Baked Goods and Sweets

Panbriacone, Italy’s “Drunken Sweet Bread”

December 13, 2013 by Toni Lydecker

I’ve given and eaten many a Christmas panettone, and always cross my fingers it won’t be dry.

No chance of that with Panbriacone, a sweet bread with an eggy panettone base, all natural ingredients and a whopping 15-18% alcohol content. The name is a shortened form of pan dolce ubriaco, roughly translated as “drunken sweet bread.” After baking, it is injected with a dessert wine like vin santo or passito or a spirit such as rum, which preserves and keeps it moist for up to a year.

Panbriacone is made exclusively by the Bonci family in the Tuscan town of Montevarchi, and it comes with a sweet story I’m about to tell you. Nice gift, right? Beatrice Ughi of Gustiamo agrees: “I’m a big fan of Bonci’s Panbriacone. Everytime I go to artisanal food trade shows, I stop to eat a piece. It is a fantastic product made by fantastic people.” But she doesn’t stock it for fear that American customers wouldn’t go for it.

In fact, the only online U.S. source for Panbriacone I found is A.G. Ferrari. So I’m

Gianmarco and Gianluca Bonci, shaping the dough

hoping through this post–probably futilely, but it is Christmas, after all–to set off a groundswell of demand for this hard-to-get product.

Silvio Bonci took over his father’s bakery and now his three sons are the third generation to enter the business. “Fifteen years ago, we set out to invent a new kind of artisanal bakery product–a sweet bread we could sell not only during the holidays but throughout the year.” The morning I visited, Silvio showed me the mega mixing bowl where yesterday’s mixture of flour, natural starter and water had generated big yeasty blisters on the surface, a stage known as the pre-impasto. To this he added butter, sugar, eggs and more flour, finishing with sultanas from Turkey and Zante currants from Greece.

Freshly made Panbriacone

The raisins are for a classic Panbriacone, but there are other versions. “When we find beautiful fresh fruit, we like to use it,” says Gianluca, the middle son. Last summer, for instance, they flavored breads with Amarena cherries and blackberries. For Moka Nero, the coffee flavor, they make espresso with a bar-sized machine.

Next a machine weighed and divided the dough into 70-gram blobs, which the two younger sons shaped and placed on baking sheets for transfer to sauna-like rising rooms. It takes 36 hours to make Panbriacone, so I didn’t see the entire process. But I did see the baked loaves cooling–upside down, allowing gravity to create a more rounded, uniform shape. And I watched the final stage, the bagnatura, during which the liqueur spurts into tiny tunnels punched throughout each round loaf.

Toward the end of the morning, Silvo pulled the madre from the refrigerator. He has used this natural starter his entire working life. He cut the sponge in slices, soaked them in water for 20 minutes and, after draining, added flour, water and a little honey, and

Silvio Bonci, kneading the starter for tomorrow’s bread

churned the mixture in an electric mixer. After kneading, he tenderly wrapped the sponge in cloth and secured it with twine before returning to the refrigerator.

Panbriacone may be an invention only 15 years old, but its foundation is that madre, sustained through a daily routine that has endured since the Bonci family acquired it from a Piemontese baker, more than 60 years ago.

I haven’t yet ordered any of the Bonci breads here, but the rum Panbriacone I brought home last June was devoured during the Thanksgiving break. Delicious, and still perfectly moist.

Improvising a Mango-Peach Jam Crostata

October 18, 2013 by Toni Lydecker

I opened the refrigerator a while back to find an jar of glistening preserves, burnt orange in color. My husband said it was from Emmanuel Roux, known in Tampa Bay and beyond for his flourless chocolate cakes, but couldn’t recall exactly what it was.

“Mango-peach confiture,” said Jennifer, Emmanuel’s curator wife, in reply to my email. And so began the obsessive tasting that culminated in the free-form crostata I’ll soon be telling you about.

Confiture is a word that just doesn’t get used enough, at least in English–so elegant and exotic sounding. It just means preserves or jam, in French. We could also say marmellata, the Italian equivalent, but out of respect for Emmanuel let’s stick with confiture.

“I was raised in a household where for breakfast and afternoon tea there were never less than four or five confitures,” says Emmanuel, whose French family lived in Tunisia for many years. “They were always homemade: berries, apple, orange marmalade, wild plums, green tomatoes.” His own confitures are simply fruit simmered with sugar and flavorings, no added pectin.

The mangoes had come from a neighbor’s tree and the peaches were among summer’s last from a local market. The confiture’s flavor and color mingled the best of two divine fruits, and I loved the texture, too–firm fruit pieces, not mushy like most jam. Of course, I had to ask how it’s done and here’s the story, in his own words:

Dropped the ripe peaches and mangoes in boiling water to remove the skin.
Scooped mango flesh out with a soup spoon and cut the peaches in chunks.
Added approximately the same quantity of organic sugar to fruit, plus juice from a couple of limes in our yard. Grabbed a not-quite-ripe grapefruit from the dying grapefruit tree in our yard, extracted the seeds and crushed them with the flat side of a knife.
Let it all sit together for some time.
Cooked the whole thing over high heat to bring to a boil. Then low heat.
Skimmed the foam with a flat kitchen spoon. You could also use an ecumoire [otherwise known as a skimmer]. Cooled the foam for Maxx [the family Lab], who loves it.
Cooked for an undetermined amount of time while I was working on something else.
Caught it just before it started to burn because Jennifer reminded me I had something on the stove.
Filled clean jars with a ladle. Tried to find matching lids for the jars. Put a lid on each jar and turned it upside down to sterilize the inside lid.
Stored, shared, enjoyed.

After a few days of spooning my mango-peach preserves into plain yogurt and onto whole-wheat toast smeared with peanut butter, I decided they deserved something more. Hence, the crostata. Crostatas are just tarts made with the Italian pastry dough called pasta frolla. Usually I make them with fresh fruit, but I knew that many Italian cooks fill them with their own homemade jam. So here’s my free-form recipe for a free-form crostata made with Emmanuel’s jam (feel free to substitute).

Mango-Peach Jam Crostata

With a fork, stirred together 1 1/2 cups flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, grated peel of half a lemon and a pinch of salt.
Using my fingertips, worked in 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (cut first in pieces) until mealy. Blended in one beaten egg with a fork to moisten the mixture. Gathered the dough into a ball and gently kneaded.
Pulled off one third of the dough for the lattice top. Shaped the remaining two-thirds into a thick disk.
Looked for a 9-inch tart pan. Couldn’t find any tart pans (no doubt they will show up when I go searching for cookie cutters at Christmas). Decided instead to make a freeform tart on a baking sheet.
Remembered to set the oven at 350°F. Too impatient to chill the dough or let it rest, as recipes always advise. Succeeded–ha!–in rolling a ragged 10-inch disk on my granite counter. Transferred it to the baking sheet and trimmed with a pizza cutter.
Spread 1 cup of the jam over the tart crust, leaving a 1-inch border. Thought of sprinkling slivered almonds on top, but didn’t have any. Folded the pastry edges over the jam. Rolled pieces of the remaining dough to make the lattice top.
Baked the crostata 20 minutes and took a look. Decided belatedly to brush the lattice top with egg yolk beaten with a little water. Rewarded 15 minutes later with a golden-brown crust (that’s 35 minutes total baking).
Tasted, shared, enjoyed.

Post Dementia: Saving a Mother’s Recipes

November 5, 2012 by Toni Lydecker

I recently returned from a trip to help move my mother-in-law to a wing of her assisted living facility for residents suffering from dementia or early Alzheimers. The physical move was the easy part–coping with the emotions, hers and ours, was far more traumatic.

The loving, upbeat mother-in-law I’ve known for 40-plus years is moodier now and more confused. Helen is not quite sure who I am or why she should trust me to touch her things. Those changes are painful but the memories remain, and some of the warmest are of time together in the kitchen and at the table.

ricotta cookies from Barbara Magro’s Recipes to Remember

As it happens, I’m the one who ended up with a large box of Helen’s recipes–written on recipe cards or clipped from newspapers–as well as notes written in her beautiful script during her years as a food and nutrition major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the most part, it’s too late for followup questions.

All of this was on my mind as I thumbed through Barbara Magro’s tender tribute to her mother, a cookbook called Recipes to Remember: My epicurean journey to preserve my mother’s Italian Cooking from memory loss. Her mom served a full-on meal at 6 every day and invited extended family and friends for Sunday and holiday feasts. This went on for 50 years. And yet, despite a publishing career that included a stint as travel director of Gourmet magazine, Barbara says, ruefully, “I never learned to cook the traditional Italian food I had consumed regularly as a child.”

When they realized their mom’s memory was starting to fail, Barbara and her sister spent hours asking her questions while making dishes from the family’s Southern Italian heritage. As Barbara culled photos from old albums and compiled stories and recipes from other relatives, this collection took shape.

It’s organized into two sections that match the family routine of Barbara’s childhood: everyday foods and traditional holiday dishes. Among the recipes that caught my eye are braciole cooked in a meaty ragu, a homey spinach-lentil soup, veal rolls filled with prosciutto and mozzarella, cavatelli with broccoli rabe, pizza rustica for the day before Easter, and several ricotta desserts.

Barbara has set a wonderful example for preserving family culinary memories. So did my sister-in-law Greta who, with her siblings, put together a small cookbook–also called Recipes to Remember–honoring their mother’s memory. They printed enough copies only for family and friends, and I felt fortunate to receive one. The photos and stories are charming. I love the list of Bertha Gill’s key ingredients for raising a large family, with admonitions like these: “Broth–make your own. Flour–purchase in 10-pound sacks. Dried fruits, walnuts, chocolate chips–just keep them hidden.”

I asked Greta why, when there wasn’t a drop of Italian blood in the family, there are recipes for pizzelles and anise “toast” (biscotti, really). Turns out family favorites like those originated with Italian neighbors and friends, who also introduced the children to sipping wine at an early age.

The box of our mother-in-law’s recipes is still in my storage unit, but doing something meaningful with them is now on my to-do list. Greta and I have started a list of key recipes that includes Helen’s “secret” chocolate cake, green beans parmesan, liver and onions with bacon, an Egyptian lentil soup recipe, Korean dishes from a two-year teaching stint at a Presbyterian mission, and the biscotti she took up making in old age.

I’ll be back with a recipe or two once we’re farther along with that project, but for now here’s Barbara Magro’s recipe for ricotta cookies. These have a soft, almost cakey texture. I tweaked the recipe a little by subtracting some of the vanilla and adding lemon zest. Colored sprinkles would be nice for the holidays, but I just used turbinado sugar, which contributes a nice sparkle.

Ricotta Cookies

Prep Time

30 mins

Cook Time

12 mins

Total Time

42 mins

(adapted from Recipes to Remember, by Barbara Magro)

Course: Baked Goods, Dessert, Sweets

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 4 dozen

Ingredients

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature, plus more for the pan
4 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
15 ounces ricotta cheese
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Turbinado sugarcolored sugar crystals or sprinkles, or chopped candy canes

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter two baking sheets. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, lemon zest, baking soda and baking powder; whisk to blend.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream together the 2 sticks butter and sugar. Gradually blend in the eggs, ricotta and vanilla extract. Add the dry ingredients, one third at a time, mixing just until incorporated.
Drop teaspoon-sized lumps of the batter onto the prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle with the decorative sugar or candy. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until cooked through and very lightly browned.

Portofino Pizza with Caramelized Onions and Pancetta

October 4, 2012 by Toni Lydecker

Christopher Columbus floral display in Genoa Don’t forget, Christopher Columbus was Italian. Although his voyages were sponsored by the Spanish, some of the expenses were underwritten by investors from his hometown, Genoa, one of Italy’s great maritime republics at the time.

So I’m thinking there’s no better way to commemorate “Cristoforo Colombo’s” sighting of the Americas than eating Italian over the Columbus Day weekend (or, if you want to be a stickler, on October 12). Specifically, a caramelized onion, mozzarella and pancetta pizza from the Ligurian coast.

On a visit to Genoa shortly before Columbus Day, I saw an elaborate floral display depicting the the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa Maria. You can also see the site of what is reputed to be Columbus’s childhood home, renovated in 2001 with the help of the American Women’s Club of Genoa and the National Italian American Association.

As the story goes, Columbus’s father was a wool weaver and the young boy may have worked at a family cheese stand before setting out to sea. I’m buying into the idea that Columbus was a cheese monger at heart and figure that if he were alive today, he’d really like this glazed-onion pizza from Portofino, only a short ferry ride from Genoa.

Portofino Pizza with Caramelized Onions and Pancetta

Prep Time

35 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Total Time

55 mins

(from Piatto Unico, by Toni Lydecker)

Course: Main Dish

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 1 16-inch pizza or two 9-inch pizzas

Ingredients

2 ounces pancetta diced small (about 1/3 cup, packed)
Extra virgin olive oil
2 large onions thinly sliced
½ to 3/4 teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1 pound pizza dough at room temperature
2 to 3 cups grated fresh mozzarella

Instructions

Line a lower oven rack with quarry tiles or a pizza stone (if you have either) and preheat the oven to 500°F or the maximum temperature. In a large skillet over medium-low heat, sauté the pancetta in 2 tablespoons olive oil until it has rendered most of its fat but is not crisp, about 8 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove to a small bowl.
Add the onions to the pan; add up to 1 tablespoon more oil and cook until soft and the edges are beginning to bronze, about 15 minutes altogether. Add the sugar and salt. Continue to cook until the onions are a medium golden (they will brown more in the oven); cool to lukewarm.
Lightly oil a pizza pan or baking sheet. Gently stretch and pat the dough into a 16-inch round or two 9-inch rounds. Sprinkle the cheese over the dough. Spread the onions on top; sprinkle with the pancetta.
Place the pizza pan on the rack with the tiles for 5 minutes. Once the crust has firmed up, slide it directly onto the tiles. Bake 5 to 7 minutes longer or until the crust and topping are browned.

photo by Tina Rupp

Summer Fruit, the Sweet Italian Way

July 30, 2012 by Toni Lydecker

Meme’s amaretti-stuffed peaches

It’s August and the fruit we dream about all year is finally here. Strawberries, raspberries and blueberries are a bargain. Melons can be trusted to taste good. And the tree fruit! Plums, peaches, nectarines and apricots, needing only the nick of a knife for their sweet juices to start dripping.

Depends where you live, of course. I live in Florida, where most fields lie fallow in August, and mangos and other tropicals are the only fruit truly in season. But the markets are flush with fruit. Though most of it has traveled, you’re not going to catch me complaining about a Georgia peach.

August is also prime time for la bella far niente, and Italians know lots of ways to enjoy fruit with very little effort. Here are seven of the best.

Just eat it. I’m not talking about grabbing a plum and munching it on the way to the car. Do that, sure, but also think about arranging whole fruit in a pretty bowl to serve for dessert. If you eat as Italians do, everybody gets a plate, knife and fork. Or pile fresh cherries in stemmed glass bowls or martini glasses, and fill each one halfway with water. As diners eat the cherries, they drop the pits back into the water. Another idea is to cut cantaloupe or honeydew wedges close to the rind to separate the fruit; position each peeled wedge in its rind. For me, eating melon this way brings back memories of breakfasting on Sicily’s bright yellow melons.

Drizzle fresh berries with good balsamic vinegar. Ideally, this would be syrupy tradizionale balsamic aged 25 years and up. If you don’t have any, vincotto makes a pleasant substitute. You might also consider teaming up the berries with vanilla ice cream, another sweet thing that takes well to a drizzle of good balsamic.

Make macedonia. Okay, it’s just fruit salad, but saying macedonia elevates the experience. It can be just perfectly ripe, cut-up fruit, or mix in a little sugar and fresh lemon juice to brighten the flavor. A swirl of whipped cream on top of each serving, that’s not wrong. If you’re lucky enough to have strawberries and peaches at the same time, slice and layer them in a glass bowl, dribbling a little maraschino liqueur over each layer.

Infuse, muddle or puree fresh fruit for cocktails. No need to search for your inner mixologist when you work with enough fruit for a pitcher of cocktails. A spritzer I’ve enjoyed making this summer, adapted from a Bon Appetit recipe, calls for placing up to a pint of raspberries or quartered strawberries in the bottom of a pitcher. Lightly crush (aka, muddle) the strawberries (no need with raspberries), pour in a bottle of rosé and let the berry flavor infuse the wine for at least three hours or overnight. Strain into another pitcher, discarding the berries. Add 1/2 cup Aperol or Campari–the slight bitterness of these aperitivi adds just the right accent–and, immediately before serving, stir in 2 cups of selzer. Serve over ice and garnish with more fresh berries.

Compose cheese and fruit plates. Fresh figs or melon, prosciutto and Gorgonzola are one classic combination. For breakfast, cheese guru Max McCalmon suggests plums or peaches with “coffee friendly” Fontina Valle d’Aosta and a croissant. If you can get your hands on fresh sheep’s milk ricotta at a farmer’s market, drizzle it with a little honey and serve with nectarine wedges and almond biscotti.

Make my watermelon granita. The full recipe is in my cookbook, Seafood alla Siciliana, but I’ll give you the gist of it. Make a simple syrup by combining equal parts sugar and water and heating until the sugar dissolves. Submerge a sprig of mint in the hot liquid; cool and discard the mint. Puree seeded watermelon chunks, using a blender or food processor, and sweeten to taste with the minty syrup. Process in an ice cream mixer and scoop into bowls, adding fresh berries to each.

Whip up a batch of amaretti-stuffed peaches. “Every Piemontese cook makes this humble dessert in summer,” says my friend Meme. “Just put a pan of these peaches on the kitchen table and watch them disappear.”

Amaretti-Stuffed Peaches

Prep Time

20 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Total Time

40 mins

(recipe of our friend Meme Amosso Irwin)

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 8 peach halves

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter plus more for the baking dish
4 large freestone peaches ripe but not overripe
12 amaretti cookies or as needed
1 teaspoon cocoa
1 tablespoon sugar optional
1 large egg yolk

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly butter a gratin dish or other baking dish just large enough for 8 peach halves.
Halve the peaches and extract the pits. Cut a thin sliver off the ends to permit them to stand upright in the baking dish. Using a teaspoon or grapefruit spoon, scoop out some of the peach flesh to make a hollow; chop your peach scoopings and place in a small bowl.
Using your hands or a potato masher, crush enough amaretti cookies to make 1 cup of crumbs. Add to the bowl with the chopped peach. Stir in the cocoa; taste and add sugar if you wish. Stir in the egg yolk until the mixture holds together.
Line up the peach halves in the prepared dish and fill with the seasoned amaretti crumbs. Top each one with a small knob of butter. Bake on a middle rack until the peaches are glazed and tender and the crumbs lightly browned. Spoon any pan juices over the peaches. These taste best when eaten at room temperature.

Searching for French Food in Paris

June 19, 2012 by Toni Lydecker

Italian restaurant in Paris I recently visited Paris for the first time in 10 years and concluded that it’s not a slamdunk to find French food here. Or at least that it’s as easy to graze from the global smorgasbord as to dine à la français.

My first clue that things had changed came when, asked about nearby restaurants, the hotel clerk offered suggestions for Moroccan, Thai, Chinese and Italian places (he skipped the Cambodian hole in the wall down the street). How about French food? He was French and yet seemed puzzled by that question.

Granted, my husband and I were staying in the chi-chi, tourist-driven St. Germain-des-Près neighborhood on the Left Bank, where seeking out an authentic bistro nobody else knows about is like searching for crawfish in Kansas. Not out of the question, but not easy.

Advance research (David Lebovitz, for example, or Paris by Mouth) and reservations might have helped, but…nah. We stuck with our seat of the pants method and here’s where it took us.

You can find a croque madame or salad niçoise in any brasserie, cafe au lait and a croissant in any bar. But I can eat those in New York, too, with probably equal chances of a standout experience. Our meal at Fish La Boissonerie could have happened in New York as well. The owners are Australian, the chef Japanese and the dish I’ll remember fondly was a quinoa, fennel and carrot salad garnished with tender raw okra. The French touch was a Languedoc wine with an American name: Jazz.

Starving at 5 p.m., we found sustenance at Da Rosa on the rue de Seine. José Da Rosa is, like Proust, engaged in “la recherche des goûts perdus.” In a friendly pairing of specialties from Provence and Spain, we nibbled Lucques olives–with green speckled skins, they are sweet, meaty, irresistible!-with hand-sliced jambon iberico.

On a marathon walk with friends, we rambled through the market in the Place de la Bastille, spotting snails waiting for their garlic fougasse butter treatment, apricots from Tunisia, hothouse tomatoes from Brittany. One falafel place after another lined the rue Rossetti in the Jewish quarter, the air filled with spicy aromas. On our way to a fly fishing shop (a novelty of a different order), we marveled at a shop window filled with oatmeal cartons, M&Ms and Campbell soup cans, all seemingly intended for homesick Americans.

In a park on the rue de Bretagne, we lunched on fougasse, an oily flatbread with the same Roman roots as focaccia. Thin and chewy, one variety of fougasse was filled with ham and olives, another with chicken and onion.

I kept noticing restaurants with Franco-Italian names like Italia Cucine. At the Musee d’Orsay’s Café Cabana, the international orgy of a menu featured penne with pesto, chorizo and, for the French touch, crispy Mimolette cheese. Or you could eat gnocchi with your filet mignon de porc.

A brasserie starter I enjoyed was a French take on prosciutto and melon: a fragrant, juicy Cavaillon melon, its top carved zigzag fashion, with slices of Bayonne ham nestled in the hollow. White asparagus were in season and I ordered them more than once, simmered soft and served with mignonette sauce.

Parisians may have opened their arms to global culinary influences but they do hold the line on a few things. The cheese course is always there if you want it, and the offerings are invariably French, from smelly Epoisses to fresh goat cheeses. At a tiny epicerie where we picked up supplies for a picnic, the specimen that most delighted me was a pyramid-shaped cheese completely enveloped in filmy white mold.

The pâtisseries are unsurpassed, too, a feast for eyes and Le Relais de L'Entrecote stomach. Macarons are so trendy you can buy them in Dallas or Miami, but the French ones taste better. Not to mention their tarts, eclairs, napoleons…

We found our steak-frites fix at Le Relais de L’Entrecôte, where tourists and Parisians alike line up for a piquantly dressed salad, fork-tender steak slathered in bearnaise and and piles of fries. I should clarify–that’s the only meal you can order here. But the air is charged with the energy of a couple of hundred people lustily eating and talking, and the brusque servers come around with seconds.

We did have a formal French meal–at the wedding that had brought us to Paris. It began with a marbled terrine of foie gras with baby leeks, paired with a white dessert wine from the Loire Valley called Coteaux du Layon, and moved on in stately fashion to Bresse chicken with lobster in a creamy morel sauce. Cheese, salad and dried fruit followed. This meal, too, had an international flavor because the young couple and most of the guests were American.

We’ve known and loved Esther, the bride, since she was a toddler–long before she became an art historian specializing in 18th century French drawings and prints. She and her new husband Jason chose traditional French cuisine for their wedding, but they also get excited about their favorite falafel place or a rising Paris chef with a farm-to-table menu. They’re reveling in a city that’s different from the one I first encountered in my youth. But it’s still Paris.

Calzones and Other Pizza Foldovers

April 13, 2012 by Toni Lydecker

Calzones (or calzoni, if you’re in Italy), stromboli, pizza rolls, Sicilian schiacciata. There’s really no consensus on what these are supposed to be.

By most accounts, calzones are half-moons of pizza dough folded over a filling that usually contains ricotta or other cheese, vegetables and deli meats. Sometimes they’re served with marinara or another sauce. Log-shaped stromboli are an Italian-American invention, wrapped around the usual pizza fillings or a chicken-and-cheese filling. Pizza rolls are a frozen commercial product or a mom’s name for the pizza-like spinoff she makes for her kids. Sicilian schiacciata is made by baking the dough halfway, splitting and filling it, then baking it a second time to create a delicious something that walks the line between pizza and panino.

On Chowhound or Yelp, you could no doubt find differing opinions on everything I just said. There are enough regional variations and vivid memories to counter each and every assertion. Basically, though, I think all of these are born of the same impulse that makes New York pizza eaters fold over a huge, floppy slice and walk off down the street. It’s not only a way of getting the thing into your hand, but of putting all the crust on the outside, for no reason but the pleasure of crunching down into a soft and savory filling.

The other variable about pizza foldovers is size. I was startled to see, on my first visit to Sicily, that one calzone could sprawl across an entire plate. Basically, we’re free to make these any size we want. Recently I experimented with one of my recipes for calzoni, downsizing them to party-size dimensions. They were fine, but fussy to make. So, instead, I patted and stretched the pizza dough to make rectangles for filling and rolling. Cut crosswide, they made great party pick-ups.

What were they? Stromboli? Well, not exactly. Pizza rolls? Maybe–you decide.

Pizza Rolls Filled with Escarole, Smoked Mozzarella and Dried Sausage

Prep Time

30 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Total Time

50 mins

(Adapted from Piatto Unico, by Toni Lydecker

Course: Appetizer

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 2 dozen hors d'oeuvres

Ingredients

1 head escarole cored (or substitute spinach or chard)
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil plus more for the pan
1 small onion chopped
2 garlic cloves finely chopped
2 ounces cacciatorini or other dried sausage Genoa salami or soppressata, cut in small squares (about 2/3 cup)
1 pound pizza dough homemade or purchased
1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded smoked mozzarella, Scamorza or imported provolone

Instructions

Wash the escarole well, changing the water until no grit remains. Cut the leaves in shreds.
Fill a large saucepan two-thirds full of cold water and bring to a boil. Cook the escarole until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Drain well, pressing with a spatula to help eliminate liquid.
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute the onion until soft and golden; stir in the garlic, cooking just until fragrant. Stir in the drained escarole and sausage, cooking for a few minutes to blend the flavors; cool and mix in the cheese.
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly oil a rimmed baking sheet. Divide the pizza dough in 2 pieces. Roll and pat one of them to make a rectangle slightly smaller than the dimensions of the sheet.
Spoon half of the filling on the rectangle, leaving a ½-inch border. Starting at one long side, roll the dough around the filling to make a roll. With a sharp knife, slash the dough in a couple of places to allow steam to escape. Repeat with the rest of the dough and filling.
Place the rolls side by side on the baking sheet. Bake on the center rack until well browned and some of the filling oozes out the vents, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly and cut each roll crosswise in 2-bite pieces.

Homemade Taralli and Other Italian Gifts

December 9, 2011 by Toni Lydecker

taralli with black pepper and fennel

A friend who, bless her heart, bought seven copies of my cookbook for holiday gifts wanted to tuck in some Italian ingredients that could be used in the recipes. She’d already settled on little packets of pistachios, almonds and pine nuts, but asked for other ideas. I suggested some other go-withs that are easily shipped: tins of Italian anchovies or tuna, small packets of dried porcini, dried artisanal pasta and beans, farro, Sicilian sea salt, dried herbs (e.g., branches of Mediterranean oregano) and spices (e.g., saffron).

With or without a cookbook, there’s no finer gift than a bottle of freshly pressed olive oil. Two I can vouch for are Frescobaldi Laudemio from Tuscany, and Olio Verde Novello from Sicily, both imported by Manicaretti, which is also promoting tempting jars of Savini Tartufi, black truffles from Tuscany. There’s plenty of under-$20 panettone around but all too often this billowy holiday sweet is dry and disappointing. In hopes of doing better, I’m pondering whether to spring for Chef Luigi Biasetto’s $70 rendition, which importer Gustiamo swears is worth every penny.

Going back to the idea of pairing an Italian cookbook with a food contained therein, why not make one of the recipes and give to someone you love? My mother-in-law Helen used to make biscotti from Carol Field’s Italian Baker (a new edition of this classic is just out) to package in a pretty way for friends. I can vouch for the lemony carrot marmellata I learned to make years ago from innkeeper Maria Pellizzari; spoon it into half-pint jars with a “From the kitchen of” label. That recipe is in Piatto Unico, along with my recipe for taralli. A crunchy, assertively seasoned cocktail snack that keeps well, taralli could be given with a bottle of Punt e Mes or any worthy Italian wine.

Taralli with Black Pepper and Fennel Seed

Prep Time

1 hr

Cook Time

50 mins

Total Time

1 hr 50 mins

Course: Baked Goods

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 3 dozen

Ingredients

1 teaspoon dry yeast
1 pound unbleached all-purpose flour about 3 ½ cups, plus more if needed
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil plus more as needed
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt or kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon whole or crushed fennel seed or anise seed or a combination

Instructions

Combine the yeast with ½ cup warm water (110°F to 115°F) in a liquid measuring cup. Let stand for a few minutes, until a beige scum forms on top.
Meanwhile, combine the flour, olive oil and wine in a mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer fitted with a paddle, mix over low speed until well blended. Add the salt, pepper, and fennel seed, and mix briefly until blended.
Add the yeast mixture and, on low speed, mix until a dough forms. On a pastry board or other smooth surface dusted with flour, knead the dough briefly and form a ball. Coat a medium bowl lightly with olive oil; turn the dough to coat and let rest, covered, until more or less doubled in size, about 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Divide the dough in half. Flatten one piece to form a rectangle, and tightly roll from one long side to the other. Roll with both hands, working from the center outwards, to make a thick rope about 1 ½ inches in diameter and 12 inches long. With a dough scraper or knife, cut crosswise at 1/2 –inch intervals. Roll each piece to make a skinny rope about 7 inches. Loop it to make an oval shape with one end crossing the other. Press firmly with your thumb to make an indentation at the point where the ends intersect (see Note). Repeat with the rest of the dough, lining up the taralli on 2 trays or rimmed baking sheets.
Bring a medium saucepan about two-thirds full of water to a simmer. Drop in 8 taralli; line the space freed up on the baking sheet with a clean dish towel. Simmer for a few seconds until the taralli rise to the surface; scoop out with a slotted spoon and lay on the dish towel. Simmer the rest of the taralli in the same way, unfolding the dish towel into the freed-up space and returning the taralli to dry until moist but not slimy to the touch.
. Lightly oil 2 baking sheets. Arrange the taralli about 1 inch apart. Bake on center racks for half an hour. Turn the taralli and return to the oven (switching the position of the pans). Bake 20 to 30 minutes longer until browned and crisp; cover with aluminum foil or parchment paper if they seem in danger of burning.
Cool the taralli on racks and store at room temperature in sealed containers; they can also be frozen.

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Baked Goods and Sweets