Pizza Ebraica

A recipe from and Q&A with Leah Koenig

Oct 13, 2023

What a week. Just when you thought the world couldn’t get any worse, it does. A lot worse. I have been struggling with how to address the news of the day, or whether to address it at all. There are plenty of other places to get opinions, and I am not particularly articulate about these kinds of things. Besides, you don’t come here for politics or news, you come for the antidote — escapism through food!

However, since this week’s recipe is from Leah Koenig’s important new book, Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen, I will direct you to her most recent Substack newsletter on The Jewish Table. She wrote an essay that is well worth read, called “Seeking Humanity Over Hot Takes.” It made me feel a little bit better. I also asked her if there were any charities we could donate to, and she suggested these:

Alliance for Middle East Peace, which is a coalition of 170 organizations, both Israeli and Palestinian, that work to foster coexistence and cooperation to build long-term stability and peace in the region.
Asif, a culinary organization in Tel Aviv, is cooking and distributing meals for families impacted in Israel. People who want to donate toward those efforts can do that here.

Back to the book. The moment Portico arrived on my doorstep, I couldn’t wait to crack it open. Leah has quickly become one the most important and authoritative voices in Jewish cooking, and has focused this book on the singular cuisine and rich history of Rome's Jewish Ghetto. Growing up eating typical Ashkenazi Jewish food, which is comforting in its way, I was delighted to discover Jewish cooking through a different lens, especially while “living” just a few blocks away from the ghetto while filming Eat, Pray, Love in Rome. Jenny Rosenstrach gave a very succinct description of Portico in her own newsletter a few weeks ago, which I won’t try to improve on.

When I first paged through the book in early September to find a recipe to share with you, I thought of choosing something for Rosh Hashanah, which was coming up a few days later (yes, I prepared this newsletter well ahead of time because of my busy schedule last month), but then laid eyes on the pizza Ebraica, which you can plainly see is not “pizza” at all, but the most delicious fruit- and nut-laden cookies. When I got around to reading the intro later (what can I say?) I saw that the book starts off talking about this exact recipe and the bakery that is famous for making them, the 200-year-old Pasticceria il Boccione on the Via del Portico d’Ottavia. Leah could not wrangle the exact recipe from the bakery, but worked hard to approximate their results. I have not stood in the long lines outside the bakery to try the real thing, though I hope to one day. Until then, we have these, and they are absolutely delicious.

The shopping list for this recipe is a bit on the pricey side if you don’t already have some of these ingredients in your pantry, but I promise you’ll be making a second (or third) batch, so it will be well worthwhile! Do not skip the candied orange peel, but if for some reason you can’t find it, add the zest of an orange, because that flavor is essential here. The edges tend to get a bit lacy as they bake, and I chose to tuck them in with a spatula when they came out of the oven for a neater look. You don’t have to— that’s just the food stylist in me. These left an indelible memory on my palate and I will definitely be making them again!

*Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen, by Leah Koenig (W.W. Norton, 2023)*

Enter to win Portico

Want a copy of Portico? Well, you’re in luck, because we are giving a copy away! To enter to win, tell us in the comments why you’d like the book sometime between now and Monday, October 16.

The inspiration behind Portico

A Q&A with Leah Koenig

SS: Can you give us a brief history of Rome’s Jewish Ghetto? How long has the community(ies) existed, and why did the Jews first come to Rome?

LK: Rome's Jewish community is over 2,000 years old and — rather remarkably — is still thriving today. The oldest group of Jews in Rome, called Italkim, date their ancestors back to ancient Roman times. The second group of Sephardim arrived from Spain, Portugal, and Sicily in the 15th and 16th centuries, fleeing persecution during the Spanish Inquisition. And, most recently, in the late 1960s, several thousand Jews from Libya immigrated to Rome. Today, about 16,000 of Rome's 3 million people are Jewish. So it's a small community, but quite vibrant.
Roman Jewish history is long and storied, but the most defining period was definitely the 300+ years (from the 1550s-1870s) that the city's Jews were forced by papal decree to live in a cramped, gated slum called a ghetto. Their livelihoods were severely restricted during those centuries, which means the community was desperately poor. And they faced discrimination and threats of violence from their non-Jewish neighbors on a daily basis. But out of those years of strife, the Jewish community became deeply connected and resilient. And meanwhile a Jewish culture and cuisine formed, which is unlike any other in the Jewish diaspora.

SS: Jewish cooking doesn’t always have the best reputation, but Roman Jewish cooking is something special. How would you describe the cooking of the Ghetto, and how has it evolved? (Or is it strongly rooted in tradition?)

LK: Haha! That is true — Ashkenazi Jewish food (hailing from Central and Eastern Europe) doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation here in America. I personally think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the many gems of Ashkenazi cuisine — I mean challah? babka? matzo ball soup? potato latkes? lox? dill pickles? bagels? pastrami? sweet noodle kugel? There's a whole lot to love!
But I also think that people don't always understand just how deep and diverse Jewish cuisine is. Jews have lived and cooked almost everywhere in the globe over the last 2,000 years, so there is truly a world to explore within Jewish food. When it comes to Roman Jewish food, tradition is paramount (which is true for Italian food more broadly too, of course). Roman Jews eat the foods that their neighbors do — things like homemade pastas and risotto, pasta e ceci, and pizza rossa. But they also have many dishes that are unique to their community, including carciofi alla giudia, or deep fried artichokes (utterly delicious), pizzarelle, which are custardy matzo fritters studded with raisins and pine nuts and drizzled in honey syrup, and stracotto di manzo, a rich and velvety beef stew made with wine and tomato passata. The cuisine is evolving as all cuisines do, and there are some younger Roman Jewish chefs who are playing with traditional dishes in delicious ways. But there is also a lot of reverence for the past because food is such a strong marker of culture and identity, and both are deeply important to Roman Jews.

SS: I wish I had had your book when I was “living” in Rome during the filming of Eat, Pray, Love just a few blocks away on the Via Giulia. What tips to you have for those planning to visit this area of Rome? What are your top spots in the Jewish Ghetto?

LK: I wish I could've been a fly on the wall during the filming of Eat, Pray, Love! What an amazing experience that must have been. Anyone visiting the Roman Jewish Ghetto today should book a tour with Micaela Pavoncello, who leads tours of the Ghetto via Jewish Roma Walking Tours. Micaela, who I feature a lot in Portico, is deeply knowledgable and engaging. Her father's side dates back to ancient Roman times (he still knows/speaks the Roman Jewish dialect, giudeo-romanesco, which developed during the early Middle Ages. And her mother's side is Libyan Jewish, so she literally knows everyone in the community. Her tours are incredible, whether you are curious about Jewish history or Roman/Italian history — or both.
For eating, I love Casalino Osteria. There are lots of restaurants in the Roman Jewish Ghetto serving the community's traditional dishes, but I think they are the best. Renato al Ghetto is also great, and doing traditional food with a modern twist. And no trip to the neighborhood is complete without a visit to Pasticceria il Boccione, a 200-year-old kosher bakery that sells traditional Roman Jewish cookies, crostata, and cakes. Just beyond the Ghetto neighborhood in Trastevere, I love C'é Pasta...e Pasta, which is a humble-looking spot that serves excellent fresh pastas and a variety of traditional Roman Jewish dishes.

SS: On that note, can you tell us a bit more about Pasticceria il Boccione, which is famous for making today’s recipe, pizza Ebraica, and why this isn’t exactly “pizza?”

LK: Pizza Ebraica (literally, "Jewish style pie") is the most iconic Roman Jewish dessert sold at Pasticceria il Boccione. And there is absolutely no sauce or cheese involved! It is actually a chewy bar cookie studded with almonds, raisins, pine nuts, and candied fruit — and it is incredibly delicious. The dessert was likely brought to Rome by the Sephardi Jews who came during the Spanish Inquisition, but it is now beloved by the entire community.
The women who own and run Boccione understandably did not want to share their recipe with me for the book. And I highly recommend trying one at the source when you're next in Rome. But I think the recipe in Portico comes pretty close to the original — I work hard to make sure all of my recipes work, but that one I gave extra attention to!

SS: Why did you want to write this book?

LK: My family hails from Lithuania and Germany, not Rome, and I grew up eating all of the Ashkenazi Jewish foods. But while I am not Roman, Portico is a deeply personal book. I've travelled there many times over the years, including in 2009, when my husband and I honeymooned in Rome. During that trip, we had Shabbat dinner at a kosher caterer's home (Giovanni Terracina, who runs a company called Le Bon Ton) that changed the course of my life. None of the dishes that he served for dinner were familiar to me. There wasn't a loaf of challah or a bowl of matzo ball soup in sight! But thanks to the shared context of Shabbat, I felt an immediate connection to everything we ate.
That meal crystallized for me the understanding that global Jewish cuisine is wildly diverse and has so much to offer the world — and that I wanted to devote my life and career to helping tell stories of food, culture, and history from around the Jewish diaspora. So Portico is my attempt to give something back to Rome as thanks for literally changing my life for the better.

Learn more about Leah

Dried Fruit and Nut Bar Cookies

Pizza Ebraica

Makes about 10 large bar cookies (or 2 dozen smaller cookies)

This recipe is reprinted, with permission, from Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen, by Leah Koenig (W.W. Norton, 2023)

The Roman Jewish Ghetto’s most famous “pizza” has nothing to do with sauce or cheese. Instead, pizza Ebraica are crispy-edged, soft-centered, absolutely addictive bar cookies. Their exact origins are unclear, but they were likely brought to Rome by Sephardi Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. The cookies (the name roughly translates as “Jewish-style pie”) are also sometimes called pizza dolce (“sweet pie”) or pizza de beridde (“bris pie”) — the latter because they are traditionally served at circumcisions.

Locals and tourists alike form long lines outside Pasticceria il Boccione to buy the 200-year old kosher pastry shop’s beloved pizza Ebraica. Most famously, in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI declared Boccione’s take on the cookies to be his favorite dessert in all of Rome.

The bakery’s pizza Ebraica are at least an inch thick, and emerge from the oven with the charred patina that has become Boccione’s trademark. They are perfect, full stop, but a challenge to re-create at home. I have the best luck when I pat the dough a bit thinner, and take the cookies out of the oven when they are well browned rather than fully singed. I do follow Boccione’s impressive ratio of dough to nuts and dried fruit, however, making sure every bite is brimming with crunchy almonds, buttery pine nuts, and sweet-tart raisins and cherries.

2/3 cup (160 ml) vegetable oil (such as sunflower)
1/3 cup (80 ml) dry white wine
1 ½ cups (210 g) all-purpose flour, plus more for shaping
1 cup (100 g) almond flour
1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup (70 g) unsalted roasted almonds, left whole or very roughly chopped
1/4 cup (30 g) pine nuts
1/2 cup (70 g) dark raisins, soaked in warm water for 5 minutes and drained well
1/2 cup (75 g) candied cherries, roughly chopped, or dried cherries, soaked in water for 5 minutes, drained, and roughly chopped
1/3 cup (40 g) candied citron or candied orange peel, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk together the vegetable oil and wine in a large bowl, until combined.
Whisk together the all-purpose flour, almond flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the oil mixture in a few stages, stirring until a soft dough forms. Add the almonds, pine nuts, raisins, cherries, and candied citron and, using clean hands, knead them into the dough. It will look like too many mix-ins for the amount of dough, but keep kneading until mostly incorporated. It’s okay if a few of the mix-ins are still falling out of the dough.
Turn the dough out, divide into 2 equal portions, and place one portion in the center of each prepared baking sheet. Lightly flour your hands, then pat and press the dough into rectangles about 8 x 4 inches (20 x 10 cm) and 3/4 inch (1.9 cm) thick. Using a floured bench scraper or knife, slice each rectangle crosswise into 5 brick-shaped pieces. (It can be tricky to cut through whole almonds, just do your best and pat the pieces back together as necessary.) Gently nudge the pieces away from one another on the baking sheet, leaving about 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) space between the cookies.
Bake, rotating the pans back to front and bottom to top halfway through baking, for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cookies are a few shades darker on top and quite browned (almost burnt) around the edges. The cookies will still feel soft on top, but they will firm up as they cool.
Remove the baking sheets from the oven and set on wire racks to cool for about 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies to the racks to cool completely.
Serve the bars as is or break into smaller pieces, if desired. The cookies can be stored, in an airtight container, in the fridge for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Pizza Ebraica

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If You’re in the Hamptons…

Join me TONIGHT for a book signing and cooking demo (and tasting) at Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett from 6 to 7:30. Purchase your ticket ($10) here. I’d love to see you there! Walk-ins welcome!