Wood Fired Pizza Quotes

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and ats the horseradish loves the miyagi, and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness of the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp... I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else--and i will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

But beyond the extravagance of Rome's wealthiest citizens and flamboyant gourmands, a more restrained cuisine emerged for the masses: breads baked with emmer wheat; polenta made from ground barley; cheese, fresh and aged, made from the milk of cows and sheep; pork sausages and cured meats; vegetables grown in the fertile soil along the Tiber. In these staples, more than the spice-rubbed game and wine-soaked feasts of Apicius and his ilk, we see the earliest signs of Italian cuisine taking shape. The pillars of Italian cuisine, like the pillars of the Pantheon, are indeed old and sturdy. The arrival of pasta to Italy is a subject of deep, rancorous debate, but despite the legend that Marco Polo returned from his trip to Asia with ramen noodles in his satchel, historians believe that pasta has been eaten on the Italian peninsula since at least the Etruscan time. Pizza as we know it didn't hit the streets of Naples until the seventeenth century, when Old World tomato and, eventually, cheese, but the foundations were forged in the fires of Pompeii, where archaeologists have discovered 2,000-year-old ovens of the same size and shape as the modern wood-burning oven. Sheep's- and cow's-milk cheeses sold in the daily markets of ancient Rome were crude precursors of pecorino and Parmesan, cheeses that literally and figuratively hold vast swaths of Italian cuisine together. Olives and wine were fundamental for rich and poor alike.

NEAR THE BASILICA OF ST. ANTHONY Antica Trattoria dei Paccagnella, the most serious restaurant near the basilica, serves up nicely presented, seasonal local dishes with modern flair and an impressive attention to ingredients. The place has friendly service, modern art on the walls, and no pretense. It’s thoughtfully run by two brothers, Raffaele and Cesare, who happily explain why they are so excited about local hens (€9-12 pastas, €14-18 secondi, Mon 19:00-22:00, Tue-Sat 12:00-14:00 & 19:00-22:00, closed Sun, Via del Santo 113, tel. 049-875-0549). Pizzeria Pago Pago dishes up wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas (a local favorite) and daily specials depending on what’s in season. Get there early for dinner or wait (€5-8 pizzas, €9 salads, Wed-Mon 12:00-14:00 & 19:00-24:00, closed Tue; 2 blocks from Basilica

Visual access to kitchen: There is nothing quite like being able to look into a restaurant’s kitchen and watch your food being prepared. The open burners, or the glow emanating from a wood-fired pizza oven, harken back to ancient times and offer a sense of hearth and home. There is also something both reassuring and entertaining about watching a busy kitchen as you await your food. Personally I find kitchens with no visual access disconcerting. Consider whether some visual access to the kitchen from your dining room might further your concept.

The pizzas keep coming: parmigiana di melanzane, planks of eggplant mixed with tomato and Parmesan, roasted in the wood-fired oven until dense and sticky with flavor, then used to crown a pillow-soft disc of dough; la pinsa conciata, a poetic union of pork lard and fig jam and an ancient goat cheese once on the brink of extinction; calzone con scarola riccia, a featherweight shell of blistered impasto stuffed with wilted escarole and anchovy and a tickle of dried chili.