SICILIAN TOMATO SAUCE
MOZZARELLA & PROVOLONE
BREADCRUMBS WITH PECORINO & ROMANO
WOOD FIRED ITALIAN CRUST
After taking some pasta and pizza classes in Rome & Naples last year, I think I made the perfect adjustments to our Sicilian sauce for this annual favorite. You really do have to start with whole peeled tomatoes, and you really do have to take an hour and crush them by hand. A blade shall never touch a tomato seed.
This is our 9th Christmas making this pizza for you. The all-day sauce starts with onion with some salty anchovies that slowly melt away. Hand-crushed Italian tomatoes, a lil oregano, and let it bubble all day, stirring every 20 minutes until you don't remember a life before you started stirring. When it's done, it tastes nothing like its individual parts. It transforms into a velvety super flavorful tomato sauce that you'd swear was lovingly crafted by a 90 year old Sicilian grandma. But it's just me. I'm the 90 year old Sicilian grandma.
You can find this pizza, called Sfincione, year round in Sicily and in some areas of Southern Italy. But in the average Sicilian home, it's enjoyed traditionally for Christmas and the New Year. I really hope you love this one. The breadcrumb+cheese crust situation on this is magical.
If I could do what I wanted, I would make this sauce for dozens of different pizzas throughout the year. But alas, sitcoms from the 80's and 90's used anchovies on pizza as the butt of too many jokes. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and ABC's TGIF lineup from the mid 90's are specifically to blame. So now we have a couple generations of people who think they don't like something they'll actually love.
