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
CONCA Dei MARINI
The AMALFI COAST
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