Panzarotti di
Spinaci e Scarola
Fried turnovers filled with spinach and escarole
A simple leavened dough, wrapped around spinach and scarola cooked down with raisins, pine nuts, and green olives, then fried until golden. The same sweet-and-savory instinct that runs through so much Neapolitan cooking, folded into a hand-held turnover.
This is a cousin of the other green-and-savory bakes on this blog — pizza di scarola chief among them — but shaped as an individual fried turnover rather than a large baked pie. The filling is the same family of ingredients: spinach and scarola cooked down with garlic until they lose their water, then combined with raisins and pine nuts for sweetness and green olives for salt, bound with egg yolk. The dough is a simple lightly leavened one, rested a few hours, then divided, filled, sealed, and fried until golden.
The raisin-and-pine-nut combination inside a savory green filling is one of those old Southern Italian habits — the same sweet-and-savory instinct that shows up in the raisins inside a proper polpetta alla napoletana — a legacy of centuries of Arabic and Spanish influence on the cuisine of the south, not a modern invention.
Spinach and scarola, raisins and pine nuts, green olives — the same sweet-and-savory instinct that runs through so much of this cuisine, folded here into a hand-held fried turnover.
The recipe
Makes about a dozen panzarotti.
Panzarotti di Spinaci e Scarola — the fried Neapolitan turnovers. Click to enlarge.
300 gFlour
1 packetDry yeast
50 gLard (or butter)
1 kgSpinach
3 headsScarola (escarole), the smooth-leaf kind
1 cloveGarlic
To tasteRaisins, pine nuts, pitted green olives
2Egg yolks
To tasteSalt
A full panOil, for frying
1
Mix the flour with the yeast, a pinch of salt, and the lard. Work in enough water to make a smooth, soft dough. Cover with a cloth and let it rise a few hours.
2
Blanch the spinach and scarola, then chop them once they have released their water. Sauté in a pan with olive oil and the garlic, adding the raisins, pine nuts, and olives. Season with salt.
3
Take the mixture off the heat, remove the garlic, and blend the egg yolks in to bind the filling.
4
Knock the air out of the risen dough on a floured surface. Divide it, roll each piece into a rope, and cut into small pieces. Roll each piece into a disc about 10–13 cm across.
5
Place a spoonful of the filling in the center of each disc. Close the edge tightly, sealing it with a little water and pressing with a fork.
6
Fry in plenty of hot oil until lightly golden. Drain well and serve hot.
Related
Pizza di Scarola
The same filling family, baked into a large double-crusted pie instead of individual fried turnovers. See
the full recipe.
Scarola e Fagioli
The same green, in a soup with beans instead of a fried filling. See
the full recipe.
Buon appetito.
