Visiting Italy?Have you ever heard of Megli’s focaccette? Nothing to do with focaccia, the flat Ligurian bread! They are fritters, made of thin layers of dough, stuffed with creamy melting cheese (crescenza).
For us Genoese, cheese fritters represent the delicious destination of a trip out of town, between olive trees and lemons, overlooking the sea.
They are typical of the small village of Megli – a handful of narrow houses around a sanctuary overlooking the Paradiso Gulf. Here, every year on Easter Monday, the focaccette fair is organized.
Megli’s focaccette are prepared with the same ingredients as Recco’s most famous cheese focaccia, but they are fried, and this, you can imagine, makes a certain difference.
Cheese focaccette from Megli
Ingredients
- 250 g (9 oz, 1 cup) of flour
- 100 ml (3,4 fl oz) of warm water
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- A pinch of salt
- 400 g (14 oz) of Stracchino (or Crescenza) cheese
- 1 l (2 pint) of peanut oil for frying
Instructions
- Prepare the dough: knead all the ingredients together at length until you get a smooth and homogeneous dough, wrap with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for half an hour.
- Roll the dough on a floured surface with a rolling pin (or with the pasta machine) until you get sheets of about 2mm (a credit card) thick.
- Cut the sheets in squares of about 12 cm (4 inches) per side. Take a square of dough, lay a couple of teaspoons of Stracchino cheese in the center of one half of the square, fold over the other half (you will get a rectangle) by making it adhere well to avoid air bubbles and pressing with your fingers seal well the edges. With a ravioli wheel trim the edges to further seal the dough and for decoration. Proceed with the remaining squares, placing them from time to time on a well-floured tray.
- Pour the oil into a deep frying pan and bring it to temperature (about 175°C – 340°F ). When the oil is hot dip the Focaccette a few at a time taking care to wet with the hot oil even the floating surface to prevent it from breaking. When the side immersed in the oil will be crisp but not golden (they must remain rather pale) turn them upside down and let cook the other side in the same way.
- Drain on paper towels and serve hot.
