Mark Bello teaches pizza lovers how to make great pies at home (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
PIZZA SELF-SUFFICIENCY CENTER
371 Grand St.
Classes Thursdays at 6:30, Saturdays & Sundays at 12 noon, $150
212-228-5483
www.pizzaacasa.com
pizza a casa slideshow
You think you love pizza? Native New Yorker Mark Bello, chef and founder of Pizza a Casa on the Lower East Side, lives and breathes one of the world’s most beloved foods. While earning a master’s in sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, Bello missed the classic pizza of New York City and decided he could sculpt his own artisanal pies. He eventually studied the classic concoction of flour, cheese, and sauce in Italy before returning to New York and opening Pizza a Casa in 2005. In February 2010, Bello transformed a Grand St. storefront into a pizza-making workshop, where he installed a regular home oven so he could show his ravenous students how to make the same kinds of thin-crust pizzas in their own kitchens. A gregarious fellow with a playful sense of humor, Bello takes his pizza very seriously, leading classes through every step of the pizza-making process as if creating a work of art, from choosing the flour (he recommends the hard-to-find King Arthur brand), mixing the dough, and adding proofed yeast to proper hand kneading, rising, and rolling, sauce preparation (he prefers San Marzano tomatoes), toppings selection, and, of course, baking, including the right ways to get it into and out of the oven. Bello uses video skillfully: Students can watch him directly as well as on a large-screen wall monitor mounted behind him that zooms in on the all-important details of pizza craft.
It’s not a stretch to say that Mark Bello loves making pizza (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Bello teaches his classes, which are limited to twelve people, how to make red pies, white pies, and dolci (sweet pies); each session comes with a menu of “today’s possibilities,” which could include such classic delights as margherita (with Alleva mozzarella, Fulvi pecorino, and fresh basil) and sopressata (the same cheeses with sweet or spicy sausage), the more complex sensations of potato rosemary, pizza bianca, and bacon & eggs, or such delectable dessert pies as Dorset & truffle honey, pear and blue, and nutella banana with pine nuts. Participants get to make between four and six pizzas each, so check out what the others are doing and be sure to share plenty of slices before going home with extra dough and leftovers: There should be enough for a few more tasty meals. Bello also sells high-quality pizza utensils and supplies at reasonable prices, and every student leaves with a “Make Perfect Pizza at Home” guide. He has also recently added a hands-on pasta workshop as well as a Big Cheese + Little Cheese Pizza Class, for children six and up with an adult (regular pizza workshops are for thirteen and older). The standard classes, which are $150 (gift certificates are available, especially as last-minute gifts) and run four hours, are a tremendous amount of fun, as Bello tells stories about his life, plays great music, and might even turn on the disco ball if you ask nicely.
One of the grandest Westerns ever made, this Sergio Leone masterpiece features an all-star cast that includes Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Woody Strode, Keenan Wynn, Lionel Stander, and Jack Elam, all enhanced by Ennio Morricone’s epic score and Tonino delli Colli’s never-ending extreme close-ups. (The opening shot of a fly crawling over Elam’s grimy face is unforgettable.) Fonda was never more evil, and Bronson was perhaps never more likable. The film is a huge step above most of Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, partially because of the cast, but also because of the script help he got from Italian horrormeister Dario Argento and iconic filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is screening as part of “20 Years of Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation,” an eighteen-film salute to Scorsese’s ongoing work preserving and restoring more than five hundred films so far. The series continues through January 2 with such highlights as William Wellman’s BEGGARS OF LIFE starring Louise Brooks, Otto Preminger’s BONJOUR TRISTESSE featuring Jean Seberg, Howard Hawks’s THE BIG SKY with Kirk Douglas, Joseph Losey’s THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR, John Cassavetes’s FACES, Max Ophüls’s LETTERS FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, Jean Renoir’s THE RIVER, and Satyajit Ray’s THE MUSIC ROOM (JALSAGHAR).
Writer-director Brad Bird won Oscars for his animated features THE INCREDIBLES (2004) and RATATOUILLE (2007), but the Simpsons veteran first made his mark with the charming 1999 sci-fi cartoon THE IRON GIANT, being revived at Film Forum during this holiday week. Based on the 1968 book THE IRON MAN by Ted Hughes, the animated film is set during the Cold War, with the general populace and the military fearful of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. So when rumors that a fifty-foot-tall iron giant (voiced by Vin Diesel) has fallen from the sky, the government wants to destroy it, but it is being hidden by young Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), who has saved its life. Hogarth keeps his new best friend a secret from his mother (Jennifer Aniston) and federal agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) with the help of the town beatnik, Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick Jr.), who takes a liking to Hogarth’s mom. The screenplay, written by Tim McCanlies (SECONDHAND LIONS), plays with various genre clichés just enough to avoid being clichéd itself, instead making THE IRON GIANT a delightful, nearly flawless twist on the E.T. mythos, mixed in with a little Androcles & the Lion, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and even FRANKENSTEIN and KING KONG. The film, which also features the voices of Cloris Leachman (Mrs. Tensedge), John Mahoney (General Rogard), and M. Emmet Walsh (Earl Stutz), is a treat for children and adults. Bird, meanwhile, has graduated to live action; his next movie will be MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — GHOST PROTOCOL, starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, and Simon Pegg.