Category Archives: English

dolci, English, ricette, torte

Crostata with strawberries

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Today, Perlana Man is in hospital and I’m waiting for Jonathan that is visiting to get up and maybe spend a bit of time together in town, so to avoid bad thoughts, I write the recipe of this cake that I had made some time ago and that the rest of the gang liked a lot. Questa e’ la versione italiana.

Basically, you make a pastafrolla, with baking powder and orange blossom flower and you put it to rest in the fridge. I have already described how to do this in the recipe of the orange flower water crostata. When it is time to assemble the cake, you put the oven on, I put 180, but I had to lower after a while, maybe 160/170 would be better? Then, you take 500gr of strawberries, you wash them, drain them, cut the leaves away and then cut them in small pieces, but not too small, like in four, max eight. As you cut them, put them in a bowl with 3 tablespoons of sugar and the juice of half a lemon and mix them every now and then as you keep on cutting. In this way, by the time you have cut all the strawberries, there should already be some juice in the strawberries, but not too much. Prepare the pan with the butter and the flower, roll the pasta frolla out and gently lay it out on the pan, leaving a bit of a border. Pour the strawberries with the juice on the pasta frolla and even them out. Put in the oven, it usually cooks in some 45′.

The good thing about this cake is that the strawberries cook and therefore they have a little bit more of flavour than fresh strawberries, and given that it is so difficult here to find really good fruit and vegetables, this is not a small advantage. The baking powder did not work for some reason, but it turned out good anyway. I feel like something is missing and suggestions are welcome, maybe I will try with crema pasticcera under the strawberries.

English, ricette, torte salate

Luci’s parmigiana of aubergines as interpreted by Gio

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This should be enough for some eight people at least. You will need 1.5 kilos of aubergines, the small ones are better. Then a lot of tomato sauce. I do it with the whole tomatoes in tin, you will need some 3 big tins. The sauce should not be done with any onion or garlic, just olive oil, salt and a lot of fresh basilikum. In general, basilikum: the more the better. Mozzarella, ideally di bufala. I used four or five. Cut in small, but not very small dices. Parmisan, a lot! At least half of a packet grated.

You start by putting the tomato sauce on: tomatoes, olive oil, basilikum and salt, and you simmer lively so that all of the water goes and you get the sauce. Keep and eye on it and stir it every now and then because it has a tendency to stick at the bottom. Also, half way through, you might want to add half a spoon of bicarbonate of soda and stir well to take some of the acidity away.

Then, essentially, you need to fry the aubergines. You should peel them and cut them in one centimeter thick slices right before putting them in the frying pan, so that they do not become black and bitter. There should be a lot of very hot oil in the pan. I use a mixture of maize and olive oil. The aubergine must become well golden, almost crunchy, but should not burn. When they are done, you put them on a dish on which there is a paper towel, you cover them with another paper towel and you press them a bit, so that they leave most of the oil. Then you move them to another dish, where you will do the pile of the fried aubergines, putting a paper towel in between every layer. You will need to change the paper towels in the first dish very often. You will need a lot of paper towels.

At a certain point, you will find that there are no more aubergines. You have fried them all. In the meantime, the sauce should be ready, so you can start putting things together. Before you start, switch the oven on at 180 degrees. You start with a layer of sauce, then aubergines, parmisan, basilikum, mozzarella. At every melanzani layers, you press down the layers so that there is no space left between them. The last layer should be tomato sauce and then a little bit of basilikum on top. The parmigiana is ready. Put it in for some 45 minutes than have a look how the situation is. I usually end up leaving it in almost an hour. You can also freeze the entire thing before or after cooking it and keep it for later or you can do it the day before and cook it right before the lunch/ dinner.

dolci, English, ricette

Tiramisu

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This is Veronika‘s glorious recipe, appreciated by and disseminated to countless people all around the world.

Beat the yolk of 6 eggs with 9 tablespoon of sugar for a while, until the mixture is kind of light, both in colour and texture. Add 500 gr of mascarpone (failing that cream cheese) and mix well until smooth. On the side, whip the white of the eggs until firm, then add to the mixture, stirring very slowly and always in the same direction (or the eggs will separate). Prepare a lot of strong coffee (don’t tell anyone, but even good instant will do). Put the coffee in a shallow bowl, roll the savoiardi (Lady Fingers can kind of substitute, you will need approximately 400gr of savoiardi) into it, and make a layer of coffee-soaked savoiardi in the bowl where you will serve the tirami su. The coffee should be hot and the savoiardi should not completely soaked in coffee. If you do that, the tirami su will be runny. Rather, the savoiardi should be rolled horizontally and quickly on the surface of the coffee. The centre of the biscuits will be still a bit hard. When you have done a layer of biscuits in the bowl, pour a layer of mixture on it, then a layer of biscuits, then a layer of mixture, and so on. How many layers you will have will depend on the shape of the bowl. Finish with a layer of mixture. With a sieve, cover the surface with a thin layer of bitter cocoa powder, then put in the fridge to rest at least 12 hours. For the people in Vienna, you can find all the ingredients in Billa. This makes a large tirami su, like a good portion for 10 people or so.

TIRAMI SU (Veronika=s glorious recipe)

Beat the yolk of 6 EGGS with 9 TABLESPOONS OF SUGAR for a while, until the mixture is kind of light, both in colour and texture. Add 500 GR OF MASCARPONE (failing that cream cheese, or failing even that Philadelphia cheese) and mix well until smooth. On the side, whip the white of the eggs until firm, then add to the mixture, stirring very slowly and always in the same direction (or the eggs will separate). Prepare a lot of STRONG COFFEE (even instant will do). Put the coffee in a shallow bowl, roll the SAVOIARDI (Lady Fingers can kind of substitute) into it, and make a layer of coffee-soaked savoiardi in the bowl where you will serve the tirami su. The coffee should be hot and the savoiardi should not completely soaked in coffee. If you do that, the tirami su will be runny. Rather, the savoiardi should be rolled horizontally and quickly on the surface of the coffee. The centre of the biscuits will be still a bit hard. When you have done a layer of biscuits in the bowl, pour a layer of mixture, 2 centimetre or so, on it, then a layer of biscuits, then a layer of mixture, and so on. You will need two 250gr PACKETS of biscuits. How many layers you will have will depend on the shape of the bowl. Finish with a layer of mixture. With a sieve, cover the surface with a thin layer of bitter cocoa powder, then put in the fridge to rest at least 12 hours. For the UN people in Vienna, you can find all the ingredients except the eggs in the Commissary. This makes a large tirami su, like a good portion for 10 people or so.

dolci, English, ricette

Orange flower water crostata

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This is the cake that I made for Eli’s birthday today!!! I had made a similar version at another dinner, and, although the filling was not the same, in reality what you taste is the orange flower water, that’s why I called it this way. We had also a little discussion on how to translate crostata and could not come up with a good word. I do not think that ‘tart’ is exactly the same, and, although ‘pasta frolla’ is similar to the dough that you make for pies, it is not the same and a crostata is not a pie. Also wikipedia does not translate crostata, so crostata it is!

First, we have to make pasta frolla, the dough. I am using the version of gennarino.org.  The thing about pasta frolla is that everything needs to be very cold and you need to work it as little as possible.

So you take 240gr of flower, 80gr of powder sugar and half a packet (8gr) of baking powder, you mix them together and, if you feel like it, you sift everything. At this point, you take 160gr of butter straigth out of the fridge and you cut it in little cubes on the flower mix. Use your fingers to mix it with the flower making a heap of crumbles. Add 2 yolks and one table spoon of orange flower water and mix first with a fork and at the end with your hands, until you have a uniform ball of dough. The least you work on it with your hands, the better! Put the ball in a close container or wrap it in cling-film and put it in the fridge for at least 1/2 hour, a hour is better.

While the dough is resting in the fridge, we can prepare the crema pasticcera, which is an easier version of custard cream. Warm 250ml of milk with one teaspoon of orange flower water. In another pot, mix two yolks, 60gr of sugar, 20gr of corn starch, mix well so that the mixture is smooth. Add the warm milk little by little until everything is mixed together and put on medium heat. As the mixture comes to the boil, it will thicken. Cook for another few minutes, mixing well so that it does not burn on the bottom of the pot and it remains smooth. Don’t worry if it looks lumpy, just mix faster. Put the crema aside.

Prepare a 26cm pan (it can be a low one, this cake does not rise much) by rubbing the inside of the pan with butter, adding a tablespoon of flour and shaking it around to lightly coat the inside.

When the time is up, take out the pasta frolla from the fridge and put some 1/5 of it aside. Don’t forget to put the oven on at 180 degrees. Roll the rest of the dough out on a lightly floured surface and transfer to the pan helping yourself by wrapping the dough around the roll. Now, with pasta frolla this is very difficult to do, so don’t dispare. In fact, what I usually end up having is a patchwork of PIECES of pasta frolla in the pan, but that’s ok because you can gently press on the dough in the pan with the palm of your hand, and it will be all right. Make the border uniform and a bit thick.

At this point you can take the crema pasticcera and spread it on the cake. Then, you can take some jam or marmelade and spread a think layer on top of the crema. Finally, take the 1/5 of dough that you had left aside, roll it out, and cut strips of dough to arrage them in crossing squares on the cake. Bake at 180 for 45 minutes or so and enjoy cold!