Boom!

Hello, I'm Julia Child.

Welcome to my house.

What fun we're going to have baking all kinds of incredible cakes, pies and breads right here in my own kitchen.

Master teacher and author Nick Malgieri of Peter Kump's Cooking School shows us how to bake authentic Sicilian specialties like savory pizza rustica and delightful fig-filled X cookies.

Learn how on... Nick Malgieri is now going to show us how to make X cookies, whatever they are.

What is an X cookie?

It's a Sicilian cookie that has a fig filling and which is encased in a sweet dough and they're formed into Xs which we'll see in a little while.

First what I'm going to do is make the dough.

This is an Italian sweet dough that's called pasta frolla and I've already got three cups of all-purpose flour in the food processor.

And I'm going to add a fourth cup and again, I like to measure the flour by spooning it into the cup and then leveling it off.

I find that... How much does one cup weigh, then?

That gives... one cup is approximately 4-1/4 to 4½ ounces when you measure it like that.

And then we've got two-thirds of a cup of sugar.

And you don't need to be nearly as careful when you measure the sugar.

We've got a teaspoon of salt which I was just going to level off there.

Regular salt?

Just regular, plain old salt level teaspoon of baking powder.

And that's fresh and good.

It certainly is.

I know I use enough baking powder never to have to worry whether or not it is.

And I'm just pulsing that a couple of times just to mix the dry ingredients together.

Going to remove the cover and what I'm going to do here with the butter is to just break it up into about six or eight pieces.

Make sure it's room-temperature butter.

Yeah.

Unsalted?

It is unsalted butter.

And this is a little bit of a departure from the way this might be made in Sicily only because in Sicily it would be much more common to use lard as the fat for a pastry dough rather than use butter.

And that needs to be pulsed.

I usually count that it takes about 15 or 20 times to get the butter to be mixed in so that it's mixed in very finely.

You want it very fine.

Yeah, yeah, because this is not a flaky dough so it really doesn't matter for the butter to be in pieces.

The butter has to be pretty much absorbed with the rest of the ingredients.

And then we have four eggs that go in.

Are these just regular large eggs?

These are large eggs-- that's right.

And then what I'm going to do is start the mixer again... or start the processor again, I should say, and mix those in.

And this is an easy dough to do because the dough very much and very easily forms a ball at the point where it's ready.

And it takes a little bit of pulsing but it certainly does it.

Ah, the processor seems to have slowed down a little tiny bit.

So we'll finish mixing the dough by hand.

And in order to do that, what I'm going to do is just put a little bit of flour here on the work surface and going to take a rubber spatula, there we go.

In other words, you don't have to be fussy at all, do you?

Well, you know, this is a very easy dough and it's also a very forgiving dough to prepare because it's got sugar in it and because it is bound with eggs rather than just water.

The dough is really tender, and as a result of that I'm just going to be careful here of getting this blade out of the... Don't want to cut your fingers.

Exactly, exactly.

One good thing about this dough is that you can make it in advance wrap it up in some plastic wrap.

I'm just going to wrap it up for a few minutes while we make our filling.

But you could chill this.

You could make it a couple of days in advance and chill it.

And if you do chill the dough you need to take it out of the refrigerator put it back on a floured surface and get it to the point, yeah where it's flexible and smooth again because you don't want the dough to be hard when you try to work with it.

So now we're going to make our filling.

And I want to move over here just for a second to the dried figs.

Here we've got some dried mission figs that I've pretty much already diced up into quarters.

And I'm going to just cut up the rest of these.

They are pretty dry, aren't they?

Well, you know, I find that they can be a lot drier and if they're extremely dry what I like to do is take the figs and put them in a bowl and just pour some boiling water over them and let them steep for about five minutes.

And that really rehydrates them to the... Where did you get these?

At a health food store?

I get these in the supermarket.

But I think you can get them in a health food store.

What are they called?

These are mission figs.

Mission.

And I think some of them are packaged as "figlets."

And you can also use the Calamyrna figs, which are the dried white figs.

So here to make the filling I'm just going to put the figs over into the food processor.

Here we've got a quarter of a cup of golden raisins.

Oh, those are golden.

Yes, yeah.

And a quarter of a cup of candied orange peel.

Here we've got half a cup of almonds that have been toasted and quartered.

And two ounces of semisweet chocolate.

Oh, chocolate-- now, that's interesting.

This is one of those everything-but-the- kitchen-sink fillings.

Yeah.

Here we've got one-third of a cup of apricot jam.

We're going to throw in a half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and then a quarter of a cup of dark rum.

That's exactly a quarter of a cup.

That's exactly a quarter of a cup.

That's by ocular measurement.

Okay, so here what we're going to do then is take the filling and... just pulse and pulse until the filling is finally ground up and it's starting to cohere together.

You don't ever want to leave it... leave it on.

You want to pulse it.

I think it works best if you pulse it rather than leave it on, because if you leave it on it's going to turn into a really fine puree and we want some identity in the ingredients.

Mm-hmm.

So that looks excellent.

It's sticky, but it's cohering together.

So I'm going to do the same thing with our filling here.

I'm going to take the filling and just dump it out from the food processor.

And going to form the filling into a cylinder.

And this is kind of an important part of the process.

Actually going to take a little bit more flour which I'm going to be able to use for keeping the surface from having either the dough or the filling stick to it.

You could use this filling in sticky buns probably, too, couldn't you?

If you wanted to make a uniquely Sicilian version of a sticky bun... That would be nice.

I think it would be great.

Okay, so what we're going to do next is divide each, the dough and the filling, into 12 pieces.

So we've got four there... and I'm just going to line them up over here because I think what we're going to do in a couple seconds is move over to the cutting board over here to form these.

So I've got my filling divided into 12 pieces and now we're going to do the same thing for the dough.

That is... that is nice.

Divide the dough... it's a nice soft dough, yeah.

And it works really easily.

I find that this is a dough that I choose very often when I make things, and, in fact, I have to say probably I could be reported as being un-American but I even like to make fruit pies with sweet dough.

Mmm.

Okay, so we're going to do the same thing here.

We're dividing our dough into 12 pieces.

And then, let's move over here to the board where we can form these.

You want this thing over?

Yeah, because I'm going to have to cut them.

And you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to take our baking pan that we're going to use and put that right up in front here so that we can take them and put them on the baking pan.

So the first step is to take the dough and I'm going to roll it out until it's approximately 12 inches long.

That looks just about right.

I'm going to grab the rolling pin so that we can roll that now.

And before I do that I just want to flour underneath and on top of the dough a little bit.

You know, when the dough is soft like this you hardly need to roll it at all.

And sometimes what I do, I have to confess is I just take and pat out the dough rather than roll it because you see that it can stick a little bit.

That's not a big problem.

Rich with butter.

Yes, it is.

Between the butter, eggs and sugar we've got a very rich dough there.

So, what I like to do, too, is to use the knife to free the dough from the surface like that after it's patted out.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, it works really well.

And then what I'm going to do, too with a little bit of the flour is to take one of my pieces of filling and then roll it out until it's approximately the same length as the dough.

So what we've got here is a piece of dough which is approximately 12 inches long and that's a little bit less than three inches wide.

And here we've got our filling, which is the same dimension.

And here I've got just a little bit of beaten egg.

That's just one whole egg?

Would you put in a little bit of water, or no?

I usually don't.

It's just plain and beaten.

Yeah.

Here we go.

And there's the filling on the dough.

And then what we're going to do is wrap the dough around the filling.

That's sort of like... a little bit like making a biscuit roulé-- like making a jelly roll-- and just kind of wrapping it around there.

Now we've filled the piece of dough with the fig filling I'm just extending it a little bit further.

So now I'm going to cut it into approximately 2½- to three-inch lengths.

You know, this is a great trick when you're cutting a bunch of things and you want them all to be the same size: just use one of them as a model.

And this one I'm just going to extend a tiny bit.

So we made five from that.

So that infers that with 12 pieces of dough and filling we can make five dozen cookies.

So here's how we make the Xs.

I just want to clean off... my knife here so that it's not going to stick as we're cutting them.

And I'm taking note of where the seam is so that I can push the seam to be on the bottom.

And I'm making a slash... Oh, and that's going to make your X!

in each end, and then opening it up and making an X.

Well, that's an X cookie.

These are fun cookies to make.

I learned how to make these at a wonderful pastry shop in Reggio Calabria where the owners came from Messina in Sicily but they still continue to make a lot of Sicilian specialties even though they were no longer there.

That's...

There's so many things very simple and then you look at it and you're wondering "How in the world did they do that?"

And then you see it done.

So we've got our X cookies ready to bake.

We're going to put them in at 350 degrees and they take about 15 or 20 minutes to bake.

Here we have the X cookies that are completely baked.

And you see they color nicely as they're baking.

And I'm just going to put them over on the cooling rack here and even though they're still hot I'm going to put them over on a... Whew!

Those are warm.

I'm going to put them and arrange them on a plate.

If these were cool...

They're pretty, aren't they?

I might dust them with a little bit of confectioner's sugar, or not.

It doesn't make that much difference.

And... let me get the rest of these on here.

And they're a really striking cookie.

The great thing about these is that in a tin or a really tightly sealed plastic container they'll stay fresh for a month.

They will?

Do you think that's cool enough to eat?

Well, I don't mind eating them when they're hot.

Why don't we split one?

Mmm.

Mmm, mmm.

I love that fig flavor, especially with the chocolate.

That's very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nick-- that's a great addition to my repertoire.

Thank you very much.

Nick is going to use this same buttery sugar dough for something else, and what's that going to be?

We're going to make a pizza rustica.

A pizza rustica.

Pizza rustica is an Italian savory pie and it might seem bizarre to be using a sweet dough with a savory filling...

Yes, it does.

but the filling for the pizza rustica is somewhat salty.

It's got pecorino cheese and prosciutto in it... Well, let's make it.

and it works out really nicely.

This is a piece of pasta frolla and, in fact, it's about half the quantity that we made before.

Mm-hmm.

This is the same batch, made with two cups of flour and what I'm going to do is roll the dough out into a disk and, you know, this dough is very forgiving and I chose to make the pizza rustica... although there are all sorts of different kinds of pans you can make it in I chose to make it in a nine-inch pie pan because I think it's easier to line the pie pan with the dough.

Mm-hmm.

I also think most people have a pie pan at home as opposed to maybe the kind of a straight-sided pan that would be more commonly used in Italy.

And, you know, when I roll this what I like to do is move the dough around a lot.

Mm-hmm.

Of course, it helps that we're rolling it on the marble surface but moving the dough around, I have a good opportunity to see whether or not it's starting to stick.

Mm-hmm.

And also, by revolving the dough like this a few degrees at a time every time I roll over it the dough stays fairly round so it doesn't turn into a bizarre shape.

Okay, what I like to do rather than roll the dough up onto the rolling pin is to fold the dough onto itself and bring the pan very close to it... Mm-hmm.

and then kind of gently get underneath the dough.

You have to be kind of gentle because it's very buttery.

You do, and you kind of can't squeeze because if you try to squeeze the dough together what's going to happen is it's going to stick to itself but, as I said, this dough is very, very forgiving.

Sometimes, more often than you might even suspect you can wind up with a great big hole in the dough like that and it doesn't matter.

You did that purposely.

Now, this isn't puff pastry or pate brisee... You just push it back together.

This is pasta frolla but all you need to do is push it back together-- it doesn't really hurt it at all.

Right there.

Yeah, right there, we can just kind of...

I'm going to leave this like this now so that we can attempt to making the filling because I've got pretty much everything ready over here.

Mm-hmm.

And, for the filling I've got a pound of ricotta and that's just regular whole-milk ricotta and I'm going to add three eggs, one at a time.

Can I start mixing right in there?

Just mix them right in.

There we go.

And a couple of tablespoons of chopped parsley.

A few grindings of pepper.

That's about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground pepper.

And here I've got a quarter of a pound-- that's four ounces-- of fresh mozzarella that's been grated and what we did here with the mozzarella-- excuse me, Julia-- was just grate it here, right on the box grater.

That works perfectly well.

So, I'm going to throw that in.

That's our fresh mozzarella.

Hmm.

And then, we've also got a little bit of prosciutto here.

This is four ounces of prosciutto.

And the prosciutto is sliced very thinly to begin with so, what I'm going to do with the prosciutto is take and just shred it very, very quickly with the knife here, cutting it first in one direction and then in the other so that it's actually cut up into very, very tiny squares.

It all sticks together.

Kind of does, but you know what?

Once it gets mixed into the filling it will kind of all separate out into little pieces again.

And I'm going to take the pecorino romano cheese here and, actually, this looks like just the right amount to grate so that I have about a quarter of a cup.

And pecorino is sheep's cheese.

We can get that easily.

It is, it is, it's very easy to get.

Okay, so that's our last ingredient, our grated cheese.

I'm going to get rid of our cheese and grater.

And there we've got our filling all put together quickly.

So, I've got to go back to our crust and add the filling to the crust and that's just about going to fill it up.

It's not going to fill it up extremely high and you're right about that, Julia.

It's going to puff up.

It's going to puff up a little bit so we don't... like any kind of cheesecake you don't want to crowd it.

So, that looks pretty good at this point.

It's getting pretty nice.

The pie pan is pretty full.

Mm-hmm.

And, what I'm going to do next is trim the dough at the edge.

See, what I like to do there is to use the back of the knife.

Mm-hmm.

And just trim off the excess dough.

Yeah, that looks good.

And I'm going to incorporate my excess dough into this other piece so that we can make the top crust which is going to be a lattice.

So, I'm just going to kind of put that underneath the rest of the dough there and roll this out into a square.

You can see that, unlike other doughs that are more delicate you don't have to be careful here about adding a little bit of flour.

It's not going to hurt the dough.

No.

Okay, so here what we want to do is cut it into 12 strips.

This is a great serrated cutting wheel.

Yeah.

Kind of makes it look a little bit more homey and old-fashioned, I think when you use a serrated wheel like this.

We used to make this, years ago, every Easter at Windows on the World when I worked there.

Oh.

Once the general manager came over when I was cutting out the strips to put them on top and he said, "You know, that doesn't look right.

"If your grandmother was cutting those strips "they'd all be different widths.

They wouldn't be all the same."

That's insulting to grandmothers, I think.

Well...

They're not that dumb.

I don't know, I think maybe he didn't mean it to be insulting.

He wanted to look... wanted it to look a little bit more casual.

And I've put on six strips and now I'm going to put on another six diagonal to those first six.

And we've got a little bit of dough left over.

Mm-hmm.

But what I like to do is just take and with my thumb just sever those little edges of dough so that we've got some scraps, you know.

Mm-hmm.

I usually take those and wrap them up.

You can put them in the freezer and make some little tartlet or something like that with them.

Mm-hmm.

That looks very nice.

Is that all there is to it?

Yeah, it's pretty easy to make.

So now we're ready to put it into the oven.

It needs to bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Okay, here we go.

I like to put it into the bottom of the oven because it's going to get the best bottom heat because, you know, there's nothing worse than a pie or a tart or any kind of a pastry that's not done well and dry on the bottom.

So, here we've got our pizza rustica all baked.

I'm going to take it out and put it on a rack to cool.

We want to serve it at room temperature and, you know, you could even make it a little bit in advance and wrap it up and chill it... Mm-hmm.

and then just bring it back to room temperature before serving it.

Oh, well, that's nice.

Here's our pizza rustica cooled to room temperature.

And what I like to do before cutting it is just to turn it upside down real fast and make sure that the pan is loosened from the dough.

Oh.

So that way, I know that all the slices are going to come out very easily.

So, I'll just get rid of our other pan here.

And...

I would slice this into smallish wedges because it's fairly rich and it... we don't want to have it be overly rich in the sense that we have too big pieces.

Mmm.

It's really great as a first course.

It's terrific as a...

The first course, even sweet, yes.

Well, you know, the sweet crust... And you always serve it in the... Yeah, I like to leave it in the pan like that.

I think it works very well.

And it works great, too as the main course of a light meal with a salad.

Mm-hmm, lovely.

I'm going to have a try, here.

I think we'll have a try, too.

I think it's real finger food.

Mmm.

That's nice.

That little bit of sweetness along with the ham is awfully nice.

It works well.

And to think that you make this and you make these beautiful X cookies out of the same dough.

It is exactly the same dough, it's funny.

I like having sprinkled that with a little bit of powdered sugar.

It makes them stand out a little bit, doesn't it?

They look a little bit better.

Well, I think we should drink to each other.

Well, okay.

And I'd like to thank you.

Thank you very much.

Santé.

These are beautiful dishes and I thank you, Nick.

Thank you, Julia.

It was a pleasure.

Julia: Bon appétit!