Carmelita’s Cookitaly

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.

Zuppa Inglese

   

Emilia-Romagna's favourite sweet

This custard concoction of sunny cheerful colours is the most popular traditional dessert here, loved throughout the region: from Emilia, spreading west of Bologna, to Romagna to its east and of course in Bologna itself. It is now found in other regions too but nowhere else does it appear without fail on every restaurant menu. That this is its home and its place of origin is, for once, not contested.

The story goes that it originated sometime in the course of the 1500s in the kitchens of the rulers of Ferrara at the time, the Dukes of the Este family. They were leading patrons of the arts and under their rule in the Renaissance period the city enjoyed a long period of intense cultural and artistic activity. Besides encouraging musicians, poets and painters the Este family engaged in diplomatic activity to develop and maintain good relations with other powerful ruling families in Italy and in Europe. It is said that a courtier returning from diplomatic duties in England described a popular sweet served at the end of the banquets at the English court, the sweet today known as "trifle". He described its layers of custard, sponge and cream and the cooks of the Este court created the Zuppa Inglese inspired by his description.

This story does not entirely hold water as it would seem that the various dainty "little trifles" served in 16th and 17th century England had no trace of sponge cake. But it makes a pretty tale and suggests a plausible explanation of why the sweet is described as "Inglese", in other words, English.

Then there is the "Zuppa" part, which often confuses non-Italian speakers. The Italian verb "inzuppare" means "to dunk" or "to dip" or more generally to moisten something dry with some form of liquid. In this sweet, as in the much newer invention Tiramisù, sponge cake or lady finger biscuits are dipped into a liquid, making the resulting sweet a "zuppa".

There are savoury "Zuppe" too, usually thick stews of fish or meat served on a slice of toasted bread or else chunky soups containing cereals and legumes. The thing to remember is that the word "zuppa" in Italian does not translate as soup, and that it is often used to describe desserts.

But enough, on to the recipe for Italy's famous Zuppa, the "English" one from Emilia-Romagna.

 Zuppa Inglese

For 6 people you will need:

300g of lady finger biscuits ("Savoiardi") (10 and a half ounces or as many as fit in your container)

120g (4 ounces) sugar

30g (an ounce) flour 

500ml (a pint) milk 

5 egg yolks  

a vanilla pod (optional, but makes it special) 

50g (scant two ounces) chopped 70% cocoa chocolate 

a glass (cup) each of water and Alchermes liqueur  

(or substitute a liqueur of your choice or a diluted strawberry syrup for the traditional bright pink colour ) 

20g (1 and a half tablespoons) butter

optional sour cherry or sharp apricot jam

Set aside 100 ml (0.4 of a cup) of milk. Heat the rest with the sugar and the scraped out vanilla seeds till it comes to the boil.

Meanwhile, place the 5 yolks in a bowl and whisk them with the sifted flour, then still whisking, add the cold 100ml of milk gradually.

When the remaining milk has come to the boil and all the sugar is dissolved, add it gradually to the yolks while still whisking. Then place everything in the pan in which you boiled the milk and return to a moderate heat for about 10 minutes to thicken.

Whisk constantly and whisking patiently on low heat to bring the mixture almost to boiling point so that it thickens - the very fine bubbles on the surface will disappear when it is ready. Snatch it off the heat, and transfer to a cool bowl as soon as possible, as it can continue to cook and so curdle, .

Divide in two thirds and one third by pouring into two separate bowls - there is no need to be precise here. Add the chocolate, broken into bits, to the smaller amount and mix to melt the chocolate and blend well. Leave to cool.

Mix the water and Alchermes* together. Dip the lady fingers lightly in the liquid, and use make a layer at the bottom of one large or several small glass bowls. Place with the pink side facing the outside, so it is visible through the glass.

Now add a layer of the chocolate custard and if you wish carefully top with a very thin layer of sour cherry or apricot jam, dropping teaspoonfuls at regular intervals as it is impossible to spread the jam over the soft custard with a knife or spoon. If you like you can reserve some of the chocolate custard and place it in a piping bag or squeegee bottle to use for decorating the top.

Finish with a deeper layer of plain custard.

Refrigerate for  at least one hour before serving. For special occasions you could further garnish with one or more of whole sour cherries in syrup, grated chocolate and toasted flaked almonds.

* Today artificial colourings are used but originally the natural dye "Kermes" was used, hence the name which is clearly of Arabic origin.