For me, living on the border between the provinces of Siena and Florence, driving south in Tuscany means going through one of the most breathtaking scenery on the planet, the Val d’Orcia and the Crete Senesi, declared by UNESCO, in 2004, World Heritage Site. The outlines of the hills are well known throughout the world, just as the small group of cypress trees at the top of a small hill that seem placed there on purpose to inspire photographers and dreamers.

Pienza, Bagno Vignoni, San Quirico d’Orcia… these are lands of cheese, hot springs and soft landscapes. Then Montalcino, known throughout the world for its wine and also for the excellent extra virgin olive oil, the view that stretches to a far horizon of rolling hills and an abbey just outside the town where the air still vibrates with mysticism and Gregorian chants.

When you drive southward  you have a far away reference point, the Mount Amiata, an ancient and no longer active volcano that dominates the surrounding valleys, the Val d’Orcia, the Bolsena lake, the Chianti and the plain of Maremma. In cloudless days you can see the Amiata mountain even from Siena and my house, covered with chestnut and beech forests. Though it has the fire in its remote past, now is the water that represents its main source of wealth: the Fiora waterworks supply with the local water the entire southern Tuscany and northern Lazio.

Until a few years ago the Mount Amiata was well-known for its winter tourism, being the most important ski resort in the southern Tuscany with its ski tows and its cozy mountain huts. Nowadays it is instead mostly appreciated for the fresh air, the green areas, the hot springs and a straightforward and hearty cuisine.

The goal of our southward trip was Piancastagnaio, famous for its incredible houses clinging to the side of a cliff and protected by the fortress Aldobrandeschi. Piancastagnaio is named after the splendid chestnut trees which surround the town and gift the villagers with one of the most important ingredients of their local cuisine, the chestnuts, celebrated every year in the famous Crastatone festival.

If you’ll ever visit Piancastagnaio, I do suggest you to climb to the Rocca Aldebrandesca, just to enjoy the pictoresque view of the town spreading beneath, with red roofs, the clock tower and the smoke from the chimneys, painting the scenario of an old time mountain village, genuine and true.

And now we enter in a Lord of the Rings genealogy: Piancastagnaio is the hometown of my friend Paolo, who is the husband of my best friend Laura, famous for the luscious Sacher Torte recipe, as well as for being the daughter of Rita, who revealed me the recipe for the delicious pine nut cake, and from now on also for being the daughter-in-law of the woman who gave me the recipe of the ricciolina, the decadent cake who pushed us South!

A first clarification is due, since I really do not want to raise the wrath of neighbour villagers, separated by colorful rivalries as always happens in Italy: the ricciolina tart belongs to the culinary tradition of Abbadia San Salvatore, not to Piancastagnaio. So do not hold it against me if the recipe comes from Laura’s mother-in-law from Piancastagnaio, I strongly believe that a thick slice of shortcrust pastry filled with creamy chocolate spread – now replaced with the world famous Nutella – would help even the most bitter enemies to come to an agreement.

The ricciolina tart hides between two crumbly shortcrust layers a thick Nutella filling and a generous handful of dried fruit, just to make it even more devilishly good. As the filling is made with Nutella, the first thing that comes to mind would be to use hazelnuts, but you can find sometimes also almonds or walnuts. I chose walnuts.

The walnuts are extremely appreciated in the Tuscan pastry making (just think at cavallucci) and their use goes back to the old times when myths and legends were part of the everyday life. Despite the love for this rich dried fruit, the relationship with the walnut trees has always been based on respect and fear. It was thought that the witches chose these trees as a shelter: every time the wayfarers found a walnut tree with a cracked trunk, they used to abandon that path not to wake up the witch who rested inside.

This is a mountain tart, a rustic and traditional shortcrust with a thick filling of Nutella and walnuts, covered by a gentle puff of meringue on which you can draw squiggles of chocolate, from which the cake takes its name.

When Paula from Bellalimento asked me to contribute with a Nutella sweet treat to the blog Bellanutella, I decided to take up the challenge and dig into the Tuscan culinary tradition to find a typical cake made with this delicious chocolate spread… this was definitely a cake worth the trip to the Mount Amiata, I bet you will adore it, too!

Head over to Bellanutella blog to discover the mouthwatering recipe to make the ricciolina!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Tuscan Nutella and meringue tart

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Just two months before Christmas, before a very special Christmas, this year. I’ve always known that if there was a Christmas to be remembered, after the many jolly festive days of childhood, it should have been the Christmas of my 30 years. So here we are, just two months to go and I’ll know if my predictions were right!

I love the Christmas day, I love the thrilling feeling of an early awakening on a cold and orange-and-cinnamon-smelling day, I love all the feelings related to that very special day: generosity, hope, love, family.

Do you think I am predictable? Yes, I might have said the usual things, listing the well known feelings that everyone relates to Christmas. Isn’t this predictable sensation that makes special the magic of Christmas? You are perfectly aware of which kind of love will rise in your heart, but every year Christmas knows how to play with your expectations, surprising you and leaving that adorable childish awe in your eyes, where the Christmas tree sparkles yet another year.

If only this warm well-being could last a little bit longer, if only we could extent the well known happy mood and not tuck it into the decoration boxes along with baubles and lights, to rest in a dark attic for a whole year… would it be great? well, I’ll tell you a secret!

I have recently discovered how to make it last, how to enhance the smiling warmth related to the Yuletide. How? Make it an home-made Christmas. Don’t run into a last minute race to buy impersonal gifts that will cost you a fortune and won’t be as perfect as a well studied gift for your best friend, for your loved one or for your parents.

Make small gourmet gifts, choose the best ingredients and wrap them with ribbons and love, make your dears one feel they are special, grind and stir hope and happiness along with spices and chocolate, infuse serenity with mint to make a precious vinegar and do not forget to sprinkle all your gifts with magic. These will be special days to be remembered, giftwrap your time and make it precious for the people you love.

To make these following two recipes I took the inspiration from this useful post from Honest-food.net. Check it for detailed information about the chemistry behind home-made mustard and storing: it can be kept in the fridge for several months!

Do you know what makes me happy? I’m not the only one already packing and wrapping singing Jingle bells in a low voice, not to be taken for a crazy person! Vanessa from Prepped has even launched a contest, Let’s make Christmas 2011, to gather gourmet gift ideas to face with serenity Christmas and be ready with home made gifts well on time! I’m happy to take part to this initiative!

Here you can find other gourmet gift ideas from my blog and from my fellow foodie friends:

• bottle your spirit and make this red wine vinegar flavoured with mint and star anise,
• involve your children into the dirty work of shaping nutty chocolate & tahini truffles, change the spices, add cinnamon, nutmeg, orange peel and ginger and make them even more festive,
• go wholesome and choose of the many healthy treats from Heidi’s 101 cookbooks, for example toasted almond sables cookies: you would make me happy with a box of these cookies with a red ribbon and a dessicated orange slice as decoration!
• be smart and vegetarian and make home made ketchup, following Jamie’s recipe or Gaby’s method,
• and obviously follow Vanessa’s contest Let’s make Christmas 2011 to discover many interesting ideas, just as her Sloe Gin.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Home made mustard – Gourmet gifts for Christmas

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When I saw this traditional English Christmas cake in the Sep/Oct Jamie Magazine issue, I knew immediately that I would have definitely baked it for Christmas (yeah, I know, I love Christmas and I start thinking about it as soon as I put away my summer T-shirts and light dresses, I can’t help it).

As you already know how much I love the British side of life, you will easily understand how I desperately fell for this delicious fruit cake: rich, sumptuous, full of dried fruit and, above all, very English! It’s traditional to make this a few weeks before Christmas, so that you can feed it by pouring over booze of your choice, to further enrich the flavor of this extraordinary fruit cake.

The brandy aroma, combined with dried fruit and nuts, reminds me of season greetings, snowy Christmas carols, twinkling lights, rustling paper and satin ribbons… I can’t wait to finally bite into a thick slice of fruity Christmas cake, as until now I could only nibble something, while gradually adding some brandy to my creature!

Traditional Christmas Cake – from Jamie Magazine Sep/Oct 10

(Serves 16)

Ingredients:

• 600 g raisins
• 200 g currants
• 100 g dried sour or glacé cherries
• 250 g mixed dried fruits (try prunes, apricot, apples, pears) finely chopped
• 400 ml booze, plus extra to ‘feed’ the cake (brandy, sherry, Tia Maria, rum… all work well)
• 300 g butter, at room temperature
• 200 g dark brown sugar
• 1 lemon
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tbsp treacle (I used golden syrup)
• 300 g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• a pinch of ground cloves
• 150 g ground almonds
• 150 g walnuts, chopped

The night before.

Place the dried fruit in a saucepan with the booze and bring to a simmer. Pour into a bowl, cool, cover and leave to soften.

The following day

Preheat the oven to 150C/gas 2 and line the base and sides of a 23cm round tin or a 20cm square tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper. You’ll need the side lining to be a good 8cm higher than the tin.

If you’d like your cake to be particularly moist, blitz half the soaked fruit in a food processor to make a paste, and stir back into the rest of the fruit. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Grate in the zest of your lemon and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the treacle. Sift the flour and combine with the spices and ground almonds. Mix into the butter mixture, alternating with the soaked fruit. Finally, fold in the walnuts. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin and bake in the oven for about 3 hours. Check after 2½ hours and then every 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, brush with a little more booze. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes and then remove, placing it directly onto a large sheet of tin foil. Wrap it up twice to retain the heat for as long as possible. After a few hours, remove the foil and wrap the cake up again in a double sheet of greaseproof paper and a double sheet of tin foil, making sure you can access the cake from the top. Store in an airtight container for 2–12 weeks. During this time, feed the cake the alcohol of your choice by gently pouring it over the top and rewrapping.

Frosting

I decided to frost this traditional cake with a soft topping made by whipping together mascarpone cheese and cream with 2 tbsps of icing sugar. Spread evenly the frosting over the cake and decorate with some glacé cherries or Christmas decorations.

Tasting test. It isn’t a traditional Italian cake and you won’t find it within our family Christmas recipes… Well, until this year, I dare say. I’m sure that next year this will become an unmissable Christmas sweet treat, a new tradition to built year after year, sweet fruity crumble after sweet fruity crumble. It is a rich, full-bodied, fruity and flavorful cake, in which all the ingredients are perfectly balanced. It slightly resembles our typical panforte (a kind of gingerbread), but is less sweet, I do prefer the English version.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Jamie Oliver’s Christmas cake

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