes based on what is fresh at the time.
After coming to Australia, Pietro worked in various Melbourne restaurants for a while, then
Since opening at Da Noi, Pietro has developed several signature dishes - including lamb with lemon sauce, his suckling pig cooked over myrtle branches and a number of seafood dishes. He also loves making pasta. Many of his recipes are inspired by his mother and grandmother.
A brief background to the history of pizza:
Historical records suggest that people in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all ate things that are very similar to our modern pizza crust. Ancient Egyptians had a custom of celebrating the Pharaoh's birthday with a flat bread seasoned with herbs, and Herodotus, a Greek historian described Babylonian recipes that are very similar to contemporary pizza crust. The word pizza may be a derivative of the Latin word picea, a word which the Romans used to describe the blackening of bread in an oven.
Pizza most clearly took the form that we are now familiar with in pre-Renaissance Naples, a large city in central Italy. Poor peasants used their limited ingredients (wheat flour, olive oil, lard, cheese and natural herbs) to make a seasoned, flat bread garnished with cheese. Mozzarella cheese was one benefit of an invasion from Asian peoples, who brought the water buffalo to Italy. Today, the best mozzarella cheese is still made from water buffalo milk.
Europeans returning from Peru and Mexico brought with them what was originally thought to be a very poisonous fruit: the tomato. Precisely how they decided that the tomato was actually edible is unclear, but as Southern Europeans overcame their suspicions, the tomato became enormously popular. Today, of course, the tomato is a crucial component of Mediterranean cuisine, and is still used in most pizza recipes.
Naples gradually assumed its reputation as having the finest pizza in Italy throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century, pizza became a popular fast food.
The world's first true pizzeria, "Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba", opened in 1830 and is still in business today at Via Port'Alba 18 in Naples. Pizzerias in this era usually included a large brick oven, a marble counter where the crust was prepared, and a shelf lined with ingredients. Contemporary Neapolitan pizzerias are prepared in the same way they were 100 years ago. The large brick ovens make the pizzerias uncomfortably hot in every season except winter, but the unique flavor of these brick-oven pizzas is unmatched. Pizzaioli (makers of pizza) often assemble the entire pizza on a marble counter right before the customer's eyes.
In 1889, Rafaele Esposito of the Pizzeria di Pietro e Basta Cosi (now called Pizzeria Brandi) baked pizza especially for the visit of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita. To make the pizza a little more patriotic-looking, Esposito used red tomato sauce, white mozzarella cheese and green basil leaves as toppings. Queen Margherita loved the pizza, and what eventually became Pizza Margherita has since become an international standard. Pizzeria Brandi, now more than 200 years old, still proudly displays a royal thank-you note signed by Galli Camillo, "head of the table of the royal household", dated June 1889.
Neapolitan pizza is still widely regarded as the best in the world, probably because of the fresh ingredients available to Neapolitan pizzerias: herbs, garlic, and San Marzano tomatoes grown in the rich volcanic ash of Vesuvius, and fresh Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, made with the milk from water buffalo raised in the marshlands of Campania and Lazio in a semi-wild state (this mozzarella is protected with its own European Protected designation of origin).
Today, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (the Association of True Neapolitan Pizza) maintains strict member guidelines for ingredients, dough, and cooking. This elite organization maintains that pizza dough must be made only with Italian wheat flour (type 0 and/or 00), natural yeast or brewers yeast, salt and water. Dough must be kneaded by hand or mixers which do not cause the dough to overheat, and the dough must be punched down and shaped by hand. Also, only wood-burning, bell-shaped brick ovens are permitted in pizzerias that belong to this organization. The pizza must be cooked on the surface of the oven (often made of volcanic stone), and not in any pan or container, with oven temperatures reaching at least 400-430° C (750-800° F). These ovens often have to heat up for hours before the first pizza is cooked. When cooked, it should be crispy, tender and fragrant. Neapolitan pizza has gained the status of "guaranteed traditional specialty" in Italy. This admits only three official variants: Pizza marinara, which is made with tomato, garlic, oregano and extra virgin olive oil (although most Neapolitan pizzerias also add basil to the marinara), Pizza Margherita, made with tomato, sliced mozzarella, basil and extra virgin olive oil, and Pizza Margherita Extra made with tomato, buffalo mozzarella from Campania in fillets, basil and extra virgin olive oil.
For a more deatiled description of pizza go to Lucy Gordan’s article at Epicuran Travler.
http://www.epicurean-traveler.com/articles/Pizza_History_Gordan/Pizza%20History_Gordan.html