An ordinary utopia in Rome
Thank god for Pizza Viola, and notes on home cooking in a Roman apartment
Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter was rescued from my drafts folder – written in Rome and I forgot to send it out as events overtook me. A tribute to the place that fed us the most while we were living and working in Rome for two months, and a list of things we cooked there.
Pizza Viola, an ordinary utopia
I have eaten something from Pizza Viola almost every day. It is a remarkable and ordinary place that every neighbourhood needs: inexpensive, better than it needs to be, and everyone goes there - food delivery drivers, parents and kids in prams, gas workers, kids after school, rockers, hungover people, drunk people, old people, people with dogs, solo diners reading comic books, us, anyone. My favourite kind of place is one where anyone walks in and feels OK.
It has a small takeaway space where you can dash in and out, with a narrow stainless steel counter on the right to lean on while you wait or for eating on the hoof. When you walk in there is a counter covered with sheets of pizza with different toppings, as well as cooked meals such as lasagna in foil trays for you to choose from. To the left on a tiered counter there are platters of cooked vegetables such as cicoria, chard with olives, stuffed roast onions, roasted potatoes with rosemary, roasted aubergine and peppers and more. There is a rotisserie with whole chickens and smaller pieces of chicken turning round and round in the heat. They offer to warm up all the food for you. On the wall behind the counter is a big varnished wooden sign with ‘Pizza Viola’ carved into it, and chalkboards with information about the price/weight of each flavour of pizza – so you know what you’re getting yourself into, financially.
The women behind the counter look at you to check how much you want, watching you look at the pizza: their knife hovers, moving along until you say ‘stop’, and then they make their cuts, ‘di più, meno, no, di più, di più!’. After heating the pizza in the oven, they offer to cut it up again into smaller pieces that can be easily held. The first time we went there a very old man asked them to cut it up twice - into dainty morsels - which they did, a size just for him. You could buy a piece of pizza that costs you one euro, or a big piece of one flavour that cost you ten, or an extensive feast of different flavours. You can cut your cloth to fit your appetite, or means.
Most people get pizza to have on the go, or take foil containers of dishes to eat at home – but next door to the takeaway there’s an empty space in the building and Pizza Viola have a few tables where you can take a tray and sit and eat sheltered from the weather. Our first visit was on the day we arrived and we bought one piece of white onion pizza, and one rossa with just tomato and olive oil, walked a few paces, placed the paper tray on a wall and ate it standing on the street, ecstatic.
Four women front Pizza Viola and each of them is perfect. They are indie rock-punk in style, they are welcoming to all, and they look after each person slightly differently – but they don’t overdo it, either. One of them gave my baby a piece of pizza bianca wrapped in a napkin, gratis. Another time one of them called the other out of the kitchen to look at her.
Pizzas and other food we have tried thus far (and I am sure I have forgotten something)
pizza rossa (more or less every day)
white with onions (more than once)
white with potato and rosemary (more than once)
white with pumpkin and provolone
white with courgette flowers, mozzarella and anchovy (more than once)
stuffed with bitter greens and olives
with thin slices of courgette
tomato, parsley and garlic (more than once)
aubergine, tomato and mozzarella
pizza bianca halved and filled with slices of porchetta
niçoise salad pizza!
smallish patties containing salt cod, potato and mozzarella
aubergine, pepper and mozzarella
potato and greens
roasted onion stuffed with breadcrumbs and parmesan
cicoria ripassata
cooked aubergine and pepper
roasted potatoes with rosemary
Pizza bianca cut in half and then filled with thin slices of porchetta, carved in front of us, which was very well seasoned and flavoured with hard herbs and garlic that were present but not overbearing, then stuffed by us at home with roasted peppers and aubergines, and with some mayonnaise from a tube: it was one of the sandwiches of my life.
Yet to try:
rotisserie chicken
meat patties
rice-stuffed tomatoes and with potatoes
–a dozens other pre-cooked dishes to take away and pizza toppings from the counter
Further:
We buy superb bread most days and lots of crostata from two young bakers and their mum at Nonna Epiro , located in mercato latino.
Home cooking
What makes home cooking feel so pleasurable and easy in Rome - while we have both been working and looking after Ursula – is the partial preparation or ‘processing’ of many ingredients by stallholders in the market. Pre-soaked chickpeas, pre-soaked salt cod, podded borlotti beans sold in bags, portioned pumpkin, perfectly sliced pieces of pork or chicken to make escalope, pre-made and bagged breadcrumbs, parmesan or pecorino freshly grated to order (to be stored in a sealed bag the fridge). Giving you the aromatics for a broth, for free, with purchase (celery, parsley, carrot and onion). Handing out a branch of rosemary.
Cooking is a collaboration with the people working in the market (mercato latino) - who also give out recipes verbally for their produce, which I have followed and which are really, really good, instantly becoming embedded in my repertoire.
On the first Friday in Rome I went to the market and bought salt cod and chickpeas to make soup. Both the salt cod and the chickpeas had been soaked by market traders, so the soup was easy to have ready by lunch time: I made salt cod and chickpea soup with croutons, to Rachel Roddy’s recipe, with the intervention from the women in the market who told me to add a rosemary sprig, which was a very good addition.
Melek Erdal’s flat beans cooked in tomatoes, topped with feta. With pork, very thinly sliced by the butcher at the market, breaded and fried. Immediately wanted to make Melek’s beans again!
Rachel Roddy’s chicken braised with grapes and boiled potatoes. Heaven, I love the sweet-sour sauce.
Leftover chicken and gravy, with potato patties I made mashing leftover potatoes with flour, egg and parmesan and coated with breadcrumbs and fried.
Braised fresh borlotti beans cooked with aromatics, then with cod baked on top in the oven.
Roasted whole wild sea bream with potato-tomato, seasoned with a little rosemary.
Beef brisket cooked in water with aromatics, served with whole carrots, boiled potatoes and salsa verde. Strongly reminiscent of a meal I had in Palermo in the winter of 2017.
A great sandwich: last of the boiled beef (so so soft!) reheated in its broth, Peperoncino mixed with mayonnaise on one side of bread, butter on the other then dipped briefly in the broth to moisten, brocoletti from last night heated up in the broth too, and then Parmesan.
Breaded fried aubergine slices (to Rachel’s recipe, but without the parmesan in the breadcrumbs, shaved on top after frying instead) and a favourite salad made to my friend Ed’s recipe.
Breadcrumbed chicken escalope with lemon, boiled chard and roasted potatoes.
Chicken meatballs to Rachel Roddy’s recipe, with mashed potato.
Potato-tomato with slices of onion, and with sausages cooked on top making for a *delicious* liquor.
Lots and lots and lots of fagiolini - fine green beans - which came into season when we were there and were piled up high in the market and restocked many times in the day.
Melek Erdal’s ‘easiest’ ever börek.
Gnocchi with cream and walnut sauce (as per the Elizabeth David recipe) with fennel orange salad on the side.
Filled pasta bought from the fresh pasta shop underneath the flat, with broth left from cooking the beef (did this on several occasions, also their tomato lasagne).
Mangoes chosen by the man on the market stall to eat on the day, often.
Pasta with sauce made from offcuts of saltcod and passata, as per the recipe told to me by the man who soaked and sold me the salt cod and chickpeas.
Chickpea, chestnut, pumpkin and rosemary soup - and variations thereof, often! Always served with olive oil and parmesan on top.
Potato tomato with steak and a small amount of sauce.
Two ingredient pasta amatriciana, as per the instructions from the woman in the market who sold us the pecorino.
Roast chicken and potatoes for our friend Olivia. I learned how to ask for a ‘plump’ chicken at the butcher for this, as Italian chickens are much more rangy than British ones.
Caesar salad with leftover chicken, with added treviso and fennel.
Stracciatella gelato bought in a polystyrene box from Freddo Gelato (a sensational place) and amarena cherries.
So many jam and butter sandwiches (my preference is wild blueberry jam) with the regional speciality of crustless, incredibly soft bread.
Feeding Ursula in Rome
Ursula was six months old when we arrived in Rome and eight months old when we left. Foods that she ate during our time there included:
Ripe kaki (or persimmon, or sharon fruit), a fruit that when fully ripe turns to liquid. They were sold ripe in the market. I broke them open and stored it in a bowl, covered, in the fridge. I mixed it with various things for Ursula’s breakfasts including:
Greek yogurt
Goat yogurt
Greek or goat’s yogurt and peanut butter mixed in
Blitzed with avocado and greek or goat yogurt and perhaps peanut butter
Variations of beans with things – borotti, chickpeas, kidney, white beans, blitzed or mashed with tuna and or greens, chicken, garlic, onion, tomato, various herbs that were lying around.
Hard boiled egg
Bread and butter
Boiled potato, mashed with butter and cheese and sometimes garlic or onion cooked with it and mashed in
Tiny gnocchi
Thinly sliced omelette in tomato sauce
Boiled and sometimes mashed pumpkin, sometimes with cheese and butter
Pizza rossa from Pasticceria Linari!
Various things that we ate, mashed or blitzed!
Always love your writing on food. I’m off to Rome for a month soon to do an exhibition - will take your recipes with me. Love to all three of you. Laurax
What a lovely read! Pizza Viola sounds like perfection.