briciole

scone alla ricotta con semi di papavero

ricotta scones with poppy seeds

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano]

poppy seeds and pod

You get up and reach the kitchen in that half-clouded state where the battle between the wish to sleep and the need to wake up is waged. The smell of something baking is, together with the smell of espresso, the best invitation to alertness you can receive at this point in your day, especially if the baked goods are scones.

You smell something slightly buttery and crisp. A bite brings you past the crispness to reach the soft heart with its hint of citrus, the delicate pop of poppy seeds, and the light creaminess of ricotta. When warm from the oven, scones are best by themselves.

I published the top photo in a post for Black and White Wednesday last year, after harvesting the seeds from dried pods. When they are ready to bloom, poppies do so fairly fast, so one can watch the process and even hear the petals stretch into freedom. I have some red and some purple poppies in my little garden: they are a pleasure to watch at any stage of their development.

The language corner: — in Italian, papavero is sometimes used metaphorically to indicate a bigwig, like in the expression gli alti papaveri. This is the sense in which the word was used in a famous song from 1952, Papaveri e papere (Poppies and Ducklings) sung by Nilla Pizzi at the Sanremo Music Festival. You can see her in this video in a duet with Mina. The papere represent the powerless.

After finishing his second one,
my husband called them "scones plus"

I created a variation of the recipe for curried pumpkin and ginger scones I presented a few days ago, using the last of the poppy seeds I harvested last year and homemade ricotta from my most recent cheese-making session.

Ingredients (see my previous post for additional information on the original recipe and the ingredients):

1. 3 tablespoons (1.5 oz., 42 g) unsalted browned butter
2. 2 tablespoons buckwheat flour + 2 tablespoons cornmeal + enough all-purpose flour to make 1 cup OR 1 cup (130 g) all-purpose flour
3. 1/2 cup (65 g) whole-wheat pastry flour
4. 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
5. 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
6. 1/4 teaspoon vanilla sea salt¹ (or regular sea salt)
7. 1/2 tablespoon ultra-fine or granulated sugar (or 1, if you want the scones a bit sweeter)
   
8. 2 tablespoons candied citron, chopped
9. 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
10. 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
    
11. 2.5 oz. (70 g) ricotta, mashed (I used my homemade ricotta)
12. 1/2 cup (120 ml) homemade kefir; original recipe alternatives: buttermilk, plain yogurt or sour cream (low-fat or nonfat is fine)

Preheat oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or a piece of parchment paper and sprinkle flour over the surface. Take the browned butter out of the fridge and let it slightly soften while you prepare the other ingredients. Measure ingredients number 2 through 7 and put into the food processor fitted with steel blade. Cut butter into pieces and add to the food processor. Pulse a few times for several seconds until the flour mix resembles coarse meal.

Pour dry ingredients into a bowl, add candied citron and mix with your hands to coat the pieces. Add the poppy seeds and stir to distribute. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients, then add them to the dry mix. Stir with a spatula until just combined. Turn onto the lined sheet and shape into a 1/2-inch thick square. With a bench scrape, cut into four lengthwise and then crosswise to get 16 small squares. With the help of the bench scrape, separate the pieces, so that they are at least one inch apart. If the corner pieces are much smaller than the rest, join them, so you'll end up with 14 scones of comparable size.

Bake for 15 minutes, then check the bottom of one scone: if it is golden brown, they are ready, otherwise, bake for another two minutes and check again. When ready, move them onto a rack and serve warm or at room temperature.

¹ I make vanilla salt similarly to vanilla sugar: I rinse well vanilla bean pieces used to make ice cream, then add them to quality sea salt and let the salt absorb the vanilla flavor for at least two weeks before using.

This is my contribution to edition #337 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and hosted this week by Terry of Crumpets & co.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

scone alla ricotta con semi di papavero

or launch the scone alla ricotta con semi di papavero audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

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scone, poppy seeds, ricotta, kefir, citron

Per i lettori italiani

semi di papavero e capsula

Al mattino ti svegli e raggiungi la cucina in stato confusionale. Il profumo di qualcosa che sta cuocendo nel forno, insieme a quello del caffè, è il miglior invito a svegliarsi del tutto che si possa ricevere in questo momento della giornata, specialemente se il profumo è quello di scone.

Un morso affonda i denti in qualcosa di sottilmente croccante che poi diventa soffice, sa vagamente di agrume, ha la lieve croccantezza dei semi di papavero e la leggera cremosità della ricotta. Quando sono appena sfornati, gli scone sono buoni da soli.

Ho pubblicato la foto in alto in un post per Black and White Wednesday l'anno scorso, dopo aver raccolto i semi di papavero dalle capsule secche. Quando sono pronti a sbocciare, i papaveri procedono abbastanza rapidamente tanto che si può osservare l'evento e anche sentire i petali che si stiracchiano nella libertà. Ho alcuni papaveri rossi e altri viola nel mio orticello e mi piace ammirarli ad ogni stadio del loro sviluppo.

Dopo aver finito il secondo,
mio marito li ha chiamati "scone più"

Per questa variazione della ricetta per scone zucca e zenzero con curry presentata alcuni giorni fa, ho usato l'ultimo cucchiaio di semi di papavero dell'anno scorso e ricotta fatta in casa dalla mia sessione casearia più recente.

Ingredienti (vedi il mio post precedente per ulteriori informazioni riguardanti la ricetta originale e gli ingredienti):

1. 42 g burro nocciola
2. 2 cucchiai (30 ml) farina di grano saraceno + (30 ml) fioretto di mais + abbastanza farina di grano per arrivare a 130 g, oppure 130 g di farina di grano
3. 65 g farina integrale fina (da dolci)
4. 1/2 cucchiaio (7,5 ml) lievito per dolci
5. 1/4 cucchiaino bicarbonato di soda
6. 1/4 cucchiaino sale fino alla vaniglia¹
7. 1/2 cucchiaio (7,5 ml) zucchero bianco fine (o 1 cucchiaio se preferite gli scone un po' più dolci)
8. 2 cucchiai (30 ml) cedro candito a pezzetti
9. 1 cucchiaio (15 ml) semi di papavero
10. 1 cucchiaino (5 ml) succo di limone fresco
    
11. 70 g ricotta (io ho usato la mia ricotta fatta in casa)
12. 120 ml kefir fatto in casa; la ricetta originale offre varie alternative: latticello, yogurt bianco o panna acida (va bene anche parzialmente scremato o magro)

Scaldare il forno a 218 C. Foderare una lastra da forno con un tappetino di silicone per forno o carta da forno e spargere un po' di farina sulla superficie. Togliere dal frigorifero il burro nocciola e farlo ammorbidire leggermente mentre preparate gli altri ingredienti. Misurare gli ingredienti dal numero 2 all'11 e metterli nel robot con la lama d'acciaio. Tagliare a pezzi il burro e aggiungerlo agli ingredienti. Pulsare un po' di volte per diversi secondi per sabbiare.

Versare gli ingredienti secchi in una ciotola, aggiungere i pezzetti di cedro candito e mescolare con le mani per infarinarli. Aggiungere i semi di papavero e mescolare per distribuirli. In una ciotola piccola, mescolare gli altri due ingredienti e poi aggiungeteli a quelli secchi. Mescolare solo fino a quando si ha un impasto coeso.

Rovesciare l'impasto sulla lastra foderata e dargli la forma di un quadrato spesso 1,25 cm. Con un raschietto, tagliare il quadrato in quattro per lungo e per largo in modo da ottenere 16 quadretti. Con l'aiuto del raschietto, separare i quadretti in modo che siano distanti almeno 2,5 cm. Se i quadretti d'angolo sono molto più piccoli degli altri, uniteli a due a due in modo da avere 14-15 scone di dimensioni simili.

Infornare e cuocere per 15 minuti, poi controllare il fondo di uno scone: se è bello dorato, gli scone sono pronti. Se no, cuocere per un altro paio di minuti e controllare di nuovo. Quando sono pronti, trasferirli su una griglia e servirli caldi o a temperatura ambiente.

¹ Io preparo il sale alla vaniglia allo stesso modo dello zucchero alla vaniglia: sciacquo bene i pezzi di baccello utilizzati per preparare il gelato e li aggiungo a sale marino fino. Lascio che il sale assorba l'aroma di vaniglia per almeno due settimane prima di cominciare ad utilizzarlo.

Questo post è il mio contributo all'edizione numero 337 di Weekend Herb Blogging, un evento creato da Kalyn di Kalyn's Kitchen, organizzato ora da Haalo di Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once, la cui versione italiana è organizzata da Brii di briggishome, e ospitata questa settimana da Terry di Crumpets & co.

Questo post contiene il raccolto dell'evento.

scone zucca e zenzero con curry

curried pumpkin and ginger scones

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano]

just baked

Biting on one of these scones brings a pleasant surprise (sorpresa). The combination of curry, candied ginger (zenzero candito), browned butter (burro nocciola), and roasted pumpkin in the background, with just enough sweetness to round all the flavors tickles and satisfies.

I have lost track of how many times I have baked these scones, but I know that the last time was yesterday morning. If you have the ingredients ready, you can mix them while the oven heats up and then you are only 15 minutes away from a satisfactory breakfast. These scones, besides being perfect by themselves, are also exquisite with kefir cheese. And they freeze well, which means that if you can spare a few from each batch, you can easily satisfy a craving for them in the future.

During the fall, I stock on pumpkins and winter squashes of various kinds and the stash lasts until spring. If stored properly, some varieties of pumpkins and winter squashes have a fairly long shelf life.

For example, the beautiy in the photo is a Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin from Neukom Family Farm. I roasted it , then made a great soup and some special scones with it. And when I bake a large pumpkin, I freeze some of it for later use.

A few months ago, I started making pane alla zucca (pumpkin bread) and later on, once my homemade kefir became available, I tried making curried pumpkin and ginger scones using a recipe from the King Arthur Flour site. After meeting pastry chef Marisa Churchill, I added a browned butter twist to the already personalized recipe (which includes the use of dried apricots or plums instead of some of the candied ginger).

solidified browned butter

My list of ingredients (overall, I halved the quantities of the original recipe):

1. 3 1/2 tablespoons (1.75 oz.) unsalted browned butter (or 4 tablespoon unsalted butter and no ricotta)
   
2. 1/8 cup chopped uncrystallized candied ginger
3. 1/8 cup chopped dried apricots or plums (or a mix)
4. 2 tablespoons buckwheat flour + 2 tablespoons cornmeal + enough all-purpose flour to make 1 cup OR 1 cup (130 g) all-purpose flour
5. 1/2 cup (65 g) whole-wheat pastry flour
6. 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
7. 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
8. 3/8 teaspoon sea salt
9. 1/4 teaspoon curry powder
10. 1/8 teaspoon turmeric (curcuma; optional, for color)
11. 1/2 tablespoon ultra-fine or granulated sugar
12. 1/2 tablespoon ricotta or cream cheese or plain kefir cheese
13. 1/4 cup (50 g) mashed roasted pumpkin
14. 1/2 cup (120 ml) homemade kefir; original recipe alternatives: buttermilk, plain yogurt or sour cream (low-fat or nonfat is fine)

The procedure I follow is also a bit different from the original.

Preheat oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or a piece of parchment paper and sprinkle flour over the surface. Take the browned butter out of the fridge and let it slightly soften while you prepare the other ingredients. Finely chop ginger and dried fruit. Measure ingredients number 4 through 11 and put into the food processor fitted with steel blade. Cut butter into pieces and add to the food processor. Pulse a few times for several seconds until the flour mix resembles coarse meal.

Pour dry ingredients into a bowl, add ginger and dried fruit and mix with your hands to coat the pieces. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients, then add them to the dry mix. Stir with a spatula until just combined. Turn onto the lined sheet and shape into a 1/2-inch thick square. With a bench scrape, cut into four lengthwise and then crosswise to get 16 small squares. With the help of the bench scrape, separate the pieces, so that they are at least one inch apart. If the corner pieces are much smaller than the rest, join them, so you'll end up with 14 scones of comparable size.

Bake for 15 minutes, then check the bottom of one scone: if it is golden brown, they are ready, otherwise, bake for another two minutes and check again. When ready, move them onto a rack and serve warm or at room temperature.

Once cooled completely, the scones can be frozen. When I want to serve them, I put them straight in a 350 F oven for 8-10 minutes.

This is my contribution to edition #336 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and hosted this week by Marta of Mangiare è un po' come viaggiare.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

scone zucca e zenzero con curry

or launch the scone zucca e zenzero con curry audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

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scone, ginger, pumpkin, kefir, curry

Per i lettori italiani

appena sfornati

Mordere uno di questi scone regala una piacevole sorpresa. La combinazione di curry, zenzero candito, burro nocciola, zucca arrosto nello sfondo e abbastanza dolcezza da unificare tutti i sapori solletica e soddisfa.

Ho perso il conto di quante volte ho fatto questi scone, ma so che l'ultima volta è stato ieri mattina. Se avete gli ingredienti, potete impastarli mentre il forno si riscalda e poi dopo solo 15 minuti avrete una colazione squisita. Oltre ad essere buoni da soli, si sposano bene con il formaggio di kefir. E si possono congelare, così quando vi viene voglia di mangiarne potete farlo facilmente.

In autunno faccio sempre scorta di zucche di vario tipo e mi durano fino a primavera. Se si conservano in modo adeguato, alcune varietà durano molto a lungo.

Per esempio, la bella zucca nella foto si chiama  Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin e proviene da Neukom Family Farm. l'ho cotta in forno. poi ci ho fatto una bella zuppa e degli scone. E quando cuocio una zucca grossa, ne surgelo un po' per usarla in futuro.

Qualche mese fa ho cominciato ad usare la zucca per fare del pane , poi, quando ho cominciato a fare il kefir in casa ho provato a fare questa ricetta per scone dal sito di King Arthur Flour. Dopo l'incontro con Marisa Churchill, ho aggiunto la variante del burro nocciola alla ricetta che avevo già personalizzato (per esempio sostituendo parte dello zenzero candito con albicocche secche).

burro nocciola

La mia lista degli ingrediente (ho dimezzato le quantità della ricetta originale):

1. 50 g burro nocciola (o 57 g di burro normale e non usare la ricotta)
2. 20 g zenzero candito
   
3. 20 g albicocche secche
4. 2 cucchiai [30 ml] farina di grano saraceno + [30 ml] fioretto di mais + abbastanza farina di grano per arrivare a 130 g, oppure 130 g di farina di grano
5. 65 g farina integrale fina (da dolci)
6. 1/2 cucchiaio [7,5 ml] lievito per dolci
7. 1/4 cucchiaino bicarbonato di soda
8. 3/8 cucchiaino sale fino
9. 1/4 cucchiaino curry in polvere
10. 1/8 cucchiaino curcuma (facoltativa, ma da' un bel colore)
11. 1/2 cucchiaio (7,5 ml) zucchero bianco fine
12. 1/2 cucchiaio (7,5 ml) ricotta o formaggio cremoso
13. 50 g zucca cotta in forno e schiacciata per renderla una crema
14. 120 ml kefir fatto in casa; la ricetta originale offre varie alternative: latticello, yogurt bianco o panna acida (va bene anche parzialmente scremato o magro)

La mia procedura è un po' diversa da quella descritta nella ricetta originale.

Scaldare il forno a 218 C. Foderare una lastra da forno con un tappetino di silicone per forno o carta da forno e spargere un po' di farina sulla superficie. Togliere dal frigorifero il burro nocciola e farlo ammorbidire leggermente mentre preparate gli altri ingredienti. Tagliare a pezzetti lo zenzero candito e le albicocche secche. Misurare gli ingredienti dal numero 4 all'11 e metterli nel robot con la lama d'acciaio. Tagliare a pezzi il burro e aggiungerlo agli ingredienti. Pulsare un po' di volte per diversi secondi per sabbiare.

Versare gli ingredienti secchi in una ciotola, aggiungere i pezzetti di zenzero e albicocche e mescolare con le mani per infarinarli. In una ciotola piccola, mescolare il resto degli ingredienti e poi aggiungeteli a quelli secchi. Mescolare solo fino a quando si ha un impasto coeso.

Rovesciare l'impasto sulla lastra foderata e dargli la forma di un quadrato spesso 1,25 cm. Con un raschietto, tagliare il quadrato in quattro per lungo e per largo in modo da ottenere 16 quadretti. Con l'aiuto del raschietto, separare i quadretti in modo che siano distanti almeno 2,5 cm. Se i quadretti d'angolo sono molto più piccoli degli altri, uniteli a due a due in modo da avere 14-15 scone di dimensioni simili.

Infornare e cuocere per 15 minuti, poi controllare il fondo di uno scone: se è bello dorato, gli scone sono pronti. Se no, cuocere per un altro paio di minuti e controllare di nuovo. Quando sono pronti, trasferirli su una griglia e servirli caldi o a temperatura ambiente.

Una volta raffreddati, surgelo sempre una parte degli scone. Quando poi voglio servirli, li metto direttamente in forno riscaldato a 175 C per 10 minuti.

Questo post è il mio contributo all'edizione numero 336 di Weekend Herb Blogging, un evento creato da Kalyn di Kalyn's Kitchen, organizzato ora da Haalo di Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once, la cui versione italiana è organizzata da Brii di briggishome, e ospitata questa settimana da Marta of Mangiare è un po' come viaggiare.

Questo post contiene il raccolto dell'evento.

pasta sfoglia "alternativa"

"alternative" puff pasty

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano]

I agonized a bit over the title for this post. Marta of Mangiare è un po' come viaggiare (eating is a bit like traveling) whose post inspired me, calls it pasta sfoglia light, using the English adjective in a way that is very common in Italy to describe food items that are less caloric (usually due to a lower fat content) than their traditional counterpart (disclaimer: this is simply a linguistic explanation; I don't know how the all-butter puff pastry I make compares to the one described below in terms of calories, so I make no claims in this regard). One of the posts Marta references calls it finta sfoglia, fake puff pastry, which I don't like as it may also discourage people for giving the recipe a try. The other post referenced calls it sfoglia dei poveretti, poor people's puff pastry, a nice alliteration that has an interesting social connotation: however, it doesn't quite apply to the US, where true ricotta is very hard to find. So, I decided to use "alternative" puff pastry, meaning, it is not the traditional all-butter puff pastry, but an alternative you may choose to make.

As a child, I thought that puff pastry was magical: I mean, what makes all those layers that give the pastry the texture everybody loves? In my case, the magic was demistified a few years ago:

In July 2008, I interviewed Trace Leighton, Chef de Patisserie of Nibblers Eatery & Wine Bar, in Pleasant Hill¹ for an article that was later published on Edible East Bay (you can download the pdf of "The Physicist and the Baker" from this page). The main topic of our conversation was puff pastry, and I owe to Trace the fearlessness of my first attempt at it, which was a success. Therefore, puff pastry is now part of my repertoire. A great characteristic of puff pastry is that it can be frozen and, in fact, for this recipe I used part of a batch that I had made and frozen a few weeks ago. The recipe for vol-au-vents on the Daring Bakers' site has also instructions on how to make puff pastry. [from my post on vol-au-vents]

The recipe in Marta's post caught my attention because it uses ricotta as an ingredient, together with flour and butter (farina e burro). As most of you know, I make ricotta at home fairly regularly, using the whey (siero di latte) from various cheeses I make, so ricotta is an ingredient that is readibly available to me. A portion of the first batch of ricotta that I made after reading Marta's post went into the preparation of this alternative puff pastry. The rest went into the filling of the tart I made with some of that pastry. The recipe for the tart, the first rendition of which is portrayed in the photo at the top, will be in the next post.

In the traditional puff pastry recipe, the dough contains a certain amount of water. The alternative puff pastry does not have water among its ingredients: the whey in ricotta contributes the liquid component. Thanks to Lory of La Mercante di Spezie for sharing her recipe (which uses ricotta), to Adriano of Profumo di Lievito for offering his take (which uses cream cheese instead of ricotta and lowers the amounto of butter) and photos, and to Marta for her version, which combines the previous two in using ricotta as the first one and the amount of butter of the second one.

Here, I am providing the English version of Marta's recipe, plus a couple of personal notes based on my experience making it.

Ingredients (see the notes below):

• 125 g (4.4 oz.) all-purpose flour (about a cup minus a teaspoon)
• 125 g (4.4 oz.) ricotta, mashed
• 80 g (2.8 oz.) cold unsalted butter (a little less than 6 tablespoons) cut into small pieces
• a generous pinch of salt

Note #1: invest in a digital kitchen scale that has both metric and US units. I use cups and spoons, but more often than not, I weigh ingredients. And having a scale allows you to follow recipes not written for a US audience.

Note #2: the amount of whey in my homemade ricotta depends on the length of the draining period. Differently from gnocchi di ricotta, this pastry does not require a very dry ricotta, but you don't want something dripping whey. After the regular draining period, I let the unmolded ricotta sit overnight in a bowl (in the fridge) and the morning after I take my 125 g from the top layer. I also usually have a small quantity of whey at the bottom of the bowl and I remove it.

Note #3: I am not good at cutting butter into flour with anything other than my hands, so that is what I do. Some people like to grate the very cold butter using a coarse grater. I prefer cutting it into small pieces, but it is good to have options, isn't it?

Cut the butter into the flour and then add the ricotta. Make a dough, shape it into a rectangle about 1/2-inch thick (see photo above), wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one day. The dough won't be nice and homogeneous at this point and that is fine.

The following day, fold the dough. To make one fold, roll the dough in both directions into a thinner rectangle. Fold along the longer side: fold the right third towards the center, then fold the left third over it to make a letter-shaped package (see photos in this post). Wrap the folded dough again and refrigerate for half an hour or so. (If it is more, it is fine: I honestly never time part of the process.)

Repeat the fold twice more in the same way. In the process, you will see that the dough becomes more homogeneous and smoother. After the last fold, refrigerate again and use as you wish. (I ended up making a fourth fold, just to see what would happen.) As mentioned above, puff pasty can be frozen, which makes it a great resource to have on hand. If you roll it and then freeze it, it will take less time to thaw when you need it.

Marta halved the quantity of the ingredients used in the recipes she quotes and I followed her lead. Whenever possible, I recommend making a smaller batch of a new recipe until you become comfortable with the process, then go for the full amount. The recipe as given makes a nice amount of puff pastry to play with.

Once you have the savory puff pastry, you can make vol-au-vents, savory tarts, pizzette (my childhood's dream party food brought to life in the post referenced by Cara and Stefano of Due Spaghetti), etc.

¹ The restaurant is now called The Fig Tree.

I am submitting this recipe, bookmarked on the blog Mangiare è un po' come viaggiare to the January edition of Bookmarked Recipes, an event originally started by Ruth of Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments and now hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

pasta sfoglia "alternativa"

or launch the pasta sfoglia "alternativa" audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

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puff pastry, ricotta

Per i lettori italiani

La ricetta che presento è praticamente la traduzione in inglese della ricetta per pasta sfoglia light di Marta (a.k.a. Martissima) del blog Mangiare è un po' come viaggiare. Nel suo post, Marta spiega la genealogia della ricetta e fa riferimento ai post che l'hanno ispirata. Le uniche due differenze tra la ricetta di Marta e quella che ho seguito io sono l'uso di un pizzico abbondante di sale invece di un cucchiaino e quello della mia ricotta fatta in casa. Grazie, Marta!

La foto qui sopra ritrae la torta salata che ho preparato utilizzando la pasta sfoglia di cui sopra: la ricetta della torta sarà argomento del mio prossimo post, che farà parte della raccolta per Weekend Herb Blogging di questa settimana.

Novel Food #2: bignè con la crema

cream puffs

A little while ago a nice young woman gave me the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and told me that the Eat part was about Italy. She invited me to read the book and then pass it along to someone else. I admit I was a bit skeptical: I always am, when approaching a non-Italian writer talking about Italy. I ended up reading the book cover to cover and enjoying it. In this autobiographical story, Gilbert narrates the year she spent in Italy, India and Indonesia.

While in Rome, Gilbert goes to school to learn Italian and meets some people with whom she practices her language skills and gets a more personal view of the country. One day, she goes to a soccer game (partita di calcio) with her friend Luca Spaghetti and his friends. This is a great choice for anybody who wants to get a feel for Italian's national passion. Gilbert is particularly interested in the language, in the expressions she hears, a mixture of encouraging and disparaging words, strung together into a running commentary. "My first soccer game with Luca Spaghetti was, for me, a delirious banquet of Italian language."

There are two teams (squadre) based in the Italian capital, Roma and Lazio, and you are a fan (tifoso) of one or the other, usually as a matter of family tradition (though I saw such tradition break down in my family, when my brother became a Roma fan, in contrast to my mother's support for Lazio). Luca Spaghetti is a Lazio fan and the team loses. After the game, Gilbert follows the group of friends to the place where they pour out their sorrow and find consolation.

Needing to be cheered up after the game, Luca Spaghetti asked his friends, “Should we go out?”

I assumed this meant,”Should we go out to a bar?” That’s what sports fans in America would do if their team had just lost. They’d go to a bar and get good and drunk. And not just Americans would do this - so would the English, the Australians, the Germans... everyone, right? But Luca and his friends didn’t go out to a bar to cheer themselves up. They went to a bakery. A small, innocuous bakery hidden in a basement in a nondescript district in Rome. The place was crowded that Sunday night. But it is always crowded after the games. The Lazio fans always stop here on their way home from the stadium to stand in the street for hours, leaning up against their motorcycles, talking about the game, looking macho as anything, and eating cream puffs.

I love Italy.

After laughing in deep appreciation of the nice vignette, I decided it was time for me to tackle bignè. My aunt Lucia used to make them: her bignè were big, golden and perfectly empty inside. If I was around when she baked them, I was allowed to fill them with crema, a task I loved to perform. What I remember most is the delicate, unmistakable smell of freshly-made crema, tinged with lemon, and the underlying sweet aroma of baked goods left over from the baking of the bignè.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my aunt passed away five years ago, so I could not ask her for the recipe. After a brief search, I chose a recipe by David Lebovitz. I mixed in the eggs by hand and dropped the pâte à choux by spoonfuls onto the baking sheets. In his "On Food and Cooking," Harold McGee calls the technique for preparing cream puff pastry "a brilliant invention," apparently dating to late medieval times:

It's a cross between a batter and a dough, and is cooked twice: once to prepare the paste itself, and once to transform the paste into hollow puffs.

My bignè were definitely smaller than the ones my aunt made and most probably smaller also than the ones Luca Spaghetti and his friends ate to get over their team's defeat. They came out hollow and crisp and absolutely delicious once I filled them with some crema.

Apply caution when biting into a bignè, as the crema tends to find all ways to escape. I made this escape easier by cutting too big of an aperture in the bignè to make space for a small spoon carrying crema: instead, as filling implement, I should have used a Ziploc bag with a corner cut. As a kid, getting crema all over myself was part of the fun (until my mother arrived on the scene). As an adult, I am a bit more self-conscious, though I believe that scooping up small dollops of crema and licking it off our fingertips is something we should do every now and then, regardless of our age.

Back to the book. After Italy, Gilbert spends some time in an Indian ashram (that's the Pray part), and finally goes to Bali, where the Love portion takes place. I found Gilbert's style of writing congenial and I appreciated that she noticed things about Italy not commonly talked about. Here is an example:

So far, though, my favorite thing to say in all of Italian is a simple, common word:

Attraversiamo.

It means, "Let's cross over." Friends say it to each other constantly when they're walking down the sidewalk and have decided it's time to switch to the other side of the street.

[...]

I love this word. I say it all the time now. I invent any excuse to say it. It's making Sophie nuts. Let's cross over! Let's cross over! I'm constantly dragging her back and forth across the crazy traffic of Rome. I'm going to get us both killed with this word.

It is indeed true that we say attraversiamo all the time, and I like the way Gilbert describes this detail.  Note that attraversare la strada (to cross the street) is a dangerous activity in Italy, in certain places more than in others, as the accepted rules of conduct and people's relationship with road sign and signals tend to change from city to city.

This is my entry for Novel Food #2, a seasonal literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I are co-hosting. The deadline for sending us your literary-inspired culinary creations is Friday, December 21 at 9 am (PST). Let us have your reading and cooking suggestions: the holidays are a perfect time to catch up with both activities.

This post contains my portion of the roundup and a link to Lisa's portion.

Hear me pronounce the words on the bignè con la crema audio file [mp3] or go to the bignè con la crema audio page for more listening options.

veneziana

An Italian Perspective on the Daring Bakers' September Challenge

As a schoolchild (in Perugia), every day I would carry with me something to eat during the mid-morning break. I never had lunch at school. However, a shorter school day required a longer school week, which means I went to school on Saturday as well. Back to the snack: la merenda. It was usually un panino with something, i.e., two slices of bread with prosciutto crudo, prosciutto cotto or formaggio, which my mother would prepare for my brother and myself. Obviously, such healthy, nutritious and flavorful fare was not what I would have liked. Occasionally we were allowed to buy a pastry or a piece of pizza, and I had my favorite options for those special days.

The top choice for pastry was maritozzo con la panna and the runner-up was veneziana, which means (female) Venetian, though I have not been able to find out what connection it has, if any, with my favorite city in the world. The veneziana I ate as a child looks sort of like a cinnamon bun, a similarity I had never noticed until I made cinnamon buns for my induction into the honorable Daring Bakers' society. This month's challenge is hosted by Marce of Pip in the city. Marce has posted the recipe for the buns, from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which includes cinnamon and sticky buns.

My first attempt was a series of near disasters, starting from a leavening that was not as marked as expected, to a vicarious placing into the oven that was on the wrong grid (not my husband's fault), while I was running on my bike to get the confectioners' sugar I had forgotten, to a clogging of my sifter by the newly-purchased sugar. I was basically resigned to consign the whole tray to the famous garbage bin department, when, to my surprise and relief, a tasting by the manager of my quality assurance department (a.k.a. my husband) revealed an outcome that, though not exceptional, was also not deserving of being consigned to irretrievable oblivion.

As a child, I had a well-designed system for eating a veneziana to delay the peak of tasting pleasure, located at the center. I would unroll the coil so that the last piece had the thickest glassa (fondant glaze). For my rendition, I opted for a threaded glaze. The given recipe for the cinnamon buns has lemon zest, and I used lemon extract in the glaze. I am pretty sure veneziana has no lemon nuance. However, I will not let this detail spoil my little walk down memory lane.

I made another batch a week later (both times I kneaded the dough by hand, which I totally enjoyed) and this time the leavening went well and the baking went better. I think I got it down now, and my husband agrees. Freshly-made cinnamon buns are delicious. I discovered that careful storage and warming up in the oven prior to breakfast extend the shelf-life of a batch for several days.

I posted this soon after arriving in my home country after a two year absence. I am adding veneziana to the long list of foods that I need to try or, as in this case, to try again.

Hear me pronounce the words on the veneziana audio file [mp3] or go to the veneziana audio page for more listening options.