The Dish: Sausage and stracchino bruschetta from Sorellina in North Philadelphia
NORTH PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- In today's edition of The Dish, we're talking appetizers, party snacks, the kind of dish you can easily whip up to impress your guests.
The fact that this recipe came straight from Florence makes it even more special.
We head to Sorellina, the new Neopolitan pizza spot from James Beard nominated chefs Angela and Joe Cicala, for this beautiful little Italian bite.
"This is really great for happy hour or aperitivo," Angela says. "It only takes 15 minutes and it's delicious. It's called sausage and stracchino bruschetta."
It's an easy, quick, luxurious little taste of Tuscany.
"This is a super simple bruschetta, which I made all the time when I was working and living in Florence," she says. "This is something a friend of mine there made for me all the time and it was so easy. It's something savory to go with a spritz or a Negroni, something like that."
You only need three ingredients: mild fennel sausage, stracchino cheese and a baguette.
"This is mild sausage. You could use spicy, but typically in Tuscany, it's made with sweet sausage. It's already seasoned with fennel, salt, pepper and garlic," says Angela.
Stracchino is a soft cow's milk cheese.
"It's kind of along the lines of a cream cheese or mascarpone with a little more bite," she says, "You can find stracchino in Italian import stores here."
She adds you can also use cream cheese or mascarpone if that's easier for you to find.
To make the bruschetta, first remove the sausage from its casing and mix it together with an equal amount of the cheese.
Next, slice up a baguette and scoop about three tablespoons of your sausage and cheese mixture onto each slice.
Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees and enjoy! It's that easy.
The Cicalas recently opened a new spot on North Broad Street called Sorellina.
It's the "little sister" to their fine dining spot Cicala at the Divine Lorraine, which is just across the hall in the historic building.
"Joe, my husband, loves everything about Neapolitan pizza," Angela says. "This space became available, so we decided to do something a little more bright and airy, and focus on Neapolitan street food and pizzas."
"This is a contemporary style, Neapolitan pizza," Joe explains. "It gets a really nice fluff to it."
The vibe at Sorellina is reminiscent of the sun-drenched Amalfi Coast, which is where the culinary couple handpicks each hand-painted serving piece.
"This restaurant is really popular with Italians, like Italian-born Italians," Joe says. "We get them every night, because this type of pizza is not normally available here."
At Cicala at the Divine Lorraine, Joe is known for his handmade pastas, and Angela for her desserts. But pizza has been calling to them.
They were making in them in a wood fired oven in their South Philly backyard during the pandemic.
"Our neighbors started asking if they could get pizza," Joe laughs. "It turned into an underground pizza speakeasy."
At Sorellina, they're making 20 different varieties of pizza on the daily.
The Cicalas also run culinary tours throughout Italy.
"A lot of people have questions about where we would travel to and where we would buy our food," Angela says. "They wanted to find more little hidden, out-of-the-way places, and they didn't speak any Italian. I think they had a hard time navigating where to go in Italy on their own."
They have become so popular, they have 12 booked this year.
