Ricotta and White Anchovy Flatbread with Preserved Meyer Lemon and Fresh Rosemary

In my one-woman campaign to pull red-sauce-aficionadoes kicking and screaming outside the pizza-box, here I offer a mostly-white “take” on flatbread (using my amazing 72-hour dough, of course) with a decided kick of salty, sour, and herbal notes. White anchovies bear as little resemblance to standard anchovies as burrata cheese to aged Parmiggiano: They’re both good, in their place, but sooo not interchangeable. Make the effort to get some of these plump, juicy white anchovies (with an almost pickle-like flavor); they don’t last forever—like the originals—but a couple of weeks is no problem.

Ricotta and White Anchovy Flatbread with Preserved Meyer Lemon and Fresh Rosemary

Makes one @13-inch flatbread; may be doubled or tripled.

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Course Appetizer, Bread

Ingredients

  

• 9 oz dough ball at room temperature
• rice flour and cornmeal for shaping and cooking the flatbread
• 1/3 Cup very soft, Whole-Milk Ricotta, at room temperature
• fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• finely slivered zest from one Preserved Meyer Lemon (see below)
• 2 tbsp minced fresh rosemary
• 10 Filets filets of white anchovy (aka Boquerones)
• *do not substitute standard anchovies
• red pepper flakes (optional)

Instructions

 

Flatbread and Ingredients

• Build a very hot fire in your oven, and wait until the floor and walls achieve your target temperature.
• Flour a board and your hands with rice flour, then stretch and pull the dough (never press) into a roughly 13-inch round or oval—don’t try too hard to make it a perfect round.
• Transfer the dough circle to a long-handled wooden pizza peel liberally sprinkled with cornmeal.
• Working quickly, gently spread the ricotta over the dough, leaving a 1-inch border; season generously with salt and pepper.
• Scatter the lemon zest and rosemary evenly over the top and then arrange the anchovy filets skin side up in a circle, like the spokes of a wheel.
• Scatter with a big pinch of pepper flakes, if desired. Jiggle the dough on the peel to make sure it’s still mobile, then slide it smoothly onto the floor in the hot oven.
• Bake until the edges are golden, 1 ½ to 4 minutes, depending on your oven.
• Retrieve with a metal pizza peel, transfer to a cutting board, slice, and enjoy.

Two-Week Preserved Meyer Lemons Yield: 5 preserved lemons

• 5 large Meyer lemons, scrubbed to remove wax, and dried
• 3/4 cups coarse sea salt.
• Olive oil, as needed (do not use best-quality oil for this recipe)
• Wash a large glass jar with abundant, very hot water and soap; rinse well and dry. Wash your hands well.
• Cut each lemon in quarters, but not all the way through; leave connected at the base like a flower.
• Pack 2 tablespoons of salt into the center, then squeeze back together and place in the jar.
• Continue partially quartering and packing with salt. Squeeze the lemons down into an even layer and place a sheet of plastic wrap over the top, pressing it down so it touches the top of the lemons.
• Let stand in a sunny place for one week, pressing the top of the lemons every day to compact them further.
• By the end of the week, the lemons will have flattened and be covered with a layer of juice; they are now ready to use.
• Gently pour about 1/2 inch of olive oil over the top to keep out the oxygen, and refrigerate for at least one week before using, and up to six months. When using, retrieve a lemon with clean tongs—not your fingers—and rinse well.
• Trim away and discard the remainder of the inner flesh, then chop or sliver the preserved rind as needed.

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