The Pastiera Napoletana recipe

The Spring is coming! And a brand new project comes along with it, we'll be partecipating in the second issue of the Blogirls 2.0 Magazine!

You can read our article about the pastiera napoletana, it's in spanish, but kitchen it's an universal language isn't it? Just make sure you don't miss it! You will enjoy it a lot!

In Italy, Easter time is usually spent around a good table. From north to south, you'll find a breathtaking variety of dishes, typical of this season. Mainly, Easter dishes are usually desserts: Easter Colomba, Chocolate eggs, Casatiellos, Cassatas, and so on. Today we'll talk about the Pastiera, maybe the most ancient dessert of one of the World's most ancient cities: Naples.

Its origins are legendary, in one of them, the mermaid Parthenope, having failed in enchanting the hero of the Odissey, Ulysses, decided to quit her life jumping from a cliff. But the mermaid survived, and the sea brought her in the Gulf of Naples, where she was saved from fishermen that help her recovering. Parthenope was since then always welcomed there. They say that the mermaid used to emerge from the waters every springtime to celebrate the friendship with the neapolitan people.

In one of these occasion, the people wanted to give a tribute to the mermaid: they gave her flour, symbol of wealth, ricotta cheese, symbol of abundance, eggs, symbol of fertility, wheat cooked with the milk, symbol of the union between the animal and vegetal reigns, flowers typical of the Campania region and the honey, today changed with the sugar, symbol of the sweet chant of the syren. The following morning, the mermaid went back to the shore with a pie cooked by the Gods of the Olympus themselves with the gifts the people gave to Parthenope. This is how the Pastiera Napoletana was born, or at least this is what tells us the legend.

What is sure is that food historians believe this dessert was created in the Greek Neapolis, and was a dish cooked to celebrate Ceres, the goddess of the harvest (Ceres gave the name to the cereals). The recipe was then perfectioned in the XVI century in the Santa Patrizia convent, where you can find the most baroque church you've ever seen. The Santa Patrizia convent is also in front of the World famous "via dei presepi", where you can find lots of nativity scene statues all years round.

The first time that the Pastiera is mentioned is in the year 1634, in the book "Il gatto Cenerentola" (in english, "Cinderella the cat") by Giambattista Basile. It may result interesting to notice that this fairy tale was then modified by Charles Perrault for his "Cinderella". We can say that the pastiera starts out with the Odissey, continue with the Mermaid and ends with Cinderella!

We can tell you another fun fact: the queen of Naples, Maria Therese of Habsurg-Teschen, the wife of Ferdinand II of Bourbon, was famous to the people as the "queen that never smiles". That nickname was used until she tried a slice of the pastiera. The pie taste was just too good not to smile! The king, after that, declared: "we had to use the pastiera to see my wife smile in public. Now we'll have to wait until next Easter to see her smiling again!".
Yes, the pastiera is an authentic cure for bad mood, just like the spring days in Naples!

Recipe: (for two pastieras some 23 cms wide approx.)

- Ingredients of the filling:

 550 g. of grano cotto; 700 g. of ricotta (both a goat and cow ricotta); 400 g. of sugar; 500 ml. of milk; 50 g. of butter; 180 g. aprox. of candied fruit (candied citron, orange, etc.); 5 g. of cinnamon powder; 5 ml. of Millefiori; 6 eggs; lemon zest to taste.

- For the shortcrust pastry:

450 g. of flour; 120 g. of sugar; 60 g. of lard (cold); 180 g. of butter (cold and cut into dices); 3 egg yolks; 1 spoonful (5 g.) of Vanillina or vanilla extract; orange zest.

Preparation:

1- Let's start preparing the grano cotto. Pour the canned cooked wheat (ready to use) in a pan, along with the milk and the butter. Stir it for some 15 minutes with a wooden spoon at medium-low heat, until you obtain a creamy texture. You can easily find the grano cotto at every italian grocery store, or very easily online (it's easy to find it at Ebay too). If you can't find it, you can easily do it at home*.

2- Prepare the pasta frolla, the italian version of the shortcrust pastry. To do so, we can use our mixer. Add first the dry ingredients, then add the butter and the lard cut into dices (both must be cold!), mix it all and add the egg yolks. Mix it again and you'll see a sandy texture. To obtain an homogeneous dough and easy to work with, add slowly 3 or 4 spoonful of really cold water. Knead the dough into a ball and pop it into the fridge covered with plastic wrap for about half an hour.

3- For the filling, put the ricotta in a bowl, but be careful! We don't want a wet ricotta, make sure that yo've dried it before using. Add the sugar to the bowl and mix it all. Then add the cream of grano cotto you've previously prepared, and add the eggs and the cinnamon too. Mix it all until you'll obtain an homogeneous cream. At last, add the Millefiori essence and the candied fruit. The Millefiori in Southern Italy means pastiera, but since it is hard to find, you can use rosewater instead.

4- Grease the moulds that you choose to bake, cover the bottom and the sides with the pasta frolla shortcrust pastry, then add the filling. The moulds usually are high, but you can use whatever mould you want, but it is important that they're metallic ones. The surface of the filling will be covered with stripes of shortcrust pastry, shaping a sort of grating. This is useful not only to decorate the surface, but also to contain the filling that will inflate during the baking. Paint the surface with beaten eggs to give to our pie a golden colour and there you are! Ready to bake!

5- Bake the pastiera in a preheated oven at 180ºC, for anytime between 60 to 75 minutes. Once baked, leave the pastiera to cool completely. It is an Easter dessert, and the tradition say that it has to be prepared on Maundy Thurday and eaten on Easter Sunday, three days after...but come on! Who can resist?

* Homemade preparation of the grano cotto: this is the key ingredient of the pie, but even if today this is very easy to find ready to use, maybe you want to know how to prepare it at home. This how you can cook it to yourself!
This is a large process, let the wheat grains in water for three days (change the water often), and then boil it in water for some hours. Then boil it again in milk for at least three hours. It is not a difficult process, but it takes a long long time to prepare your homemade grano cotto! We usually use the bottled grano cotto, that is very cheap too and it tastes just as good as the homemade one!

Happy Easter and...Buon Appetito!

The history of the Easter Egg

The Easter Egg is the symbol itself of the Eastertide around the World and of course in Italy too, where it shares the status of hero of Easter celebrations along with the neapolitan Pastiera in south and the Colomba pasquale in the north of the Country. But beneath the thin layer of dark, white or milk chocolate (choose the one you prefer) our egg hides a World full of legends and histories. We don't wanna talk about the recipe today, we want to share with you the origin of one of the most recognizable gastronomical icon in the Western world. How was it created? It's a long long way back, so let's get started!

The eggs have always represented a strong mythological and symbolic element, often linked with religions. For example, we have decorated ostrich eggs from sixty thousands years ago...it was the origin of mankind itself! Then the Sumerian and the Egyptians used to put decorated and coloured eggs in the tombs. The ancient Romans used to put a red egg in the fields they cultivated in sign of good luck, saying "Omne vivum ex ovo", that is, everything that is alive came from an egg. There are also biblical legends from the roman era. Mary Magdalen, says the legend, when discovered that the tomb of Jesus was empty, immediately ran to tell the news to the Apostles. Peter, according to the legend, would have said then: "I will believe you, Mary Magdalen, only if those eggs in that basket will become red!". And suddenly the eggs actually became red. After that, in the first Christian era, in Mesopotamia, started the tradition of decorating and painting an egg red remembering the blood of Christ in the Good Friday.

But it was during the institution of Lent that the symbolical eggs of Easter became somewhat related to food: in the Lent, infact, there was the tradition of not eating eggs, and therefore the eggs were put aside and preservated for Easter. During the Middle Ages, it was a tradition to give to the servants eggs for Easter. There are various hypotesis about who created the chocolate eggs, some say it has been the king Louis XIV of France, other says it has been created in South America, where the cocoa plant, the xocoatl, is from. What we actually know is that the procedure to create the vacuum chocolate egg we see today has been invented in 1825 by the dutch chocolate artist Coenrad van Houte. This technique is known today -properly enough- as "dutching". In 1875 the english chocolatier John Cadbury started the massive distribution of the modern days Easter Eggs.

Cadbury's mini Easter eggs

Then, between 1885 and 1917 the decorated Easter eggs became world icon,
because of the famous jewels made for the Tsars or Russia by the russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé. Since the popularity of the Fabergé eggs, the chocolate eggs started to become more and more famous, and started containing a little surprise.


After the World War II, the chocolate Easter Eggs became a pop culture icon linked to springtime and Easter, and new and ancient myths have been rediscovered, like for example the tradition of the Easter Bunny leaving the eggs in the garden in Northern Europe. Today, in parts of England, Germany and France, someone still organizes a family treasure hunt with kids on Easter Sunday looking for the hidden chocolate eggs. As a final note, we can add that the word "Easter" comes from the pagan Goddess of Eostre, that in the nordic mythologies was linked with the ideas of Nature and Springtime.

Our dark chocolate Easter egg...soo delicious!

Have a wonderful Easter!

Tom

The Gachas Cordobesas

Today we bring you a recipe that I've known since I was a little kid. My Grandma (mother side) and all her family are from Cordoba, a city of Andalucia, and this dish comes from that part of Spain. The recipe has been passed from generation to generation, and my mother taught it to me. I want to share it with you all this recipe that is really famous in Cordoba, even if in Canary Island not so much.

About the origins of the cordobese Gachas little is known, but what is sure is that this recipe has lots of centuries on its back. This recipe was popular in the Middle Ages and in the Al-Andalus era too (the moresque era). It is known also that in the roman era somethig very similar was prepared, since there are documents found in the work of the latin writer Marcus Gavius Apicius.

The gachas are to be prepared with very simple ingredients, and even if the tradition wants them to be prepared for all the Saints (1st of November), you can't help but eating them all-year-round.

Ingredients:

• 200 g. of flour ( some 8 spoonful)
• 20 g. aprox. of granulated anise (matalahuva)
• 1/2 lemon zest
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 100 g. of sugar (yu choose)
• Bread
• oil to fry the bread ( 150 g. aprox.)
• 1 pinch of salt
• milk ( aproximately I used 1 and half liter).
• cinnamon powder to decorate

The fried bread

Preparation:

1º- Cut the bread in pieces and fry it in the oil, y lo doramos o freímos en aceite, but we won't let it burn. Put the bread aside.

2º- Put a pot on heat and pour two spoonful of oil. When it starts being really hot, we will add the anise grains and we will remove it from heat so to not let it burn, otherwise our dish will be too bitter.

3º- Put again the pot on heat and we will add some milk. The milk it can be both warm or cold. I usually prefer it to be cold at the beginning and then warm to avoid bulks, you choose.

Milk, lemon, cinnamon, oil and anise seeds.

4º- At low heat, we put the flour, the lemon, the cinnamon and the salt in the pot. We energically stir to mix well the flour with the milk. We will add slowly the milk, letting it dense a little bit, just like we would do with the bechamel sauce. Stir it countinously, to avoid the creation of bulks. The process will last some 20 minutes in order to obtain a well cooked sauce with a good taste.

5º- When the sauce starts to dense and we have finished pouring all the milk, we add the sugar and we stir. When the sugar have completely melted we move to our next step (try if the sauce is sweet enough, and in the case, just add some more sugar and stir again).

6º- We add the fried bread, we stir and we turn off the heat. Now you can try them, and you'll see that they will not taste as flour at all, and they'll have a very smooth consistence in the mouth.

7º- Serve it in a central dish, or in different, individual portions. Decorate them with cinnamon powder and let it cool a little bit before serving. I love them warm anyway.

The gachas are realized also with water instead of milk, but in my family we always used this version. In other parts of Spain, the word "gacha" is used to describe other salted dishes.

In many versions the lemon skin is added at the beginning, along with the oil, and then remove it when it is a little bit fried. I tend to prefer to add it to the milk and cook it, so that the aroma of the lemon slowly gets integrated in the milk. I love to put some not fried bread in the gacha, but I know many others prefers to add it above the gacha, to decorate it. That's a matter of taste, as everything is in this life!

I hope you'll try them!

Greetings,

AnGie