Pizza Fritta by Jack O'Keeffe
| Serves: 4 | Chef: Jack O'Keeffe | Category: Pizza | Cuisine: Italian | Course: Mains | Machine: Mixer | Total time (min.): 139 |
Everyone loves pizza, so you can imagine how excited I was when while wandering the streets of Naples - in search of Aperol spritz and doughy pizza - I discovered these little deep-fried pizza’s being fried in hot fat by street vendors. So, I just had to join the long queue of locals waiting for their daily dose of crispy fried loveliness. When the vendor handed me that crispy package wrapped in brown paper, I knew this was going to be amazing and it was! After ignoring the vendor’s advice, I tucked straight into the Pizza Fritta and I got a weakness in my knees and butterflies in my stomach while hot liquid mozzarella and lardo ran down my chin. I was in love.
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 600g 00 flour or strong bread flour
- 1 sachet dried yeast (7g)
- A pinch of salt
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 400ml warm water approx.
For the toppings:
- 1 can of good quality tomatoes
- 1 bunch of fresh basil
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 balls of good mozzarella
- 6 heaped tbsp ricotta
- 2 tbsp grated parmesan
- 200g nduja sausage or spicy chorizo
- salt and pepper
- About 500ml to 1L of frying oil
Tools
- Chef XL
Method
- Let’s start by making a basic quick pizza dough, add the flour to a bowl along with the salt. In a small bowl add the yeast plus 100ml of the warm water and stir to dissolve the yeast. Pour the yeast mix into the flour along with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Start to add the rest of your water while mixing with your hands until a rough slightly sticky dough is formed. Pop the dough out onto a floured surface and knead the dough for at least 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and soft. If it’s very sticky just keep dusting the table with flour. Grab a tray, rub it with the rest of the olive oil and divide the dough into 6 balls and pop them onto the tray. Cover the tray with cling film and leave it somewhere warm for 1 to 2 hours or until the dough doubles in size.
- While waiting for the dough start preparing the rest of your ingredients. Open that can of GOOD quality tomatoes and lash it into a jug, add a couple of sprigs of basil, sugar and a pinch of salt and pepper. Roughly blend it with a stick blender and set it aside. Place the ricotta into a bowl along with the parmesan and black pepper and whisk together until a paste is formed. Set this aside. Now, grab the nduja, and crumble it up into very small chunks and set it aside. Open the mozzarella and tear it into chunks and you guessed it – set aside.
- When the dough is ready preheat your deep fat fryer or a pot of oil to 190˚c.
- On a floured surface roll out a dough ball into a rough circle, add a dollop of the ricotta spreading it out a little, sprinkle around the nduja, mozzarella, a drizzle of tomato sauce and one or two basil leaves.
- Fold one side of dough over to the other side and pinch the edges tightly. Slowly lower the pizza into the hot oil and cook until crispy and golden roughly 4 minutes, flipping over halfway through. Remove from the hot oil and place on kitchen paper. Allow them to cool for 5 minutes before devouring.
- Yes, I know, you can thank me later!