Sfratti are traditional pastries for Rosh Hashanah, and following the Italian Jewish custom for sweets the name is sad -- it translates as "eviction" to remind people of the pitfalls that life has in store.
Ingredients:
- For the filling:
- 18 ounces (500 g) honey
- 2 1/4 pounds (1 k) unshelled walnuts
- Orange zest
- A pinch each ground pepper, cloves and cinnamon
- For the dough:
- 10 tablespoons white wine
- 5 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 1/2 cups (300 g) sugar
- Flour
Preparation:
Giuliana Ascoli Vitali-Norsa, author of La Cucina nella Tradizione Ebraica, says that, among other things, the standard Italian Rosh Hashanah meal will include ricciolini, triglie alla mosaica, polpettone di tacchino, fried yellow squash or other vegetables prepared without vinegar, and either a honey cake, sfratti, or apples and bananas cooked with rum. Ricciolini are pasta served in broth, a sort of noodle soup, while triglie alla mosaica are reef mullet cooked in a tomato sauce, sometimes with a jolt of hot pepper; you also find them referred to as triglie alla livornese, and by extension other kinds of fish cooked in this sauce can be called "alla livornese" too. Polpettone di tacchino is turkey loaf, and can be simple (the above link), but can also be extraordinarily refined.
Sfratti, she says, are a traditional Italian Rosh Hashanah sweet, and the combination of honey and nutmeats the recipe calls for does look quite old; the recipe's obvious sweetness also suggests age -- before the advent of readily available refined sugar, sweets were very prized and reserved for extremely special events, for example greeting the new year. Assemble the ingredients listed above.
Begin by shelling the nuts and mincing the nutmeats with a little orange zest. Heat the honey with the spices, and when it reaches the thread stage slowly stir in the nuts and cook them in the honey over a low flame.
Unfortunately, Ms. Vitali-Norsa was writing for Jewish women who were familiar with the recipes, and assumes that her readers will know what the results should be like. Hence, she simply says to cook the honey-nut mix until done; I would cook the mixture until I have finished making the dough, and then remove it from the burner. She also omits the quantity of flour for the dough. You'll need enough to form a smooth, workable dough, which you'll want to knead well and roll out about an eighth of an inch thick. Next, she says, take tepid blobs or cylinders of the honey-nut mixture, wrap them in the dough, and form them into doughnuts or snakes -- in other words, once you have laid out equally spaced blebs of filling on the dough, cut the dough into rectangles, each with a bleb of filling, and roll them up to make tubes, either pinching the ends off to form snakes or twisting them around and pinching them together to form doughnuts. Once you are done rolling and shaping, bake the sfratti in a moderate (350 F, 175 C) oven until lightly browned.
Sfratti, she says, are a traditional Italian Rosh Hashanah sweet, and the combination of honey and nutmeats the recipe calls for does look quite old; the recipe's obvious sweetness also suggests age -- before the advent of readily available refined sugar, sweets were very prized and reserved for extremely special events, for example greeting the new year. Assemble the ingredients listed above.
Begin by shelling the nuts and mincing the nutmeats with a little orange zest. Heat the honey with the spices, and when it reaches the thread stage slowly stir in the nuts and cook them in the honey over a low flame.
Unfortunately, Ms. Vitali-Norsa was writing for Jewish women who were familiar with the recipes, and assumes that her readers will know what the results should be like. Hence, she simply says to cook the honey-nut mix until done; I would cook the mixture until I have finished making the dough, and then remove it from the burner. She also omits the quantity of flour for the dough. You'll need enough to form a smooth, workable dough, which you'll want to knead well and roll out about an eighth of an inch thick. Next, she says, take tepid blobs or cylinders of the honey-nut mixture, wrap them in the dough, and form them into doughnuts or snakes -- in other words, once you have laid out equally spaced blebs of filling on the dough, cut the dough into rectangles, each with a bleb of filling, and roll them up to make tubes, either pinching the ends off to form snakes or twisting them around and pinching them together to form doughnuts. Once you are done rolling and shaping, bake the sfratti in a moderate (350 F, 175 C) oven until lightly browned.
