Pastizzi

As tradition built it

Makes about 20. About 2 hours.

Ingredients

• 500 g flour
• 250 g butter or lard, plus more for laminating
• enough to bring the dough together, plus a pinch water, a pinch of salt
• 400 g fresh ricotta, or 400g cooked, mashed peas with onion and spice, for the two fillings
• 1 egg, for the ricotta filling

Method

1. Make a simple flour, butter or lard and water dough, rest 30 minutes.
2. Roll thin, dot with softened fat, fold and roll repeatedly, laminating the dough in the manner of a rough puff pastry, resting between folds.
3. For the ricotta filling, beat the ricotta with the egg and a little salt.
4. For the pea filling, cook mashed peas with softened onion and spices to a thick, savoury paste.
5. Cut the laminated dough into ovals, spoon on the filling, and fold: down the middle for ricotta, down the side for pea.
6. Bake hot, around 220°C, 20 to 25 minutes, until flaky and golden.

What a modern chef changes

The lamination taken as seriously as any French pastry, and the two fillings kept genuinely distinct

Rung 4

Method

1. Laminate properly, with real rest between folds, treating this pastry with the same discipline you would a rough puff for a French tart, since a rushed lamination is the single biggest reason home-made pastizzi turn dense rather than shattering into flaky layers.
2. Season the pea filling assertively. It wants to read as more savoury and hearty than the ricotta version, and a timid hand here is the most common way home versions blur the two fillings into indistinguishable ones.
3. Bake on a stone or steel for a properly crisp base, the same principle Rung 1 applies to ftira.

Notes

Part Four