Those who know me know I’m an unabashed fan of stuffed-crust pizza. In fact, I included a recipe for one in my second cookbook. But as I get wiser with age and experience, I have started to think of things like, “Why just stuff the crust when you can stuff the whole thing?”
Held together with two layers of cheese, the prosciutto in this recipe tucks nicely into a pillowy focaccia dough. On top, wild ramps soften and char in the heat of the oven, creating a lovely, sweet onion flavor. If you can’t find ramps, feel free to use young garlic, spring onions, or your favorite pizza toppings. This focaccia is best served the day it’s baked.
I started making this rye focaccia while leading the Pastry and Bread program at Rossoblu in Los Angeles. I wanted the bread program to reflect the whole--grain heritage of Italy, and I loved making seasonal variations with fruit. Focaccia is also known as a salt cake, and I love cake with fruit. Here, we are celebrating a classic autumn variation of apples and onions, with some lemons to brighten the whole affair. Feel free to change out the toppings as the seasons change! This dough is extremely forgiving and a great place to build shaping confidence. Focaccia is great served warm alongside dinner or enjoyed cold as the ultimate sandwich bread stuffed with your choice of fillings. I also love it sliced thick and grilled with olive oil. Keeps for a week at room temperature, wrapped in a tea towel. Replace the honey with molasses to make the recipe vegan.
THE MAN’OUSHE (SINGULAR for mana’eesh) is the quintessential street food of the Levant. Wherever you go in the streets of Damascus, Beirut, or Jerusalem, you’ll see professionals, students, families, and their children all enjoying piping hot flatbreads, usually slathered with herbaceous za’atar. They’re eaten while walking down the street on the way to work or school, sitting in cafés, or around the breakfast table. Among my favorite memories in Syria and Lebanon is heading to one of the corner bakeries and ordering flatbreads by the dozen. Slid right out of the oven into pizza boxes, my cousins and I would rush back to an aunt or uncle’s home and devour them without a single word exchanged.
A happy culinary accident, hard pretzels are one of America's first salty, crunchy snack foods.
Food writer Maureen Abood learned how to make these fragrant cinnamon-laced Lebanese lamb and onion pies from her grandmother. Maureen fondly recalls how her grandmother, who used about twenty-five pounds of flour a week for baking, made the dough and filling and shaped the pies. Fatayar are eaten out of hand as part of a meal or as a snack on their own. They are relatively quick and easy to put together once the dough has risen.
Porous, golden, and springy, real Russian blini are both ethereal and substantial, and utterly unforgettable. In the West, buckwheat blini are perceived as authentic. That much is true, but during Soviet times buckwheat flour completely disappeared from stores. I've never had buckwheat blini in Russia and when I tasted them in the West, I've found them dry and odd - a flavor anachronism.
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