Asparagus & Fresh Ricotta Grilled Flatbread

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Grilled Flatbread with Asparagus Ribbons & Ricotta If I don’t post any new recipes here for a while, just assume it’s because I’m making and eating this flatbread for every meal.  

The flatbread is a piece of pizza dough stretched into a rectangle and grilled until it gets a little charred here and there.  It’s topped with a crisp salad of asparagus ribbons and mixed herbs, dollops of fresh ricotta, and a handful of crushed pistachios.  It screams springs and it screams “yes, I’m a pizza, but I’m also a vehicle for salad so you can eat me whenever you feel like it.”  Which will be quite often.

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Broccoli Rabe, Italian Sausage & Ricotta Pizza

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Italian sausage, broccoli rabe & ricotta pizzaAbout a year ago, my life changed in a big way.  I discovered this recipe for no-knead pizza dough that yields my favorite kind of restaurant-pizza crust, right out of my home oven.  It’s thin in the middle, chewy and bubbly around the edges, and a total cinch to make.  I’ve been talking it up to friends and family (come on, Dad–try it!  I know you’ll love it!), but somehow we haven’t talked about it here since my initial discovery.

Well, let’s change that!  Let’s talk pizza today.  We’ll definitely use my go-to dough and I’m thinking some garlicky sautéed broccoli rabe, spicy Italian sausage, and ricotta cheese sound like awfully good toppings for this chilly evening.  A bottle of red?  Maybe a movie?  Good, I’m glad you’re on board.

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Fig & Rosemary Schiacciata

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Fig & Rosemary SchiacciataThis, for the record, is exactly what my dreams are made of.

It’s a warm slab of schiacciata, studded with fresh figs, sprinkled with rosemary, sea salt, and sugar.  It covers all of my crave bases: sweet, salty, carby, plus it reminds me of my one of my favorite cities.

Il Duomo di Firenze

Schiacciata is, in my estimation, the official snack of Florence.  It’s a dimply flatbread, a lot like focaccia, that’s really loaded up with olive oil.  You can stop in to a panificio, stand in line with kids being treated to an after-school snack and old women on their grocery run, and hold your hands up to indicate just how big a slab of schiacciata you’d like.  You might think you’ll bring it home, save it for later, but once it’s in your possession and you can feel that it is indeed still warm, you have no choice but to eat it right there, street side.  It’s okay, you’ll be in good company.  I can’t imagine anyone, young or old, being able to walk home without nibbling at least a corner.

So that’s regular schiacciata, but come fall another sort of schiacciata descends on the lucky Florentines: schiacciata all’uva.  That’s the one I’m riffing on today.  Normally, it’s made with grapes, but because I don’t live under the Tuscan sun and do not have access to good, flavorful wine grapes, I’m making it with fresh figs instead.

Sound good?  Shall we get started?

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Best-Ever No-Knead Pizza Dough

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No-Knead Pizza Dough

I’m the type of person who is, sometimes really annoyingly, resistant to change.  Even if it’s the kind of change that might enhance my everyday living, like trading in my old flip phone or upgrading my decade-old, leaky, stained $10 coffeemaker, I’ll insist that my old way is just fine.  So naturally, I never had much interest in trying Jim Lahey’s famous no-knead pizza dough recipe that has been sweeping the rest of the nation for the last couple of years.  What good was that for someone like me?  I like spending time in the kitchen, I like getting my hands dirty, and I like kneading my dough.

An unfortunate side effect of being resistant to change is the tendency to hoard.  My old magazines had finally stacked up to the point of bothering me, so I recently started weeding through old issues of Bon Appétit and came across the no-knead pizza dough recipe again.  Fine!  I gave in and decided to give this crust a shot.

Thank goodness I did–it’s amazing!  It’s like the pizza crust I seek out in restaurants, made at home, in my ordinary oven.  The center is thin and crisp, the edges chewy and bubbly.  Plus, if you make the full recipe, you can keep balls of dough in the freezer and have pizza whenever the mood strikes.  So daily.

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Endive, Olive & Potato Tiella

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Endive, Olive & Potato Tiella - Version 2

Oh, how I wish I could entertain you with some charmingly romantic story about my first encounter with tiella.  I’d love to say I was hiking between hillside villages in the Italian countryside and I stumbled upon the most wonderful, humble, little osteria.  A wrinkled old woman, cheeks dusted with flour, wearing a checkered kerchief, beckoned me in to try a piece of her legendary tiella.

Nope.  My first encounter was less exotic, far less romantic.

It was less fairytale and way more suburban mall food court.

It occurred to me as I was slicing into my homemade, wilted greens and garlic-filled tiella that it looked an awful lot like the spinach-stuffed pizza from sbarro that I’d splurge on with my hard-earned baby-sitting cash during my teeny-bopper mall-cruising days.

My more “authentic” experiences with tiella are hardly more exotic or romantic.  In fact, the last time I had it in Italy, it was from a gas station, eaten from my lap, as we frantically drove to our next destination, while I complained bitterly about Matt’s driving style and my extreme nausea.

That’s okay, though.  I don’t think tiella is supposed to be put on a pedestal.  All it is, really, is a double crusted pizza pie, filled with whatever tasty ingredients you fancy.  And while my old lady-osteria fantasy might exist somewhere, even in Italy you are way more likely to find yourself a piece of tiella at a convenience store or bar or take-away joint.

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