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Pizza La Romana
Although not in the same “Neapolitan standard” category as the Marinara and the Margherita, La Romana is up there with the finest examples of an amazing pizza. Personally I consider it as the best of the rest. Pizzaioli eat Marinara, some eat Margherita; as a treat we eat Romana.
The ingredients, as we work our way up from the base, are, San Marzano tomato sauce, chilli, oregano, garlic, onions, leeks, capers, anchovies and our amazing organic buffalo mozzarella. The underlined ingredients are tweaks that we add to the original Romana.
We find the combination of onions and leeks allows the sweetness of the onions to shine through while the leeks round off the edge of the onion taste; it is a bit like layering colours on a painting.
Sweet and salty always combine well. So the capers, rinsed and rinsed again to remove the excessive salinity, along with the anchovies offer a contrast as well as a landscape to fill with other ingredients. The sweetness of the tomato sauce, the onions and the leeks against that saltiness and the briny capers is unmistakable.
To increase the depth of flavours we add a bit of garlic, chilli and oregano. If we think of this as a painting, these ingredients set the mood of the painting: the long shadows, the warm colours of a setting sun. In so many ways and on so many levels, the Romana is the template of all other pizzas, of how a pizza should be created, how the flavours should combine and how the detail does not need to dominate but simple prop up the main ingredients.
We always preach about choosing the finest ingredients. Finding good, I mean really good anchovies is so hard. There were times, back in Malta, when fishermen used to bring us anchovies straight from their fishing trips. They know that we buy anchovies whenever they are available. This became more rare as time went by to the point that we gave up making our own anchovies until we moved to Berkhamsted.
These days we produce our own anchovies again. A trip to Billingsgate every week means that we can get fresh anchovies from British ports, though not a given. Having amazing anchovies is what makes the Romana a truly special pizza.
It is such a simple process. We would love to give them away. It is inexpensive, easy and a hundred times better than the shop bought ones. All you need is a container and salt. We always have a good stock of anchovies, so please ask. Once you get the fish, you layer a substrate of coarse salt and place the little fish in one layer. Top this with more salt and add another layer of fish. Repeat until the container is full or the fish have been covered in salt.
Leave in the back of the fridge for at least a week, months even, until needed. Once needed, remove fish from salt, rinse under cold water and peel off the fillets from the tail down to the head, discarding the central spine and the head. Place the fillets in layers and cover with sunflower oil. Your life will be transformed by the experience.
So, the Pizza Romana is tomato sauce, onions, chilli, oregano, garlic, capers, anchovies and buffalo mozzarella. What happens to the pizza Romana once you add olives to it? Well, once you add olives to a Romana it becomes a Napoletana. The difference between the two being the olives. Keep that in your trivia file.
Some people love adding rucola to the Romana. We understand that. It almost converts the pizza into a healthy salad.
Strictly speaking the Romana does not have the leeks or the garlic (and even for us, the garlic has been a recent addition) but we believe that this elevates the pizza rather than detracts from it.
Do not confuse the Pizza La Romana with Pizza Romana (Roman Pizza). The former describes a type of Neapolitan Pizza with specific toppings while the latter describes a type of pizza that is ascribed to the Rome and Lazio region of Italy.
The difference between the two are pretty significant.
The benchmark, in our opinion is the Neapolitan pizza: a pizza that is very thing, always stretched by hand and with a significant cornicione – thick crust. The thickness of the crust is a matter of personal preference. Lately we have seen exaggerated crusts and the introduction of a new pizza category called “contemporary style” pizza. Very Instagrammable. Not sure how digestible it is.
The Roman style pizza is a much thinner crust. It is crispier. Fat is added to the dough to add to the crispiness and the pliability of the pizza.
Temperature wise, the Neapolitan version is cooked at much higher temperatures than the Roman counterpart. Neapolitan pizza is generally cooked for 90 seconds, the Roman version is cooked for longer, sometimes four to five minutes.
Strictly speaking you can only have Marinara or Margherita (refer to Showcase 1 – Margherita) pizzas in a Neapolitan style pizza. The dough is more delicate, wetter, and can withhold less condiment weight. Furthermore, adding more toppings will simply not be possible to cook the pizza in 90 seconds.
Once you start adding extra ingredients, then you are in the realms of Roman pizza or a hybrid. The Roman pizza is made a bit drier and therefore can take more toppings and it is cooked at a lower temperature allowing all those extra toppings to cook through.
Our challenge at Margo’s is to add extra toppings to a Neapolitan dough. Mostly, we succeed; sometimes we fail. It is a daily struggle to try an achieve the impossible. Our biggest enemy is trying to keep the oven temperature high enough to depart from the Roman style to the Neapolitan style.
The Romans have something called the Pinsa. You see the correlation between the words: pinsa and pizza. Pinza is a flat bread that dates back to the Romans. It is shaped a bit like a pizza but it is quite crispy around the edges and softish in the middle. Pinsa is significantly lighter than pizza. Pinsa is a far wetter dough than pizza. It is baked blind prior to service and then topped with ingredients and baked a second time before served to the guests.
But pinsa is not pizza; so the Romans, despite having the upper hand with regards to the chicken and egg situation, the Neapolitans do take a lot of the credit when it comes to claiming the creation of the classic pizza.
We have always given credit to the US for popularising the pizza concept. Yet what they have done with it since then is a bit of an abomination. There are so many different types of pizza now. Here are a few: The New York Pizza, The Chicago Pizza, The Detroit Pizza, The New Haven Pizza, The Colorado Pizza, The Philadelphia Pizza, The New Jersey Pizza and the list goes on. (Baltimore, Buffalo, California, Old Forge, St. Louis….).
At Margo’s we deviate very little from the original concept. And this is what ranks us as one of the best pizzerias in the world. We use organic flour, we use a sourdough fermentation process, not yeast; we use pure tomatoes, organic buffalo mozzarella and the rest of the toppings are prepared in house. From anchovies to prosciutto crudo, from pastrami to smoked salmon, everything is done in house because we only ant the best, cleanest food, not just for us but for you and your family.
Thank you for your generous support. Your belief in us keeps us going.
