Stuffed and Nonsense

So I know you’ve all enjoyed my various pizza adventures and for those of you not living here, you’re probably intrigued by the fugazzeta rellena that I’ve shown now and again – cheese stuffed dough topped with more cheese and caramelized onions. Well the challenge now, after having tried so many different versions, is to come up with a better mousetrap. Because let’s face it, a slice of ooey, gooey, cheesy, fugazzeta rellena would pretty much be the ultimate mousetrap, no? So this is my first stab at it.

It kinda sorta worked, it’s not remotely where I want it to be – I think I was trying too many different ideas that came up with various versions, and putting them all in one pie. But sometimes, editing is the better move. It’s a start, and there will be more versions to come. And this was good, it just wasn’t what I’d envisioned.

First off, I generally find most of the fugazzetas to be too “bready”. It’s not that I don’t like thick crusts, after all, Chicago and Detroit pizzas are among my faves, but in contrast to toppings, Argentine pizzas tend to be heavy on bread and cheese. So I went with an extra thin crust, almost like a Roman style pizza – with a little whole wheat flour added in. After thoughts? Needed to be a little thicker than this – you want a touch more dough than I ended up with – after all, pretty much what a fugazzeta is about is dough, cheese, onions.

Several of the versions I tried had a tangier, creamier cheese in the filling part, rather than mozzarella. I went with exactly that, a tangy cream cheese, spread on the lower dough, and then I topped it with roasted pork loin rather than lunchmeat style ham. I liked the cheese, though maybe something like a soft goat cheese would be even more interesting. I wasn’t as happy with the pork. Maybe something like a good smoky bacon….

Placed the top dough over that and rolled up the edges to seal it.

I had a preheated cast iron skillet and I plopped the pizza in, top side down first to partially cook the upper dough…

…and then flipped it over, letting the bottom side cook partially through while I…

[Edit: A couple of people asked me why this step – it’s mostly because a home oven isn’t near as hot as a pizza oven typically is, and I was afraid that with the filling and being covered with a lot of cheese and onions, that if I put those on first, I’d end up with the top crust being undercooked.]

…covered it with a good amount of garlic chive pesto. A couple of places had gone with some “green” – either a chimichurri or a provencal topping (garlic and parsley). I do love pesto, but the garlic chive version was too strong – either I need to use less, or go with a less pungent pesto.

A good amount of cuartirolo cheese – similar to mozzarella, but gets more… melty. Unfortunately, it’s also not as elastic, and you really do want that elastic stretch of gooey mozzarella.

A good amount of slivered onions, lightly tossed in melted butter – both for flavor and to help them brown. Then into the oven.

This is the other reason to use mozzarella – the cuartirolo melts and gets all browned way too fast, the onions ended up barely cooked. And maybe the butter’s not a good idea – it just sort of pooled atop the fugazzeta, though again, if I’d used mozzarella that might have cooked into the onions. Or maybe that’s the oil from the cheese.