Posts filed under 'Italy'
I come from a place where the doughnut is king. I even have my own joke about it that goes: the reason why New Englanders don’t make good fried chicken is because when we see that much hot fat we make doughnuts.
When my sisters and brothers and I came home from school in the cold afternoons, we were as likely to be greeted with fresh, hot doughnuts as other kids were greeted by peanut butter and jam sandwiches. It is supposed that policemen especially like doughnuts, and I always thought that were I to have a jewelry shop I would put it next to a doughnut shop to be sure I was protected well by the policemen.
To a great degree that day is over. Factory made doughnuts, not one of which is worth one crumb from a freshly homemade or even shop made doughnut, have all but withered away the once common practice of creative doughnutry. What does it matter that you can buy a maple glazed doughnut rolled in chopped nuts if the doughnut itself is heavy, dense, cold and tasteless? Although it should not be saved in my personal kitchen, doughnut making should be revived and saved. Perhaps the Italians who have managed to maintain a recipe for making noodles out of breadcrumbs for 550 years will taste these and decide to save doughnuts as well?
The truth is, these are really easy to make. They are too easy to make. I feel like Pandora opening this box for you. You can whip these up in minutes. They can disappear in seconds. They are delicious just as they come out of the pan or rolled in sugar and you really only need to learn about glazes and various things they can be rolled in if you open a shop near the Piazza di Spagna, where I will be your occasional client for one plain and one sugared.
It probably leaps to your mind that we do not have doughnut cutters in Italy, and that is true. That’s why mine are doughnut sticks. If you have a sharp biscuit cutter, you could use that and then something tiny to remove the center, or you can order a doughnut cutter and let the dogana figure it out, but ALWAYS claim that it is a cultural object. It’s true; doughnuts are definitely a cultural object. Do not try to wrestle these into a circle like a bagel; this dough is way too delicate. Or go ahead and try anything, and if it works please tell me.
This recipe, which is half a recipe, works. It is from a 1960 edition of Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and is a recipe from New England. To make a lot of them, double it—if you run a B&B or have six children or are married to a policeman?
Doughnuts
2 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon seed oil
3/8 cup milk
1 ¾ cup sifted flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
Oil for frying
Beat the egg yolks well, and then beat in the sugar and oil. Stir in the milk. Sift together the dry ingredients and then beat them into the liquids until smooth. Turn the dough out onto a generously floured board, turning it to lightly cover all of it in flour. It is quite sticky, so use plenty of flour. Gently roll it out to 1/3” thick. (I actually patted it out with a floury palm.)
Heat the cooking oil or fat 3 to 4” deep in a heavy kettle or a fryer. Heat it to 370-380° F (a cube of bread will brown in 60 seconds).
Cut dough with a floured cutter, which should be sharp. The dough is delicate and must not be over handled. Take the cutting board near the oil when you are ready to fry the doughnuts. Using a metal spatula, lift the shapes off the board and slide them into the oil. Don’t crowd them. Fry as many at a time as can easily be turned. Turn the doughnuts as they rise to the surface and show a little color. This allows the center to break the crust as it swells, making the outsides much crispier. Fry a few at a time for just 2 to 3 minutes, until just browned on both sides. Lift the finished doughnuts from the fat with a long fork, but do not prick them. Drain them on paper towels in a warm spot. You can then roll them in sugar, cinnamon and sugar or glaze them. Makes 12 doughnuts.
You can re-use frying fat several times by merely frying potatoes in it, then cooling, straining and storing it in a clean bottle. Whether you eat the potatoes is up to you. The flavors of what you’ve been cooking go into them, and therefore leave the fat ready to use for a different recipe.
In italiano
Questo dolce è comune a prima colazione, ma anche è fatto della mamma per la merenda dopo scuola. Ho tanti ricordi dei doughnuts tra la mia gioventù. Sono cresciuta in uno stato dove faceva un freddo polare tra l’inverno, e il doughnut è perfetto quando una bambina entra la casa, con il profumo un po’ speziato, un po’ zuccherato e c’è anche che dove sono i doughnuts, diciamo che c’è anch il poliziotto. I poliziotti vanno pazzi per i doughnuts. Come mai non fate almeno una volta un dolce che porta felicità e anche securità? Come si pronuncia questa parola? DO-naht.
Doughnuts
2 tuorli
115 g zucchero
1 cucchiaio olio di semi
100 ml latte
240 g farina 00
2 cucchiaini di té di lievita in polvere (quella chimica)
1 g sale
pizzico noce moscato
pizzico canella
Olio per friggere
In una ciottola, battete bene i tuorli, e poi aggiungete lo zucchero e battete bene, bene per sciolgiere lo zucchero. Aggiungete il latte e l’olio e mescolatela.
Mescolate gli ingredienti asciutti e aggiungetegli alla pasta, battendola bene. Disperdete generosamente qualche farina sul un piano di lavoro. Fate girare per infarinarla bene la pasta che sarà morbidissima a delicata. Distendete la pasta a un centimetro. Usando un coltello ben farinato, tagliate la pasta in bastoncini circa 2 cm larghi per 7 cm lunghi.
Riscaldate l’olio per friggere fino a 187 – 193°C. Un dado di pane sarebbe arosolato in un minuto.
Quando l’olio è caldo, alzate le strisce di pasta con una spatula al’olio bollente. Si può cucinare 3 o 4 alla volta, ma dovete lasciare lo spazio a girarle. Vanno subito al fondo, e poi vengono alla superficie, leggermente arosolate di sotto. Girare le strisce fino a tutte sono gonfiate e arosolate e dorate. Togietele a qualche carta da cucina. Continuate fino a tutti sono cotti. Si può spargere lo zucchero come mostrato, o anche un misto di zucchero e canella.
Sono buonissimi tiepidi, ma anche a temperatura ambiente. Possono essere congelati senza lo zucchero, poi riscaldati a quel punto anche zuccherati se volete.
Fa un piatto di circa 24 stecche, o colazione per 8-10 persone normali o 3 poliziotti.
May 16th, 2008
This recipe is just a lovely thing, but I have been having a hard time sitting myself down to write it. It is the meat course from the menu of April 7, 2008. I’ve cooked it four times, photographed it once and still I haven’t typed it up and published it. I’m not sure why.
My suspicions lie with the fact that although it’s easy, it’s also easy to screw up. It depends very much on good meat. The first and third times I made it I used ordinary supermarket meat and it was a fine dish if you hadn’t had it the other way. When I used local hand-reared pork from this area that I bought and had prepared at the butcher shop for euro 13 per kilo, it was fabulous. My local Coop now offers the same service at half the price, and it was good, but not nearly as good as the pampered pork
The recipe here was inspired by a recipe I found in an Italian culinary magazine. I actually made their recipe, but I found the stuffing mixture of sausage meat, two cheeses and three salamis too heavy, although it might be great in January. I wanted something springy, and something in which I could use all the fresh herbs jumping up out of the ground these days.
The stuffing looks, even to me, unnecessarily complicated in terms of ingredients, but I found out the hard way that you really do need two different kinds of breadcrumbs and two different kinds of cheese.
The amount it makes is awkward. A whole one of these double chops is too much meat for one person, especially in an Italian meal. On the other hand, I found it impossible to cook less than one per person, because it thought it looked chintzy not to have one bony piece per person, just in case. On the plus side, the leftovers are terrific either cold or gently heated. Oh, and by the way, there is a reason why these are rib chops and not loin chops. By the time these thick stuffed chops were cooked through, the tenderloin bit of the loin chop would have become sawdust. Use the cheaper rib chop.
So how come if I like this dish so well, well enough to have cooked it four times, have fed it to clients and again to friends, how come I haven’t splashed it out onto this page? Never mind, it’s making it today.
Costellette di Maiale Ripiene or stuffed rib pork chops
Four pieces, which I think should serve six people
4 rib chops one rib wide, or about 2 centimeters thick, with a pocket cut in them to the bone
6 to 12 toothpicks
the stuffing:
soft breadcrumbs from one slice of Italian or other real bread
½ cup of dry bread crumbs (a couple of handfuls or 2 espresso cups full)
one medium onion, minced fine
2 teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons of minced chives
2 teaspoons of fresh oregano leaves
salt to taste
half of one beaten egg
enough white wine to moisten the mixture
3 ounces of coarsely grated relatively unaged pecorino cheese or another very tasty not very hard cheese
another stuffing:
4 ounces of Rambol herbed cheese in Italy and Boursin in other countries
the cooking:
olive oil for frying
about 2 teaspoons of salt
sprigs of all the herbs used in the stuffing
three or four whole garlic cloves
a couple of espresso cups of white wine
Preheat the oven to 375°F or 165°C
If you have not talked your meat seller into making the pockets for you, then you will need to use a sharp knife and carefully cut pockets from the fatty edge toward the bone, being careful not to let the knife wander and cut through the meat. I recommend using your charm on the meat person of your choice!
Mix up the stuffing. It should be moist and cling together when you gather it in your hand, but not wet.
Using your hands, (I use surgical gloves when cooking professionally and touching raw meat) open the pocket in the chop and stuff in a good spoonful of the herbed cheese. Then gather up a fistful of the stuffing and push it in after the cheese. Add another good spoonful of the cheese and then close the pocket up using one or two toothpicks, depending on how wide the meat person made the pocket opening. You can pretend you are a plastic surgeon when doing this part of the operation.
Heat a quite large frying pan, or two of them, if you don’t have one that fits all four chops. Pour in about 2 tablespoons of oil, and then brown the chops on both sides. Be patient so that you will get a lovely golden brown without chancing a scorching. When they are all nicely browned, toss in the garlic and the herb sprigs, toss the salt over the chops, then pour the wine into the sizzling pan.
Put the pan into the oven and cook about 40 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 160°F or 72°C. Remove the chops to a board and allow them to rest 10 minutes while you reduce the sauce in the pan over a fairly high heat.
Using a sharp knife, cut 1 cm (fat ¼ inch) slices off the chops until you almost reach the bone. Arrange the chops on a serving dish and garnish with some of the fresh herbs you used in the dish. Drizzle some of the reduced pan juices over the meat.
You know what’s really nice about this dish? That soft herby cheese melts and coats the inside of the pocket and the outside of the stuffing, making both things extraordinarily creamy and herbalicious. The meat is tender and gently seasoned. The stuffing is springlike with its herbs. I consider it a four-star meat course.
With it I served a good old American carrot and raisin salad which was new to my guests and they liked it!
May 7th, 2008
This is another dish from last Monday’s dinner. It’s an antipasto/appetizer from Puglia. Although recipes I found when I first tried to make it called for using vegetable broth to cook it, I soon discovered that I could make the vegetable broth and cook it all at the same time. It is a very healthy dish in the highest level of Mediterranean attention to vitamins, fiber and animal fat completely replaced with healthy olive oil. I cannot tell you where to buy dried fave in your country, but I know people have bought them in every country I know. If all you can find are fave with their skins, you can use them, but it will have to cook longer and you will need to use a food mill to remove the skins which I am told cause really dramatic intestinal gas.
I was served this garnished or plain in Puglia several times, but this version is my favorite one so far. I ate this by itself for supper yesterday. Jump to the recipe:
Purea di Fave
1 carrot cleaned and diced
1 leg of celery cleaned and diced
1 onion cleaned and diced
1 small dried red pepper crushed
1 teaspoon salt
water to cover
1 large or 2 medium potatoes peeled and diced
250 g or 1/2 pound dried fave/favas/broadbeans without skins
water as needed
salt to taste
Garnish:
red sweet pepper/peperone/capsicum, cleaned and cut in thin slivers
good olive oil
salt to taste
In a tall pot, put the first list of vegetables and salt, then cover with water and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the diced potato and water to keep it covered. When it comes back to a boil, add the dried fave and more water to cover.
Cook this at a simmer for about 45 minutes, adding water periodically so that there is always about 1/2″ or one finger’s thickness of water over the top of the vegetables. At 45 minutes, take a fava out and bite it. It should be soft throughout. If it isn’t cook a bit more until it is. Check for salt at this point and stir in more until it tastes right to you.
You can use a stick blender to puree this in the pot, or you can cool it a bit and put it through a medium-fine plate on a food mill. If you do that, you will need to rewarm it before serving.
Before serving, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and quickly fry the pepper slivers with a bit of salt. Scatter them over the purea, drizzle the pink oil as well, and then add a thread of raw oil. Serve warm.
Leftovers will need a bit of added water to become semi-liquid again. You can, however, make this quite a while ahead and keep it in the refrigerator, then warm the amount you want to serve.
April 16th, 2008
Here I am again, not only with pasta, which I am not supposed to be eating, but with a pasta so easy you don’t need a cooking teacher. If I keep this up I won’t be able to afford pasta for myself.
I had fresh goat cheese left over from a dinner I made on Monday evening. This goat cheese is not the little one with a soft white crust, but really fresh, like cream cheese only tastier by far. I kept staring at it and trying to get it to tell me how to eat it without carbohydrates, but alas, that innocent looking goat kept saying, “No way! I want bread or pasta.” So then I had to think some more on what would be nice with goat cheese. What wouldn’t be nice with goat cheese? I am such a fool. I pulled out some diced smoked bacon and said, “This week it’s you!”
I am using up this unfortunate pasta called lumache. Lumache means snails, ergh. Pasta lumache can be fortunate, but this particular one doesn’t cook evenly and one part starts to shred before the other part has stopped being crunchy. In the spirit of not wasting the resources used to make food, I am eating it, although with regret. So the first thing I did was look at the package to see how long they say to cook it. It usually takes a minute less time, I find.
Check your age and height. If you are over seven you can make this pasta. If you are tall enough to reach the top of the cooker while standing on a chair, you are allowed as long as someone grownup is in the kitchen to help with heavy stuff and draining big pots of boiling stuff. Tell that grownup to make a nice salad while he waits to do his part.
Look at your pasta package. If it says it takes 12 minutes, this pasta will be done in 12 minutes, including the minute it spends in the cheese pan after draining. Get the big pot of water boiling. It helps if you put a lid on it until it boils.
Goat Cheese-Bacon Pasta
for one, just multiply for as many as you are feeding
100 grams or 3-1/2 ounces of chunky pasta (spaghetti and noodles aren’t so great for this)
30 grams or 1 ounce diced smoked bacon or pancetta
40 grams or a little over an ounce of fresh goat cheese
Liberal amounts of freshly ground pepper
Put some but not much salt into the boiling water and then the pasta. My goat cheese is a bit salty and so is bacon, so we keep the salt down in the pasta.
In a frying pan, fry the diced bacon until it starts to brown, then ladle some of the pasta water into the pan to get the browned bits off the pan bottom. Leave it to simmer until the pasta is done. Because this is a creamy pasta, cook it a little less than normal. The very moment the pasta stops being crunchy, drain it and toss it into the bacon pan, then drop the goat cheese on top and stir it all together for a minute. Scrape it into a pasta bowl and grind fresh pepper over it and eat it while the smoke is still coming off into the spring air.
I would have liked a salad of maché with a lemon vinaigrette, but my cook was too lazy. So instead I photographed it and decided to send it off as a spring offering for Presto Pasta Night.
If you are over 15 years old, you should cut and paste this whole post and share it with someone younger, offering to be the big person in the kitchen with him. Remember the story of the lion and the mouse. Or was it an elephant?
April 10th, 2008
I wrote this yesterday and it went poof!
Some of the dishes on this menu are already on the blog as recipes. Those that are not are being written and will be published over time. Everyone seemed to really enjoy all of it, and all but one eater were Italian. I consider that a yea vote, right?
Antipasto:
purea di fave secche con peperoni fritti (puree of dried fava beans/broadbeans with fried sweet red peppers)
piccole patate arroste sotto sale con formagino di capra (tiny potatoes roasted under salt with goat cheese)
Primo:
tagliatelle ai carciofi con pecorino sardo affumicato (egg pasta with artichokes and shards of smoked Sardegnan pecorino cheese)
Contorno:
sformato di asparagi (puffy custard of asparagus)
Secondo:
Costolette di maiale ripiene di formaggi (double rib pork chops stuffed with a cheese stuffing)
Dolce:
palline di cocco con due cioccolati (coconut balls with two chocolate ganaches)
jump to recipe
Palline di cocco (coconut balls or cocopuffs to me)
Makes enough for at least 8 people
Preheat oven to 170°C or 350°F (yes, the F temp is higher than reality, but these droop and spread if the temp is too low.)
2 eggs
175 g sugar (6 ounces or about 7/8 cup)
240 g dried coconut (8-1/2 ounces or about 3 cups)
I have been fussing for years about how to use the coconut one can buy here, which is dried and not shredded, sugared or any of the things that are done to coconut in America. I checked, and you can buy dried or dessicated coconut in US health food stores and perhaps the nicer grocery stores. Check out Indian groceries, too, for lower prices. Anyway, at last I found a recipe for using it. I misread one of the directions in a way that made it intriguing to me, so away I went. When I discovered my error, I decided to go for it anyway and I really like the result. If you don’t try this you’re nuts, because it is just about the easiest way I know to please some diners.
In a large mixing bowl, break the eggs and toss in the sugar. Using an electric mixer, beat them on high speed until they become thick and almost white. Add the coconut and at low speed, stir it in until it is blended.
Here’s the tricky, cute part. Line a baking sheet (placca) with baking paper. Using an espresso cup, scoop up this coco-dough, about 2/3 full, and press slightly with your fingers, then turn it upside down on the paper, rapping sharply to release the little form. You can place them fairly closely because they should not spread. When they are all on the paper, put them into the pre-heated oven and cook 15 minutes.
If they spread or are not that lovely golden color, your oven is running cool and you should probably get it calibrated. Cook them a little longer this time.
These are delicious. Crunchy on the outside and chewy, damp and slightly sweet inside.
For the two chocolates, choose a good dark chocolate and a good white chocolate. In two very tiny pans put the chocolate and add an equal weight of heavy cream. Over the lowest achievable heat stir the two chocolates and when each is melted and blended with the cream — you can take them off the heat when almost melted and they’ll safely finish melting with no chance of overheating disasters — use a spoon to drizzle streaks and drops on a plate and dip the bottom of each pallina into the dark before placing it on the dessert plate.
Try it. It’s really good and dessert doesn’t get any easier unless you buy it.
April 9th, 2008
My first dinner is next week and I am very happy. The calendar has rolled around again, tourists arrive, there were tour buses in the parking lots this morning when I went to market. The biggest thing, however, was combing through the lists of dishes in my mind and in my magic purple book to make menus again.
A tramp through the market shows me what’s in season for sure– the strawberries are still from Spain– but I found things like duck and goose eggs, more artichokes than most people will ever have seen in one place, and the first of the tiny baking potatoes for antipasto. I can’t bring myself to buy the live hens and pigeons that the vendor will kill to order. If I were rich I might buy them all and set them free. I’d be arrested because Città di Castello may have a swan park, but they do not encourage poultry in the streets.
Inside the wall my herb lady sold me not only a gorgeous oregano plant but perhaps the most glamorous cauliflower ever. I shall make a portrait of her when the sun is shining.
A trip to my butcher proved that in her opinion, at least, pork is better than veal still a while. She tried to talk me into turkey and again I had to explain how mundane turkey usually seems to Americans, even though at €13 per kilo it wouldn’t seem mundane to me. That’s about $10 or £5 per pound — although the British are used to horrific prices and may not find this shocking in the least.
Now begins a time when most of my cookery posts depend on classes or chef jobs and I don’t have to eat everything. Time to diet off the pounds gained from quitting smoking. Time to wander the specialty shops and come up with new ways to use the old things and invent dishes with new things. Time to ask about wines and honeys and time to toast nuts and snip herbs and prune the rosemary and the sages.
I think the Romans had it right when they made the year begin with spring. What wrong-headed power monger changed that?
Here is a hint at things to come. 
April 5th, 2008
I sure wish they were at my house this rainy day! But you will find them instead at Barb’s house.
Scalloped potatoes are such a favorite with me that when I was in the hospital having my baby, my sister brought me scalloped potatoes instead of flowers.
April 4th, 2008
Bucatini makes me happy. I don’t know what it is about this pasta shape, it makes me feel like a kid, feel like slurping, it requires eating alone. It’s messy, because it never gets really limp. You can’t wind it around your fork. One single piece fills your mouth. It demands fun stuff on top, none of your serious gourmet sauces need apply!
It looks like fat spaghetti, but there is a hole inside, una buca, and there’s how they got the name.
If you don’t know where to find it near you, the site where that picture comes from can sell it to you online.
Anyway, that hole means that bucatini is great for juicy things that can run inside. Therefore, since you can’t roll it around your fork, and have to slurp it a bit, and that hole is filled with something liquid, it’s pretty much a scene from Tom Jones, the movie, when I eat it. I snap the long strands into thirds and that helps a bit.
Tonight I ate them with tomato sauce just like that I used for the Pane Frattau.
Simple Tomato Sauce
1/2 cup finely minced onion, celery and carrot
2 cloves of garlic cut up
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
1 28 ounce can of peeled Roma tomatoes, or others you like
salt to taste
You may add oregano or basil or any herb you like, but you don’t have to every time.
Sauté the vegetables and garlic in the oil until they soften, then add the tomatoes, stirring them in. Using a stick blender, puree the sauce and then heat it, tasting to correct salt, for ten to 15 minutes. Once cooled it can be kept covered in the fridge for many days or frozen in portions for almost forever.
Chinese Meatballs
I also made some Chinese meatballs like I’ve made before for a very different recipe. These meatballs consist of the meat from inside sausages and about an equal amount of lean ground pork, a few minced scallion tops, some grated ginger, some wine vinegar, a bit of toasted sesame oil, and sometimes some crushed red chili bits. I think cheese would not go with these meatballs at all.
I liked it. I liked it very much indeed. I smiled through the wreath or tomato sauce around my mouth and felt not a year older than twelve. You have to love a food that can do that for you. It’s especially nice to be a twelve year old who can also drink I nice glass of Rifosco with her bucatini. As a matter of fact, with what I have been hearing about the foul weather in North America, I think I have to export this feeling to Presto Pasta Night. They could use a big red grin over there.
April 1st, 2008
Over the next few days we shall be having the recipes for everything that is in that photo, one at a time. Today it’s “Fool’s Hollandaise.” Did you know that Hollandaise is part of classic Italian cookery as well as French? In Italian, however, it’s called salsa olandese. You can find the recipe for real Hollandaise sauce a thousand different places, and for blender Hollandaise a thousand more. I, too, can crouch over a double boiler watching egg yolks attempt suicide and splodge themselves into orangey bits clinging to pan and spoon and unwilling to play nice with lemon juice. I only do that if someone is paying me to.
This is the one I make when I just want sauce for myself and mine. I can make this without looking, while talking over my shoulder to a friend, while dressed or undressed, in any quantity I need. This should be enough to sauce perhaps asparagus for four normal people, or two spring-starved eaters who plan to eat a lot of asparagus– or something else.
Fool’s Hollandaise
4 ounces (120 g) butter at room temperature, cut into pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch of cayenne (peperoncino in polvere)
1 egg
In a small, heavy pot, start to heat the butter and lemon juice. Once the lemon juice heats and starts melting the butter, remove it from the heat and add the cayenne and salt, then stir vigorously with a whisk. As soon as the butter is completely melted into the lemon juice, add the whole egg, whisking vigorously and continuously. Move the pot back over low heat, continuously whisking, and lifting the pot to cool it occasionally, if it appears to be thickening too fast. Quickly taste for salt; you may need to add some because it depends on how acid your lemon was. Continue to whisk until it is become a smooth, thickened sauce.
The only thing you can do wrong is let it get too hot too quickly in which case the egg will scramble and separate from the lemon butter. In that case, call it Goldenrod Sauce and serve it anyway. Avoid that by controlling the amount of heat and never stopping whisking until it is finished. I could have used a flametamer as I do with polenta, but to me it is just easier to lift the pan away from the heat.
If when it is done you are not ready to eat it, keep it warm by putting the pan into a larger pan containing hot, not boiling, water. I don’t think the microwave should come into this at all, although because I don’t have one, I haven’t tried it.
This sauce is fantastic on greens and with spinach as shown above, it provides the acid you must eat to liberate the iron in spinach. I like it on asparagus, as a dip to artichoke leaves, on eggs, and surprise! stirred like fudge ripple into mashed potatoes. Don’t incorporate it, just make a swirl of it in the potatoes.
April 1st, 2008
This is a recipe that came together so fast and was eaten so instantly I could almost forget I made it up. The very first version was everything I wanted or expected it to be. That’s something of a record for me in baking. My worst grade in high school was chemistry. This, however, is a success. Not too sweet, fluffy, not overly rich or fatty—in fact most of the weight is in fruit. It should serve six easily or eight with cheese or ice cream and any Italian would like it for breakfast, too.
I took it around to seven various neighbors and they all agree: this is really good. The fact that it is really easy and designed to be made by anyone with an oven, even if they have never made a cake before, is just garnish. It started with yellow plums I froze last summer when they were so good and so everywhere you hardly knew what to do. I made a bit of syrup for them, so they’d come out as nice as they went in. I usually don’t, but they do stay prettier if you do. I thawed them about half way so I could taste them and see what I had to work with. They were firm, tart and very juicy, all good characteristics to work with.
Here’s what you need:
An 8” or 20 cm round shallow pan that can go into the oven—I used a cake tin
A moderate sized bowl
A 1/3 cup measure
A liquid measuring cup
Two table knives
A fork
A teaspoon
An oven set at 425°F or 220°C
Here are the ingredients:
1 cup of plain flour (3 scoops with that 1/3 cup measure)
1/3 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
a pinch of ground nutmeg
1/3 cup butter
½ cup of the juices of the plums
1 egg
About 14 plum halves
A little sugar
Butter really well the bottom and sides of the baking dish you plan to cook this in.
Put the flour, sugar, spices, baking powder and salt into the bowl and mix them up a bit. Add the butter, cut into pieces, and using the two knives, cut the butter into the dry stuff until it’s incorporated and looks mealy. You can also do that in the food processor, but it’s not in my list above.
Break the egg into the liquid measure and add the plum juice. Use the fork to mix it up well. Dump it onto the dry stuff and use the fork to stir it just enough so that it’s wet. It may still look lumpy and that’s okay. Then scrape it all into the baking dish and arrange the plums on top so that they look nice. Sprinkle a little sugar over the plums. Put it into the oven and cook it for about 30 minutes. Stick a toothpick in the center and if it comes out clean, it’s done, if not, give it another 5 minutes.
Let this sit 10 minutes before turning it onto a cooling rack. The juice cooks into a syrup and clings at first, but after a few minutes it releases the bottom. You can make this, wash the dishes, cool it a bit and serve it all in such a short time…
This is nice warm and I would have loved some Fior di Latte gelato or some vanilla ice cream with it. I thought of sieving powdered sugar over it, but the plums were so jewel-like I couldn’t bear to do it.
If you make it with fresh plums, use milk in the place of the juices. Or try it with any fruit that’s hanging around, fresh or frozen. Maybe cherries? Peaches?
March 29th, 2008
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