Air-Fryer Coccoli with Stracchino & Prosciutto

Coccoli are the small fried-dough rounds that line every Tuscan aperitivo platter. They're traditionally deep-fried — hot oil, spluttering, dough balls floating to the surface and turning golden in 90 seconds — then split open and stuffed with stracchino (a soft, spreadable cow's-milk cheese from northern Italy) and prosciutto crudo. The combination of warm puffed dough, cool creamy cheese, and salty ham is exact.

The air fryer version skips the deep-fry while keeping the structural result. Small balls of yeasted dough (the same dough you'd use for focaccia) get sprayed with oil and cooked at 200°C until they puff golden. They come out slightly less crisp than the deep-fried version but still pillowy inside.

The dough is the slowest part — about an hour of proofing total. Everything else is quick. The assembly is theatre: split coccolo, spoon cheese onto bottom half, drape with prosciutto, replace top. Eat with fingers.

The photo shows them assembled on a ceramic plate: golden split dough rounds with white stracchino visible through the gap and pink prosciutto draped across, alongside a bowl of stracchino with olive oil and pepper for additional spreading. The aperitivo standard.