A Sicilian cocktail party, a lost recipe, the triumph of gluttony

This week, Liz and I are gatecrashing a Sicilian cocktail party! What is a Sicilian party without drinks and food? Liz brings Clam Casino (below left) and a gorgeous coloured negroni (below right); I went for sweets from Sicilian convents with the Triumph of Gluttony.

To read about our partying hijinks and get the clam and cocktail recipes, please head over to Liz’s blog (where you will also find the Dr Who cocktail (squee), bread on a stick, N₂O gas-leavened cakes, and more fun than you can poke a pogo stick at).

{Interlude … }

{ I’ll be here sipping a negroni when you come back }

A triumphal idea As for the Triumph of Gluttony, this is not so much a recipe as a tumble of ideas, an attempt to turn words on a page into something real, sans star trek replicator. The moment I read about the Triumph of Gluttony in Mary Simeti Taylor’s book, Sicilian Food, a love affair was born. It was an unrequited love affair, because Ms Simeti Taylor said each convent had its secret recipes that were, or are likely to become, forgotten with the last generation of nuns. So, I did what any mildly obsessive home cook would do, and made my own. For anyone who’s had the real Triumph of Gluttony from Palermo convents, this ain’t it. But if you didn’t make it before the convent stopped selling them to the public, this is for you.

PS, it’s also for everyone at Angie’s Fiesta Friday bash, you should also visit my co-gatecrasher Liz’s blog for the full story!!

  Cake: The Triumph of Gluttony is a layered creation. The layers can be made of sponge cake (pan di spagna), or short pastry (pasta frolla, pate brisee), or even marzipan (pasta reale). I used sponge cake, recipe below (with annotations on that baking powder question). Ricotta or biancomangiare filling: The filling can be made of ricotta cream, or blancmange / biancomangiare. They can be scented with jasmine flowers – which sounds just magical; see here, don’t you want to make that, right now? I wanted alternate layers of ricotta and biancomangiare. But the biancomangiare was … temperamental. Maybe because of clumsy stirring, I got a bland, gloopy cornflour-y mess that mocked my Gluttonous ambitious. To save the cake, I only used ricotta cream, recipe below. I couldn’t find fresh culinary jasmine flowers to flavour the ricotta, only dried jasmine flowers (used for herbal tea) and artificial jasmine essence. I tried a couple of ways of adding jasmine scent using dried flowers, but nothing came close to the drunken sweetness of fresh jasmine in my imagination. As a backup, I added rose water and orange blossom water to two separate batches of ricotta cream, to approximate the floral notes. “like so many tesserae from the mosaic wall…” Mixed in with the ricotta cream were chunks of pistachios and candied citron, with “an affirmation of cinnamon” sprinkled over each layer of ricotta cream. Some version of Triumph uses candied zuccata (I think also known as cucuzza), a long, fantastically shaped squash/gourd which is mostly grown in Sicily; see here, here, here, here, plus more on the interwebs. Since I couldn’t find it (Ms Simeti Taylor does provide a recipe, but it also needs fresh jasmine flowers – dangit), I substituted candied citron. Citron has a similar semi translucent, green-gold colour, and has a delicate flavour that set off the flower-scented ricotta. Pistachio glaze and decorations: Traditionally, a Triumph of Gluttony is covered in marzipan or similar pistachio paste. For reasons of laziness and technical ineptitude, I made a more liquid version of pistachio glaze with the consistency of a thin ganache. The cake was partially ‘glazed’, and otherwise remained ‘naked’. The real pistachio conserve recipe is given below. And decorations! Triumphs are described as being exuberantly decorated with candied fruit, marzipan, with a “touchingly naive” outward appearance that belies the delicacy of flavours and colours within. A tad exhausted by this point, I went with a tumble of dried jasmine and rose buds, dried rose petals, slivers of candied citron, and chopped pistachios. Marzipan pearls around the base of the cake was a (ironic?) nod to tradition.

Sponge cake or pan di spagna

Baking powder: there are many, many recipes for sponge cake that suggest using baking powder is cheating. But other recipes use a small amount of baking powder to ensure the sponge cake rises; and Ms Simeti Taylor’s book has a recipe for pan di spagna which uses baking powder. As a home cook who is notoriously cow-handed at whipping eggwhites, I added baking powder in the batter, but all you egg-whipping-pros out there can leave it out. From here, here, here, here, and elsewhere Ingredients 4/5 cup (120 g) plain/AP flour (note, a number of recipes use a small amount of wheat starch or cornflour, for a ‘softer’ crumb) 2/3 cup (120 g) castor/granulated sugar 4 eggs, at room temperature (it is important that eggwhites are at room temperature for whipping) A pinch of salt A teaspoon vanilla extract Optional: 1/4 teaspoon baking powder A 10-inch (24 cm) round pan, buttered and floured; for a thinner cake, I used a rectangular pan. Method 1. Preheat your oven to 380 F (190 C). Sift the flour (and cornflour/wheat starch, if using). 2. Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks with sugar until very fluffy, almost white. Beat in the vanilla extract. 3. Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, add a pinch of salt during beating, and gently fold them into the beaten egg yolks. 4. Fold the flour into the batter and pour it into the pan. Put the cake pan in the oven (the oven rack was one below middle of the oven), reduce the temperature to 350 F (175 C), and bake the cake for about 25-40 minutes (if you used a rectangular pan, the baking time will be closer to 25-30 minutes; if you used a round pan, the baking time should be closer to 40 minutes). A toothpick inserted will come out dry, and the cake will begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Mine browned slightly. 5. Let the cake cool upside down, then remove it from the pan. Alternately I had lined the cake pan with baking paper, and lifted it onto a cooling rack after 5 minutes.

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Ricotta cream

Ingredients 250 grams fresh ricotta, well drained 125 grams icing sugar A pinch of salt 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon rosewater 1 teaspoon orange blossom water 10-20 grams each of chopped pistachios and candied citron Method 1. Pass the ricotta through a sieve so it becomes fine and creamy. Using a wooden spoon or in a stand mixer, lightly beat in the icing sugar, pinch of salt and vanilla. 2. Divide ricotta mixture into two bowls. To one bowl, add the rosewater, and half of the pistachios and citrons. To another bowl, add the orange blossom water and the remaining pistachios and citrons. Mix to distribute the flavours and mix-ins.

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Pistachio Preserves or Paste

Ingredients 50 grams shelled pistachios (unsalted) 50 grams castor / granulated sugar About 1.5 tablespoons water (I added more water to make a liquid glaze rather than paste) Method 1. Finely chop the pistachios in a food processor or a spice grinder. If you have the patience, remove the purple inner skin before grinding the pistachios. 2. In the smallest pan you have, dissolve the water and sugar, place over a moderate heat. Add the ground pistachios and stir until it forms a thick paste. Since I am making a small amount, I added more water to prevent burning, so ended up with a more liquid paste/glaze.

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Assembly

These are my notes, not firm instructions. I used some short, wide drinking glasses as mould, and cut out circles of sponge cake to fit in the glass. Before layering, I lightly greased the inside of the glasses with flavourless vegetable oil, and lined the glasses with some cling wrap. This made the finished cake relatively easy to remove from its mould (though the cling wrap did leave its creases and patterns on the ricotta, not sure how to fix that…) Next time, I would like to cut the sponge layers in half horizontally. This would give me thinner cake layers and more room to play with the filling – especially if I succeeded in making the biancomangiare. To layer the cake: Start with one layer of sponge cake, then one layer of ricotta cream (rose water flavoured), then a sprinkling of powdered cinnamon (as fresh as you can get it), and some crushed chocolate crumbs. Then, another layer of sponge cake, another layer of ricotta cream (orange blossom water flavoured) with cinnamon and chocolate crumbs, and finish with one final layer of sponge cake. A note on chocolate crumbs: I added crushed chocolate crumbs, made using a Christina Tosi recipe, on a whim. This isn’t a traditional addition, but it made the layers more visible, and who has ever said no to chocolate? You could sprinkle over some finely grated chocolate if you don’t have chocolate crumbs at hand. I was lucky in my layering. The layered cake just over-filled the height of the drinking glasses, so that I could put a chopping board over the glasses, put a couple of cans on top, and leave them in the fridge to chill and set. To finish, drizzle over some pistachio glaze. Or, traditionally, you would roll out the marzipan or pistachio conserve and wrap it around the cake. Top with decorations: candied fruit, marzipan, rosebuds, rose petals, jasmine flowers – maybe even edible glitter for a touch of luxe? Admire your handiwork briefly, then dig in!

Tagged: baking, blogger party, cake, candied citron, cocktail party, Fiesta Friday, food experiments, food photography, jasmine flowers, lost recipes, Mary Simeti Taylor, marzipan, pan di spagna, pistachio conserve, pistachios, ricotta, ricotta cream, rose petals, secret recipes, Sicily, sponge cake, Triumph of gluttony