Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- You know, if you go to Rome, you'll find most of the menus to be very similar; when it comes to desserts, there are three desserts you probably almost always see.

Tiramisu, of course, a ricotta jam tart, and, of course, biscotti.

So we decided to go to Italy to find out how these things are authentically made.

So for tiramisu, we traveled to Treviso, where it actually was made for the first time.

It's a little bit less sweet.

There's no cooking involved.

They serve it in individual portions, absolutely delicious.

And then Tuscany for our favorite biscotti.

Now, some of them are thoroughly dried out and brittle.

Some of them have a little bit of chew.

We prefer the ones with a little bit of chew, so we'll show you how to do that.

So ricotta jam tart.

It tends to be fairly thin with just a little bit of ricotta.

We actually increased that and made it nice and light and creamy and not too sweet.

So if you like Italian desserts like I do, here are three Italian desserts made the authentic way.

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- No liquor, no cooking, not a lot of sugar, and maybe a side of prostitution.

I think it's safe to say that this is not the tiramisu we thought we knew.

I was in Treviso in northern Italy to learn the true tiramisu.

But that brought up some interesting questions about its origin story.

Some people say it only dates back about 70 or 80 years and was created by a local restaurant.

The more interesting version dates it back to the 1800s, when it supposedly was served as an aphrodisiac in the city's brothels.

Apparently, it was so closely tied to this scene that even after people started eating it outside of brothels, they only did it on the down low because they didn't want to be associated with that.

But after tasting how wonderfully simple and how clean and fresh and lightly sweet this was, I can get how it could be considered an aphrodisiac.

(dishes clanking) (speaking Italian) - We are in Treviso.

And this is the birthplace of tiramisu.

It was a little bit unknown until last years, but now with the tiramisu and the tradition is becoming even more popular.

- I asked baker Camilla Conzera to walk me through the recipe, one that had been named the city's best tiramisu.

- So first step is to mix the pasteurized egg yolk with the sugar.

- How many egg yolks and how much sugar?

- Ah, we cannot tell you.

- We cannot tell you.

We have to kill you later.

(laughs) - Oh, well.

Worth a shot.

- So the second step is to add the mascarpone cheese.

And you do it when the zabaglione is ready.

And you add it all together.

And then we mix it again, And then we start to fill the cups.

We do individual portions, and for some clients that ask us, we have the ceramic tray, because we give them ceramic tray that they can eat at home with their friends.

And then the next day they bring it back to us.

- What really stood out to me about this tiramisu was how light it was, both in texture and in flavor; the lack of alcohol meant there was no kind of harsh notes to weigh everything down.

And the very little amount of sugar used also meant that it wasn't cloying.

It was just a light, wonderfully creamy, and very gently sweet dessert.

So the folks at Camilla Bakery wouldn't give us all of their ratios and all of the secrets of their recipe, but just watching them make it, I was able to figure out a lot, and one thing that really stood out to me was the shockingly high ratio of eggs to sugar.

And that explains a lot about how light this dish really is.

Another big difference is in the United States, a lot of tiramisu is made by starting with a zabaglione, which is where you gently cook egg yolks with sugar, and then you add some sort of a liquor to it.

But in Italy, it is never cooked.

You always use the egg yolks raw, and you whip them with the sugar, and then you whip in the mascarpone.

I'm going to add two eight-ounce packages of mascarpone a little bit at a time, and you want to make sure that they're nice and cold, they don't break.

In the United States, we're more accustomed to tiramisu being served in kind of a large format trifle-like assembly.

But in Italy, it's generally served as single serve, much like we would get a cup of ice cream, and we really liked that, so that's the approach we took.

Time to assemble our tiramisu, and that means we need our biscuits.

Now, these are Savoiardi or ladyfinger biscuits.

They are kind of like a sponge cake, but they're nice and crispy.

Now, an important step here is Italian cooks insist that you must snap them in half before assembling your tiramisu.

And this is to increase the surface area, because their job is basically to act as a flavor sponge, first in the espresso, and then with the mascarpone.

The other trick here, really quick dunk, one to two seconds into the coffee, and that's it; so in Italy, of course, they would never dream of using anything but freshly-brewed espresso.

Problem is, in the United States, most of us don't have espresso makers at home.

We did try a couple of alternatives, including instant espresso powder, but we found it kind of harsh and bitter; we actually found that we could get much better results just by brewing some really strong coffee.

Not only are the ingredients simple, but so is the assembly.

It's really just a matter of layering those soaked biscuits, some mascarpone cream.

Soaked biscuits, mascarpone cream, soaked biscuits, mascarpone cream-- you get where I'm going with this, right?

I have to say, I was impressed by the folks at Camilla Bakery because they could crank those out.

They make hundreds and hundreds of them a day.

The important step here now is to give it some time to rest.

Cause these cookies are not supposed to be crispy when the dish is served.

Six hours later, our ladyfingers have absorbed all that flavor from the coffee and the mascarpone.

And the finishing flourish is a sprinkle of cocoa powder.

You never put this on before chilling because it can get gummy as the tiramisu chills.

And now the big reveal.

We get to taste our aphrodisiac.

Here we go, oh, it's so thick and so creamy.

And absolutely no crunch from the biscuits is exactly what you want.

Mm, that's perfect.

You're really tasting the coffee.

You're really tasting the mascarpone.

Neither of them are being weighed down by a lot of sugar.

You can really taste the clean flavors and also no harshness from liquor.

That's wonderful.

- At Armando al Pantheon in Rome, we ended our meal with a delicious rustic tart, which really highlighted the Roman combination of ricotta and cherries.

Chris thought the filling was not too sweet.

It had a really nice, buttery, cakey crust with a crumble on top, so we brought it back and decided to work on it here.

So we're gonna start with some slivered almonds, A little bit of sugar.

And some lemon zest-- we really liked having the crunchy almond in this crust and also the lemon, which gives it a little bit of brightness.

I'm just gonna pulse these a little bit until the almonds are just roughly chopped.

To that, I'm gonna add two kinds of flour; we have AP flour.

And then we also have a little bit of semolina.

We like that because it adds a nice texture and a little bit of crispness to the tart.

And then a little bit of baking powder for lift.

And of course, some salt.

And then to that, we're gonna add our butter.

I have a whole egg and I have vanilla extract.

So I'm just gonna pulse this until it comes together.

It's gonna come together in bigger chunks, but it's not gonna be a cohesive dough.

But that's what we want.

Okay, so you can see this is exactly what I'm looking for.

We did a little research on this crust and topping and found it's a cross between a pastry crust and something called sbrisolona, which is like an almond semolina cake that they make in Italy that's almost like a giant cookie, so it's really crispy, but it's baked in a cake form.

And so that's what we're using for the crust here and for the crumble.

So to mimic that kind of cookie crumbly crust, we're just gonna take half of this mixture and I'm gonna crumble it in here.

But I don't want to press it down like a... tart crust.

I'm gonna press it down really lightly.

And then this is gonna bake up into this kind of crumbly, crispy bottom.

And it has all these little nooks and crannies, and it's so easy.

That's all you have to do.

I'm gonna bake this at 350 until it's golden brown and nice and crisp.

So now that that's in the oven, I'm gonna take the rest of this and just put it in a bowl to save for our crumbly topping and stick it in the refrigerator while we make our filling.

So our beautiful rustic crust is out of the oven.

You can see it's golden brown.

It's been cooling for about ten minutes.

I want to add the filling when this is still a little bit warm.

I'm gonna add an egg yolk to my ricotta.

The tart that Chris had had some poppy seeds in it, and we love that.

So we added some poppy seeds to ours as well.

A little bit of vanilla extract, and I'm just adding a dash of almond extract.

I think it's really nice.

The almond extract is optional in this, but if you are gonna use it, remember, a little goes a long way.

I do like a little hint of that.

So we're adding a very small amount.

You can see we haven't added any sugar to the filling because we have a lot of sweet from the jam.

So this is a sour cherry jam.

Don't use cherry preserves if you can't find sour cherry.

It's too sweet.

We did find, if you can't find a sour cherry jam, it's better to use a really good quality strawberry jam in this.

Cause it's kind of the same level of sweetness.

So I'm gonna add our filling to the crust.

The one that Chris had in Rome, the jam was on the bottom near the crust, and we just found that it made the crust kind of soggy.

So I switched the order of that.

So you want to leave a little bit of a border.

Otherwise, I did find it kind of caramelized on the edge.

And then I just couldn't get it out in one lovely piece.

So here is the rest of our dough.

I'm going to sprinkle that on.

You know, the size of the crumble doesn't really matter, but you want it to be some bigger pieces, some smaller pieces.

We're gonna bake this at the same 350 degree oven temperature.

So I haven't turned the oven off.

Put it in there for about 35 to 40 minutes.

You want the crust to be nice and golden brown, and there'll be some jam kind of bubbling up on the edges.

So I've let this cool for about 30 minutes.

I'm gonna unclip that.

This one looks like it's coming out pretty clean.

If it's sticking to the side of the pan, just run a knife around it and you should be fine.

And there we have it.

We have our crispy crust.

You can see the cherry jam.

I'm gonna cut into it.

You'll be able to see the beautiful ricotta in the middle.

And I like to sugar the top.

And again, very simple, simple ingredients, easy to put together.

This certainly looks like something you picked up at an Italian bakery, and there you have it.

Look at how pretty that is.

So creamy in the middle.

We've got the nice sweetness of the cherries, but not too sweet.

And that crumbly topping is divine.

Developing this recipe was all about getting the right combination of crust to filling, jam, crumbly topping, and I think we nailed it.

So this recipe is Italian dessert at its finest.

Simple ingredients everyone is familiar with.

Anyone can make it.

- Here we are in the ancient shop of Antonio Mattei Biscuits Factory, exactly in the same place where everything started 165 years ago.

We produce from 1,000 to 22,000 biscuits a day.

We have eggs, fresh eggs, sugar, flour, and then comes the flavor.

So for the classical recipes, we have just pine nuts and almonds.

Here in the biscuits factory, things are always done in the same way through the years.

Our biggest difficulties is to change.

- So here we have the ingredients for the biscotti.

You might think, why lemon and oranges in Tuscany?

Because the Medici family, since the Renaissance time, they've always been passionate about citrus fruits.

And it's important to make these thin and long because they tend to spread while they bake.

Here they are, hm.

- So Bianca and I are here to make biscotti, or I should say, Bianca's here to make biscotti, and I'm here to comment or something.

But here's my question.

I have a question.

I think biscotti with the two, you know, baking twice thing, I think that was just to preserve them.

So it was sort of like carrying bacon in your saddlebag out west.

I mean, they would last for days and days and days.

So I think this twice-baking thing, which I always wondered if you had to do it, is really to dry them out so that they last a long time.

So one of the things I want to do today is after we bake it one time, I'm going to taste one.

- Oh, okay.

- And just see what that's like.

Because I think our goal is not to have a totally dried out biscotti.

We want a little bit of... - Little chew.

You know, and as happens often when Milk Street travels the world looking for recipes is they get inspiration from both establishments that have been making something for a long time-- restaurants, and in this case, a biscotti factory, and also from home cooks.

And then you get two different sides of the same coin.

And there is really a beautiful way to approach a recipe.

So our recipe combines inspiration from two different sources.

We take from Antonio Mattei's Biscotti Factory, who have been making biscotti for eons and eons.

And then we also got inspiration from home cook Giulia Scarpaleggia.

- And she had a very different take than the classic.

The classic one was like eggs, flour, sugar.

It's very simple.

- That's it.

As bare bones as it gets.

And they make amazing biscotti.

And she adds a little bit of flavoring with citrus.

Two different citruses; a little bit of honey, which gives it that softness in the center.

And she uses a little bit of leavening, too, which is something not all biscotti have, but it contributes to a lighter texture.

So you have mixed the dry ingredients together.

And I'm gonna... - Including leavening, right?

- Including the baking powder, leavening.

And I'm gonna get started on the sugar and the citrus.

- And while you do that, we could talk about pine nuts for a second, you know?

- Yeah.

- This is one of those things that drives me crazy.

Like, in Italy, they have pine nuts, - Pignolis, yeah.

- That are delicious.

So of course they use them, it's like, you know, why do Italians always use olive oil?

Well, if you look out in your backyard and you have olive trees, that's why-- that's what they had.

- Yeah.

- So in this country, since we don't grow pine nuts here, it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

And also, I don't know about you, but a lot of the pine nuts that I have bought are kind of half-rancid by the time.

Because they have a lot of oil in them, so it goes bad.

- They go bad pretty fast.

- And these are not pignoli.

Very often, the inexpensive pine nuts do not come from Italy.

So they're really not as good.

So for us, pine nuts are great in Italy, but, the stuff you get here, eh.

- Yeah, but if you can get good pine nuts, it's worth-- just substitute some of the almonds with pine nuts and use both.

Now, why are we putting the citrus in the sugar?

Because sugar is very absorbent.

And by rubbing the citrus into the sugar, we're infusing the flavor of that citrus throughout all of this sugar.

Now, every biscotti has egg in it.

Egg is really, generally, the only moisture within the biscotti.

But this biscotti, we add a little bit of honey, like Giulia does, and that honey contributes to the softer interior that we're aiming for.

- Yeah, you can't substitute honey for sugar in baking because it's very different.

They react very differently.

- Right.

- So you could replace a little bit of it, but if you replaced 100% of it, that's going to be a problem.

Unless you re-engineer the recipe.

- Exactly.

You can do this by hand, absolutely.

But you got to put some real elbow grease in it.

We found that you... (laughs) - This is a one-legged hand mixer.

- Yeah.

It's all we need.

- We couldn't afford the other one, so.

- I mean, look at the aeration from that.

The egg's practically doubled.

The other benefit of this is the sugar in the eggs get emulsified and that sugar starts dissolving a little bit.

It just makes for a smoother mixture.

Now we're going to mix this until it's practically all completely together and then we'll incorporate the almonds.

We're using whole almonds, not chopped almonds; you can do either one.

And these are untoasted as well.

During that second baking, after the logs are cut, the almonds get a little... - Can I use my hands here?

- Oh, please do!

Jeez Louise.

When do you have to ask to use your hands?

- Well, I see people on cooking shows sometimes who don't like using their hands.

- Oh, I know.

- So they have this thing, and they're going like this, and nothing's happening.

- I can't imagine a cook who doesn't like touching food.

- Yeah, okay, here we go.

- There we go, okay.

- You want to flour this?

- Okay, 14 inches, 14-inch log, and you want it evenly spaced, so use the palm of your hand.

We even have a handy dandy ruler in case.

Oops, I've gone a little too far.

- So have I.

- But it's easy enough to get back.

14, 15, 12.

It's okay, all of it's okay.

We'll put them both on here.

If you find the dough is sticking a little too much, rather than using more flour, just moisten your palm a little bit with a little bit of water, and that will help you as well.

The oven is preheated at 350-- these bake for about 30 minutes or so.

They're going to get a little cracked on top, but they will still be soft and pliable in the middle.

And that's our halfway point for baking.

- And I'm gonna taste one of those.

Just to see if we could do one version of baking.

- You are determined.

- Okay, yeah.

- Step one of the two-baking process.

These came out of the oven.

We turned the oven immediately down to 275, by the way, for the second bake, these sat and cooled for about 15 to 20 minutes; you don't want them completely cool before you cut them.

I know you want to taste these before they go back for the second baking, but before you do that, we have to decide.

Cut them straight?

Cut them on the diagonal?

- Diagonal.

- Well, it's a choice, right?

- Well, you'd have little tiny biscotti if you did it straight.

- Well, Antonio Mattei cuts them straight.

- Well, what does he know?

He's only been doing it for 100 years.

- That's right.

You want a good serrated knife for this, obviously.

And whether you saw or cut straight down is up to the dough.

Test out a few times and see what works better.

You know the ones that might crack a little bit or break apart?

Those are the cook's biscottis.

- Well, I'm gonna take a nice one and taste it... - Right from the middle.

- Yeah.

Come on, I'm not gonna take the end.

So my question is, can you just bake them once?

And I think the answer is no.

Because they're... - They're soft.

I mean if you like a soft cookie, yeah, why not?

It's your biscotti.

They're fully cooked.

- Mm.

Tasty.

- Yeah, right?

- Yeah, but they're not a biscotti.

- Right, they're a cookie.

- I hate it when I'm wrong.

- (laughs) - Happens much too often.

Yeah, okay, so you gotta bake them twice, all right.

- Yeah, so, bring over the sheet tray.

What's nice about this quantity of biscotti is they will all fit back on one sheet tray, which is good.

You know, when I make them around the holidays, I'm making like four to six logs at a time and I have sheets and sheets of little biscotti.

- I'm gonna eat the ends.

- Yeah, I know.

I love the ends, you can put the ends in like this.

Put them cut side down and just let them crisp up anymore.

But they're already kind of crisp-- you're gonna keep those?

All right, all right, keep them.

- Oh.

- So these will go back in the 275 degree oven, low.

Cause we just want to dry them out a little bit, not make them brown or anything.

- Well, I'm taking my ends and going home.

- (laughs) For half an hour.

- All right, well if you're around in 30 minutes, I'll see you then.

You know when to show up.

- I went to my room for half an hour.

- (chuckles) (biscotto snaps) - So, okay, now I'm eating a fully baked one.

- Yeah, twice-baked.

They're crunchier, right?

- They're definitely crunchier.

Yeah, but they're not super dry on the inside.

They have a little... - Little give.

Which is good.

- Mm-hm.

- So it depends how you like it.

- You know, I would think these would be fabulous with a cup of tea because of that citrus or you know, just a glass of milk, even.

Coffee?

- Coffee.

- They're Italian, so coffee.

And a little bit of Vin Santo, which is a sweet dessert wine, would be fabulous as well.

- Bianca's going to give you 365 ways of eating biscotti over the course of the year.

- Grazie.

And a little bit of sugar in here kind of helps with this, you could just drop one in instead of a cube.

- You could drop the whole biscotti in the coffee.

- Half a biscotti.

Oh, speaking of halves, I saved the end pieces for you.

- Oh, good.

- So there we go, some chewy ones, you can dip those in.

- So if you like an almond and citrus biscotti, a great recipe from both a home cook and a biscotti factory in Italy.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Mm.

- You know, one of the best recipes I don't think you've ever heard of is torta Barozzi.

Now, I had this near Bologna a few years ago, but it has a long story.

The story is in the late 19th century, it was a local baker, Gollini, he was working on a chocolate cake and he ends up with this recipe, a flourless cake with whipped egg whites and nuts instead of flour.

And he names it after, for some strange reason, the Renaissance architect Giacomo Barozzi.

So this recipe, torta Barozzi, becomes really popular.

But the Gollini family has kept the recipe a secret ever since that time.

So we had to come up with our best guess based on what we'd eaten there.

And a few things we found; the key is to use both chocolate and cocoa powder.

Lightly whip the egg whites.

Makes it easier to fold properly.

And we used almond flour here and a good dose of rum, of course.

What I really like about this recipe is that it's very chocolatey, but it's not overpowering.

It's kind of light at the same time.

It's also a recipe that's going to come out every time, just right.

Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $29.95, 40% less than the cover price.

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