♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we travel to Italy to uncover a few of their secret recipes.

We start in Southern Italy with a tomato-olive focaccia.

It's crazy-- tons of yeast, tons of water, rises for six hours.

Then we make orecchiette with broccolini, and finally, a simple pasta dish, fregola, with shrimp and tomatoes.

Stay tuned as we uncover a few of the secret recipes of Italy.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - For 25 years, Consumer Cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect.

We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you.

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- J.M., you've been to Italy many times... - I have, mm-hmm.

- On behalf of Milk Street, and the most interesting trip from my perspective was Bari, which is on the East Coast.

And it was about focaccia.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so, I love bread-baking, I think it's fascinating, but this is the craziest, at first, I thought dumbest recipe... - (laughs) - Set the stage before we get to the recipe.

- Yeah, it made no sense.

Deliciously so.

So Bari is in Puglia, which is the heel of the Italian boot.

And it's a walled city, ancient, of course.

It's the sort of city where you walk down these cobblestone streets, and women are sitting on their doorstep making pasta to sell by the bag.

I mean, it's that sort of environment.

I went into a shop, Panificio Fiore.

There's a line out the door, 20, 30 people going down the street, and Antonio Fiore, whose grandfather started this focacciaria back in 1940, hands me a slab of the thickest, most oily-- I know that sounds bad, but it was amazing-- most delicious focaccia I've ever eaten.

You know, the olive oil is running down my hands.

The bottom of the focaccia is cracklingly crisp, the top is tender and just the right amount of chew, it's studded with green olives, you get that brininess from sweet tomato hunks.

It was transformative-- I couldn't believe it.

(laughs) And it's all housed in this crypt-- literally.

The bakery is in a crypt that dates back to the 1500s.

The first thing you see is this massive wood-fired oven, can cook 48 focaccia at a time.

Second thing you see is them pouring the dough-- pouring is the key word here-- into these black cast-iron skillets.

It's practically a liquid.

You know, most focaccia recipes call for 56%, 60% hydration between wet and dry ingredients.

- Which means the weight of the water as a percentage of the weight of the flour.

- Correct.

His clocks in at 90%.

- (laughs) - Then you realize that he isn't just letting his dough rise, he lets his dough rise for four to five hours.

The focaccia rises, collapses, and rises again over this period.

- Okay, if you talk to a professional baker, you say, "I'm gonna let it rise five hours, and it's gonna collapse."

- Mm-hmm.

- They would say, "No."

- Exactly.

- Absolutely.

- And that's what you said when I came back with the recipe.

But in fact, it works so well, and that's how you get this tender, chewy crumb to the focaccia.

Uh, the other part that was really interesting was the volume of olive oil.

Remember, I mentioned it was dripping down my hands?

Well, that has an important role.

When they put this very liquid dough into the pan, there's already a tremendous amount of olive oil.

So much so, it sloshes up the sides of this liquid dough.

The bottom of it essentially fries.

And that's how you get that kind of crackling, crispy bottom to the focaccia.

- Thank you, J.M., sounds great.

- Thank you.

♪ ♪ - This is a recipe focaccia, where we found this amazing technique that we didn't believe.

We brought it back to the kitchen and refused to do it that way, and finally, we did it exactly the way they said, and it was absolutely amazing.

So this breaks all the rules.

Everything I know about bread- baking, I have to throw out.

- It's a really-- it's an incredibly different technique, and what I love about it is, it's so easy and hands-off.

Here in the bowl, I have three- and-two-thirds cup bread flour, and to that, I'm gonna add a lot of instant yeast-- this is five teaspoons of yeast.

We want it to be very light and airy and bubbly, so we're adding a lot of yeast to make that happen.

And then we're also going to give the yeast a little bit of food-- this is just a teaspoon of sugar.

And then, if you wouldn't mind, you have two cups of cool, room-temperature water over there, and you might notice that's a lot of water.

- Of water, yes.

- And it's almost the same amount by weight as the flour, and the reason is that this needs to be an extremely wet dough in order to create that light, airy, bubbly texture that we're after.

(mixer whirring) We're gonna let this mix, I'm gonna increase it up to medium and let it go for another five minutes.

(speed increases) (mixer stops) As you can see, the dough is incredibly wet, incredibly sticky.

- You're trying to talk me down... - I am.

- Off the ledge.

- I know, you're right on the precipice.

And now we're gonna cover this with plastic wrap, and we're gonna let it sit for ten minutes to give the flour time to absorb the water.

And this allows more gluten to develop when we're gonna come back and mix it again, when we add the salt.

Okay, so it's been ten minutes, and now we're gonna go ahead and add two teaspoons of kosher salt.

We're gonna mix it on medium speed for another five minutes.

You can see the dough has started to get smooth, and it's a little bit shiny, and it's definitely sticking to the sides of the bowl.

- I'm not gonna lick the batter in the bowl.

- (laughs) Oh... - Not for this one.

- Are you sure?

- Yeah, I'm sure.

- You want to use a really large bowl, because this will rise quite a bit.

And as you can see on the bottom, I have a lot of oil-- that's actually two tablespoons of olive oil.

- Normally, you just have a teaspoon or two, right?

- Right, just to coat.

But because this dough is so wet and so sticky, you really need a lot of oil so that it doesn't stick everywhere.

- Okay, and now, I'm not really going to touch the dough at this point, but what I want to do is just sort of stick my fingertips into the oil that's pooled around the sides of the dough, and I'm just gonna sort of dabble it on top, and we just do this so that the top doesn't dry out.

This is gonna rise for anywhere between five-and-a-half to six hours.

- (laughs) - I know, what we're doing here, it's almost like a self-kneading dough-- it's gonna rise up, and then it's gonna collapse, and then it's gonna rise up again.

And what that does is help make the dough extra-stretchy so that it can trap more air bubbles, and, because that's really what we're after in the end, is this really light and airy and bubbly texture.

- Okay.

- So I'm gonna go ahead and cover this really tightly with plastic wrap.

And then you want to set it aside.

You don't want to jostle it or disturb it, and we'll come back in a while.

- In a long while.

- In a long while.

♪ ♪ Okay, Chris, so it's been a while, and now you can see how much this dough, it rose all the way to the top, and then it sank all the way down, and then it came up again, and look, it's really bubbly, it's very active.

I went ahead and set our oven to 500 degrees with a rack in the middle position, with baking steel inside-- if you don't have a baking steel, you can use a baking stone.

So now we're gonna transfer this to our prepared pan.

This is a nine-by-13 baking pan, and I've misted this with some cooking spray.

We're also gonna add some more olive oil, another two tablespoons.

This is what produces the really shatteringly crisp bottom crust.

So you wanna be really gentle at this stage.

I'm just gently scraping the dough from the sides here, and then you just really want to gently scrape it in.

You can see how jiggly it is.

(chuckles) It's like it has a life of its own.

- Well, it's, it's an active dough.

You can say that.

- It is, it is.

- I also like the fact there's no shaping.

- And you really don't even need to do much at this point.

Gravity will sort of do a lot of the work for you.

It will slowly spread down into the bottom.

If you have some trouble getting it into the corners, again, using that oil that's pooled on top, you can sort of gently tip your fingers and you just wanna guide it, you don't wanna smash it or deflate it in any way.

And so now we're gonna go ahead and put on our toppings.

And we really like this traditional combination of these green olives and cherry tomatoes.

And if you wouldn't mind, we're gonna just mash them lightly with a potato masher just to release a lot of the juice.

I'm gonna go ahead and place these olives.

- Is that good enough?

- That's perfect, thank you.

- See, I had to do the hard work.

- (laughs) - So this is a little bit like, you know, that famous no-knead bread dough from many years ago, where you're letting water, flour... - Yes.

- And time develop the gluten.

- Do all the work for you.

- To do all the work for you, yeah.

- Which I love about this.

I think this makes it a very approachable recipe.

Okay, and now I'm gonna put the tomatoes on, and I'm just gonna pick them up, but try to leave the seeds and the juice behind.

And I'm gonna arrange these.

Okay, so now that our toppings are on, we're just gonna let this sit for about 20 minutes uncovered, and that's gonna allow the dough to just rise up a little bit more around our toppings, and then we're gonna put a little bit of the last finishing touches, and we're ready to bake it.

Okay, Chris, all those bubbles have gotten bigger and come up and around the tomatoes and the olives, so I'm gonna drizzle more olive oil.

- Of course.

- We're gonna do another four tablespoons of olive oil.

I'm covering the tomatoes, because we want them to get nice and crispy, as well.

- I do have to say it is visually stunning.

Yeah.

- It's really beautiful.

Okay, and now I'm going to sprinkle on a teaspoon of dried oregano... A teaspoon and a half of kosher salt... And then three-quarters of a teaspoon of ground black pepper.

All right, and that's gonna go into the oven for about 20 minutes.

You want the top, it's gonna look nicely golden brown.

You wanna look for the sides to pull away from the edges, and that's it.

- 20 minutes away from... - Deliciousness.

(chuckling) ♪ ♪ Are you ready-- isn't this a thing of beauty?

- Well, I love the little...

I mean, how bubbly does it get?

- I know!

The little eruptions coming out, yes.

So I let this cool in the pan for five minutes, and then I took it out of the pan and let it cool on a wire rack for about 30 minutes.

And now we are ready to eat it.

- Okay.

- I'm gonna go ahead and slice this.

When you slice it, you want to use a serrated knife and saw at it, so that you don't compress it.

(bread crunching) You can hear how crisp that bottom crust is.

- Mm.

- I'll let you choose your slice.

I'll just take this nice corner piece.

- Wow.

- I know, just look at that.

You can see all of the bubbles in the crumb, it's amazing.

- It's almost too thick to bite into.

- (laughs): I know, let's give it go.

- Mm.

The crust, by the way, is really crackly, as you said.

- Exactly, mm-hmm.

- Because of the olive oil on the bottom.

- And the inside is light but chewy.

Very airy.

- Amazing.

So tomato-olive focaccia breaks all the rules.

It has almost a much water as flour, and we let it rise almost six hours, which gives it a great bubbly texture.

And a lot of olive oil on the bottom of pan gives it a crispy bottom.

- Mm-hmm.

- So for the craziest bread recipe in the world, tomato-olive focaccia, lots of water, lots of rising time, but it makes the world's best focaccia.

♪ ♪ - You know, in life, there are many ways to get rich, and we discovered this in Puglia, in the southern part of Italy.

See, in the North, when they make their pasta dough, they use eggs, but in the South, they do it differently.

We discovered orecchiette con cime di rapa, little ear pasta with bitter greens, and we found all kinds of ways to add richness with one pot and lots and lots of flavor without the eggs, without the dairy-- you ready?

Let's get started.

♪ ♪ We're not going to use regular bread crumbs.

They will turn gummy and mushy in our topping.

We want something that retains its crunch, so we use panko bread crumbs.

See the difference in texture?

I'm gonna put in half my anchovies, all my minced garlic... And I'm gonna give that about 45 seconds to get fragrant.

♪ ♪ In go the panko bread crumbs.

And we're gonna toast these for about three minutes till they're golden brown and crunchy.

♪ ♪ Bread crumbs have browned up and toasted really nicely.

I'm going to transfer them to a separate bowl.

♪ ♪ So now I'm going to use tongs and wipe out with a paper towel the bottom off the Dutch oven.

Right, so I'm gonna move on to cooking our greens.

We're using broccolini, which looks like little broccolis and asparagus-like stems.

It's a milder flavor, it's not the same as broccoli, but it's from the same general family.

♪ ♪ And along with that, I'm gonna add my sliced garlic and my red chili flakes.

(pan sizzling) And the salt and pepper.

(sizzling) So I've removed my broccolini into a small bowl, and I've put in five cups of water, two teaspoons of salt-- it's very important that we're doing this, it's a one-pot dish, and we're using very little water.

All the pasta goes in, I cook it till al dente, and here it is, reduced down.

We don't have to drain it at all.

♪ ♪ And a little extra panko bread crumb topping for me.

So here it is, orecchiette with broccolini.

I love this, let's taste.

♪ ♪ That's great, I don't miss the cheese at all.

So this is definitely going to be a weeknight favorite for me, one-pot dish from Puglia, Italy, orecchiette with broccolini.

♪ ♪ - Sometimes I'm jealous when you go some place I haven't been that I always wanted to go, and Sardinia is, like, on the top of my list.

- It should be.

- It should be.

- It has kind of a fascinating history, because it's an island, and you would assume that seafood would have dominated its cuisine over the years.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen, because there were waves upon waves upon waves of invaders, and over time, the locals moved inland.

As a result, their cuisine actually developed to prioritize grains and dairy and lamb.

One of the things that came out of that is fregola, which is a, kind of a pellet-shaped pasta that's very similar to what we would call Israeli couscous.

The difference is, Israeli couscous is steamed and fregola is roasted.

The roasting allows the fregola to kind of retain a chewiness to it.

I was at Trattoria Lillicu, where generation upon generation upon generation has cooked, worked for decades there.

The current chef, Francesco Pinna, he taught me how to make a very simple fregola dish.

And the resulting dish was very much like risotto, kind of a loose risotto with seafood in it, and incredibly light, but also very savory and flavorful, and again... - Boy, that sounds good.

- It is really good!

Because, again, you get that texture-- it's almost like the al dente rice from a risotto-- you're getting that kind of chewy texture in the fregola.

- Fregola sounds like one of those pastas everybody should know about and make... - Absolutely.

- But we don't.

So maybe we will now.

- There we go.

- Thank you, J.M.

- Thank you.

♪ ♪ - You know, what I really love about traveling, besides the travel, is, you go somewhere and you think you're gonna find recipes that are hard to make or hard to translate.

And very often you get somewhere, and it's the easiest possible concept that really transforms how you cook.

So instead of cooking with rice or cooking with pasta, you cook with fregola, and that's a complete game-changer.

Because it's so simple to do, you can buy it anywhere.

So, so this is fregola?

- Yep, this right here is fregola, and as you can see, all the different granules are of varying colors, but most of them have that slightly golden hue.

A couple of them have that more toasty, dark brown hue.

And it's a really, really unique texture when it's cooked, because it still gives you just that little bit of bite in the center.

And we're going to be able to highlight that in the way we're cooking it today, with shrimp, as well as with tomatoes.

So we're going to take three cups of chicken broth and fortify it with a couple of other ingredients: two eight-ounce bottles of clam juice to bolster that seafood, briny, shellfish flavor.

- And if you don't have fregola, you could use pearl couscous and just toast it in the pot, right?

- Absolutely, if you throw it into a dry pot over medium heat, just swirl it around, then toast it for five minutes, it should take on that same color right there.

We're also going to throw in one tablespoon of black peppercorns, one sprig of thyme... - Now, now, wait.

Okay.

- Okay.

- Can I just, I'm not going to give a big speech, but really?

I mean, is this going to do anything?

- Yes, it absolutely will, it's infusing the entire broth... - Okay... - With just a nice little herbaceousness.

- We'll taste it when we're done, okay.

- Oh, we will, we will.

In addition to that, we're throwing in four bay leaves, and finally, the tails of our shrimp.

There's so much flavor packed in the shrimp shells themselves.

So we're gonna add that to the broth and we'll go ahead and microwave this for about five minutes.

So that way all the flavors can infuse.

So our broth, microwaved for five minutes, and I'm going to strain it right here into this measuring cup with a fine mesh strainer set into it.

So that way, we can catch all of those solids.

- We should also say that fish broths take about 20 minutes to make-- they're really quick broths.

- They're fairly... - Whereas a meat broth would take more time.

- Right, right, right.

So we don't have to worry about these shells any longer.

This broth we'll take a look at later on.

We're going to use that to cook the fregola slowly, so we can set that aside, and actually, if you could season these shrimp with some salt and pepper for me, that would be great.

We're going to sear off all of that shrimp in a large pot that we have set over medium- high heat.

And we're only going to be cooking one side of the shrimp, because we'll be mixing it into the fregola later on, and it's going to carryover cook, and cook all the way through in the residual heat of that fregola.

- And, and that's a good tip overall for cooking shrimp.

- Oh, yeah.

- You sort of halfway cook it, and let the heat of whatever it's in finish the cooking.

- Absolutely-- so now that this pot is hot, we'll throw in one tablespoon of oil.

I'm going to cook half of this batch in the pot, so that way, we avoid overcrowding, because what I'm looking for is a really nice sear on one side of the shrimp.

Half these shrimp, we go.

(pot sizzling) So, Chris, if you could hand me that plate, I'm gonna transfer out some of these shrimp and take a look at the nice color on that.

So we are going to continue with the remainder of the shrimp-- if you wouldn't mind.

And be sure to add oil as needed, up to one tablespoon, just to ensure that the shrimp does sear up properly.

(sizzling) By searing everything off, we've also developed a fond on the bottom of the pot.

So now we have all of this deeply caramelized flavor that we could lift up using a couple other ingredients here.

All right, if you wouldn't mind just setting that over, I'm going to top this off with another little tablespoon of oil.

We're going to add in one pint of cherry tomatoes that have been halved, one medium onion that has been finely minced, as well as one medium carrot that's been thinly sliced, and this goes right on in.

And we're going to use the moisture from these ingredients to scrape up any of the brown bits on the bottom.

(sizzling) To this we'll add in one half-teaspoon of salt.

And we'll cook this down until the tomato starts to turn spotty brown, and that should take about three to five minutes.

- Fine.

- All right, Chris, our vegetables have cooked down, and now we could add the star ingredient, our fregola, along with two cloves of garlic that have been finely grated.

We're going to cook this through, coating the fregola in as much of the liquid as possible until the garlic is aromatic.

So from here, we can go ahead and start cooking this fregola down using that broth.

So what I'm going to add in is two cups of our broth into the fregola first, bring that mixture up to a simmer, and then lower the heat and cook the fregola down for about eight to ten minutes, or until all the moisture is absorbed.

- So are we cooking risotto, or are we cooking fregola?

- It's a little bit of a nod to risotto, yeah.

We wanna cook out those starches, so that way we get something that's creamy, not soupy.

(sizzling softly) Stir it around and let that come up to a simmer, then we'll cook the fregola through.

A lot of that moisture has already evaporated and cooked into the fregola, so we can go ahead and add in another two cups of our broth here.

Now, we're going to do this very same thing.

We're gonna bring this mixture to a simmer and then cook it down for eight to ten minutes until that moisture evaporates once again.

After that, we're going to add in the final cup of our broth, and at that point, I'm gonna be stirring quite a bit to really develop those starches.

And that way we get this nice, creamy texture, not a broth.

All right, Chris, it's reduced down to something that is very, very creamy, it's coating each and every piece of fregola.

So we're gonna add in our shrimp, as well as any of the juices that have accumulated while it was resting.

And we'll add in half a cup of chopped parsley, two tablespoons lemon juice, and finally, one tablespoon of olive oil.

That's just gonna give us a little bit of richness.

We're gonna turn off the heat.

- Now, in Sardinia, they probably kept this for about a minute.

They were just, like, just pouring the olive oil.

- Plowed right through?

- Boy, that looks good.

- So now that everything is well stirred, it's off heat, we're going to pop a lid on it, and we need to keep that lid in place, so that way the shrimp can finish cooking in the residual heat, and that will take about five minutes.

♪ ♪ The shrimp is cooked, and I'm just going to give it one taste before you get a taste, just so that way, if we need to add any salt and pepper, we can go ahead and do that.

Here we go.

- Boy, that looks good, - Right?

- Yeah.

- And again, that broth reduced down into something that is creamy with no cream in it, and that shrimp is perfectly tender.

Okay.

- Steaming hot.

Mmm...

It has a lot of flavor, but has a really interesting flavor.

There's a lot of stuff going on-- this is delicious.

- And that excess starch coming from the fregola really makes a difference in how this dish comes out.

- I mean, fregola really is special-- or the couscous, but it's got a great texture.

So straight from Sardinia, a fregola dish with shrimp and tomatoes.

Fregola has great texture, and there's just tons of flavor in this dish.

Takes about half an hour to make.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show, from authentic lasagna Bolognese and roasted cauliflower with tahini and lemon to Indian butter chicken and flourless French chocolate cake.

The Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪