Food

Modern Meets Traditional at Zooma

The Federal Hill spot features authentic Italian dishes with a twist

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Marcello Florio has been the executive chef at Zooma on Federal Hill since August of 2012. Born in Pescara, Italy and trained at the Villa Santa Maria culinary institute, his love of cooking stems from a childhood filled with waking up on Sunday mornings to the smell of his mother and grandmother cooking Sunday dinner. These memories, as well as the passion for what he does, continue to propel him to the forefront of authentic Italian cuisine.

Is there a recipe from your childhood that you still make today?
The Bolognese. It is mine. This recipe is 70 years old. My great grandmother gave it to my grandmother. It’s six hours of cooking certain kinds of meat, certain kinds of fat, red wine, no white wine, vegetables. It’s just carrots, onions and celery and you let them braise for 45 minutes. After that you add ground veal, ground pork and ground beef with a certain percentage of fat. You braise that for at least an hour and a half. Then you add the red wine – I suggest Burgundy – for another 40 minutes. Then, you add the San Marzano tomatoes, which are the top of the line. Then, let that simmer for around two and a half to three more hours. When the fat comes up I skim some of it off and then it is ready to go. I serve it on top of pappardelle, which they call jumbo tagliatelle. It’s a really wide noodle.

Tell me about the fresh pasta.
We make all the fresh pasta in house with my recipe in the Pastificio, a room you see as soon as you walk in the front door. It was here before I got here but we added more pastas. It was and still is the forte of Zooma.

Could you describe a bit about the fresh pasta making process?
You have to remember that with the pasta, you don’t just put it in the pasta machine and cut it. With the ravioli, for example, you need to press it between 11-15 times in the machine, otherwise they won’t stretch and when you put them in the water they will break. With the tagliatelle, you must only put it through twice because you want it to shrink a bit. With the squid ink pasta you need to press it six or seven times, otherwise the squid ink tends to pull back and it breaks. And with the small pasta you have to press them very hard, otherwise when you put them in water they just dissolve. It’s a process.

Do you have any special menu plans for Easter?
We are doing what we call a Fritelli. It’s a traditional savory crêpe. In my town, we make the Fratelli with milk, eggs, flour, salt, pepper, herbs. Then we make it into a crêpe and stuff it with ricotta and ham, bake it with béchamel and smoked mozzarella and serve it as an appetizer. For the meat we are planning to serve agnello, lamb. I’ll do a lamb loin with peas and artichokes. It’s a traditional dish.

What is a traditional dish you’ve adapted to meet modern tastes?
The Italian name [of the dish] might change but the concept is the same – like the Spaghetti alla Chitarra. This pasta came from Abruzzo. We put the fresh spaghetti on top of a guitar, press and the edges are squared on the spaghetti. I’ve incorporated this pasta into a classic Neopolitan dish called sciue sciue, which basically means quick quick. It’s garlic, a little pasta water, basil and cherry tomatoes. That’s it. With the Chitarra pasta, it’s like you’ve been sent back to Italy.

What is comfort food to you?
I love pizza. I love simple pizza with tomato and mozzarella. And I love meat. I am picky about steak. The meat must have the right marbling and I don’t grill it. I love to pan sear it because it locks in all the juices. The juices start to boil from the inside and come out when you put it in your mouth. That’s what I love. I will cook that at home, same with fish. I like to cook the whole fish at home. I will stuff it with herbs and garlic, seal it with rope and cook it in the oven.

Describe some of your seasonal dishes.
Right now we are making cod the Livornese-style, meaning from Livorno a town in the northwest of Italy. It is made with fresh plum tomatoes, capers and olives. In another dish we stuff trout with pine nuts and spinach, and we serve that with polenta. Another fish we serve is tuna. I buy the sushi grade tuna, which is expensive but people appreciate it. I just pan sear it, and crust it with pistachios, butter and tarragon. We serve it with asparagus, confit, red onions and sometimes when it is in season we will put raw pesto on it. All of that has a mustard sauce, which I do with my own mayo and my own mustard and put that on top.

I hear you have amazing wood-fired pizza.
We use a wood-fired oven that is 800 degrees and the pizza cooks in three or four minutes. We are famous for our Neapolitan-style pizza, which is different from other kinds of pizza. Our pizza doesn’t stand stiff. Ours is crispy on the bottom and soft on top, so it folds when you pick it up. We also don’t cut the pizza because in Italy we take it straight from the oven and put it on the plate and eat it with a fork and knife. We buy imported buffalo mozzarella from Campania and Naples and we import it every week. My favorite pizza is the Queen Margherita, which is just tomato sauce, olive oil and the buffalo mozzarella. We also have our tri-color pizza, which is made with arugula, ricotta and tomato and it looks like the Italian flag.

What have you learned after all these years of being a chef?
Being a chef, you either hate it or you love it because it is a life of sacrifice. If you want to do this career you must know that there are no holidays. Being a chef is not just cooking. You must have a good relationship with your team. I cannot do anything by myself. You must know how to build a team. You must know which one is good in which area. To deal with the pressure I have to be cool because I have to lead 20-25 people at a time. This is being a chef, not just cooking.

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