Polenta e Osei, a specialty of Bergamo, is a pastrychef's slight of hand, a mound-shaped cake that looks like freshly turned out polenta, being pecked at by a flock of sweet marzipan osei, or birds. A great delight!
Prep Time: 2 hours,
Cook Time: 1 hours,
Ingredients:
- The Base, a pasta Margherita cake (see link)
- 4/5 cup (100 g) flour
- 1 cup (100 g) potato starch (many US supermarkets consider this a Jewish ingredient for some reason)
- 1/2 cup (100 g) unsalted butter, melted
- 6 eggs, separated
- 2 cups (200 g) powdered sugar
- Butter for buttering the pan
- Flour for flouring the buttered pan
- 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 (see link below)
Preparation:
Continuing with the introduction,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 called the Pasticceria Isacchi at the time.
The recipe:
Make the almond paste, or purchase it if you can, as it takes a lot of work.
Next, make the cake: 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 (say a round 10-inch pan), pour in the batter, and bake it in a preheated oven until done, about 30 minutes.
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.
