Frezzelle

What is a Frezzelle, you ask? Well, if you’re Italian, you may already know. If you just happen to like Italian food, read on.

Since I wrote about my family of Italian cooks in my memoir anthology, and the types of foods they used to make, I thought I’d share another one today. Frezzelles were part of our Italian food tradition.

Living in Florida, I can no longer find Frezzelles, but where I grew up (suburban Chicago), I could find them at many corner stores. Just the sight of them makes me long for days gone by with Grandma and Mom making me one of these. I can almost smell the garlic and oregano.

This is not a recipe post, but if you happen to find these crusty, bread delights, you can use this description as a template.

The above, doughnut-looking shape of bread is quite hard. Grandma used to rub a raw piece of garlic over its crusty middle and around the edges. Since it’s too hard to bite into, she then sprinkled water over it to soften for chewing.

We added spices and whatever food suited our fancy that day, or whatever we had handy. Add ingredients in whatever order you wish. Here we have balsamic vinegar and olive oil, a cold-cut like salami, prosciutto, capicola or sopressata, cheese like provolone or fontina, tomatoes and spices like salt, pepper, oregano. Basically, an open face Italian sub sandwich on very crusty bread. (Fonts in different color are the actual ingredients on this particular frezzelle).

There are many ways you can top this delicious Italian hard bread. I found a fantastico food blogger from Chicago who put it together much better than I. She added green olives, roasted red peppers and capers. OMG! Next time I visit back home to Chicago, I think I’ll go knock on her door for a meal. Her blog proves her to be a phenomenal Italian cook. Check out the photos  of her assembly here.

Thanks for going down the food memory lane with me today. If you missed the last installment of my free memoir series, or any of the installments, click here to read.