hello this is chef john from food whooshes calm with Pizza Rustica that's
right I am very happy to be sharing this traditional Easter recipe which a lot of
people describe as an Italian meat filled quiche but to me it's way closer
to a savory cheesecake so if you've ever been enjoying a slice of that and
thought to yourself I wish this wasn't sweet and also had salami and pepperoni
in it you are gonna love this but no matter how you describe it it's
definitely not like pizza although it is pretty Rustica and very very delicious
so with that let's go ahead and get started with the dough for our crust
which will begin with some all-purpose flour a little bit of salt and then some
very very cold butter that we've cut in slices and as usual the colder the
better and I will also add in a couple tablespoons of olive oil which as you
can see I'm measuring very carefully and then what we'll do is take one of these
wire pastry cutters and we'll go ahead and blend that butter into the flour
until it resembles coarse crumbs and by the way if you don't have one of these
tools you can just use your fingertips to rub all this together which is how
between 90 and 95 percent of Italian grandmothers would do it and then what
we'll do once our mixture resembles something that looks like this is stop
and make a little well in the center with a fork into which we'll pour one
beaten egg and then we'll fork you late that for about a minute or until we
think that egg is pretty well mixed in at which point we'll stop and add the
last ingredients a splash a nice cold fresh water and I should mention most of
the dough recipes for this call for just eggs but I think a combo of egg water is
a little easier to work with and what we'll do is give that a very brief
mixing with the fork before switching to our hands with which we will attempt to
press this into a ball of dough and if it seems dry and it's not coming
together definitely sprinkle in some more water
like a teaspoon at a time until it does in fact if I'm being completely
objective I think mine was actually a little too dry and I couldn't used one
more splash but anyway it worked just barely but the point is you had enough
water so it does come together nicely and once it does come together we can
transfer that onto the table top to finish it off and then what we'll do
once we have manipulated that into a nice disc of dough let's go ahead and
wrap it plastic and pop in the fridge for at
least an hour alright these type of dough's are always easier to work with
once they're cold plus it gives our flour time to hydrate and if you're not
filming it in a big hurry make sure you press those random crumbs I left that in
a table into your dough and then what we'll do while our dough is resting in
the fridge is go ahead and make our filling which is gonna start with 1
pound of drained ricotta cheese and all that means is we left it in a strainer
over a bowl the night before so that any of the excess water could drip out and
not to brag but I was using a really good one so now much came out but with
your average supermarket variety you're gonna be surprised just how much
moisture does leak out but anyway we will transfer that to a nice big mixing
bowl and add a half a pound of low moisture mozzarella that we've cut into
small cubes and by low-moisture mozzarella I mean inexpensive and then
the last of our cheese additions will be a couple ounces of finely grated
pecorino romano or if you want some parmesan that is up to you and since
this is an Easter video I think it is appropriate to say you are after all the
Jesus of your cheese's and either would work and then to that we will add a
little touch of salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper at which
point we will add 7 large beaten eggs ok because 6 is not enough 1/8 would be too
many and then once the eggs are in it's time to meet our meats and what I'll be
adding is some cooked and crumbled Italian sausage and I went with the
sweet variety but of course a spicy one would also work we will also toss in
some cubed up smoked ham as well as some type of cubed up salami and then last
but not least some pepperoni which I basically just sliced into strips since
it came already sliced but if you can fight it and stick form you can go ahead
and cube that up just like the salami in the ham and that's it we'll go ahead and
take a big spoon or spatula and give this a very very very thorough mixing
until it's extremely well combined in fact if you're not sure keep stirring
until you are and then stir it for another minute and that's it once thats
mixed we'll go ahead pop it in the fridge until we're ready to use it and
then the only other thing we need to prep would be a 9 inch springform pan
that we've rubbed with olive oil and dusted with flour and while it is true
you can cook this another large deep taking pans or dishes this really is
what you want to use so call your friend that does all that baking and safely
borrow one from them and that's it once our dough is rested we can pull it out
and unwrap it and cut off about 1/3 for the top and we'll reserve that while we
roll out the rest to fill our pan and of course as usual we will only use enough
flour as needed and we're gonna want to try to get this to about an eighth of an
inch thick and hopefully about 15 inches wide and remember when I said I thought
my deal was a little dry or a see how it's really splitting around the edges
that is one of the tell-tale signs so next time I'll use a little more water
but the good news is because of the way we're gonna place this in that's not
really gonna matter but what does matter is this is not sticking to the table so
I made sure that was not a problem before carefully rolling up the dough on
my pin like this and we're doing that so it's easier to transfer into our pan and
then what we need to do without stretching the dough out is tuck it into
this pan so it's evenly distributed across the bottom and up the sides and
if like me you have too much on one side and not enough on the other you can
always pull that extra dough off and dampen it very slightly with some water
and then push it into the areas where it's needed okay in a perfect world you
roll that out uniformly and then placed it in absolutely centered but you know
what I've never lived in that world and you probably haven't either so for
people like us we're gonna have to do a little bit of patching and by a little
bit I mean a lot and ultimately what we want to end up with is that dough coming
up just past the edge of the pan which I finally achieve like 10 minutes later
but anyway once that's accomplished we'll go ahead and transfer in our
filling and as we do this we want to make sure there's no air pockets so make
sure you're pressing that firmly into the corners and once that's been
transferred and we will smooth out the top and that's it we will take our
remaining dough and roll that out into a circle that's ideally slightly wider
than our pan and then just like the bottom we'll go ahead and roll that up
on our pin and transfer it over the top oh by the way in the written recipe I'm
gonna suggest you double the dough recipe so that you have plenty to do
this with since this amount did work but I had like absolutely zero despair which
can make it a little trickier and stressful
especially if you're new to baking okay it's a proven scientific fact that
pastries can sense fear and anxiety but anyway we'll go ahead and get that top
cross properly positioned and pressed in at which point we will take an egg wash
and we'll give this a nice brushing and if you're not sure what an egg wash is
it is simply one egg beaten with a teaspoon of water and then once that
surface was sufficiently moistened I decided to take a knife and go ahead and
trim off any excess which is totally optional but it will give us a little
more uniform and cleaner edge and once that was done it was time to start
folding our dough down from the edge with the crust from the bottom going up
over the top of the top crust and thanks to our egg wash is we kind of push and
press that together it should seal nicely at which point it is time to
crimp which can be a little challenging in this situation because our dough is
lower than the top of the pan in fact I think there was even a song way back
when that was called crimping ain't easy about this very thing so all we're
really able to do is sort of go around poking making indentations like this
which is fine because once this is baked it's gonna look great no matter what you
did to that edge and that was actually going pretty well until for some reason
I switched directions and proceeded to slice my finger open on the sharp edge
of the pan and at this point I became much less concerned with crimping and
much more concerned about not getting blood on the crust so I stopped and gave
the top one last brushing with our egg wash after which it was ready to
transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for just three seconds because as
soon as that's in we're gonna immediately reduce our heat to 350 and
let it bake for about an hour and 15 to 20 minutes or until our top is
beautifully golden brown and it looks like this and then very important we
need to let it sit just like this for 10 minutes before we carefully remove the
ring all right so don't rush that it needs to cool down a little bit before
we proceed alright so let it rest for 10 minutes before you spring the ring and
if everything's gone according to plan that crust should be a beautiful light
golden brown and fully cooked all the way through and despite the massive
amount of patching I had to do it actually looked pretty good if I do say
so myself which is why I transferred it onto a cake Stan even though I was too
chicken take off the bottom and I took way too
many pictures but that's okay because after you Deering this thing you
definitely want to let it cool for about 15 minutes or so before you slice in
otherwise it still might be a little bit loose inside so like I said I'll let
mine sit about 15 minutes before cutting out a nice big wedge which for the first
piece taken out of this went surprisingly well
and that my friends if you've never seen it before is what a proper slice a pizza
Rustica should look like at least according to me and if you're wondering
what it tastes like I have some great news it tastes exactly like what it
looks like just an absolute embarrassment of riches of Italian meats
and cheeses with just enough egg to somehow hold this all together and of
course I'll state the obvious until you can make this with whatever combination
of meeting Jesus you want or you can add different cheeses like provolone or
fontina or different meats like Coppa or prosciutto or of course gabagool as
would several other Italian meats I can't pronounce and I was just about to
start telling you how nice and flaky this crust was but you know what when it
comes to Pizza Rustica nobody cares about the crust it is simply here to
hold all this massive amount of goodness together and then it's fairly light and
flaky and tender is just an added bonus but anyway that's it my take on Pizza
Rustica which like I said earlier is nothing like a quiche so if you're one
of these people please stop describing it like that okay it's way closer to a
savory cheesecake containing dangerous quantities of meat and whether you end
up making this for your Easter Sunday celebration or for some other occasion
special or otherwise I really do hope you give this a try soon so please
follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a principle written
recipe and much more info as usual and as always
enjoy
you