Can anyone translate this from Italian?

I'll try, back in a bit.

Lecce is a city in (I think it's) the Apulia region of Italy - sort of the heel.

Rustici in this case seem to be similar to bread sticks (odd, I saved a bread stick recipe just this week)..

Here it the recipe of/for rustici from Lecce -

(bookmark) doing this a bit at a time -

ingredients for 6 of whatever they are

500 grams of puff pastry (seems like packaged puff pastry is fine)
125 grams of minced mozzarella (I assume sort of grate or dice)
150 grams of tomato sauce in pieces (diced or small diced?)
bechamel sauce (40 grams flour like cream of wheat or other cereal grains, 30 grams butter, 1 cup milk
1 egg (large probably)
oil, salt and pepper, nutmeg

posting so I don't lose this

Maybe this is a help as a start

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Italy/Puglia/Lecce-149462/Local_Customs-Lecce-TG-C-1.html

This doesn't sound like bread sticks. Rustici seems a word to cover many items...
basically meaning rustic.

back in a minute

Directions

1. Prepare a thick bechamel adjusting with salt, pepper and nutmeg
2. Add to the bechamel yet over heat the diced mozzarella, mixing until the last has been incorporated well. Leave to cool.
3. Stir the tomato sauce with a drop (dollop?) of oil and a bit of salt.

(time for an osso break)

"Rustico" (aka "torta salada") is a kind of 'quiche' - this one is in he style of the province of Lecce. See the Italian wikipedia entry
(Rustici is plural)

rustico
, a, ci, che
rural , (arredamento) rustic (fig) (modi) rough, unrefined
shed, (alloggio di contadini) farm labourer's (Brit) o farmhand's cottage

4. Spread out the puff pastry (3-4 millmeter thickness) and cut out six circles of 10 centimeter diameter or six circles of 12 centimeter diameter.
5. Arrange on the circles smaller circles of good spoonful of bechamel and a smaller spoonful of tomato sauce.

(break time again - I'll put it together later and add the equivalents to grams - - it fun for me to do it this way in small pezzi... )

True, but it's also bread sticks and cookies...
these seem to be coming out as puff pastry appetizers

6. Cover the diskettes with larger circles, sealing the edges well.

Hmmmm - I was wondering if pasta sfoglia might not be puff pastry - I had rememebered it as regular tart dough until I looked in up online. Couldn't quickly fin it in my cookbooks, but remembered it as Non-sweet (aka savory) tart dough.

I don't us puff pastry (the thin multi layer stuff) myself, so not sure how easy the edges would be to seal.

7. Place the rustici on a baking pan with parchment paper and brush with egg batter.
8. Cook at baking temp preset at 250 degrees C for about ten minutes.
9. Let cool and good appetite!


Have you got a photo so we can tell if it's puff pastry or tart dough, Boom?

edit - even my italian dictionary calls it puff pastry.

Dozens of photos @ Google picture search

On wikipedia (link see above):

Putting it together -

here are the equivalents for u.s. measurement -
500 grams pastry - 17.6 ounces
125 gm mozzarella - 4.4 ounces
150 gm tomato sauce - 5.3 ounces
40 grams farina - 3.7 tablespoons (u.s.)
30 grams butter - 2 tablespoons (u.s.)
250 ml - 1.05 cup
250 C temp - 482 F
1 centimeter - approx 0.4 inches


Ingredients for 6 rustici

500 grams of puff pastry (seems like packaged puff pastry is fine)
125 grams of minced mozzarella (I assume sort of grate or dice)
150 grams of tomato sauce in pieces (diced or small diced?)
bechamel sauce (40 grams flour like cream of wheat or other cereal grains, 30 grams butter, 1 cup milk
1 egg (large probably)
oil, salt and pepper, nutmeg

Directions

1. Prepare a thick bechamel adjusting with salt, pepper and nutmeg
2. Add to the bechamel yet over heat the diced mozzarella, mixing until the last has been incorporated well. Leave to cool.
3. Stir the tomato sauce with a drop (dollop?) of oil and a bit of salt.
4. Spread out the puff pastry (3-4 millmeter thickness) and cut out six circles of 10 centimeter diameter or six circles of 12 centimeter diameter.
5. Arrange on the circles smaller circles of good spoonful of bechamel and a smaller spoonful of tomato sauce.
6. Cover the diskettes with larger circles, sealing the edges well.
7. Place the rustici on a baking pan with parchment paper and brush with egg batter.
8. Cook at baking temp preset at 250 degrees C for about ten minutes.
9. Let cool and good appetite!

Yes! That's it.

It's a puff pastry stuffed with tomato chunks and mozzarella.

Osso! Your Italian is good! Do you speak it as well? (I can read of bit of French and Spanish but can't speak it at all.)

I also asked for a translation on an Italian site and got back this translation:

500 grams of puff pastry

125 gr of shredded mozzarella cheese

150 gr total of chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce

bechamel (40 gr flour, 30 gr butter, 250 ml milk)

1 egg

oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg

1 Prepare a dense bechamel and add salt, pepper and nutmeg

2 Add to the bechamel still on the fire the shredded mozzarella, stir until the cheese melts, let it cool

3 Season the tomato with oil and salt

4 Cut 6 12 cm circles and another 6 10 cm circles from the pastry

5 On the smallest circles, put a spoonful of bechamel and a spoonful of tomato

6 Cover the small circles with the bigger circles, close the edges

7 Put them on a baking tin with baking paper and cover in beaten egg

8 Cook for about 10 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 250°C

9 Let it cool

You rock!!

Doesn't that sound delicious? I have some phyllo dough that I'm going to try it with.

On italian rustic cooking, I've got a neat book, Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman, that I've cooked from over the years, so I knew about that, but I didn't know there were separate items called rustici.

That looks good in the photo, Walter.

Step-by-step photos and commentary at the link.

http://expatcucina.com/2011/08/13/rustico-leccese/

Rustico Leccese
Posted on August 13, 2011 by Daniela

Here I am today sharing with you another awesome recipe!

This is not a fancy one and it’s not going to win any culinary price, but it’s one of the most appreciated local snacks in town.

‘Rustico’ means ‘rough’, ‘uncouth’ which is exactly how this dish is! It’s a put-together-a-bunch-of-things kinda recipe. It’s one of the simpliest thing on hearth to make, but despite its semplicity is really, really tasty!

No one I know that has tried doesn’t think this is the most awesome thing ever!

I do advice you to give this a try!

Ingredients (makes 4):

2 rolls of puff pastry
4 ripe tomatoes
100 g mozzarella cheese
8 tbsp white sauce
1 egg
black pepper and salt

Roll out the puff pastry. To make things easy you can buy the pre-made one, or…if you fill like it, you can make your own. This is the link to my puff pastry recipe

Cut 4 disks by each roll of puff pastry with a dimater of 10-12 cm (you should have a total of 8 disks)

grab some white sauce…again you can use pre-made one or make it yourself. If so, this is my white sauce recipe

put two full tbsp of white sauce in the center of the 4 disks

and with a knife spread it a bit leaving about 1 inch all around the edges

Wash, peel and break up into pieces the ripe tomatoes

place 1 few pieces in the center of the 4 disks

add some salt and pepper

and a few slices of mozzarella cheese

Now cover the 4 diks with the other 4 you obtained from the other roll…

am I making any sense today?

In a bowl crack one egg and beat it up a bit

then brush the top and side of each disk

bake at 180 C for about 20-25 min. Remove from the over and let them cool down

This is a perfect snack for a picnic or, you can also make it into a bigger round shape and just cut it up into slices and serve it as finger food during a party.

Or just eat it in the middle of the afternoon if you feel like….or for breakfast…why not? I know people that would no problem…

Anyways, no matter what time of the day you are going to eat this. MAKE IT!

Here's a video of a baker making them. The audio is in Italian, but you can see the techniques used.

Looks like they're right about the circles over circles - have to go back and look, but that makes more sense.

No, I don't speak italian well and never will, but I just love it. I'll never ever forget the first day I really heard a lot of people using it - exhausted from thirty hours getting to Rome (long story) and riding the subway.. it all sounded like music.
I used to read quite well, including fairly advanced stuff, but even then I needed a good dictionary at hand. Once made my own dictionary and grammar - thick notebooks - in order to get it all further into my brain. Still have those - they'd look like Mandarin to me now, I bet. I can get the italian in some movies, but am always glad to have some subtitles there. I like netflix since you can go back and listen again if they speak too fast or the dialect throws you off. I can still read some of the online newspapers, except that - like the circles business, I'd probably call the victim the murderer or some equally dumb thing.

The guy who is sharp here in italian - is fbaezer; Walter is probably no slouch. My pal PaolaL was italian and Raphillon still is.. but he isn't around a2k much.
Tartarin would have been conversant, and so would have LoisLane.. Ul from Vienna had a place in Italy if I remember right. Kicky, he probably swears better than all of us combined.

Okay. How did he get that bechamel so stiff?

I'm assuming he mixed the mozzarella in with it but still....

Do you think he chilled it? Would letting it fully chill give it that consistency?