“You never forget your first pasticciotto…”
My first memories of the Apulian pasticciotto date back to my adolescence when we devoured them on the deck of the ferry that left Brindisi to go to Greece. The Pasticciotti were a gift from Livia’s parents, DOC Apulians, and they came strictly from the Ascalone pastry shop in Galatina. And I remember them being delicious and comforting, while on the deck it was freezing cold. Since then, every time I had the opportunity to pass through Puglia or to have friends and relatives who passed by, I always asked “bring me the pasticciotti!!!”
So you can well understand how it was a deep desire of mine to make them again, to bring a bit of Puglia to our home.
Tradition has it that the pasticciotto was invented precisely in the Ascalone pastry shop in Galatina, in lean times, when a leftover pastry and cream, insufficient to make a cake, were assembled into a small cake, a pasticcio in fact, given to a passerby while still warm. And the success was immediate and such that the rest has become history and the pasticciotto is now recognized as a Lecce specialty in the list of national agri-food products.
So I browsed the internet to find out why a shortcrust pastry and cream dessert was so good and one of its secrets is that the shortcrust pastry is made with lard…
Here below is the recipe that I extrapolated… who knows if it really resembles Ascalone’s! (if the great Ascalone ever read this article it would be truly magnificent if he told us how far we are from the real recipe)
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry
- 250 g of 00 flour
- 125 g of lard (or 100 g of lard and 20 g of butter)
- 130 g of sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 level tablespoon of baking powder
- 1 pinch of salt
For the cream:
- 500 ml of milk
- 125 g of sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- 50 g of flour
- the zest of a lemon
Knead the flour and yeast with the lard (or lard + butter) with your hands until you obtain a crumbly dough. Add the sugar, egg yolks, pinch of salt and knead everything quickly with your hands until you get a soft and elastic dough (shortcrust pastry).
My advice to use lard with a little butter is due to the difference in processing the shortcrust pastry with lard: sometimes, but only sometimes, the dough can crumble and the butter counteracts this effect. Wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest for an hour.
Heat the milk with the untreated lemon zest until it is hot, but without boiling, otherwise the milk changes flavor. Mix the egg yolks with the sugar in a saucepan and then add the flour and mix well with a spoon to obtain a smooth mixture. Pour in a little hot milk and mix delicately always in the same direction until you have added almost all the milk, eliminating the lemon zest.
Place on low heat and, with a lot of patience, stir the cream with a wooden spoon until the cream thickens and begins to simmer. If necessary, add the remaining milk.
Let the cream cool and pick up the pastry again.
Work the pastry with a rolling pin and roll out a sheet of about half a cm thick. Make discs of about 12 cm and line the tart or pasticciotto (boat-shaped) molds previously buttered and floured. Prick the pastry with the prongs of a fork to prevent it from rising during cooking.
Fill the inside of the pasticciotto with custard (without overflowing!) and cover the mold with another shortcrust pastry disc, sealing it at the edges.
Brush the outside with a beaten egg yolk to make them shiny (I didn’t do it but it was an oversight) and bake in a preheated oven (200°C) for about 20 minutes until they are nice and golden on the surface. Serve them hot and fragrant, or be patient and let them cool (I prefer them like this…at room temperature)…
And lick your lips because the first pasticciotto is never forgotten…:-)
