briciole

crostatina al limone meringata

lemon meringue tartlet

It's that time of the month when the Daring Bakers reveal to the worldwide blogosphere to what good use they put their multifarious skills, industriousness, inventiveness and, last but not least, their sense of humor.

Last Saturday was the day I had decided the deed would be done. The weather helped me by sending a steady rain that made staying inside a desirable option. The recipe chosen by Jen, The Canadian Baker, for the January challenge was lemon meringue pie, but an allowed alternative to the traditional pie was to make free-style tartlets (crostatine), according to a recipe by David Lebovitz, and that's what I did.

Right from the start, I knew this would be a challenge for me, because two previous encounters with this dessert - as an eater rather than a maker - have not left pleasant memories behind. However, that was not a good excuse, and in any case I was interested in making the experience: "Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day," as Macbeth says.

Everything went satisfactorily until it was time to assemble the crostatine. My filling was not dense enough, which meant that the first tablespoon that I mounded in the center of a crostatina, based on the written instructions, signaled very clearly that it had no intention of staying put, and rushed towards the edges that provided no barrier to its fluid movement. I quickly spooned the filling back into the captivity of the pan and, after reading the instructions again and verifying that they specified to shape the dough into disks, i.e., flat surfaces, I switched into damage-control mode.

I decided to ask the thick meringue (meringa) for help in preventing the filling from escaping from its flat Alcatraz. As shown in the photo, I built a retaining wall of meringue before mounding the filling in the center of the island, as instructed.

This prevention measure did not work satisfactorily right away: in my first crostatina, the filling was able to outwit me and ran towards freedom. I am happy to report that the other crostatine behaved better, at least until it was time to relocate them from the baking sheet to a plate. In a couple of cases, the meringue touched the parchment paper I used to line the baking sheet, a touch that became a seal after the sojourn in the oven. I had to gently but firmly separate the twain, with, in one case, regrettable consequences (should I call it a security breach?), of which the unruly filling immediately took advantage.      

I had a lot of fun squeezing the meringue from the Ziploc bag with a corner cut, my very first pastry bag. A blob of meringue erupting from the top and landing in the middle of my decorative pattern was a not-so-subtle reminder of the need to seal the bag before applying pressure to it. My sense of humor came handy at this point and made me chuckle instead of cry.

After making six crostatine, I had some leftover filling and meringue and decided to make a little crustless pie with them, using a container that would keep the filling securely in place. I still would like to know what I should have done to make the obtain a denser filling. If anybody has any suggestions to offer, please do.

After the crostatine reached the right temperature, I asked my husband to investigate the flavor of the result and report to me. He faithfully performed the task assigned to him and his verdict was: "I like it a lot!" The flattering feedback to my efforts was seconded by our kind dinner guest (and patient too, but that is a different story).

Make sure you use the Daring Bakers blogroll to guide you to look at the masterworks that were baked around the world by my fellow daring pie-makers.

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

mangiare a quattro palmenti

to eat a lot and greedily, to eat like a horse

A little while ago Peter of Detectives Beyond Borders asked me about the original expressions in a passage at the beginning of chapter 7 of "The Smell of the Night," one of Camilleri's Montalbano novels. I promised him I would write about them, e ora mantengo la mia promessa (now I keep my promise).

Peter expressed a desire:

to see the original versions of the sayings that in English became "count your chickens before they hatch," "eat like a horse" and "sow your wild oats" in the scene.

Here they are, in the same order:

• vendere la pelle dell'orso prima di averlo ucciso
• mangiare a quattro palmenti
• correre la cavallina

In the original text the expressions are given in Italian, without any Sicilian influence. Montalbano gets upset at Livia, his eternal fiancée, for using a frase fatta (cliché, idiom) in a conversation and then comes up with the set of three examples listed above. You can read the the translation of the passage here, together with Peter's thoughtful comments.

The literal translation of vendere la pelle dell'orso prima di averlo ucciso is to sell the pelt before killing the bear. The next sentence has to do with food. Palmento is the millstone (however, the Italian word most commonly used in this sense is macina) and the sentence literally means to eat like four millstones. Millstones don't eat, they grind, and in fact an alternative version of the same idiom is macinare a quattro palmenti, to grind like four millstones, i.e., like a mill that has four millstones¹. The idea then is to describe a voracious person that grinds as much food with his/her teeth as four millstones grind wheat. Cavallina is a young mare, but also the (vaulting) horse and the game leapfrog. The Italian dictionary I usually consult associates the idiom to the first meaning. Still, the construct of the sentence sounds unusual. I will tentatively translate it as to run like a young mare (unbridled).

When he first started learning Italian, my husband was intrigued by the apparent love we harbor for the numbers four and two, and he wanted to know why we did not use other numbers in the same way. Non ne ho la piu pallida idea, as my mother would answer: I really don't know. But it is indeed true that there are many Italian idioms that feature the two numbers, sometimes interchangeably. Here are four examples:

• fare quattro passi / fare due passi = to go for a short walk (passo is step)
• fare quattro salti = to go dancing (salto is jump)
• fare quattro chiacchiere / fare due chiacchiere = to chat (chiacchiera in this context is chat)
• fare due gocce = to rain just a little (goccia is drop)

The opposite of fare due gocce is piovere a catinelle, to bucket down (no cats and dogs involved). And speaking of rain, here is an image from my garden after a night of rain.

Hear me pronounce the words and expressions on the mangiare a quattro palmenti audio file [mp3] or go to the mangiare a quattro palmenti audio page for more listening options.

Final note: for an introduction to Salvo Montalbano, you can read this post or, better still, the novels that feature him.

¹ I added this clarification after publication. Apologies to the early readers.

spaghetti alla carbonara

The Virtual Group of Italian Chefs (GVCI) has declared January 17th, 2008 the International Day of Italian Cuisines:

"For one day, everyone who makes, promotes or simply loves Italian food outside of Italy is invited to carry out a small activity to celebrate authenticity and quality in Italian cuisine."

Italian chefs all over the world are celebrating the day by making pasta alla carbonara, one of the most famous dishes of the Italian tradition. I am not a chef, but simply an Italian who loves to cook and who has a soft spot for spaghetti alla carbonara. I have never had anything other than spaghetti prepared in this way, but apparently there is a claim that rigatoni is the pasta to use. For my rendition, I will stick to spaghetti.

The origin of this dish and the reason for its name are not clearly established. It appears that its origin is recent: there is no mention of it in cookbooks before WWII. The name could refer to carbonai, Carbonari, the Sardinian town of Carbonia, or  carbone (coal). Carbonai were people who cut and processed wood to make charcoal. On this page there are some photos of how this was done and even short videos. Carbonari, on the other hand, were the members of a secret society (Carboneria) that was active in the first half of the 19th century and had as goal the unification of Italy into a single country freed from foreign occupants. The name of the society comes from the fact that its members used symbols from the carbonai. Fortunately we don't need to establish the origin of the pasta alla carbonara before enjoying it.

There are uncountable recipes for this dish. My mother makes it occasionally and it is a nice dish to share with friends. I like to keep the recipe simple and agree with Roman chef Antonello Colonna when he describes the traditional ingredients, among which he includes tradition itself:

guanciale (e non pancetta), pecorino, uovo, sale e pepe. Null’altro...
Le rielaborazioni non sono vietate. Ma chi pretende di fare la vera carbonara deve usare solo queste materie: la tradizione è un ingrediente come gli altri.

Translation: guanciale (not pancetta), pecorino, egg, salt and pepper. Nothing else...
Variations are not prohibited, but who claims to be making a true carbonara must use only those ingredients: tradition is itself an ingredient.

For the spaghetti in the photo I could not find guanciale and therefore I used pancetta. Guanciale is cured pork jowl (the word also means pillow). Pancetta, instead, comes from the pork belly (pancia). Coincidentally, the NY Times just published an article that talks about guanciale in connection with another famous Italian pasta dish, bucatini all'amatriciana. Chef Colonna is adamant about not using parmigiano for this dish and again I agree with him and use only good pecorino.

My recipe makes no special claim besides the fact that a me piace farla così (I like to make it this way).

Bring a pot of water to rolling boil and pour in it a pound of spaghetti. In the meantime, finely dice 3.5 oz of guanciale. Warm up a lightly oiled skillet big enough to hold the spaghetti and add two small garlic cloves. When the oil is warm, add the guanciale and cook it in its fat, then remove the garlic and keep warm. In the meantime, prepare also the bowl in which you will mix the spaghetti: break 3 very fresh eggs in it and lightly beat them with a pinch of salt, then add 3 oz of pecorino, freshly grated. Keep the bowl warm while you wait for the pasta to cook. Drain the pasta when it is al dente, leaving a little water clinging to it, and pour it into the skillet with the browned guanciale, mix briefly and then empty the skillet into the bowl with the eggs and cheese. Stir quickly: the egg and cheese mixture must remain creamy (I use two forks for this step). Sprinkle generously with freshly-ground black pepper. Serve immediately, possibly in warm bowls and enjoy.

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

la Befana

I should start by wishing all of you Buon Anno (Happy New Year), since this is my first post in 2008. We had two intense weeks between December 23 and January 6. We spent Christmas in the Bay Area, where we still live part of the time, then we visited my father-in-law and his wife, and finally we spent a week scuba diving with friends. We did not stay up until midnight on December 31, but we celebrated Capodanno (New Year's Day) in a nice way, immersed in nature and in the company of good friends.

I was planning to talk about la Befana which is celebrated on January 6. It was a holiday when I was a kid, then it was no longer a holiday for a few years (it was decided that the Italian calendar had too many holidays, so some of them were canceled) and finally it was reinstated. The actual religious holiday is called Epifania (Epiphany). If you have never heard of la Befana, and therefore don't know what she looks like, on this page you can see a couple of photos of a modern incarnation of her on a site dedicated to la Befana and to a celebration that occurs every year in a village in central Italy. Then come back here for more.

"La Befana vien di notte con le scarpe tutte rotte" is the beginning of a rhyme about la Befana that has many different variations in terms of how it proceeds. I actually remember only as much as I wrote, which in English reads la Befana comes at night with her shoes all tattered-and-torn. Children expects la Befana to fill their stockings with candies and chocolates if they have been good during the preceding year, and with lumps of coal if they have been not so good. I always found a piece of coal in my stocking, which was black, hard, made of sugar and not particularly tasty. Every year, my father would tell me that the prized items in his stocking were mandarins and oranges, not candies and chocolates.

My father used to recite another rhyme about this day. The first part was in Italian: Pasqua Epifania tutte le feste porta via (Epiphany carries away all the holidays). In fact, the day after la Befana we would usually dismantle the Christmas tree and put away all the decorations. The second part was in the dialect spoken in his village and my writing is an approximation of his pronunciation: poi revè Sant'Antognetto e ne reporta 'n saccoccetto (then Saint Anthony arrives carrying a small pocketful of them). The feast of Saint Anthony Abbot is celebrated on January 17. What does the saint have to do with a small bagful of holidays? To get the answer you will have to wait until the right day.

Every year my favorite square in Rome, Piazza Navona, hosts the Fiera della Befana, a colorful fair that I remember visiting when I was a child and was already in love with that elegant urban space. I no longer leave my stocking out on the eve of la Befana, but I am still attached to the old lady that makes children happy (hence the stylized smiley face on the sand, an image taken recently at Point of Sand, Little Cayman island).

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