Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen
Leah Koenig’s latest cookbook brings Rome’s Jewish cooking tradition to Delmarva.
The Roman Jewish Ghetto’s most famous “pizza” has nothing to do with sauce or cheese. Instead, pizza Ebraica are crispy-edged, soft-centered, absolutely addictive bar cookies. Their exact origins are unclear, but they were likely brought to Rome by Sephardi Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. The cookies (the name roughly translates as “Jewish- style pie”) are also sometimes called pizza dolce (“sweet pie”) or pizza de beridde (“bris pie”)—the latter because they are traditionally served at circumcisions.
Recipe and photo from Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen by Leah Koenig.
Ingredients
SERVINGS: Makes about 10 large bar cookies (or 2 dozen smaller cookies)
- 2/3 cup vegetable oil (such as sunflower)
- 1/3 cup dry white wine
- 1½ cups all- purpose flour, plus more for shaping
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ cup unsalted roasted almonds, left whole or very roughly chopped
- ¼ cup pine nuts
- ½ cup dark raisins, soaked in warm water for 5 minutes and drained well
- ½ cup candied cherries, roughly chopped; or dried cherries soaked in water for 5 minutes, drained, and roughly chopped
- 1/3 cup candied citron or candied orange peel, roughly chopped
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk together the vegetable oil and wine in a large bowl, until combined. Whisk together the all- purpose flour, almond flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the oil mixture in a few stages, stirring until a soft dough forms. Add the almonds, pine nuts, raisins, cherries, and candied citron and, using clean hands, knead them into the dough. It will look like too many mix- ins for the amount of dough, but keep kneading until mostly incorporated. It’s okay if a few of the mix- ins are still falling out of the dough.
Turn the dough out, divide into 2 equal portions, and place one portion in the center of each prepared baking sheet. Lightly flour your hands, then pat and press the dough into rectangles about 8 x 4 inches and ¾ inch thick. Using a floured bench scraper or knife, slice each rectangle crosswise into 5 brick- shaped pieces. (It can be tricky to cut through whole almonds, just do your best and pat the pieces back together as necessary.) Gently nudge the pieces away from one another on the baking sheet, leaving about ½ inch space between the cookies.
Bake, rotating the pans back to front and bottom to top halfway through baking, for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cookies are a few shades darker on top and quite browned (almost burnt) around the edges. The cookies will still feel soft on top, but they will firm up as they cool.
Remove the baking sheets from the oven and set on wire racks to cool for about 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies to the racks to cool completely.
Serve the bars as is or break into smaller pieces, if desired. The cookies can be stored, in an airtight container, in the fridge for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Related Stories & Recipes
Garlicky Pumpkin Spread
Watching home cook Ghily Guetta prepare Shabbat dinner in her sunlit kitchen in the Piazza Bologna neighborhood was like observing a master class in multitasking. But of all the pots and pans bubbling...
