THE COOKBOOK TEST #0064: ITALIAN SNACKING, PART 1
INSTALLMENT #0064 (FREE) A QUICK NOTE OF THANKSGIVING / THAT’S SNACKITALIANO! / A CAKE TO REMEMBER
Dear Readers,
Before we get rolling this week, a question: Do you enjoy THE COOKBOOK TEST? Revel in the recipes? Relate to the writing? Respond to the riffs?
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Thus concludeth the pitches. On a related note, as this newsletter falls on Thanksgiving weekend, I’d like to formally express my thanks to all of you: my wonderful free readers who help this newsletter reach a broad and growing audience, and my ridiculously awesome paying subscribers who help me justify the time, constant kitchen mess, and calories that go into this thing every week. You’re literally the best.
at your service,
James
ITALIAN SNACKING
BY ANNA FRANCESE GASS
UNION SQUARE AND CO. | 2024 | $35
This week’s book is a new one that I discovered at the always excellent Moon Palace Books, just down the street from me in Minneapolis. Written by editor and recipe tester Anna Francese Gass, ITALIAN SNACKING is my kind of book: brass tacks, serious as hell, recipes focused and contextualized, photography lovely but usefully illustrative, writing terse without being cold or omitting too much supporting details. Italian Snacking covers cakes, drinks, cookies, pizzas, doughnuts, skewers, fried street food, and more.
And while there are plenty of useful “usual suspects” in the book (cannoli or Sicilian-style pizza, for example), there are also plenty of intriguing, delicious-looking, exciting recipes I’ve never seen before.
Every once in a while, a book will give me such a good feeling that I’ll make an executive decision to spend a couple of weeks exploring it. Italian Snacking is one such book.
And because it’s Thanksgiving this week and I’m sure you’re all some combination of cooked out / overfed / exhausted, I’ll keep it short and simple this week with a single tasty recipe and then hit it harder next Sunday with a couple more dishes.
A CAKE TO REMEMBER
If I had to zero in on one personal flaw vis-a-vis this newsletter, it would be my inability to style and photograph food. I mean - once in a while I get a decent shot, or turn out food that looks palatable. But that’s not my forte. I’m a word guy. And my wife is a photographer, so I think I’ve got an emotional block preventing me from moving too aggressively into her realm of expertise. It feels disrespectful! I know it’s not, but this division of labor has seen us through several collaborative book projects and nearly 20 years of marriage.
That said: When I saw this book’s Torta della Rose (Rose Wreath Cake) I said to myself: I like the appearance of this AND I think I could turn out one of these that looks plausible.
Did I? I think so! Feel free to post dissenting opinions, I’ve been in journalism for nearly 30 years and my hide is rhinoceros thick.
Anyhow, some notes about this cake: It’s from Mantua. It was originally baked for the 1490 wedding of Isabella d’Este and Duke Francesco Gonzaga. It is lemony AS HELL. How lemony is it, you might ask? Lemon zest in the dough. Lemon buttercream in the cake. Hyper-lemony lemon icing on top of the cake.
If you do not like lemons, do not approach this cake. Do not share a room with it. Do not look directly at it. I quite like lemons, however, and found this to be a delicious dessert that pairs beautifully with tea. And as a presentation piece (we brought it to friends who had invited us over for homemade pizza), it really rules.
This is not a cake that you can make lightly. It requires an unpleasant kneading-with-butter process that goes for 15 minutes, a two-hour proof, a roll out and frosting-spreading step (above), another hour-long proof, a 45-minute bake, an icing step, and a dusting-with-powdered-sugar-to-serve step. If I never make this again, it’ll be solely because of the hassle factor, because it’s really very tasty and really quite gorgeous looking to boot.
The recipe calls for Italian 00 flour and bread flour; I ended up using 00 flour and AP flour, and it turned out great. If getting the flours is a hardship, don’t. You’ll get a slightly different but still acceptably tasty result.
TORTA DELLA ROSE
Cake
¾ Cup warm whole milk
½ Cup granulated sugar
2 ¼ tsp (one .25 oz. packet) dry yeast
1 ½ Cups 00 flour, plus more for dusting
2 cups bread flour
2 large eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp kosher salt
10 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
Buttercream Filling
12 Tbsp butter at room temperature
¾ cup granulated sugar
Zest of 3 lemons
Lemon Glaze
1 cup confectioner’s sugar, plus more to serve
Zest and juice of 2 lemons
In small bowl, whisk milk, sugar, and yeast to combine. Let stand for 5 minutes.
In bowl of stand mixer fitted with dough hook, add flours, eggs, vanilla, lemon zest and salt. Add the milk mixture and beat until just combined, on medium low, about 2-3 minutes.
Knead dough on floured work surface (with more flour on hand as needed) and start dropping in pieces of butter. Knead 1-2 Tbsp butter into dough until incorporated, then add more until all 10 Tbsp have been combined. After about 15 minutes of this, all the butter should be incorporated and the dough should be soft and supple.
Grease a large bowl with butter, place the dough in the bowl, cover with a kitchen towel, and set aside in a warm spot for 2 hours. (I like to heat my oven to 110 F, turn it off, and use it as a proofing zone.)
Meanwhile, make the buttercream filling: stir butter, sugar, and lemon zest in medium bowl with spatula until combined.
Generously butter a 10-inch springform pan or deep dish quiche pan.
Roll dough out to 16x20-inch rectangle, and evenly spread the buttercream over the dough.
Cut the dough into eight 2-inch wide strips, roll them up, and place them cut side down into the prepared pan. Start with one roll in the middle of the pan and surround it with the remaining seven.
Cover pan with a kitchen towel and proof in a warm place for an hour.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Set a baking sheet on the bottom rack to catch any butter drippings as cake rises.
Bake the cake on top rack of the oven for 35-40 minutes, until light brown. Tent with foil if it browns too quickly.
Make the glaze: combine confectioner’s sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice and stir to create a thin, brushable glaze.
While cake is still hot, brush the lemon glaze over the top and let it cool completely. Before serving, sift 2-3 Tbsp of confectioner’s sugar over the cake - I like to use a tea ball to do so.
ITALIAN SNACKING
(***BUY IT*** / BORROW IT / SKIP IT / SCRAP IT)
This book covers a ton of ground, offers tight, authoritative recipes, places a real emphasis on foods that look terrific and pack a lot of fun into small packages, and generally just supplies a great deal of value per page. I can’t wait to explore it more thoroughly next week, but I already feel comfortable saying it’s a straight-up hit of a book.
FOOTNOTES
[1] WRITER’S NOTE: I mean, obviously my eventual death is a natural limiter on this statement. But given enough backers and the right kind of momentum, not only will I find a much younger successor to myself for this newsletter, I will find one who is BETTER AT THIS than I am. Challenging? Yes. Impossible? Sadly no. Anyway, something to look forward to in the 2040s or 2050s, depending on circumstances.