Good morning. There are many ways to dress up focaccia. You can top 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 layer the interior with mortadella and pistachio cream, as 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 shaved onions.
As Ham El-Waylly explains in his new recipe, some Argentines dial their fugazza up a few notches and make fugazetta (above), a kind of fugazza calzone, with the dough sandwiching the cheese before it’s crimped shut and topped with shaved onions. These soften and char in the heat of the oven, and offer a nice contrast to the molten cheese within.
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Fugazetta
So of course I’m going to make that today and so should you, if only to assert that cheese-stuffed pizza is both a cornerstone of American fast-food chains and an example of Italian Argentine cuisine at its finest.
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 standing in for bread. One of our subscribers added some sherry vinegar to the balsamic in the dressing for extra zip, and topped the dish with burrata “because I am alive and like joy.” Approved!
Tuesday
Yewande Komolafe’s shrimp tacos are an easy weeknight win, with deeply spiced shrimp and quick-pickled red cabbage for crunch. I like them with guacamole and pico de gallo, but you’d be fine with hot sauce alone.
Wednesday
Here’s a tuna salad from Naz Deravian that nods at Iranians’ love of pickles and fresh herbs. Naz nestles it into ciabatta and tops the salad with salted potato chips. She calls for canned tuna packed in water, but if you’ve got an Italian variety packed in olive oil, use that and cut back a little on the oil in the dressing. So good.
Thursday
You don’t need a recipe to cook my bulgogi-style tofu, only a marinade of soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, a spoonful of gochujang, a splash of neutral oil, some sliced scallions and toasted sesame seeds. In what proportions? Start with a little of each and then taste your way to perfection. You’ve got this.
Friday
And then you can round out the week with Nicole Taylor’s excellent recipe for peach and molasses chicken. Nicole prepares it on a grill, but you could use your oven with a wire rack placed on a foil-lined sheet pan. Either way, I like mine with grits and sautéed greens.
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Now, it’s a country mile from anything to do with persimmons or slab bacon, but Stephen King’s review in The Times has me excited to read S.A. Cosby’s latest thriller, “All the Sinners Bleed.”
Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes have taken their podcast, “Smartless,” on the road for Max, formerly HBOMax. It’s very dadcore.
One cool thing Harper’s Magazine does on its website is to bring back interesting articles from its archive. Recently that was “What Is Poetry? And Does It Pay?,” a 2002 “Letter From Reno” by a young writer named Jake Silverstein. (Jake’s now the editor of The New York Times Magazine.) It’s very fun.
Finally, here’s a podcast about spiked stories, which is to say pieces 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.
