Colomba Sestolese - A traditional sweet pie from my Italian village in the Apennines - step by step photos and instructions

This cake is traditionally made in Sestola on 6 December for St Nicholas' Day, so I am totally out of season here, but I have a good excuse: my friend Stefania gave me a jar of jam she made with rusticane plums, and the flavour was just right, not too sweet and a little sour... just like the plum jams they make at home, and an essential ingredient for this preparation. Please note, this is a VERY ITALIAN CAKE, not one that Kiwis may like as in this country the preference is for somewhat soft and 'moist' cakes (although my husband ate this happily, but with cream on the side!!!).

I am sure that every family has a lightly different recipe, this is mine and works pretty well. In a large bowl, or on a wooden table, measure 500 g of plain flour, 200 g sugar, 1 tsp of baking powder and 120 g of butter. Usually in Italy we use unsalted butter, so add a pinch of salt, but here in NZ I used salted butter, so no more salt is needed. Mix just a little then add 3 free range eggs and a small glass of liquor. I used Sambuca, Sassolino is best, but hard to find here, and Sambuca is a good substitute. You can also add the zest of a lemon or some citrus peels (I added citrus peels, about 1 heap tsp).

Mix well, don't worry if it feels too dry at first, you need to work on the dough and with a little patience you will get a soft dough.

Shape into a ball then cut into three pieces. Take the bigger piece and roll it (add more flour for the board/table).

Line a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper and place the rolled piece inside, building up the borders a little.

Now add about three or four tablespoons of plum jam.

Chop some almonds and chop some walnuts. You can also add pine nuts, or even hazelnuts, the important thing is always to have walnuts! 

Top the jam with the chopped almonds,

Then with walnut pieces, and sprinkle with sultanas.

Roll some more pasty and cut a circle to cover the filling, add some leftover pastry to lift the border where necessary.

Repeat! Jam, chopped almonds and walnuts, sultana...

Roll some more pastry and cut another circle to cover the filling. Always lift the border with more pastry where necessary.

And repeat for the third time: jam, nuts, sultana and one more circle of pastry. 

Use the pastry strips left over to seal well the borders with the top, I press everything down with a teaspoon for a neat look.

Make some light incisions with a fork on the top.

Sprinkle with sugar and bake at 180/200°C for about 40 minutes.

Let the pie cool down before cutting, even if the fragrance will be irresistible.

Ok, I was going to cut the cake the day after and take a great photo... but my daughter got up first and had some for breakfast.... and then it went so quickly that this is the only photo I have... anyway, you can see the three layers, and the crust is like a biscuit. It was delicious, and this is a good thing: when we make this cake in the village we have a proverb which says that if the cake is good it will be a good snowy season (mountain village you see, we need snow for skiing), and now the family hopes that this year Mt Ruapehu  will have lots of snow and a great skiing season!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Autumn preserves: quince paste, feijoa paste and fig jam, all good with cheese!

It is Autumn and there is great produce around, in particular I like quinces, which I can find at the local orchard in Oratia (Dragicevich and Sons, in West Coast Rd). I usually make jelly (recipe here) or paste, the paste needs less sugar and you get more out of it, although the cooking process is quite long. 

Wash the quinces, quarter and then remove the centre but not the skin. Cook with a bit of water until soft then blend. Add 60% of weight in sugar and a pinch of citric acid, and then bring to the boil, and boil, boil and boil until quite thick, stirring most of the time (ideally all the time, but I took breaks away from the heat!!). Then pour into a mould or a rectangular container.

Let the paste set for a few days, then cut and wrap in baking paper.

This year I had quite a few feijoas in the garden, so I though of doing the same. In the past I made jam (recipe here) and it was so solid that I realised that it had been a mistake to put it into jars: feijoas are like guava and guava makes a paste similar to quince paste, great for cheese too!

So I followed the same steps as for the quinces, but instead of removing the core I removed the skins with a knife. If you want to use the skins for something else you can try this feijoa cordial.

 Finally, the fig trees have a few figs, not big and as soon as they ripen the birds eat them, so the only thing I can do is to pick them when they are still green, not so good for eating fresh, but good for jam. 

Boil them first for five minutes then discard the water and scum (from the white sap that comes out), cut them into two and put them back in the pot, once again with 60% sugar, and a little water. 

 The figs should mush easily while boiling, if you keep stirring them with a wooden spoon, but if you want to keep a few whole remove them from the pot before mashing the rest, and add them back during the last 5-10 minutes. This jam went into jars, it looks great, but I have the feeling that it will also be quite hard (I added some pectine - jam setting mix) and probably next year I will end up making fig paste instead of jam!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Quince jelly

I love quince jelly, lovely project for rainy days! Wash and quarter some quinces, removing the pips, then boil the lot with lemon juice and a little water until the fruit is soft and mushy. 

Put the pulp inside a jelly bag, cheaper if you just use a clean pillowcase (I have one which I use just for jellies) and hung it over a bowl (using a broom and two chairs) for a day and night.

This way the juice will drop into the bowl. As a rule if you like a clear jelly do not squeeze the bag! But I confess that I gave it a little squeeze… I wanted to get more out of it!

Measure the juice and add the same amount of sugar, then boil again.

I had lots, so I put half in a container to set, and added Fresh As Raspberry powder to the other half for a quick raspberry jelly. Delicious!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Plum jam with a little brown sugar

I am back to New Zealand and it is still plum season in the Oratia orchards! But is it so hot that plums don't last long after picking, so I had about 1 kg that was far too ripe and soft for eating. I washed them and then place them in a pot with a little water and boiled them, then I strained the 'paste' to discard stones and leftover skin and tasted it. I usually add 50-60% of sugar (I don't like the 1kg fruit for 1kg sugar ratio they do in NZ), but this paste was already sweet! So I added just 2 tbsp of brown sugar and a pinch of citric acid (as a preservative) and, fearing that the jam wouldn't set, 1/3 tsp of agar agar. If I were to keep this jam longer maybe I would have added more sugar, but I only made 5 small jars and two are gone already!

It is a really delicious and sweet jam, and it is the first time (after 18 years in NZ for me) that plums seems to be so sweet when ripe (almost like in Italy), and a jam need so little sugar - I guess it is due to the dry January we had.

But I really want to try to make a jam with even less sugar (or no sugar at all) to keep, any suggestion?

Remember that the first pears and the famous Oratia Beauty apples are also in season at the Dragicevich Orchard, 556 West Coast Rd, Oratia, Auckland. The Oratia Beauty apples are the first fruit to be added to the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Ark of Taste

  

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Feijoa jam... is like guava paste!

I made feijoa jam using my usual ratio of 60% sugar (i.e. 60g sugar for every 100g fruit - in this case you need to scoop the pulp our first, as the jam is made only with the pulps, not the skins).

Most Kiwis seem to use the same amount of sugar as the weight of the fruit (100g to 100g) which I find too much personally, but if this is also your style of jam and you are planning a feijoa jam … think again!!

Even with the 60% ratio my jam was so thick that I regretted putting it into jars! It would it been better in a mould, like quince paste.

In fact it really reminds me of the guava paste that you can buy in South America (and in some shops here too, in cans). It smells tropical and taste fantastic, sweet and thick and just perfect with a strong cheese. So next time I'll make feijoa 'paste', not jam, and I'll be sure not to put it into a jar!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

This recipe is for Sweet New Zealand #34, the blogging event open to all Kiwi bloggers (living in NZ or overseas) and expats blogging from NZ. May's host is Sue from Couscous and Consciousness. I have entered another recipe already for Sweet NZ this month, but since feijoas are in season now I didn't want to wait another month. Visit Sue's blog and click here to share you sweet creations with her. Also let me know if you are keen to be a host in 2014, and book a month!

Plum jam and the last of the summer sun?

It feels like summer is slowly coming to an end. I had the very last of the plums from the Oratia orchard and made some jam. I usually blend my jams as my husband like them smooth, but I prefer jams with chunks of fruit and peel in it, so I just remove the stone and cooked the plums with a little water and some jam setting sugar (this was a present, and I wanted to try it). The NZ jam tradition seems to be 1kg of sugar for 1 kg of fruit (or even more sugar if you make raspberry jam) for an Italian this is too much. I go for 40 to 60%, with the latter being my preference if I need to preserve the jam for a long time (it helps agains botulin). You can taste the fruit better with less sugar :-).

Finally I am getting sunflowers in the garden, now that summer is ending… well, I got three now, and they are my little personal suns!

And our cats, Nikita (left) and Marameo (right) are also enjoying the last of the sun, sleeping outdoors all day long! Marameo is 18 now, an old lady cat 

 Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Cape Gooseberry Jam

Upon my return from holidays I found that I didn't have a veggie garden but a forest of leaves and bugs! We had so much rain when I was away, and I could hardly see the tomatoes on the plants (full of leaves), the zucchini plants were rotten while pumpkins were crawling everywhere, and golly, the Cape gooseberries were out of control!

My problem is that I am not very good at 'thinning' plants. I don't have the courage of killing a seedling just because it gets to close to another one... and the result is this: a mess! I almost felt like removing all the cape gooseberry plants at once, but then I remember the Italian bloggers saying that cape gooseberries are so expensive in Europe... so I picked some and made a jam, on the same afternoon that I got home, even if I was tired from the trip.

Ingredients:

700 g cape gooseberries

Juice of half a lemon

500 g sugar (I used cater sugar simply because I just had that in the pantry, having being away so long!)

1 big apple

Wash the freshly picked fruit and place in a large saucepan with a little water and the lemon juice. Bring the fruit to a gentle boil. When the fruit is simmering add the apple, cut and cored but not peeled (the peel contain pectin, which will help your jam set) and the sugar. Stir often and cook for 30 minutes, then blend with an immersion blender. Cook for 10 more minutes, at this point the jam should start setting (check by picking up a little with a metal spoon).

Place the hot jam in sterilised jars, dried in the oven. Either seal the jars with cellophane covers (available in all supermarkets) and secure with an elastic band, or use capsule lids (I use Quattro Stagioni brand).

If using capsule lids, seal the jars well, place in a pot and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the jars. Let the jars cool down in the pot overnight and when they are cold make sure that the capsule has popped by pressing gently on the lid. Properly sterilised jars will keep for over a year.

The jam turned out to be great, possibly one of the best jams I have made recently :-)

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©