The crostata I made back at home -- this one with apricot jam and fresh cherries
While we were in Italy just last month we took a cooking class from a lovely Italian woman named Sonia. If your imagination is running to a graying mamma wielding a pasta roller and a checkered apron, think again. Sonia teaches French at the Lucca high school and graduated from Amherst College. Just wanted to set the scene…correctly! I was so excited to tackle crostata, the classic Italian dolce that is part pie, part cake. Sonia called it cake, but you’ll soon see why is shares more with our American pies than any cake we’ve come to know.
The husband and I lived in Italy an unmentionable number of years ago, and this was our long-overdue return. I had also taken cooking classes back then, and had thought I’d returned home with a fool-proof recipe for Torta della Nonna, a crostata-like cake/pie made with ricotta. It never, ever worked here, either because of my poor note-taking, even poorer conversions, or most likely, because the flour here just isn’t the same as it is in Italy. I think this time I’ve managed to get a little closer to the crostata we made in Italy, but the flour still affects the final outcome. I think our flour makes a softer crust, so I’m going to keep on the lookout for imported Italian flour to see if I can really achieve the intended flavor and texture.
Italian desserts are not terribly sweet. I think that’s why I like them (I’m a savory craver, not a sweet eater). And this dessert will take away all pie fears, if you have them!
Crostata | 6 to 8 servings
Made with jam it is a jam crostata (example: crostata dei fichi, or fig jam crostata) and made with fresh fruit it’s called a torta di frutta. This one is a jam crostata, but the pastry can be pre-cooked and filled with pastry cream and fresh fruit.
The pastry for crostata, called pasta frolla, is a pie dough almost like shortbread. To keep it tender and not too “bready,” have all the ingredients refrigerator cold. I’ve even mixed the dry ingredients and stuck them in the fridge for a few minutes.
Italian baking sugar is finer than ours, so if possible, use superfine sugar, available at many grocery stores.
Scant 1/4 cup ice-cold water
Zest of 1/2 lemon
1 egg
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup superfine sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter, or 1 stick, refrigerator cold
1 1/2 cups good-quality, naturally sweetened jam, such as apricot, raspberry, cherry, fig
Measure the water and put it in the freezer until needed. Prepare the lemon zest and set aside. Break the egg into a small bowl, beat until combined, and store in the refrigerator until needed.
Measure the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix together. Mix in the lemon zest.
Sonia is mixing the flour, sugar and lemon zest together but she's working quickly -- the kitchen was warm
Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the dry ingredients. Using fingertips and working quickly, pinch the butter into the flour mixture until it is crumbly and about the texture of steel-cut oats. A pastry blender works well, also.
The butter just came out of the fridge
Pinching and tossing very quickly
Mix in the egg, tossing quickly. Add the ice-cold water, tossing the dough as you go. Use just enough so that the dough will gather up but not be soggy. Punch the dough together until it forms a ball.
Divide the dough into a 1/3-sized ball and a 2/3-sized ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour.
This was a double recipe, so we divided the dough for two "cakes"
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Butter a 10-inch round pan or line with waxed paper. Place the larger dough ball in the center and work the dough out to the edges of the pan using your fingertips, pressing from the center out. Work the dough up the side of pan about 1 to 1 1/2 inches. Trim the top edge of the dough if necessary.
Try to make the thickness of the dough even all over
Sonia -- using her thumbs to push the dough up the side of the pan -- and Loren, watching!
It's optional to trim the top, but it makes a more even edge
With a fork, poke holes all over the bottom of the crust.
This keeps the dough from bowing up or bubbling and distorting
Spread the dough with the jam, evenly and to the edges.
This was a fig crostata, using Sonia's homemade fig jam made from her fig tree
Flour a work surface. With the other 1/3 of the dough, shape and flatten strips to lay across the top of the crostata.
Shape "logs" and flatten them
Here I am working on the second crostata while Sonia finishes the top strips for the fig one
Fold the crust down over the top edge of the crostata. Press with the tines of a fork. Brush the dough lightly with a little milk.
This makes the nice edge -- you can also make an edge with another strip of dough
Ready for the oven!
Bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, or until lightly golden.
This is the one I made, but the crust was a little too thick
Here's the one I made at home, with a much better result! It has apricot jam and a handful of fresh pitted and halved cherries
Buon appetito, amici!
Kelly McCune © 2010
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I Blame the Cows…
by Kelly on July 8, 2010
Happy Swiss cows with bells leads to amazing cheese
I’ve been away, and internet-challenged to boot! Now back from Italy and a brief stop in Switzerland — much more on Italy very soon. First I must pay homage to the cows of Lauterbrunnen, with their big, noisy bells that would blend perfectly with a yodel here and there. This was the land of artisanal cheeses, a place you could go to learn cheese-making and cow herding. The grass looked so good I thought I might even eat some.
Switzerland has two well-known national dishes — fondue and rösti. These are based on their two great edibles, cheese and potatoes. I’ve known about fondue since the 70s, when the fondue craze struck American homes like an electric shock, planting thousands of fondue pots in our avocado and goldenrod kitchens. Ours was yellow, of course. We didn’t try the fondue in Switzerland because we smelled it so continually one evening while we waited for a table at a popular restaurant that we felt like we’d actually eaten it.
No, it was rösti that I was unfamiliar with, but I now know that it is a variation on hash browns, or latkes, or other such potato dishes.
Not my picture -- but ours looked just like this!
Rösti is grated potato, and the Swiss potatoes are very good. I know this because potatoes accompany just about every meal, sometimes combined with…cheese! Season the grated potato, shape it into a very buttery pan and fry it up. Very easy, very filling. The Husband ordered his with a curry flavor, which was not a great choice. Mine had bacon and cheese, and I plowed through about half of it. It was comfort food on steroids, and I’ll be making it here very soon.
An aerial view of cows, but no matter how far away you get, you can hear those bells
Back to cows. These Swiss cows are very happy and well cared-for. They spend all summer in the spectacular foothills of the Alps, eating clover and basking in the sun. And all that goodness yields a field of dairy products that has all that flavors of pure joy. Nutty, tangy gruyeres and emmenthalers, mellow yogurt, achingly fresh milk and butter. It’s a well-protected industry there, family-owned and carefully managed.
Lauterbrunnen, in the shadow of the Eiger, the Jungfrau, and the Monch peaks
Our favorite meal in Switzerland was a hunk of bread with several local cheeses which we cut up with — what else? — a Swiss Army knife. But stay tuned for Italy.
Yodel-ay-hee-hoo
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