If there's one thing Italians love, it's tradition, either revering it or breaking it.

Tradition gives us a foundation to fly, to soar, to create, to build on wisdom.

Today we'll build on my nonna's traditional pastry and visit Altamura to discover one of the most beautiful Pugliese traditional breads █ focaccia.

Time to live our healthiest lives.

On Christina Cooks.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens A tiny but nutrient dense fresh green vegetable.

Wanna Greens can be added to any meal, snack or dessert.

Fresh greens.

Wanna Greens.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzanne█s Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne█s Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan█s Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: Hi, I'm Christina Pirello, and this is Christina Cooks, where each week we take fresh, seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant based?

Yeah.

Will they all be delicious?

Absolutely.

When I was growing up in an Italian and Irish household, we kind of veered toward Italian tradition because the Italian side were the cooks, the Irish side not so much.

They loved our food, but they came over and ate it.

So we kind of all went toward the Italian tradition.

And every year at Christmas and Easter, my grandmother made something called pastiera, which is a rice pie.

Although different regions of Italy use different grains.

My grandmother used white rice, white arborio rice to make her rice pie, and it's a really heavy, rich dessert that served at the holidays.

This isn't something you make for a Wednesday, but because it's such a big tradition in my house and since we're talking about tradition today, I couldn't ignore this one.

So instead of traditional pastry cream, I'll be making a vegan pastry cream with oat milk as the base.

And the first thing I'll add to it is coconut sugar.

Now when I bake, sometimes I use cups and sometimes I use grams, and I weigh my ingredients depending on how specific the recipe will determine whether or not I am weighing or whether or not I am.

using cups.

Weighing is very precise, so depending on what you want to achieve, you should weigh.

We're adding in some orange zest to the pastry cream.

The vanilla will go in at the end and now will whisk in some arrowroot.

And this is going to help the pastry cream to thicken the oat milk to thicken to the texture of pastry cream you really need to be whisking while you add the arrowroot.

Or you'll get little white lumps which if that happens, don't panic, just strain it.

No big deal.

Push it through a colander.

But if you pay attention while you're cooking it, it will thicken.

Now you don't have to stand over it.

Put it on a low simmer, keep your whisk nearby and keep going back to it.

If you don't pay attention.

Your arrowroot will sink to the bottom and get all thick and sticky to the bottom of the pan, and you won't have pastry cream.

You'll have a mess.

So you want to be attentive, and bear in mind that you'll add your vanilla at the end unless you forget, in which case it doesn't matter.

But let's try not to forget, shall we?

In this bowl I have sprouted whole wheat flour, which I like to use instead of pastry flour, but you can use pastry flour.

We█ll be adding to it some extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil.

You can choose.

About...

I know I just talked about precision, but when it comes to making a crust, I kind of do this on my own.

We're going to use about half cup.

because I've got a good cup and a half of flour, and we're going to start to mix this with a pinch of salt.

And you need salt to create a sweet crust.

Now if you want the crust to be a little bit more like a shortbread, which in Italian cooking that's called a pasta roller, you're going to need to add a little bit of sweetener.

So a little bit of coconut sugar to your crust in order to get that little bit of sweetness.

And you'll get more of a cookie texture.

So a mix that in, try not to touch your flour too much in the beginning, because the oil from your hands, right from your skin can make for a tough dough.

And once you have the texture of sort of like peas in the sand.

You can add some vanilla extract.

What we're trying to do here is create a sweet crust and some more orange zest.

And you're thinking this crust is not coming together for her.

Well, we have to add water.

Now.

Once you have it to this stage, you'll start to add water.

Don't ignore your pastry cream.

Pay attention.

Baking is I'm not going to call it scientifically precise, but it's it's pretty.

It's pretty up there.

And the pastry cream is done.

This is not rocket science.

You can see it's thick and creamy.

And this is exactly what we're looking for.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Now we're going to take water and go back to our crust.

Now don't add your water fast.

You add your water slowly.

You can weigh it on a scale so that you have a precise amount of water.

Every time.

The problem with that is flour can have a mind of its own, especially a whole grain flour.

And if you store your flour in the freezer, it has more moisture.

If you store it in the pantry, it's drier and that will determine how much water you add.

So we're going to try to not add too much soon as your crust comes together.

A pasta flour tends to be a little sticky like this.

This is exactly what we're looking for.

And then this gets wrapped in plastic, flour, plastic for about an hour.

You can do it in the fridge, not in the fridge.

It doesn't matter.

There's no butter.

So we don't have to be in the fridge.

But this sticky dough needs to rest and sort of come together.

So we're going to set that aside and go to a finished pasta for all the.

You just want to roll it into a disc and set it aside.

Now one of the biggest traditions in my family growing up is my grandmother's use of a rolling pin.

This is not hers, but my grandmother used a rolling pin to roll dough and to keep her grandchildren in line, as many Italian grandmothers did.

So we're going to use it in a nonviolent way today.

So you want to take your dough, flatten it out, and now we're going to roll it.

When you're rolling pie crust, the most important thing is that it's even not too thick in one place.

And thin in the other.

Even.

So, we're going to roll this out, turning it slightly so it stays round.

When your crust is larger than your pie plate, this is actually my Nana's pie plate.

When your crust is larger than your pie plate, substantially larger.

A trick she taught me is peel your parchment paper off.

She used wax paper at the time, though, when I was a kid.

Remember wax paper.

And you're going to cut away a small piece and set that aside and you'll see why.

And then we're going to give it another quick, just a little quick roll to round out that edge.

So we do that little peeling trick again.

My grandmother did this because it would prevent the dough from sticking to the wax paper then.

You're going to take your pie plate, center it as much as you can over the dough.

Clip it.

And then using your fingers.

And pressing.

Try not to stretch the dough.

You hear that all the time.

When you see people make pies or talk about pies, and you use any excess to make it evenly high along the plate, because we're going to crimp this just like you would a pie.

And the reason you try not to stretch it is because you'll end up activating the gluten too much, and you'll take away any chance you have of the crust being flaky.

Okay, so now this gets set aside for a second and we're going to take the this scrap over here.

And using a knife cut it into strips.

These can be very organic.

They don't have to be even they don't have to be perfect.

You'll see why.

This is old school Neapolitan style cooking.

Now in this bowl.

I have pretty much what we would call rice pudding.

This is just arborio rice cooked with brown rice syrup, vanilla, golden raisins and a little bit of orange zest.

That's it.

And it's cooked on toast.

The texture of rice pudding.

Now to this we take our pastry cream.

Scoop that in.

Scoop that in.

And you just work the pastry cream into the warm rice.

This is not a dish where you want to cook the rice the day before, and let it be totally cold and have a it'll have a really hard time sort of meshing.

Now you can add your vanilla to your filling.

Try not to cook vanilla for too long or it takes on a metallic aftertaste.

Once your pastry cream's incorporated.

Just keep stirring.

It should look really creamy and almost scarily loose, like thinking, I don't know about this.

There we go.

We're going to take it.

And spoon it into our pie shell.

Really filling it.

Abundantly.

When I was a kid, my nana used to make this with a dried citrus fruit that was candied that she would buy in the supermarket called Citron.

If you're Italian, especially from the east coast, you know what this is.

But it was considered a very expensive ingredient and a very expensive pie to make for the holidays.

But she loved making it, and she always did.

In one year as a kid, I decided, wouldn't it be funny if I took her powdered sugar container and filled it with white pepper?

Haha.

My Nana was not amused and we wasted three pies because she would make a ton of them for the family and I wasted three pies.

You can imagine how that went over.

So these you just lay across the pie in a lattice.

You don't really.

It's not really a lattice.

My grandmother wasn't, a French sophisticated baker, so her lattice was just laying pieces of dough on top of each other to create a lattice.

And if she didn't have enough, she would roll some more dough out to get another lattice piece.

Very simple, as I'm doing here, because I need more pieces.

Okay.

And once the lattice are all in place, however you decide to do it, you can also skip this part and do a double crust.

But my Nonna used to do a very rustic looking lattice.

Then she would go around in crimp and by crimping you just take the dough between your two fingers, your forefinger and your thumb and first finger, and you create a crimped little sort of pleated crust, pulling away any excess as you go so the excess doesn't stick to the side of the pie plate.

And then this is going to go into the oven at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes.

What you're looking to have happen is that the crust browns.

And the center of the pie is what they call soft set.

So it's still like moves a little when you take it out of the oven.

But it's pretty well set.

So let's see what happens.

(gentle music plays) So after it comes out of the oven, cool it down completely before you cut it.

You really can't cut this before.

So what we're going to do is loosen it.

You want to make sure that it's loosened from your pie plate.

Now, a little trick that my nonna used to do is she would oil her pie plate very lightly, but it did prevent her crust from sticking.

So I did that.

Let's see if my nonna is up there telling me that I did a good job, even though I've completely changed it the way she did it.

This is a very dense, very rich pie.

But, you know, between rolling the crust and cutting it, let's just say you got a little bit of a workout before you eat dessert.

So now we're going to go in, see if this comes apart.

Come on.

You can do it.

And there you have you can see the rice.

You can see the raisins.

And you have a really lovely, nontraditional, traditional dessert that I think my nonna would be proud of.

Right, Nonna?

(Italian music plays) So I'm here again with my new friend, Giuseppe di Gesu.

And now we are going to make my favorite food in the world.

Focaccia.

Yes.

Okay, so the first thing you have to do is oil the pan so that the focaccia doesn't stick.

And we use very good olive oil for everything.

Extra virgin olive oil of Puglia Of Puglia.

Without oiling the pan you won't get that crust.

That is the signature of Pugliese focaccia.

You'll just get a sort of a bready pizza.

But if you want a nice crunch, it█s called crocante focaccia.

You must oil the pan.

Andiamo!

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Okay, so the ingredients that go on top of the focaccia here are very simple.

It's a little cherry tomato, salt.

Oregano.

(speaking Italian) Okay.

And after we put olive oil, we put some olives.

And that's the classic Pugliese (speaking Italian) So everything here in this focaccia is zero kilometer.

As we talk about █ we talk about a lot in the US.

But here they do it.

It's simple, local and fresh.

Period.

No waste.

Like this... Giuseppe?

(speaking Italian) He says I'm doing very well.

He█s been watching.

(speaking Italian) Not a lot of salt because the dough has such good flavor.

Just a pinch of salt will bring out the flavor in the tomatoes.

You don't need a lot of salt.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) Ah - also, Giuseppe, it's not a lot of salt because you have olives as well, right?

So you don't want too much salt in the flavor █ you want to taste the dough.

(speaking Italian) We have to put some oil.

We need some oil.

(speaking Italian) In Puglia, in the south of Italy...

When you say a little, it means.

- It means a lot.

- A lot.

Yeah.

(speaking Italian) Once around, twice around, three times around... Four times around.

(speaking Italian) So for ██he's saying for us, for people in the Mediterranean this is what creates the Mediterranean diet, the health of the Mediterranean diet is the oil.

(speaking Italian) It's a different kind of fat as we know it's a monounsaturated fat.

It's not like butter and meat.

It's it's a monounsaturated, it's a healthy oil.

(speaking Italian) So you can eat it as you like.

But always try to eat if it's local.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) So now you have to take one more step so the oil doesn't lay on top of the focaccia, and he's going to show me how to do it.

- Okay.

- Tell us when.

(speaking Italian) CHRISTINA: Okay.

So he's saying now we're going to bathe the whole focaccia in oil.

(speaking Italian) CHRISTINA: Exactly.

You█re... You have to caress your focaccia.

(both speaking Italian) Perfetto, Christina, Perfetto.

So the last ingredient to go on top before the oven is a little pinch of oregano.

- Si!

Si si.

- For freshness.

Okay.

Shall we?

(speaking Italian) So in the same way that we went around with everything, we do a tiny pinch of oregano before it goes in the oven.

So this is going to rest for half an hour, and then it will go into the oven for 40 minutes, At about 400 Farenheit, 500, more or less.

For 40 minutes.

And then you'll have a perfect focaccia, which you'll see in one second.

30 minutes rise, 40 minutes in the oven.

I'm dying for this focaccia.

Giuseppe, dov'è la focaccia?

Where's the focaccia?

GIUSEPPE: Ciao, Christina!

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) CHRISTINA: Look how beautiful this is!

Look at the crust, the crunch, on here, on the side... - Wow.

- (speaking Italian) This is so beautiful.

Can we try?

- Yeah!

- Please, cut.

(speaking Italian) So he's cutting a nice piece of focaccia.

I just want to show you, look... Look at the bubbles inside here.

And the lovely... you can actually feel the crunch.

I can█t wait one more second.

(speaking Italian) It's amazing.

You must come to Altamura someday and taste this.

And now Giuseppe, I feel so greedy.

I'm eating.

I'm taking some back to our villa for the whole crew and we'll taste it again.

Grazie mille!

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Wow.

Buonissimo!

I'll see you guys back at the villa.

(gentle music plays) You know, I spent my whole day in the water with Giuseppe de Gesu, making bread and focaccia and talking about tradition, and it got me to thinking about how I honor tradition and how I spend time with my crew.

We spend long days working, long days working.

So at the end of every shoot day, we always sit around the table, eat together, maybe a glass of wine, maybe not, and kind of reminisce about the long day and honor our own traditions.

So what are you waiting for?

Let's get back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks: The Macroterranean Way.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens Organic and sustainable, Wanna Greens are grown in a completely closed, indoor environment.

At Wanna Greens, we believe in the benefits of fresh greens for people and the planet.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzanne█s Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne█s Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan█s Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at christinacooks.com and by following Christina on social media.

Learn how to add delicious plant based dishes to your daily diet with the companion cookbook VegEdibles.

Featuring more than 80 easy-to-make recipes To order your copy for $32.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815 or visit christinacooks.com.

Add “Back to the Cutting Board” and get both books for $55.95 plus handling.