To begin, a brief aside: I've been meaning to add a postcard section to the site but haven't had time. But I have put up a holiday photo of Florence I hope all will like: Happy Happy Merry Merry!

This has been an interesting week on the food front: The prefectures of Florence and Bologna received two panettoni each (one baked by Motta and the other by Alemagna) from the Animal Liberation Front, accompanied by a warning that they were injected with rat poison and similarly treated panettoni were in the supermarkets of Florence and Bologna: this was to punish Nestlé, owner of Motta and Alemagna, for using genetically engineered plants in its products.

The ALF wanted to create a stir and harm Nestlé. It did; all the Nestlé panettoni in Florence and Bologna were recalled and sales of Motta and Alemagna have ground to a halt nation wide. The company is writing the season off and estimates losses in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars (panettone is a strictly Christmas thing that nobody would buy in January).

But did the ALF help its cause? I don't think so -- Most Italians do not know much about agriculture and probably are not even aware of the existence of genetically altered hybrids. Thus, they won't understand what the ALF is upset about. And though most Italians do like panettone, it's especially popular with children, so the reaction was "My God, they could have poisoned my kid! (or grandkid!!)" This is not the way to gain support. Nor is putting people out of work -- Since nobody is buying Motta or Alemagna, Nestlé has shut down the factories outside Verona (which just make panettoni and Colombe, cakes shaped like doves for Easter) and laid off the workers. 450 families in the lurch 10 days before Christmas. Most people feel quite sorry for them, somewhat sorry for Nestlé, and fervently hope the authorities will track down the ALF members who did the deed (they were filmed by a surveillance camera in the post office). No sympathy whatsoever for the ALF, and no support for its stance against Nestlé.

Why would anyone want to crusade against Nestlé? As a monk who works in a poor section of an African city (don't recall which) pointed out in an interview, there is good reason: The food multinationals are extraordinarily profitable in large part because of their practices in third world countries, which do tremendous personal and environmental damage. However, mailing tainted panettoni is not the way to get this message across. Greanpeace has lots of volunteers who get out the word, good publicists, and enjoys tremendous grassroots support (at least in Italy).

So where does this leave us? The local pastry shop makes excellent panettone and reports record sales, as do all of Florence's bakeries. Wondering what panettone is? It's a Milanese Christmastime specialty bread made with raisins and candied fruit, which is light, airy, and keeps remarkably well -- the Milanese set aside a wedge to enjoy on San Biagio, in mid February. Because it keeps so well it is ideally suited for mass production and now the food industry floods the country with panettoni beginning in December. Here are a number of panettone recipes, and some other things as well:

Panettone
An extremely detailed recipe, from Good Morning America (of all places).

Cassadetti & Cassata alla Siciliana

Winding down, Kit Cat wrote"I am seeking the recipe for Cassadetti (I may not be spelling it correctly). It is a deep fried cake/cookie, it is made of a sweet dough filled with dried ricotta cheese and honey. They are usually shaped as a half moon. The dough is filled, closed, ends pressed down with fork and then deep fried in vegetable shortening."

Turns out they're Sicilian, and called Cassatelle (Cassateddi in Sicilian) di Ricotta. Pino Correnti notes, in introducing them in his "Il Libro d'Oro della Cucina e dei Vini di Sicilia"that they're an Easter thing and especially popular in the area around Modiciano. His recipe doesn't mention frying, but he does say that there's an infinite number of variations on the theme. Likewise, though he suggests sugar one could easily replace it with honey as the sweetener.

His recipe is an observation following his basic Cassata recipe, so we will begin with that:

Cassata Siciliana al Forno, from Palermo's Pasticceria Mazzarra

To serve 10:

• 1 1/4 pounds fresh ricotta (the crumbly kind one buys in delicatessens)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 pound diced candied melon rind, finely diced
• 1/4 pound diced candied orange peel, finely diced
• 1/4 pound baking chocolate, finely shaved
• A pinch vanilla (figure 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract)
• Pasta frolla sufficient to line and cover a 9-inch pan (see http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0130.htm)
• Confectioner's sugar for dusting
• Pan di Spagna (see below)

This is the recipe used by Salvatore Beninati, pastry chef of the Antica Pasticceria Mazzarra in Via Generale Magliocco 15/21, where Tommasi di Lampedusa wrote much of his celebrated Il Gattopardo.

Put the ricotta through a strainer and mix it with the sugar (Ada Boni, in her recipe, suggests you beat the sugar and ricotta until the mixture is light and fluffy). Stir in the vanilla, candied fruit and chocolate, mixing well to distribute them evenly.

Roll out your pasta frolla and line a 9-inch cake pan with it. Lay down a layer of crumbled pan di spagna over the dough, spoon the ricotta mixture over it, and cover everything with a second sheet of pasta frolla. Bake in a moderate (370 F, 185 C) oven until the pasta frolla is lightly browned (don't let it over brown or it will become quite hard). Remove it from the pan when it has cooled and dust it with the confectioner's sugar.

Note: Ada Boni suggests a slightly different procedure: She has you line your cake pan with oven paper, then with pieces of pan di spagna cut into strips so as to make a pan di spagna box, which should be filled with the ricotta mixture and covered with a thin lid of pan di spagna. She then has you chill the cassata and remove it from the pan by covering the cake with a serving plate, flipping everything, and carefully lifting away the pan and the paper. Then she tells you to dust the cake with powdered sugar -- no baking other than that of the pan di spagna involved.

In any case, with regards to Cassateddi di Ricotta, Mr. Correnti says, "they're an Easter cake, common throughout the Island (in the past they were also made from boiled ground chick peas mixed with cooked wine), especially in the Modiciano area. They're made by splitting small loaves of pan di spagna and filling them with ricotta that has been put through a strainer, sweetened with sugar, and enriched with chocolate and candied fruit. At Modica they're also made with tuma, a very fresh unsalted cheese. Dusted with an abundance of confectioner's sugar, they're topped with candied cherries. A more recent variation has them filled with crema pasticcera (pastry cream) and topped with sugar frosting. The popularity of "cassatelle"has led to the saying, cu nn'appi n'appi cassateddi ri Pasqua, which one uses in Sicily at the end of any event, meaning that it's time for all, those pleased and those less so, turn their attention to other things."

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

Pan di Spagna

The pan di spagna that Mr. Correnti and Ada Boni call for is quite similar to the Genoise, which Italians call pasta Genovese. It's a simple cake whose major function is to serve as an ingredient in other, more elaborate productions. Here is Ada Boni's recipe, from Il Talismano della Felicitá:

To make a cake for 6:

• 1 1/3 cups fine flour
• 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar (if you have a scale, you want the same weight as you have flour)
• 5 eggs, separated
• Grated lemon or orange zest, or vanilla extract (about a teaspoon or so of whichever you prefer)
• Butter for greasing the pan

Preheat your oven to 375 F (185 C).

Beat the yolks and the sugar until the mixture is pale yellow, light, and has expanded considerably in volume. Whip the whites to firm peaks. Fold them into the yolks, and then fold the flour and the flavoring agent of your choice into everything. Grease and flour a fairly high-sided round 9-inch pan. Bake for about 40 minutes or until done (a toothpick inserted will come out dry, and the cake will pull away from the sides of the pan). Turn the cake out onto a rack to cool.

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

Thanks for visiting, and have a wonderful day!
Kyle Phillips

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