The Venetian butter cookies that you’ve been longing to hear about

Last year we went for a trip to Venice, and I suddenly realized that the time has drifted away and I’ve told you nothing yet about our time there!  So, today I’m going to rectify that.  Sorry that I’ve kept you in suspense for so long.  I know that you’ve been waking up every morning thinking that maybe, finally, this will be the morning that Lisa writes about Venice.  Well, all your wishes are now coming true!  Tonight, you can go to bed and rest easy. The recipe I’m going to share with you today comes from the tiny island of Burano that lies in the lagoon surrounding Venice.  The island is famous for its lace and beautifully coloured houses, and also for these biscuits called Bussolai Buranei (let’s just call them Venetian butter cookies).  They’re delicious biscuits that are formed into a “s” or an “o” shape before baking. They are dipped in sweet wine (or coffee) before eating.  Actually, you can eat them without dipping them and nothing will happen to you…….

The cookies that are too good to only make for Easter

These cookies were traditionally made just for Easter, but they’re so delicious, and so many tourists want to eat them, they now make them all year round.  They come in different shapes, but essentially, they taste the same, whichever shape they are in.  That leads me to the important point that you don’t have to make them in the shape of an “s” or even an “o”.  If you make them straight, I promise that they’ll still taste just as good.

Today, I’m going to do something a little different.  Instead of just writing about the Venetian Butter Cookies, I’m going to assault you with a short piece I wrote about Venice.  I hope you like it!

A Day in Venice

Sitting in the back-alley restaurant, Venetian dialect eddies and swirls around us. My Italian husband shrugs. “No, I don’t understand anything either.”  As we eat Sarde in Saor, the old man at the next table hears our jumble of languages.  He breaks into Italian and says, “I used to live in Texas, but I missed the water.” The stray tourists a few tables over try to order a cappuccino after their lunch. “Scusate, but is not possibile,” murmurs the waiter politely in broken English.  I make a paper boat out of the ragu-stained place-mat for one of my sons.  His eyes shine. “Let’s go float it on a canal!”.

On the slippery, algae-covered steps, I hold his hand as he carefully launches his boat. It bobs gently on the murky water towards an arch, where people stop to take photos of it. A passing gondolier maneuvers his gondola around it and gives it a helping hand on its voyage by touching it gently with his pole. My son leaps for joy and punches the air with his fist.  The gondolier winks as he glides past. A boat-taxi steams past.  The tassista swerves to avoid the paper boat, then salutes my son. Finally the little craft meanders off down a side canal.

We elbow our way onto the Ponte di Rialto. We inch the kids to the rail, keeping one hand on them through the wall of people so that they can watch the aquatic ballet of near misses going on below. A vaporetto and a gondola play a game of chicken. “This is too scary”, says my eldest son, covering his eyes. Later, the boys stalk pigeons in Piazza San Marco. “What’s the bet that this is the only bit they’ll remember?” I say.

By Lisa Watson

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Venetian Butter Cookies

Venetian Butter Cookies (Bussolai Buranei) are a specialty from the island of Burano, which lies in the Venice lagoon in Italy. 

Course Dessert, Snack, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Resting time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 50 minutes minutes

Servings 18 -20 cookies

Ingredients

• 250 g All-purpose flour 2 cups, 8oz
• 125 g Granulated sugar 4.2oz, 1/2 cup
• 1 pinch Salt
• 1 packet Vanilla sugar or 1 tsp of vanilla essence
• 100 g Butter at room temperature 7 Tbsp, 3.5oz
• Lemon zest from 1 lemon
• 3 Egg yolks
• 1 Tbsp optional Rum

Instructions

• Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, then pour the mixture onto the kitchen bench.
• Make a well in the centre, then add the butter, egg yolks, rum (if using), and lemon zest.
• Work the mixture with your hands until it turns into a smooth dough.
• Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes. If you leave it overnight in the fridge, you'll need to take it out about 30 minutes before you start making the cookies.
• Pull walnut size pieces off the ball of dough. Squeeze and roll them gently between your hands until you get a sausage shaped about the thickness of your little finger that measure about 12 cm (5 inches).  The length and thickness is to help you form the "s" shape.  Gently form it into an "s" and lay it on a cookie tray covered in baking paper.
• Bake the biscuits at 180ºC (350ºF) for 10 - 12 minutes until golden-brown.
• Leave them on the tray to cool for a few minutes after taking them out of the oven so that they "set" a little, then transfer them to a wire grill to cool.

Crumiri and cappuccino: a breakfast made in heaven!

Whenever I am in Turin, one of the first things I do on the first morning I’m there is go to the bar and drink a cappuccino (of course!) and grab a biscuit to munch on that is made with polenta flour.  The cracking of the cornmeal grains between your teeth is somehow incredibly satisfying. These cookies called crumiri, are typical of the Piemonte region of Italy in the North-west, where my husband comes from.  I’m very grateful for the fact that it comes from that part of Italy, so I have an excuse to go and eat these biscuits often! For some reason, I’d never tried to make them at home before.  I heard mentions of piping bags, and scary things like that, so I’d put them to the back of my mind. Recently I came across a recipe in an Italian cookbook that said that there was no need for any special equipment at all, except for a fork to make them look pretty.  I decided to launch myself into the making of crumiri, and discovered that it is actaully quite easy to do at home.  No longer do I have to wait until my next trip to Turin to scoff myself silly with them!

Why are crumiri cookies shaped in a U-shape?

It is said that the half-moon shape of crumiri represents the voluminous moustaches of King Vittorio Emanuele II, who was the first king of Italy when it actually united to become Italy as we know it today (except without a king now, of course). If you go to Italy, you’ll find all sorts of things named after Vittorio Emanuele II: streets, piazzas, monuments.  I guess trying to call the crumiri “Biscotti di Vittorio Emanuele II” was a bigger mouthful than the cookie, so Domenico Rossi, the baker who developed them, called them crumiri.  The actual origin of the word “crumiri” is unknown.  Maybe Mr Rossi just liked the sound of the name. 🙂

And just to finish, before I go and make myself a big cup of tea and chomp on some of the leftover crumiri before the kids get home (and eat them all!), I’d just like to say happy New Year to you all!  There are going to be all sorts of interesting things happening here this year, including a trip to New Zealand!   So, stay tuned and thanks to all of you who come to visit me here in this small part of the blogosphere!  I love your return visits!

By Lisa Watson

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Crumiri (Crunchy Cornmeal Cookies) from Italy

how to make delicious Crumiri (Crunchy Cornmeal Cookies) from Italy

Course cookies, Dessert, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour

Servings 30 cookies

Ingredients

• 200 g Polenta Flour (cornmeal) 1 1/2 cups
• 250 g All-purpose flour 2 cups
• 100 g Sugar 1/2 cup
• 1 packet Vanilla sugar or 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
• 220 g Butter 7.7oz, 1 cup
• 3 Eggs

Instructions

• In a food processor, or with a wooden spoon, mix together the dry ingredients.
• Mix in the eggs.
• Mix in the butter (softened to room temperature), either with short pulses of the food processor or with your fingertips, until an smooth dough forms. Add a little more flour if necessary.
• Form into a ball and leave in a lightly floured bowl for 30 minutes.
• Turn out onto a lightly floured bench.  Take pieces about the size of a walnut and roll then into sausages about 10cm (4 in) long.
• Place on a tray covered with baking paper and curve them into a cresent shape.  Flatten them slightly, and run over the top of the cookies gently with fork prongs to make the grooves on them.
• Bake at 200ºC (400ºF) for 18 - 20 minutes.

These cookies from Puglia has nothing to do with marzipan

Before you start thinking biscuits made of marzipan, stop right there.  These are delicious biscuits called marzapani, but the only thing they have in common with the almond paste is that they are made with lots and lots of almonds.  Marzapani are a combination of crunchy biscuit made with almonds and meringue that come from way down South in Puglia.  I’ve talked about Puglia already……..Are you beginning to get a sinking feeling that it may turn into another ranting phase like the Sicily overload I put you through last year? Sorry (well, not really!), but these two areas of Italy are too fabulous to not wax lyrical about, so bear with me! This recipe for marzapani comes from Lina, the delightful owner of Casina Montana, the lovely agriturismo we stayed at when we were hanging out in Puglia for a few days. There’s already a photo of the agriturismo in my post on torta caprese.  If you’re not convinced about going there by that photo, have a look at the photo below of the breakfast they serve up every day, then try to tell me that you’re still not interested! The pie in the front is a pasticciotto, which is relatively easy to make at home. You too can have breakfast like a Southern Italian.

Only four ingredients

Marzapani biscuits are very simple to make and only have four ingredients!  I’m amazed that you can make something that tastes so incredibly good using so few ingredients.  I discovered that it’s a very forgiving recipe as well.  As I didn’t have enough whole almonds in the cupboard, I used a mixture of peeled almonds, non-peeled almonds, sliced almonds and almond flour (I was impressed also at how many different types of almond products I had lying around), and it came out great!  I do suggest using some non-peeled almonds as it makes the finished result look pretty and gives the marzapani biscuits more texture.

How to make marzapani if you don’t have a standing mixer

If you don’t have a food processor, you can put the almonds in a large plastic bag and whack them with a rolling pin.  That’s a great exercise for getting out any frustrations you may be carrying around, but don’t get too enthusiastic and start hitting other things (or offending people)!.  If you don’t have a standing mixer to make the meringue, either use and eggbeater or whip them by hand.  If you whip them by hand, change arms every now and then, and then you won’t need to go to the gym that day: see, making marzapani is not only good for your taste-buds, but also great for your body! If you don’t have an oven, there’s not much I can do about that….

Why is everyone gluten-free these days?

Another great thing about these marzapani biscuits is that they are gluten-free!  I seem to be running into more and more people these days with gluten intolerance, so I’m always on the look-out for recipes for friends who have issues digesting gluten.  I wonder: is it a problem that’s occurring more often in our chemical soaked lives, or is it just that people are more aware of it now that they were 20 years ago?  In Italy, many supermarkets now seem to have a whole aisle dedicated to  gluten-free foods, which shows how wide-spread it must be in Italy at least.

Anyway, you don’t really need any of these excuses to make marzapani except for one: they taste stupendously good!  I highly recommend that you run to the kitchen right now and make a batch.

By Lisa Watson

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Marzapani biscuits from Puglia, Italy

Marzapani biscuits are very simple to make and only have four ingredients!  They are made with almonds of all different kinds. 

Course Dessert, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 20 -30 biscuits

Ingredients

• 250 g Almonds with skin 8.8 oz
• 250 g Peeled almonds 8.8 oz
• 3 Egg whites
• 1 packet or 1 tsp vanilla essence Vanilla sugar
• 350 g White sugar 1 3/4 cups

Instructions

• Grind the almonds into the consistency of coarse meal using a food processor.
• Using a standing mixer, or an eggbeater, beat the egg whites until foamy. Continue to beat until stiff peaks form, adding the sugar bit by bit while still beating.
• Stir in the vanilla sugar.
• Divide the meringue mixture roughly in two.
• Add one part of the meringue to the ground almonds and mix together.
• Turn out onto the bench and form it into a square or rectangle.  Use a rolling pin or your hands to make it about 1/2cm thick.
• Cover the dough with the rest of the egg mixture.
• CAREFULLY cut the dough into rectangles (or squares!) and place them on a cookie tray lined with baking paper.
• Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 15-18 minutes.

Crunchy treat time during European Carnaval

It’s Carnevale in Italy, and everywhere you look, these scrumptious pastries jump out and you and scream, “EAT ME!! EAT ME!! No, not just one of me!  MORE!! MORE!!”.  Carnevale is celebrated in many parts of Europe for a few weeks before “Shrove Tuesday”, after which you are supposed to give up something you like until Easter weekend.  That’s 40 days of no chocolate, or no coffee, or whatever vice you think you may have…….that part of the celebration is not really my thing, but I have to say that the festivities before are lots of fun with parades going on everywhere, confetti being thrown all over the place, people dressing up in costumes, and of course, lots of devouring of snacks like these chiacchiere.

In the end, a crunchy snack by any other name tastes as sweet

Chiacchiere have as many aliases in Italy as a CIA spy. Just to name a few: cenci in Tuscany, grostoli in Friuli, frappe in Lazio, and my favourite: bugie in Piemonte (which means “lies”). If you get down to brass tacks, they are basically the same deal: dough fried in oil and sprinkled with icing sugar. Who really cares about the name, as long as you can order them at the pasticceria!

A fun activity to do with kids

Just to make my life into a rerun, my youngest has the flu at the moment (see my post on minestrina from last February), so I was stuck at home busy caring for him all day.  I decided that since this is the right time of the year to eat chiacchere it was time to give them a try.  My son helped me (I figured the flu virus will die in the boiling oil).  Those are his hands cutting the dough in the photo below.  My hands don’t look that young.  So, after a test-run I can safely say that this is a fun activity to do with young kids as it doesn’t really matter what shape the chiacchiere are cut in.  The boiling in oil bit though is best to do without kids though.

Last hints on Chiacchiere

Chiacchiere are much easier to make if you have a standing-mixer and a pasta machine, but you can do it all by hand with a bit of muscle for the kneading and a rolling pin.  The chiacchiere come out amazing dry and light if the oil is heated hot enough, and are not greasy at all. Just a last note: the first photo on this page is the result of half the recipe I posted here (I didn’t have enough flour to make the full recipe and for sick kid reasons, I couldn’t go and buy more).  Even halved, it makes quite a large amount of pastries. If you want to really get into the Carnival feeling, you can also try out this recipe for Nutella stuffed Crostoli.

Oh, just two more things, then I promise that I’m signing off: I used grappa in the recipe, but you can use any digestivo that you prefer.  I’ve seen them made with brandy, limoncello, and cointreau. But, if you don’t like any of these, just add water in its place. Last note is: if you can’t get vanilla sugar where you live, just add a few drops of vanilla essence. Now I’m really getting out of here as I hear crunching coming from the kitchen and I know if I don’t get there soon, the pastries will have vanished leaving only a few stray crumbs behind……

This recipe is a mixture of two recipes: one from www.giallozafferano.it and from L’Enciclopedia della Cucina Italiana 13. Piccola Pasticceria

By Lisa Watson

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Chiacchiere (Crunchy Italian Carnaval Treats)

How to make Chiacchiere (Crunchy Italian Carnaval Treats)

Course Dessert, Snack, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Resting time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 10 minutes minutes

Servings 6 -8 people

Ingredients

• 500 g Flour 3 ½ cups
• Salt a pinch
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 70 g White sugar ⅓ cup
• 1 packet Vanilla sugar
• 20 ml Grappa 1 ½ Tbsp
• 3 Eggs
• 50 g Butter 3 ½ Tbsp
• light frying oil

Instructions

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl.  Mix them together until they are well amalgamated.
• Turn the dough out onto a slightly floured bench and knead for 10 minutes until the dough becomes elastic. If you have a stand-mixer with a kneading hook you can do this more easily!
• Wrap in plastic wrap and let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
• Cut the dough into four pieces.  Leave those that you are not working with wrapped in plastic wrap so that they don't dry out.
• Sprinkle the dough with flour and run it through a pasta machine set on the widest setting. Fold the dough in thirds, then run it through the pasta machine on the medium setting.
• Turn the dial to the second to thinnest setting and run it through one more time.  If you don't have a pasta machine, you can roll out the dough thinly and then move on to step 7.
• Lay the dough out on a lightly floured bench. Using a pastry cutter, or a sharp knife, cut the dough into shapes and sizes of your choosing.  I cut mine into rectangles about 10cm wide. Don't throw away any of the funny shaped pieces as they are also delicious when cooked!
• Heat sunflower/vegetable oil in a deep pan.  The optimum temperature for cooking the dough is 160 °C. Place the shapes in a few at a time.  They should float in the oil. Turn them regularly for 2 - 3 minutes until golden-brown.
• Drain them on a paper towel, and continue cooking the rest.
• Before serving, sprinkle them liberally with icing sugar.

Sbrisolona: the cakey-biscuit from Romeo’s Mantova in Italy

Is it a cake? Or is it a biscuit? Or shall we just not care about the semantics and gobble it all up?!! This is a delicious cake/giant biscuit called sbrisolona, which is a specialty from the beautiful city of Mantova, which I have written about once before.  You can buy it from gastronomie (kind of like delicatessens) and souvenir shops all over the city. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to get there on the spur of the moment for most people. So, to get a taste of Mantova, you can make it at home very quickly.  If you then wrap it in clear cellophane, put a ribbon around it and stick a little card on it with the word Mantova written on it in fancy writing, you could even impress your friends and pretend you HAVE been there and just thought you’d bring them back a souvenir. Just read a guidebook first about the area so you can drop some place names from around there into the conversation to sound more authentic. Say things like, “Oh the Palazzo del Té was beyond description!”, and say, “you must try tortelli di zucca when you go there!”, but never, NEVER say, “the views from our hotel of the Colosseum were stunning!”……then, I’m afraid, you may be exposed.

How did Sbrisolona get its name?

The name sbrisolona comes from the fact that  it is an incredibly crumbly cake.  In Italian “sbriciolare” means “to crumble”. In fact, sbrisolona should not be cut to serve it, but pieces of it should be broken off.  If you do decide to make this, you will very quickly discover that you don’t actually have a choice in the way you serve it.  Anyway, part of the joy of eating it is scraping up all the crumbs that are left behind, because as we all know very well, broken bits of biscuit have no calories!

In the past, this recipe traditionally used strutto, or lard in English, which is rendered fat from under the skin of pigs (OK, that does sound disgusting, but it tastes really good). I used only butter in this recipe, and from what my mouth remembers from the real thing that I ate in Mantova, the difference in taste is negligible. Sbrisolona is extremely easy to make as you throw all the ingredients in a bowl together, mix them a little and then throw the crumbly mess into the oven.  The finished product somehow manages to look as though you’ve spent hours making it. I firmly believe that  if people want to believe it, I’m not going to enlighten them! It never hurts to make everyone think you’ve been working in the kitchen longer than you really have. Then they feel too intimidated to try the recipe you just made….because if they did, they would realize that it’s no big deal to make and your cooking prowess would drop a few notches.

Other almond recipes for you to try

When I made this recipe, I ended up having enough to make two cakes.  They both seem to have disappeared very quickly, and it keeps really well for several weeks, so don’t hesitate to make it!  If you’re looking for other almond cookie recipes, check out my good friend, Azlin Blloor’s blog called Lin’s Food.  She has the most delicious recipe for Moroccan Almond Cookies there.  I can say that from experience because I made them.!

Travel photo of the week

This photo below is not actually Mantova, but it is taken nearby.  This is the stunning Lake Maggiore, about 30 minutes from Mantova, where I’m sure they also eat plenty of Torta Sbrisolona.

By Lisa Watson

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Torta Sbrisolona

A Fabulous way to finish a meal along-side a glass of sweet dessert wine, or as a treat with a cup of tea for afternoon tea! Torta Sbrisolona comes from the beautiful town of Mantova in Italy.

Course cake, Dessert, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 35 minutes minutes

Total Time 45 minutes minutes

Servings 1 to 2 cakes

Ingredients

• 200 g Butter 3/4 cup (or 100 g butter and 100g lard) - at room temperature
• 150 g Sugar 3/4 cup
• 250 g White flour 1 2/3 cup
• 200 g Cornmeal 1 1/3 cup -that's fine meal used to make polenta....NOT cornstarch/cornflour
• Lemon zest from 1 lemon
• 2 Egg yolks
• 50 g Non-peeled almonds 1/3 cup
• 150 g Peeled almonds 1 cup
• 1 sachet Vanilla sugar or add 1 tsp of vanilla essence

Instructions

• Just a note about the cornmeal before starting the recipe.  I used extremely finely ground cornmeal to make it (which I so far haven't seen outside of Italy), but I'm sure it would turn out well with more coarsely ground cornmeal that is used for making polenta.  Just try to find the finest you can.
• Heat the oven to 180 degrees C (350F).
• Chop both lots of almonds into coarse chunks.  Leave a few unpeeled ones whole to scatter on the top at the end.
• Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them carefully until they are just combined. DO NOT OVER-MIX.
• Sprinkle the mixture, as shown in the photo above, into a greased tart pan that is at least 25cm in diameter. I used a cake-tin with removable sides, and for the extra dough, a pie dish.
• Pat it down just slightly and VERY GENTLY.  DO NOT press down hard.  It should be a quite loose mixture and not pressed together.
• Sprinkle the whole almonds over the top.
• Sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar over the top. I used brown cassonade sugar, but white sugar is fine.
• Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, or until golden brown.
• Leave in the pan to cool and then carefully extract it from the pan.

Notes

To eat torta sbrisolona, break it into pieces.