From Cosa Bolle in Pentola, the newsletter:
Winding down, Laura recently wrote: "Greetings, When visiting my relatives in Bergamo I have seen a wonderful little cake that is made to look like polenta with birds. It is sold all over the old town. I brought one back this time to try to figure out how to make it. My friend and I think we have figured out the cake and filling. Do you have a recipe for it? Specifically, we are having a problem with the outside. It appears to have corn meal in it, but the outside layer almost peels off. We are stumped. Any ideas?

Alessandro Pradelli says, in "La Cucina Lombarda," that Polenta e Osei are a much praised, century-old tradition, and that the recipe is said to have been invented a couple of minutes from the Teatro Doninzetti, in the kitchens of the Pasticceria Balzer, though it may have been the Pasticceria Isacchi at the time. Here's the recipe he gives:

The Base

A Pasta Margherita Cake:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup potato starch (many US supermarkets consider this a Jewish ingredient for some reason)
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 6 eggs, separated
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• Butter for buttering the pan
• Flour for flouring the buttered pan
• Preheat your oven to 370 F (180 C)
• Beat the whites to moderately stiff peaks.

Whip the yolks and the powdered sugar until you obtain a fluffy white mixture. Fold in, a bit at a time, the whipped whites, the starch, the flour, and the butter.

Butter and flour a pan (he doesn't say how big; I would try a 10-inch pan to start with), pour in the batter, and bake it in a preheated oven until done, about 30 minutes.

Mr. Pradelli says it should be served cold, covered with chocolate icing, zabaione, or whatever, or used as a base for preparing other cakes.

For the filling:

Alchermes (a spicy deep red liqueur)

Rum

Apricot Marmalade

For the icing:

1/4 teaspoon yellow food coloring, diluted in 1/4 cup water

1/3 cup sugar

The syrupy clear liqueur of your choice

Cocoa powder

1/2 pound almond paste (pasta di mandorle -- De Agostini's La Mia Cucina suggests you buy it because it's difficult to make, but also says how (you'll have to reduce the recipe in this case):

To make 3 pounds:

• 2/3 pound peeled almonds
• 2 1/4 pounds sugar
• 4 ounces glucose
• A mortar

Put the almonds in a moderately warm oven and let them dry for a few minutes, watching them carefully lest they brown.

Grind the almonds, a few at a time, in a mortar with 1/2 cup of sugar so as to obtain a coarse flour (if you use a blender the almonds will give off oil, which you don't want). Strain the flour into a bowl and return the coarser bits to the mortar to regrind them. Continue until you have ground all the almonds with the sugar. Pour the almond flour into a large bowl and mix 3 ounces of the glucose into it.

Combine the remaining glucose and sugar in a pot and simmer the resulting mixture, stirring gently, until threads form when you pour a spoonful back into the pot. At this point thoroughly mix the syrup into the almonds. Pour the mixture out onto a marble work surface or a large platter and let it cool. The mixture will appear granular. If you have a hand-operated pasta machine moisten the rollers and crank the mixture through it several times to smooth it out. Otherwise, roll it out with a rolling pin so as to obtain as smooth a paste as possible.

Use the extra paste to make cookies, or in other cakes.

Procedure:

Make the pasta margherita batter and bake it in a round pan of the same diameter you want the polenta to have.

Upon removing it from the oven let it cool and slice it horizontally into 2 or three slices (depending upon its thickness). Sprinkle the slices liberally with alkermes and rum, and spread them with apricot jam. It's important that the cake take on the mound-like appearance of polenta turned out on a board.

Put the sugar in a bowl and combine it with the yellow to obtain a yellow wash. Use a little more food coloring to die 3/4 of the almond paste. Roll it out with a rolling pin and lay the sheet over the cake, making sure it follows the contours of the cake, and folding the edges of the sheet under the bottom of the cake. Brush the colored syrup over the cake, and then the clear liqueur (I'm not sure what I would use here -- perhaps something almondy). While the cake is drying, shape the remaining almond paste into 2 or three birds, dust them with cocoa powder, and place them on the polenta. Store in a cool place until serving time.

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Cakes and baked desserts
The General Recipe Index