Semolina Flour

In Algeria they sometimes bake it on a griddle or skillet, but that didn’t work well for me.

Semolina cooked in cream becomes a thick, delicious porridge, with an almost puddinglike consistency, that can be enjoyed many ways. In Sardinia I have had it as an appetizer with honey drizzled on top, and as a dessert with a sauce of mirto, or myrtle. I loved both! And I’ve made it as a warm breakfast treat, too. Here I give you mazzafrissa as a dessert, with a lovely blueberry sauce (strawberries or cherries or other seasonal berries would be good, too). Scoop the warm cereal into serving bowls and top with the blueberry sauce, or serve the sauce on the side and let your guests help themselves.

This recipe makes a large batch of malloreddus, enough to serve eight. You don’t need to cook it all, because it freezes easily and keeps well. Malloreddus can be dressed simply with butter and grated cheese or almost any sauce you like. My favorite version, though, is the first one I ever had, in Porto Cervo many years ago: malloreddus with sausage and tomato sauce (recipe follows).

Rava dosas—savory, crisp-edged crêpes popular in South India—are typically made from semolina and rice flours. Stuff them with hearty vegetables cooked in a blend of spices, chile, garlic, and ginger.

Have you ever visited the marketplace of Jerusalem and noticed small wooden imprinted molds with handles? To be sure, the merchant is hard put to explain their significance. They are ma'amoul molds. Ma'amoul means "filled" in Arabic, and these molds make filled cookies eaten by Jews and Arabs throughout the Middle East, especially in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. A piece of short-pastry dough the size of a walnut is pressed into the crevices of the ma'amoul mold. A tablespoon of date or nut filling is inserted, and you close the pastry with your fingers. Holding the handle of the wooden mold, you slam it on the table, letting the enclosed dough fall out. On the top of the cookie is a lovely design. After baking and rolling in confectioners' sugar, the design stands out even more. Of course, the ma'amoul mold is not necessary to the preparation of these sweets, though it certainly adds to their beauty. The tines of a fork, tweezers with a serrated edge, or a tool of your own devising will do quite well. The following ma'amoul recipe came from Aleppo to the Syrian Jewish community on Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn. These cookies are served at Purim. A similar cookie, called karabij here (nataife in Syria), topped with marshmallow fluff, is also served at Purim. Arasibajweh—rolled cookies from the same dough and stuffed with dates—are served at the New Year or Hanukkah.

Flour and water—can it get any more basic? After a few minutes of kneading, the dough magically comes together into a smooth, supple ball. Fettuccine is the goal here, but Chun also likes to cut the pasta into free-form "rags" to serve with a wild-mushroom sauce.

For a nutrition boost, replace one of the eggs with 1/2 cup of pureed beans or vegetables. (That's two 2-ounce jars of baby food.)

Although this flour, semolina, and egg mixture begins as a stiff dough, it cooks into beautiful, velvety noodles that are as smooth as butter. A pasta machine makes this recipe easy and foolproof. Store-bought fettuccine simply can't compare to homemade.

These wine-infused, ring-shaped biscuits, called taralli, are on every Pugliese table during the antipasto course, but good ones can be hard to find in the U.S. This homemade version replicates their crisp, crumbly texture, with occasional hits of black pepper.

Far from being little more than crisp vehicles for the prosciutto , these have the flavor of a freshly baked olive-oil bread.

This recipe was created by chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill restaurant in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. It's part of a special menu he created for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program. For this Summer dessert, Chef Barber suggests experimenting with any seasonal berry.

Eating one of these individual pies is quite different from your basic fork-and-plate experience. A bite through the crisp pastry, sparkling with sugar, reveals a thick filling of sweet-and-tart fruit.

The beauty of plums becomes all the more evident when they are displayed in a galette. Accompanied by sweetened Armagnac crème fraîche, this one makes a wonderfully sophisticated dessert.

Galatopita, or milk pie, has a crisp phyllo crust and a dense, satisfying custard filling made with semolina flour. It is among the dairy specialties of Epirus and Thessaly; we like this version from Ioannina.

(Music Paper Bread) _Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Giuliano Bugialli's book _Foods of Sicily & Sardinia. We've also added some helpful tips of our own, which appear at the bottom of the page. This recipe originally accompanied Jumbo Shrimp with Fregola.

(Pão) Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Jean Anderson's book Process This!. Anderson also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Anderson and Portuguese cuisine, click here. What I wanted to do here was turn the food processor into a bread machine, that is, to see if I could proof the yeast, mix and knead the dough, even let it rise in the processor. I'm pleased to say that it worked perfectly. I don't recommend this technique for bigger batches of yeast dough, for more complex recipes, and certainly not for wimpy food processors with small work bowls (you need at least an 11-cup capacity). For this simple five-ingredient loaf, however, a big, powerful machine does it all. This "daily bread" of Portugal is both crusty and chewy thanks to the steam ovens in which it's baked (I bake my bread at very high temperature over a shallow pan of water). Because Portuguese flours are milled of hard wheat, I've fortified our softer-wheat all-purpose flour with semolina and find the texture exactly right. This dough is unusually stiff and for that reason I use the metal chopping blade throughout — the stubby dough blade merely spins the dough against the sides of the work bowl. I also use high-speed churning throughout (the ON button) instead of a "dough mode" because it does a better job of developing the gluten (wheat protein) that forms the framework of this bread.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Paula Wolfert's book The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen. Wolfert also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. Here's a fast bread for slow foods. Small as a pancake, these easy-to-make, grainy-textured griddle breads are similar to those sold on the streets of Casablanca and Tunis. No yeast is required. A combination of coarse semolina and fine pasta flour provides a butter-colored interior and blotchy black exterior. Serve these breads as a hot hors d'oeuvre with North African herb or tomato jams or for breakfast brushed with butter or argan oil and honey.

This fennel-and-scallion-enriched version of tyropita (Greek cheese pie) uses feta and cottage cheese to create a filling that's mildly tangy yet mellow.

One of Morocco's major grains, barley brings a malt-like flavor to this surprisingly light bread. Nigella seeds add a pleasant crunch and just the faintest hint of onion. To order the barley flour and nigella seeds, visit kalustyans.com.

This no-bake dessert features alternating layers of savory pistachio-studded semolina and a cooked cream called kashta, set into a springform cake pan and chilled in the refrigerator overnight. If you are feeding a crowd, double the recipe and forgo the cake shape for a looser presentation: Spread all the semolina mixture on a large platter, spoon the kashta over it, and garnish with the nuts and powdered sugar; then spoon it into dessert bowls. There is no English translation for kashta, pronounced "ahshta," but it is often described as the Arab equivalent of clotted cream. This fragrant cake filling is also delicious as a breakfast treat, drizzled with honey or swabbed on a piece of toast.