Rosanna Marziale: the queen of mozzarella
By taking one of the most famous ingredients in all of Italy and using it to create stunning new dishes, Rosanna Marziale has become the simple string cheese's saving grace. See how she uses it in her cooking and try it for yourself at home.
Rosanna Marziale: the queen of mozzarella
By taking one of the most famous ingredients in all of Italy and using it to create stunning new dishes, Rosanna Marziale has become the simple string cheese's saving grace. See how she uses it in her cooking and try it for yourself at home.
Pasta and pizza are two Italian dishes that many chefs strive to master over decades of their careers. Discovering how to make that perfect crust or knowing just the right amount of pasta water to add to a sauce so it emulsifies to give it the perfect consistency are skills reserved for only the highest level of chefs. But for the Michelin-starred chef Rosanna Marziale, it’s not specific dishes she’s dedicated her life to, but a specific ingredient – Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP.
This is no ordinary mozzarella – it’s the best money can buy. Made from buffalo milk in the Italian region of Campania, it is smooth, slightly bouncy and unmistakably creamy, with a soft, milky flavour and subtle lactic tang. And while other chefs stick to the tried and true methods of tearing it over pizzas, stirring it into sauces or simply dressing it as part of a salad, Rosanna is proving that by reimagining our ingredients, we can do pretty much anything with them. She’s done so much for the humble ingredient that she is now the official ambassador for the cheese, helping to spread appreciation and understanding of it around the world.
When she’s not writing mozzarella-based cookbooks (Hooray Mozzarella) or even children’s books such as Sorrisi di Latte (Milky Smiles), Rosanna spends time in her restaurant kitchen creating dishes with mozzarella as the star. Take a look at the following three recipes to see just how inventive someone with a true love and deep understanding of this cheese can be.
Mozzarella and pizza go hand in hand, but rather than letting the cheese play second fiddle to the doughy base and tomato sauce, Rosanna uses it to envelop the other elements to create her iconic Inside-out pizza. Using a large ball of mozzarella weighing a kilogram means she can cut strips, circles and other shapes which are large enough to be wrapped around different ingredients. If you want to give this a go at home, visit an Italian delicatessen to get your hands on a larger piece of the cheese.
Rosanna's second recipe is another way of hiding ingredients within what appears to be a large ball of mozzarella. Ovomozzo contains a silky sous vide egg, which oozes out of the mozzarella shell once split open with a knife. A smattering of breadcrumbs adds some welcome crunch, while the risotto rice purée and tomato sauce adds even more flavour.
Risotto is famed for its creaminess, but Rosanna steps it up by using the water used to make mozzarella as well as stock. Instead of draining the cheese, reserve the liquid and use it in this simple – but incredibly delicious – risotto.
After the full recipes for each of Rosanna Marziale's dishes? Click here and rediscover mozzarella in a whole new light.
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