Good morning. There are many ways to dress up focaccia. You can invest the bread with fruit or herbs (or fruit and herbs). You can cover it with potatoes and leeks. I like to split the bread and cover the interior with mortadella and pistachio cream, like they do at All’Antico Vinaio in Manhattan. In Argentina, home to a huge population of Italian immigrants, focaccia dough can be used to make fugazza, a kind of pizza hybrid topped with mozzarella, provolone, and slivered onions.
As Ham El-Waylly explains in his new recipe, some Argentines turn their fugazza up a few notches and make fugazetta (above), a type of fugazza calzone, where the dough wedges the cheese between the cheese before being pinched and topped with slivered onions . These soften and char in the heat of the oven, offering a nice contrast to the melted cheese inside.
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fuguetta
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So of course I’m going to make that today and so are you, if only to claim that cheese-stuffed pizza is both a cornerstone of American fast food chains and an example of Italian Argentinian cuisine at its best.
As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
I love Hetty McKinnon’s recipe for crispy gnocchi with tomato and red onion, a warm panzanella with gnocchi instead of bread. One of our subscribers added some sherry vinegar to the balsamic in the dressing for extra spice, and finished the dish with “because I live and love joy” burrata. Approved!
Tuesday
Yewande Komolafe’s shrimp tacos are an easy weeknight win, with deeply seasoned shrimp and quick pickled red cabbage for crunch. I like them with guacamole and pico de gallo, but just hot sauce is fine too.
Wednesday
Here’s a tuna salad from Naz Deravian that nods to Iranians’ love of pickles and fresh herbs. Naz nestles it in ciabatta and finishes the salad with salted potato chips. She calls for canned tuna packed in water, but if you have an Italian variety packed in olive oil, use that and reduce some of the oil in the dressing. Awesome.
Thursday
You don’t need a recipe to cook my bulgogi-style tofu, just a marinade of soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, a spoonful of gochujang, a drizzle of neutral oil, some sliced scallions, and toasted sesame seeds. In what proportions? Start with a little of each and taste your way to perfection. You have this.
Friday
And then you can end the week with Nicole Taylor’s excellent recipe for chicken with peach and molasses. Nicole prepares it on a grill, but you can use your oven with a rack on a foil-lined baking sheet. Anyway, I like mine with grits and sauteed veggies.
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Now it’s a country mile away from anything persimmon or bacon, but Stephen King’s review in The Times has me excited to read SA Cosby’s latest thriller, “All the Sinners Bleed”.
Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes brought their “Smartless” podcast to Max, formerly HBOMax. It’s very dadcore.
One cool thing Harper’s Magazine does on its website is bring back interesting articles from its archive. Recently it was “What is poetry? And Does It Pay?”, a 2002 “Letter From Reno” by a young writer named Jake Silverstein. (Jake is now the editor of DailyExpertNews Magazine.) It’s a lot of fun.
Finally here’s a podcast about stories with spikes, that is, bits of reportage that never made it to print. It’s called ‘Killed’ and the host is Justine Harman. See what you think of that, and I’ll be back on Friday.