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Ingredients 500 grams (about 1 pound) flour
Directions Once the dough has been made, working it as little as possible, add the pork cracklings, minced.
Notes The recipe in this entry was taken from "La Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene manuale Pratico per le Famiglie" compilato da Pellegrino Artusi. The book was first published in 1891. Since then many Italian editions have been published. Olga Ragusa's selection of recipes from Pellegrino Artusi's famous cookbook, titled "The Italian Cook Book," can be found in its entirety at www.archive.org (It's free). The University of Toronto recently published a new English edition of Pellegrino Artusi's "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well"; many of the recipes in this edition can be found at www.books.google.ca..... P.S. I tried this recipe and found it unbelievably strange. I had no idea Italians combined pork cracklings with sugar. As this recipe is in the dessert section of Artusi's book, it must have been presented as one. Many regions offer fried pizza dough topped with sugar as a dessert, so it's not all that weird to combine "flat bread" with sugar. The weird part is combining sugar with pork cracklings. On the other hand rustic Italian Easter pies sometimes combine a variety of meat products with a sweet dough, so maybe it is not that weird at all. It could be that in the 21st century we've become accustomed to a standardized list of Italian foods (Doesn't include such recipes as this). In Montreal Italian pastry shops all seem to offer the same foodstuffs -- the almond cookies sold in St. Leonard look no different than those sold in downtown Montreal. You would think Montreal had one Italian pastry chef, rather than dozens. There is very little variety. The prices are high, but the choices are limited. Most of the sweets are Sicilian in origin but that's O.K. as Sicilians have some of the best sweets in the world, the problem is that so few Sicilian sweets are represented. Going into an Italian pastry shop in Montreal is as exciting as tearing opening a Mars chocolate bar. You know exactly what you are going to get. Too much said.... Personally, this recipe does not appeal to me, but then it's possible I didn't quite do it right. Comments and photo: Mary Melfi. |