This is an odd one. My grandfather Mike was a NY Italian and I’m pretty sure this is his NY accent butchering ‘a foccacia’ – but that’s what he called it and it was a central part of every holiday held in their house. He would grow his own tomatoes and then make a bunch of these pizzas then freeze them for the holidays. They held up in the freezer surprisingly well and it was one of the things I most looked forward to when visiting them for the holidays. I would also steal big slices of it and smuggle it out wrapped tinfoil so I could eat it like a cave troll later in the privacy of my room and not have to share it<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now – we all loved this pizza and when I was in my early teens he showed me how to make it (since I was the only one that showed any interest in cooking he felt I was worthy). I remember him patiently walking me through the steps and me paying close attention but NOT TAKING NOTES<\/strong>. So when he passed a few years later my grandmother asked me if I could make some ‘affogatz’ for her and I panicked because I barely remembered what he taught me at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That began the trip down the rabbit hole of trying to recreate a taste from memory. I knew he often bought pizza dough from the store so I started there but it didn’t really match the texture of the pizza so I turned to making a quick 2 hour rise dough that fit the flavor profile (it wasn’t a long proofed dough – it has a more bready consistency). I knew plum tomatoes were the answer because other tomatoes were too wet. I remember him walking me through crushing the tomatoes after they are cut and that helps ensure it cooked a bit more evenly but the texture was off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The spice profile was pretty easy to nail – salt, lots of pepper, and a proprietary blend of seasonings were easy to isolate as I knew he had a very limited spice cabinet so it wasn’t hard to deduce what he used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I had the pizza, I had the flavors but the texture just wasn’t what I remembered. It took me a few years but I was making some other dish when it clicked in my mind that he cooked<\/em> the tomatoes and drained them before he put them on the pizza. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last piece of the puzzle was solved and now I can reliably recreate this unique dish for my family and hopefully inspire one of my future grand-kids to take up the torch and keep the tradition alive (the recipe is in the family cookbook now so it’s safe and preserved for the future)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an odd one. My grandfather Mike was a NY Italian and I’m pretty sure this is his NY accent butchering ‘a foccacia’ – but that’s what he called it and it was a central part of every holiday held in their house. He would grow his own tomatoes and then make a bunch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[104,194,209,251],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pizza","tag-focaccia","tag-pizza","tag-recipe","tag-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1817,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/1817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}