Tiella di Gaeta, a seaside town that practically straddles the border between Lazio and Campania, differs drastically from its Apulian counterpart. While Puglia's Tiella combines mussels, rice, and potatoes, the version from Gaeta is more of a "stuffed pizza."
Like most local dishes, tiella di Gaeta fuses flavors from both the land and sea. While octopus abound in the gulf, the surrounding countryside teems with olives, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and escarole. These local ingredients are stuffed inside the double-layered tiella. Once upon a time, the sizeable tiella was even more ample, but the preparation has thinned out over the decades. This particular tiella is a street food that's normally enjoyed by the slice – it's just as much of a draw to the town as the Blue Flag beach.
If you'd like to recreate this treat of the Tyhrennian Sea at home, the recipe is below. The basic tenet followed by chefs and pizzaioli is to work with pre-salted raw veggies to help drain out excess water.
Our traditional recipe for tiella di polpi (tiella with octopus)
Ingredients:
4 cups | 500 g. flour
5 Tsp. | 20 g. natural yeast - active dry yeast
3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup | 200 ml lukewarm water
2¼ lb. | 1 kg. octopus, boiled
½ cup | 100 g. Gaeta olives, pitted
½ cup | 100 g. tomatoes, peeled
parsley
red chile pepper
salt to taste
Method:
In a bowl, combine the yeast with salt and oil. Knead in the flour by hand until a smooth dough forms. Wrap the dough in a cloth and set aside to let rise for at least 30 minutes.
Separately, prepare the filling by cutting the boiled octopus in pieces. Season the octopus with olive oil, parsley, red chili pepper, and peeled tomatoes. Add the pitted olives.
Take half of the dough and roll it out with a rolling pin for a sheet of pie dough that has a thickness of less than ½ inch.
Grease a pie dish and line it with a disc of the dough. Add the filling and cover with the second dough disc, pressing the edges together with your fingers. Bake the tiella at 350°F (180°C) for at least 30 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm.