Roberta’s, The Cookbook

Excerpted from Roberta’s Cookbook. Copyright 2013. Photograph by Ryan Rice

The last time I was at Roberta’s was about a month ago. Michele (Gather co-founder) and I were invited by the wonderful Michael Harlan Turkell to be guests on his weekly radio show, The Food Seen, broadcast live on the Heritage Radio Network from a cabin-like booth in the middle of the restaurant’s dining room. The show was great fun; less fun was watching people eat from behind a plate glass window. Thankfully, all was righted post-show with a late afternoon feast, the centerpiece of which was the thing that has inspired droves (Bill and Hill, included) to trek out to Bushwick since the restaurant first opened in January 2008: pizza. New York is a pizza-infatuated place and Roberta’s has always offered one of its most shining examples: a pillar of pie perfection. And the restaurant’s new eponymous cookbook (Clarkson Potter) kicks off with with the essential components of that signature pizza: dough (both with sourdough starter and store-bought yeast, plus instructions for how to properly manipulate it) and, if a Margherita is the plan, sauce and homemade mozzarella. But as any Roberta’s regular knows full well, the pizza may be at the heart of the menu, but there is plenty more you’ll want to put in your belly. Recipes like carrots, smoked ricotta, radish and lemon; lamb carbonara; porchetta; and sweet tea gelato are ideal reflections of Roberta’s simple, ingredient-forward mantra. And fried chicken acolytes be advised, the book also contains the recipe for Carolyn Bane’s (chef and co-owner at Williamsburg’s Pies n’ Thighs, and briefly, a chef in Roberta’s kitchen) Southern-style classic. But the one dish currently at the top of my to-make list is the pici with pig tail ragu; a perfectly hearty pasta that managed to transport me to my nonna’s kitchen in Italy the first time I tasted it from a corner table in Bushwick. A miracle on a plate. FIORELLA V.