In his first book, ‘Los secretos del Puto Amo’, he has just gathered advice on how to make a pizzaPrestanizzi arrived in Spain at the end of the eighties and set up his own pizzeria after verifying that good pizza was not eaten hereOn his YouTube channel he has 1 .1 million subscribers who follow his culinary commentsPino Prestanizzi (Calabria, 1963) is the Puto Amo, that’s how he’s known and that’s how he’s derisively called. This 58-year-old Italian, owner of a successful pizzeria (La Briciola) in Barcelona, has become a YouTube star where he offers Italian cooking tips without mincing words, criticizing or praising the dishes he likes. Some tips that he has just gathered in his first book Los secretos del Puto Amo (Ed. Libros Cúpula), in which he offers recipes so that we can all cook a good pizza without making those mistakes that we laymen make and that make him so angry .P. When he arrived in Spain in the eighties he was surprised to see how little we knew about Italian food.R. He came for the first time in 1986. Four friends came to San Carlos de la Rapida on vacation, we met four girls, we fell in love and we stayed here. But when we went to Barcelona we saw that the pizzas that were there were not good. They were precooked! So we said to ourselves: Let’s set up a pizzeria and make a fortune! We set it up in 1988. R. At first it was hard for us, we didn’t speak Spanish or Catalan. But in the end it worked out.Q. Did people understand your way of cooking? R. He cost us a bit. We set up the pizzeria with the typical Italian pizza, with few ingredients and large. First we start with the 30 centimeters, then we move on to the 20-22 cm. Q. Are the pizzas in Italy bigger than in Spain? A. I come from a country where the way of eating is different. And I say to myself, I am nobody to change a country, if they want to eat like that. Who am I to correct them? But when we arrived I didn’t think so, we started to make large pizzas as they are made in Italy, made at the moment as well. And we insist on cooking them with Italian products. Now it is easier to import it but when we started it was difficult to get them. Still we play it. We decided to put only Italian products and see what happened. People began to come a lot, perhaps because in 1988 there were no restaurants like this. We were among the first. It was something nice, funny. I didn’t even speak the language, I didn’t know Spanish or Catalan. Q. And yet he managed to make himself understood and that we understood his culinary proposal. A. It took a bit for them to understand us, but in the end they did. Of course there is more culture now. Before taking a plane cost you a lot of money, now it is cheaper and people have traveled to Italy, so they know our country a little better. Even so, Pino says that we Spaniards still do not fully understand what Italian cuisine is like, especially when we do it. For this reason, to put an end to so much aberration, he has published his book .P. What are those mistakes we make that you don’t understand? A. Put a lot of things on the pizzas. You Spaniards put too many ingredients. I’ve been in kitchens for 34 years and I’ve seen it all. But the worst thing is that everyone wants pizza with many things. A. No, there are many more errors. I don’t understand buying precooked pizza. If you’re hungry you can eat it, it’s like anything else, but the dough they put is not a pizza dough. In addition to the fact that in frozen pizza the ingredients are of poor quality, because they influence the price. If you are looking for a cheap pizza the ingredients will be cheap and of low quality. That is why I have written the book, to teach how to do it well, with good products. You defend that making a delicious and cheap homemade pizza at home is possible.R. Making pizza at home is easy, you can make a good one with few ingredients and without difficulty, of course, but you have to practice. What is the most important? Follow the instructions well. You have to follow the steps that I say Everyone! That’s what’s important. You have to knead, ferment. The pizza is simple to make, the only problem may be the fermentation times, but that’s it.Q. In the book he says that the trick is in the fermentation. R. I explain it very clearly, in pizza the most important thing is the dough and you have to let it ferment. If you don’t listen to me, you’ll be left with a shitty pizza. If people follow my instructions, they will get pizzas as good as the Puto Amo, which is me. The secret is in the good fermentation. It can be fermented in three hours and a good pizza will come out, and if we leave it for 24 hours it will come out better. The temperature of the oven is also very important.Q. Well, managing to make a pizza like yours doesn’t seem so easy. Q. The first few times they may not turn out so well, but you have to practice. Many people make mistakes because they don’t know the proportions. The dough is simple, it is nothing more than water, flour, yeast and salt. There is no more, but with its measures.R. And how do we do it then? The best pizza for first-timers is to make the integlia (tray) pizza. Because it doesn’t fail there. In the book I already explained that there are four ways to bake pizza. For people who want to complicate their lives, try the ones at the pizzeria, but for beginners it is best to take a tray. You put the sourdough in there and without touching it anymore a good, good pizza comes out. The trick is that if you have a 30×40 tray that gives you 1,200. Dividing it by two gives you the perimeter, 600. That’s what the mass has to weigh. In this way you get a dough that is not fat, not thin, with the perfect portions. You have to bake it twice. They are old cook’s tricks. That’s why the book is called the secrets of the Puto Amo, because I reveal my secrets to you. Tell us more secretsR. The ingredients are important. That is essential. It is not the same to put a synthetic mozzarella than a real one. Q. Can tomato or natural tomato? A. Now there are already very good tomatoes. The tomato is very important. On my YouTube channel I have done many tomato tastings, and well, now there are many canned tomatoes that are not bad, that are not acidic, they are not green, they are a good tomato. Even so, there is nothing better than taking a natural tomato and putting it raw. Always raw, never fried or cooked. In any case, pizza always with a good tomato, that is not acidic, that is a red, ripe tomato and that’s it. What ingredient would you never put? I think he doesn’t like pineapple. R. I am not one to tell people what to eat, pineapple can be eaten. Everything can be eaten! If you like it eat it, now in my opinion, that sucks! The pizza with pineapple is one of those extravagances that does not convince the cook, who in fact assures that he had never tried it until he promised to do so if it reached a million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Once that number was exceeded, the video of his pineapple pizza tasting has become one of the most viewed. He has told us about the mistakes we make with pizza, but he has once commented that we don’t understand the rest of Italian food very well either. With pasta you make several mistakes, which still amaze me. The first eat a lot of pasta. We take it as a first course and then comes a second and a dessert. We eat pasta every day but we are talking about 80 grams, 30 grams. It’s a first! The Spaniards put a kilo of pasta. P. That says that it is our first error, and the second? A. Do it a lot. Well-done pasta doesn’t taste like anything! Q. Understood, less pasta and make it a little less than what the manufacturer says. A. There’s more, people put a lot of pasta in a little water. If you put more water it boils well, it comes out better. And you don’t have to put oil in it or anything like that. When it’s done, you drain it and sauté it with whatever you want to put on it. In other words, we have no idea how to make pasta well. A. It is not that difficult. The secret of the pasta is to always put it two minutes less than what the manufacturer says. If in the spaghetti they tell you 10 minutes of cooking, you have to put them 8 and then as you sauté it in the pan with the tomato, or whatever, we are giving it those two more minutes of cooking. If you put 20 minutes you have to put it 18. The last two minutes are left to sauté it with the sauce. Advice from a chef who has become famous for the way he expresses his opinions without palliatives, seasoning his comments with a taco, and who tends to rate the food he dislikes with a three. “I only say things as I see them. And I don’t do it for money. It amuses me how people say “tree” (three) copying my accent, they write me messages on Instagram and on Twitter saying that they have discovered good pizza The important thing is that they don’t eat crap”, he explains. At the moment his sincerity is paying off and he has conquered such famous youtubers as AuronPlay (who was the one who baptized him as “the fucking master” of pizzas,) or Ibai Llanos, whom he taught to cook a pizza. For now, 1.1 million subscribers follow his YouTube channel, the one he opened at the suggestion of his son and nephew and which he only approaches when he feels like it. “I upload videos because it amuses me, but when I feel like it, I record and when I don’t feel like it, I don’t record. If I was caught younger, maybe I would have seen it differently, but now I just want to be calm and have fun.” Word of Puto Amo.