Recipe of the week: Castelvittorio's Turtun

Turtun is a big pie with vegetables and wild herbs, fresh goat cheese, flour, eggs and extra virgin olives. The dough should be rolled by hand and not baked in a pan but directly on a stone, called ciappa in the local dialect, giving the turtun its unique delicious taste.

A traditional dish of Castelvittorio, turtun is a typical green cake with extra virgin olive oil produced in the small village as a key ingredient.

On January 19th, this dish so rooted to the flavours and lands of Western Liguria will be presented in Copenhagen at the Italian Cultural Institute  during an evening dedicated to Art & Taste, promoting Valle Argentina's products as well.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• For the filling: 1 kg zucchini, 300 g of fresh cheese, 1 onion, 1 potato, 1 egg (optional) salt, pepper and 3 spoons of extra virgin olive oil.
• For the dough: 400g flour, 1 glass of extra virgin olive oil, salt and water

Directions:

Knead the dough twice until firm, but soft; let it rest covered by a cloth.

For the filling, dice vegetables (onion, zucchini and potatoes), stir in the oil with the other ingredients, finely chopped. Roll out the pastry on a wooden cutting board, give it a round shape, pour the filling and pull the outer part of the dough to cover the upper part. Sprinkle with oil and pierce in several places with a fork. Put in a wood oven for 40/50 minutes without pan directly on the stone.