Cooking Italian: April 2019

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Sfogliatella Santa rosa Amalfi Coast

SFOGLIATELLA SANTA ROSA

"INVENTED by NUNS"

SFOGLIATELLE

Italian-American New York's favorite pastry? It has to be our beloved Cannoli from Sicily. Yes we Italian-American New Yorkers and we do love our Cannoli, but when it comes to our second favorite it another crispy treat, this time from the Amalfi Coast in the Southern Italian City of Napoli (Naples). Yes we do love our Sfogliatelle all crunchy crispy and filled with sweet lemon flavored ricotta cream to complete its lovely taste. Yes the Cannoli may be number one, but it's not everyone's absolute favorite, though they may love it, if forced to pick one over the other, some would go with the much loved Sfogliatelle a pastry invented by Nuns in The Convent of Santa Rosa in the small town of Conca dei Marini on The Amalfi Coast of Italy.

Most people associate this tasty Italian Pastry the Sfogliatelle with the city of Naples, and they would be right in doing so. But if they thought it was invented in this city they would be wrong, for as we have just stated it was invented on the Amalfi Coast at the Convent of Santa Rosa. This being said, as this pastry is wonderfully delicious and loved by millions, and with Napoli being the capital city of the region, Naples has adopted the pastry as its own, and more Sfogliatelle are consumed on a daily basis in Naples than in any other place. The on Earth including New York , and they make such good ones there, New York Italians and all citizens of The Big Apple associate the pastry with Naples. All this being said, just go out and get one and enjoy for lucky for those of us who live in New York, we have many fine Italian Pastry Shops that make Sfogliatelle every bit as good as you get in Naples or anywhere on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. That's Sfogliatelle alla New York-ese. Basta !

It is a typical cake of the Neapolitan pastry tradition, a sin of gluttony that everyone should enjoy once arrived in Campania. It has a classic shell shape, fragrant in the mouth with a soft and delicious filling, garnished with pastry cream and raspberries...have you understood what we are talking about? The Sfogliatelle Santa Rosa, of course, an inviting-looking sweet rich in tradition, it contains within it the secrets of a distant history.

The history began in 1600, in the Monastery of St. Rose from Lima in Conca dei Marini, on the Amalfi Coast. The cook, one of the nuns (probably inspired by God or by the need to not waste anything) decided to prepare a mixture using a bit of semolina cooked in the milk, lemon liqueur, dried fruit and sugar; then she enriched the bread mixture with white wine and lard and created a pocket like a nun's hood in which she put the first mixture. Once out of the oven, the nun garnished the new cake with pastry cream and raspberries. This delicious sweet was renamed "Santa Rosa", to glorify the Saint to which the monastery was dedicated.

The recipe of the sfogliatella Santa Rosa was jealously guarded within the walls of the Monastery of St. Rose for about 150 years. In the early XIX century Pasquale Pintauro, a Neapolitan pastry chef, obtained the original recipe (probably from a nun aunt): he promptly changed it by removing the pastry cream and the raspberries. So he created the "riccia" (curly) variant of the sfogliatella: triangular-shaped, crunchy, composed by composed of layers of thin puff pastry overlapping each other, filled with flour, eggs, ricotta, candied fruit, milk and sugar. Finally, there is also a third variant of the sfogliatella, the "frolla" one, of round form, prepared with soft short pastry and filled with the same puff of the Sogliatella Riccia.

In the 18th century a group of cloistered nuns at the Santa Rosa convent in the town of Conca dei Marini combined ricotta, candied fruit, Lemon Zest, and semolina in a shell shaped puff pastry and thus a culinary star was born. These nuns of Santa Rosa invented the dish to avoid throwing away excess ingredients, never expecting to create such a culinary sensation. The traditional version of Sfogliatella is served riccia, named for its curly appearance and crunchy texture. As legend has it, this version was difficult to eat for people who had no teeth (dental hygiene was less than spectacular in the days of Bourbon rule), so local bakers invented a ‘frolla’ or smooth version. Both are delicious, but the original “riccia” version will always reign supreme.

Many of Italy's iconic pastries originated in medieval convents. Nuns would rise early and bake my candlelight, ready for the early morning customers who would purchase them hot from the oven and passed through a grilled window. Sometime around the year 1700, a sister at the Santa Rosa convent in Conca dei Marini mixed together some flour and ricotta cheese and shaped it to resemble a monk’s hood as it would fall against his back.

The recipe for the Santa Rosa convent's signature sfogliatelle pastry may have been passed beyond the walls of the cloister by a nun to one of her nephews. Sfogliatelle pastries later appeared in a number of fashionable pastry shops along the Via Toledo in Naples. The shape of the pastry was simply inverted to resemble a seashell, a popular design motif for Rococo Naples at the time which was then the most sophisticated capital in all of Europe.

Excerpted from POSITANO

The AMALFI COAST