TWD - Pizza Rustica

First challenge of April was Pizza Rustica located on pages 430 and 431 of Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.



 If you are interested in the recipe you can find it posted on this weeks hosts blogs Emily of Capital Region Dining Blog and Raelynn of The Place They Call Home .  If you would like to see how all of the baker's did on this weeks challenge you can find those links here.

I was not sure about this recipe, it looked very quiche like to me.  I happen to love quiche but I have some younger family members that don't share my love of  'egg pie'.  Of course to them the title of the recipe is quite misleading.  When I said we were having Pizza Rustica for dinner they weren't expecting what was served to them ;)

The recipe was nice and simple and it came together quite fast.  I love how simple the dough was and that I didn't have to wait for it to chill in the fridge.  I am such a procrastinator that it made all the difference in getting dinner on the table on time! 

First step was getting all of the dry ingredients into the food processor and pulsing to combine



Then it was to add cold unsalted butter and pulse until it became like cornmeal in consistency 

Once the butter was combined I added the eggs

After it balled up around the blade it was ready to take out and knead.  Super easy!

It was a moist dough and it never quite got 'smooth' like it indicated it would in the directions.  Perhaps I am being too literal?

It was more of this almost bubbly texture.  This was after a couple of minutes of kneading and it wasn't changing consistency at this point so I decided to stop in case I overworked it.



The ingredients were very basic, which I love.  Eggs, ricotta cheese, mozzarella, pecorino romano, prosciutto, parsley and black pepper.  I mixed those ingredients together while the oven preheated. 



First I put the ricotta in the bowl and blended it with a rubber spatula.  Then I added the eggs so I had an easy mixture to add the other ingredients into.  In this picture it already has the prosciutto and I am adding the pecorino romano, which I cheated on and bought it already grated.

The mozzarella required weighing so I pulled out the scale.  Can I just say this scale is da bomb! 

I added the parsley last as the hubs was picking some up from the grocery store for me while I was mixing the other ingredients ;)  It just didn't make it onto my mental grocery list!

I rolled out the pie crust after everything was mixed and layed it in the pie pan.  It was a soft dough but easy to handle.  This pie crust is so simple and I know I am going to use it again in the future!

Here it is after adding the filling.  I panicked a little thinking my pie pan was too big because the filling seemed to be low, but it was just right.

I rolled out the remaining pie dough and cut it into 12 strips with my pastry cutter (that the hubs picked up while he was getting parsley.......keeper :) )  My strips weren't even but I made it work the best I could.

They look a little wonky after baking but not too bad!  It was reminding me more and more of quiche, even though the filling was more cheesy than eggy.  Pastry is one of my favourite parts of any pie, quiche or otherwise, so I was looking forward to having pastry on top as well as underneath.  Yum.

Here it is straight out of the oven

I let it rest while the hubs and I worked on a home project and served it just warm for dinner



Comparing my Pizza Rustica to the picture in the book (at top of page), I noticed that I don't seem to have as much fillings as pictured.  There seems to be much more prosciutto in the book's pictured Pizza Rustica, in comparison mine looks a bit boring.



My first bite was not what I expected.  I'm not sure why, I saw what I put in there ;)  However the texture of the ricotta can be a bit grainy/chalky/gritty?  I'm not sure how it's best to describe it, but it's not my favourite texture.  The flavour was good.  The pecorino romano added a nice saltiness, it could have used a little more prosciutto.  I'm sure other ingredients would be delicious too.  Mushrooms and onions come to mind, or possibly spinach or fresh herbs such as thyme, oregano or basil.  I was not sure about the sweetness of the dough.  At times it seemed complimentary and other times just too sweet for a savoury dish.  I would probably cut down the amount of sugar in the future.  I see a lot of potential for variety and definitely have not written this recipe off.  With how simple it is it would make a nice potluck dish or would be good for casual entertaining.

Now having said that, not one of my kids liked it :) :(  I served it with salad and you might have thought I was torturing my offspring.   I may have particularly picky children, even my adventurous (I use that term loosely) eaters were not keen on it.  Oh well.  I'm sure they'll hate the lemon loaf cake that we are making next ;)