Carmelita’s Cookitaly

recipes, food facts and food lore from Italy
 

White Chocolate Tart with Seasonal Berries

This is a very easy, very quick desert that looks and tastes great. If you can have a good dish without much effort I am all for it and this one you can put it together in moments. Keep your cupboard stocked and you can amaze your unexpected guests withj a stunning loking sweet .

It is not a traditional dish but one I picked up from an Italian cooking magazine a few years back. It is wholly Italian in it simplicity: just a few ingredients and no going mad adding this spice and that garnish. I have no desire to "put my twist" on recipes that are perfectly good already. Certainly not in the case of recipes that have been tried, tested and imporved over decades and at times centuries, but also when the recipe comes from a friend or a food magazione. If it works, no need to "fix it".

So here it is, just as I found it in "Sale e Pepe"  Or maybe it was the Italian "La Cucina Italiana": a recipe for a simple sweet that looks and tastes sublime.


Torta al Cioccolato Bianco con Frutti di Bosco

250g (9 ounces) of ready made puff pastry (or make your own pasta frolla or short crust if you prefer)

200g (7 ounces) white chocolate

400g fresh runny cheese ( for example a mixture of Ricotta and Robiola or Philadelphia)

120g (4 ounces) small berries in season - ideally the tiny elongated and super fragrant Alpine strawberries or woodland strawberries, or else whatever berries are at their seasonal best

optional

2 tablespoons sugar

half a teaspoon of powdered cinnamon

Confectioner's sugar to finish

 

  • Pre heat the oven to 180° C (350° F).

  • The flaky pastry I buy here comes on it own sheet of baking paper. If yours doesn't, flour and butter the tart tin. Delicately roll out the bought pastry.

  • Place the pastry in the baking tin and pierce the base several times with a fork. Cover with baking paper and fill with dried beans . Bake at 180 ° for 20 minutes till crisp and golden.

  • If when you lift off the paper the inside of the tart does not look well cooked, protect the edges with kitchen foil and return to the oven for a 5 minutes or so.

  • While the pastry shell is baking, very briefly rinse the wild strawberries and leave to dry on kitchen paper. Break the chocolate into small pieces

  • Place the two cheeses in a bowl with the cinnamon if using and whisk together with a wooden spoon or spatula till it is very smooth and well blended

  • Melt the white chocolate over low heat in a water bath.

  • Leave to cool a little then pour gradually onto the cream cheese and blend the two mixtures thoroughly. Taste and adjust for sweetness with sugar or honey if you wish. Refrigerate this filling for at least 2 hours.

  • 10 minutes before serving, sprinkle the raspberries with the sugar and leave to macerate.

  • Just before serving fill your pre-baked tart with the cold white chocolate "cream". Smooth the surface with a spatula or the back of a metal spoon.

  • Pour the fruit all over the top of the filling and serve.

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Variations:

As you can see in the top photo, we made a little rasberry syrup by cooking the riper fruit with a little sugar and water.

You can sprinkle thickly with confectioner's sugar (icing sugar, powdered sugar) if you like. Do this only just before serving.

You can garnish with little sprigs of fresh mint and/ or chocolate curls or grated chocolate.

You can" bury" most of the fruit if you want a white colour top: Place most if the berries, reserving some for decoration, on the bottom of the cooled tart then spread or pour over the white “crema”. Smooth the surface over as before. Use the reserved berries to form the outline of a flower, circle, an initial, a heart shape etc.

Filed under  //   berries   chocolate   Dessert   quick and easy  
Posted June 23, 2010
// 4 Comments
 

Celery, Pine Nut, Raisin and Chocolate Sauce for Roman Coda alla Vaccinara

       

Part Two

On to the second exciting part, the finishing sauce that makes the dish so special.

You will need

3 to 6 celery stalks, the pale kind if you can get it - the original recipe uses half a head of celery
A handful of pine nuts
A handful of raisins
A  single square of 70% cocoa dark chocolate - milk chocolate is all wrong
A nutmeg to grate

Preparation

First thing you do is de-string the celery carefully, then slice it into half moon segments. Bring a a pan of water to the boil and throw in a small handful of salt just before you tip in the sliced celery. Roman cuisine loves celery  - called sellero not sedano here - so you can put lots of it in. That way the celery is your vegetable dish and no other side is needed. How  small you chop it and how long you cook it is up to you. Italians like their vegetables cooked through not crunchy, and would cook medium slices for 15 to 20 minutes. I usually cook most of mine the Italian way reserving a handful to add a few minutes before the rest is ready, so as to have just a few crunchy pieces. One minute before scooping out the celery with a slotted spoon, throw in the raisins too, so that they can plump up a little, but if your raisins are very dry then soak them in warm water beforehand and skip this step.

Now it's time to toast the pine nuts on low heat in a dry pan. The traditional recipe does not toast them, just adds them to the chocolate sauce along with the celery and raisins but I prefer to use them as a topping - more attractive and tastier  - and they retain some crunch this way. Toast them patiently and slowly to be sure they are toasted all the way through, not just too browned on the outside and soft on the inside. They are ready when you can really smell their aroma.

Warm up the ox tail and its meat jelly in a small saucepan on low heat until the gelatin liquefies. Cover and leave on low heat until it is time to serve.

And now the sauce!

Take a small saucepan and in it place a few ladles of the jellied juices from the casserole but make sure you leave the ox tail pieces well covered to stop them from drying out, add water if necessary. When the meat sauce in the little pan is hot, add the drained celery, the raisins, and one square of dark chocolate. Stir till the chocolate is melted, let it cook for 5 minutes or so and taste - it should not taste chocolatey.The chocolate is there to darken and thicken the sauce, and to add a smokey mysterious something to the meat/tomato/clove flavours. If your sauce tastes chocolatey, keep cooking it, and if necessary add more of the cooking sauce from the ox tail. If it seems watery then add a little more chocolate. Grate some nutmeg  - I like lots - and maybe some pepper, then taste and if you're happy with it, you're ready to serve,

Place one large or two small ox tail pieces on each plate with some of the juices from the casserole, place a tablespoon of the chocolate and celery enriched sauce on top, scatter with pine nuts, garnish with celery leaves, and take to the table

Buon Appetito!

 

 

Filed under  //   celery   chocolate   oxtail   pine nuts   raisins   Roman cuisine   sauce   traditional  
Posted January 18, 2010
// 1 Comment
 

Petrali – Christmas Cookies from Calabria

 

These look so festive and have a yum fig and nut filling which you can chop as coarse or as fine as you prefer. They are very “more-ish” so if you want them out of sight, they keep well in an air tight tin. If they seem Sicilian, bear in mind that apart from sharing climate and geography, Calabria and Sicily were both first Greek then part of the Kingdom of Sicily, later Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, so they have many centuries of shared history which is reflected in their respective cuisines.

To make about 50 Petrali

For the pastry you will need:

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

1 ¼ cups sugar

a stick of butter

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

2 tsp. Baking powder

grated zest of a lemon

For the filling you will need :

¾ cup soft dried figs

½ cup shelled almonds, peeled and toasted

½ cup shelled walnuts, toasted

3 tbsp. candied citrus peel, ideally of real Mandarin orange

grated zest of an orange

2 tbsp honey

A small glass of sweet dessert wine or dry Marsala

For decorating:

An egg white

Dark chocolate, butter, water

A packet of multi-coloured candy sprinkles


How you make the filling

Cut the hard stem tip off the figs, quarter and place in a small saucepan of boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes. Remove, pat dry and chop small.

Chop the toasted almond and walnuts as small as you prefer. I do it by hand but a processor is fine too.

In a bowl mix together the chopped figs and nuts, add the honey and Marsala and stir to mix.

Add the candied citrus peel and the orange zest and mix well.

Place the mixture to simmer on low heat for 5 minutes, then take off the heat and leave to macerate. The longer the better but an absolute minimum of 3 hours. Overnight or over 3 days is better still.


*You may want to make a double quantity and store in the fridge, then when you fancy some freshly made cookies you only need make the dough and the filling is ready and waiting.


How you make the pastry

Mix the egg and egg yolk with sugar.

Sieve the flour with the baking powder.

Cut in the cold butter using two knives at first so as to keep everything cold, then lightly rub in till the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.

Make a well in the centre and add the egg and lemon zest and quickly combine into a dough.

Leave to rest overnight if you can, though you can also use the dough after a short 30 minute rest in the fridge.


How you make the cookies

Roll out the dough on a well floured sheet of greaseproof paper.

Use an espresso coffee cup or a cutter to stamp out 3 inch diameter rounds. Place a spoonful of the filling to one side and fold over to make half moon pastries.

Brush some of them with egg white and sprinkle with the candy sprinkles.

Bake at 350 ° C for about 25 minutes or till lightly golden.

Allow to cool completely.


How you make the chocolate glaze

Melt 1 ½ oz dark chocolate with a pat of butter and 1 tbsp of water and brush this over the remaining Petrali.

Scatter with candy sprinkles and leave several hours for the chocolate glaze to dry well.

Filed under  //   almonds   Calabria   chocolate   Christmas   cookies   dried figs   dried fruit and nuts   Petrali   traditional Christmas meals  
Posted December 20, 2009
// 10 Comments