My Italian food
Well, that title IS misleading in its conciseness. It should read “apple, pumpkin, amaretti, chocolate, figs and sultana cake with brandy and rum” – no less!. Continue reading “Torta monferrina di mele e zucca (apple and pumpkin cake from Monferrato, Piemonte)”
Miascia (mee-AH-sha) is a bread cake typically found in the lovely villages dotting Lake Como. It is an impromptu cake, made with cheap ingredients: stale bread, milk, some fruit, fresh or dried, polenta flour, sugar, a little chopped rosemary to give an elusive perfume. Nothing fancy and yet the final result is truly delicious. The bread is soaked in milk and then fruit is added, with very little flour to bind. This creates a lovely custardy texture that contrasts well with the crunchy topping. Continue reading “Miascia (Bread, grape and rosemary cake from Lake Como)”
It took a leap of faith and my avid curiosity to try this cake: could a basic sweet batter and some grated courgettes make a good cake? No nuts, no sultanas, no spices…really? A resolute “yes!” is the answer.
This is a most unusual and excellent cake come dessert: delicate, plain and light, but not at all boring, with a delicious custardy quality. Burnished golden outside, yellow with specks of green inside, it is also pretty.
Scarpaccia means “nasty/old shoe” and no one really knows why such an uninspiring name; it is possibly something to do with the appearance of this dessert: a genuine scarpaccia should be a fairly thin and crusty affair – like an old, over-worn shoe. It is the contrast between the sugary and crusty exterior (due to a good drizzle of olive oil) and the custardy, vanilla scented interior that make this unposessing looking dessert sing.
It is a Tuscan speciality and you will not find anywhere else in Italy – Continue reading “Scarpaccia viareggina (sweet and custardy courgette cake from Viareggio, in Tuscany)”
In Campania, no Easter would be conceivable without pastiera, a wonderful cake that exemplifies Southern Italy cooking at its best. It is decadent, generous, refined and simple at the same time. A rich and crumbly pasta frolla (sweet pastry), plump soft wheat berries cooked to a cream in milk, sweet snow-white ricotta, eggs, exotic orange flower water, and bright candied citrus peels that bring the sunshine of the costiera into your home. Impossible to resist – but then why should you? Continue reading “La pastiera (Easter Neapolitan sweet pie with wheat and ricotta)”
This is a method for candying citrus peels that works FOR ME. It is not a professional method, it has flaws, it is not “the perfect”, BUT it works for ME (hence that “my”). It delivers the type of candied peels that I like: still juicy and fruity, with a faint bitterness in the background, not overly sweet.
The following are to be regarded as working notes, drawn from experience and other cooks’ versions.
I do not have any “culinary scientific evidence” for some of the things I say – you decide, if they make sense to you or not.
Italian home cooking 