My Daughter’s Thanksgiving – Onion, Olive, and Rosemary Focaccia
My daughter doesn’t like Thanksgiving – neither the holiday nor the food. Never has. It’s not because of the people or the family gathering, but rather it’s because of her birthday, which is always during the same week as Thanksgiving. Some years, including this year, her birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day. Since she was little, she hasn’t wanted to share her birthday with a holiday, even if it means getting a day off from school.
While others wait all year for the Thanksgiving meal, she loathes the food. Poultry of any kind has never really been her thing – unless it’s fried. I guess you could say the same about potatoes. Squash and sweet potatoes are a no go, but she may have a bite or two of stuffing – as long as the edges are crispy. Don’t get me wrong, she is not a bad eater; she loves spicy food and salad, sushi and Chinese. She is obsessed with tacos and will happily eat Thai or Indian food, especially if it involves a dosa.
But Thanksgiving has always been a challenge. Several times we have sought out an open McDonald’s on our way home after the big meal so she could get a hamburger and French fries. How pitiful is that? Fast food on the way home from a perfectly good Thanksgiving meal. In recent years my strategy to avoid the fast food diversion has been to make enough appetizers to fill her up before the main meal even begins. One of her go-to starters is onion, olive, and rosemary focaccia.
It is crunchy on the outside (the dough is practically fried in olive oil as it bakes), sweet from the cooked onions, salty from the olives, and scented with essence of rosemary. I bake it Thanksgiving morning while others are cooking their turkeys, then bring it, still in the pan, and cut it when we get to my relatives’ home.
It is a great appetizer that everyone enjoys, especially my daughter. The only problem is that appetizers are served before the meal and we are always the last guests to arrive. But that’s a story for another time.
Onion, Olive, and Rosemary Focaccia
I know I should make my own dough, but I don’t because I live in New York where perfect pizza dough is cheap and readily available. I adorn a pre-made pizza dough from one of our local pizza shops. Most will sell a round of dough for a few bucks, saving the trouble of making it on my own. But because each pizza joint makes a slightly different size pie, with varying thickness of crust, their round of dough will be different from that of another pizza parlor. Thus, my recipe is an estimation; use it as a guideline and with a little trial and error you will make an excellent focaccia.
Some rules to follow:
- Use a dough that weighs about 1¼ lbs. and cook it in a 9 x 9 inch baking pan. A different size dough and different size pan will certainly work, but use an adjusted cooking time, as the focaccia will be a different thickness. Watch it closely as it bakes.
- Don’t be cheap with the olive oil – this isn’t health food. It’s a hunk of crispy, salty, greasy bread.
- Use more onions than you think – they cook down and are really good.
- Make sure the rosemary is somewhat crushed (or chopped if using fresh) – there is nothing worse than getting a needle of rosemary caught deep in your throat. (Okay, there are probably worse things, but it’s still really unpleasant.)
- Use as many olives as you want, but according to my daughter, you’re not using enough.
- Use a non-stick baking pan. You’ll thank me later.
- Once you remove the focaccia from the pan, it is hard to cut because the crust is so crispy. I recommend your biggest, most serious knife; I break out my cleaver.
- Use a large cutting board because while you are cutting it, olives and onions will fall off the top. There’s just not much you can do about it.
- There are endless variations of focaccia. Try other toppings – tomato, garlic, thin slices of pepper, zucchini, or eggplant, wisps of prosciutto, or anything else. Just consider their cooking time, and place them on the already cooking dough far enough into baking so that the toppings will cook through without burning. This may take some experimentation.
1 focaccia, about 1½ to 2 hours (including cooking time)
½ cup olive oil, divided
1 pizza dough
1 large or 2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1½ tsp. crushed dried rosemary or 1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, leaves finely chopped
½ tsp. kosher salt
1 cup pitted Kalamata olives, sliced
- Pre-heat the oven to 375 oF.
- Coat the bottom and sides of a non-stick baking pan with ¼ cup of olive oil.
- Stretch the dough to fit in the pan. I find that because pizza dough springs back and shrinks after it’s stretched, it needs to be stretched bigger than the pan. Make “dimples” all over the surface of the dough with your fingers.
- Separate the rings of the sliced onions and spread them over the surface of the dough. Sprinkle the rosemary on top. Then drizzle the remaining ¼ cup of olive oil over the surface, quickly toss it with the onions and rosemary, then sprinkle with salt.
- Bake for about a half-hour.
- Remove the focaccia from the oven, scatter the sliced olives evenly over its surface, and return it to the oven to finish cooking.
- Cook until the focaccia is done. The sides of the focaccia will be lightly browned, as will the top along the outer edges. Make sure the center is not too doughy. This might take anywhere from an additional half-hour to a full hour, depending on the thickness of the focaccia.
- Allow the focaccia to cool in the pan on a cooling rack, then remove it to a cutting board using a spatula. Cut into squares using some serious muscle and the biggest knife you have.
