Sfogliatelles with Ricotta Walnut and Raisins

I have been cooking a lot of Italian food, or Italian influenced food.

Our family love Italian food, especially children, and we have a lot of Italian families around us.  When we get to another birthday party - the friends of our children, we get more Italian food and get more Italian recipes.

And some of them have been accepted by the Italians, when hubby brought them to work.  Including the Italian Potato Donuts, Cannolis, so I said to hubby, time to re-visit some of the old time favourites and bring them to work, see if the Italians at work will OK them as well...

So, time to do Sfogliatelles.  The little pastry wrapped sweets filled with ricotta ...

However, I made an almost fatal mistake, about the timing.  Anyway, this is this batch of Sfogliatelles:

I didn't change the pastry dough quantity:

Ingredients



Dough
500g plain flour
50g sugar
1 tsp salt
80g water
80g milk
1 large egg

The dough was mixed, and rested for more than 3 hours, and rolled out and stretched, bit like how I'd do filo pastry, make it thinner and then brush melted butter on each later, roll it up like a long log.

Normally, I'd wrap it up in cling form and rest it for an hour as per original recipe suggests. 
However, because I was very tired that night and decided to leave it in the fridge over night, and make the filling the next day.

The Filling:
75g thickened cream

75g milk
60g sugar
50g semolina
150g Ricotta
1 egg yolk
1 whole egg
Zest of 2 lemons
1/3 cup of crushed and roasted walnuts
1/3 cup of raisins
1 vanilla pod, sliced open and seed scrapped out.

Bring the cream, sugar, vanilla and milk to a slow boil and set aside and discard the vanilla pod. 

Whisk the egg and the yolk, stir in the warm mixture, return to the small saucepan and add in semolina.  Once thickened and smooth, fold in ricotta.  Fold in the rest of the ingredients.

And, I found the pastry is too sticky to be moved like how I used to!  So instead of the traditional method of cutting into 1cm rings and push out the middle, I roll it out and wrapped the filling like hmm... riviolis.

But they are still quite nice and well accepted by the Italians at hubby's work....

Chocolate Sfogliatelle - My Not so Italian Sfogliatelle...

My family missed the sfogliatelles so I decided to make a new batch, it is a lot of work but then, I thought, how about chocolate fillings?

This is the way how I adapted the original Italian version and made this modified version with modified fillings:

Ingredients

Dough
500g plain flour
50g sugar
1 tsp salt
80g water
80g milk
1 egg

Filling
75g thickened cream
75g milk
60g brown sugar
50g semolina
150g Ricotta
3 egg yolks
100g Lindt’s 70% dark chocolate
50g candied orange peel, grounded
½ tsp cinnamon powder

Preparation

Dough:
Place all ingredients into the bowl of a mixer and combine with a dough hook until a firm dough has formed.
Remove from the bowl and wrap in cling wrap. Leave to rest for about 3 hours.
Using a pasta machine, roll out dough.
To do this, cut the dough into pieces the same size of a slice of bread.
Pass each piece through the pasta machine on number 1. Fold the dough into itself giving it three layers. Continue doing this until the dough becomes smooth. This should take about 4 folds through the machine.
On the final fold, pass the dough through gradually, while making the dough thinner by increasing the numbers on the dial finishing at number 1.
Leave the dough to rest on a bench with a think layer of olive oil spread over it.
Continue with the remainder of the dough.
Once you have all sheets rolled out and covered in lard, start to assemble the roll.
Start by rolling up one sheet of dough as you would a cigar. Roll the next sheet around the first and so on until you have formed a thick roll.
Wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge for a minimum of 1hr.
Remove from the fridge and cut the roll in 1cm thick disks.
Cover the outside of the disk with a little olive oil.

Filling:
In a large saucepan bring to boil the cream and milk.
As the liquid starts boiling add the semolina and sugar and stir, Continue cooking until the filling thickens, break up Lindts chocolate pieces and add in to melt. Remove from the heat, add the egg yolks and mix well.
Add ricotta and orange peel and mix for a further 3 minutes.

To fill the sfogliatelle :

Spread the sfogliatelle gently, pushing out the centre and using your fingertips to gently separate the layers, creating a shell shape. Scoop the filling into the centre. Fill the shell to the top and fold over to close.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180’c for 25-30 minutes. Dusted with icing sugar, voila!

From Shanghai to SziChuang - Egg Crepe Pork Mince Rolls & Mapo Tofu... and the so Italian Sfogliatella Riccia

It's Saturday again...
After helping out with mum's duties, we went out for lunch and had some really yummy Cantonese Roast Duck, and Roast Pork - and awesome fishballs (well, the 3 year old had them)...
So tonight, I can't do Cantonese any more...

Something I learned from mum, a very fiddley Shanghai Dish or is it Hangchow... Sometimes I get it mixed up... but that region, most dishes are super fiddley and time consuming, this is the cheat version of egg dumplings - dumpling skin made by egg only, which means you will have to stand beside the stove, with a steel scoop, a bit of whisked egg in the scoop and making dumpling skins one by one, before the egg is cooked, you need to put the mince in, and close the egg crepe when it's still runny... I don't have the scoop, so I decided to make egg rolls instead... I don't have a proper crepe pan either, but, the $5 Ikea 20cm frying pan will just do the trick...

But first of all, I have to get the mince ready... and my mince, is not all that authentic, this is why...

The Fish Sauce.... something exciting I found after having Vietnamese food....

Ok, this is my 3 year old helping out with the mince, it's just pork mince, with fresh ginger mince, finely chopping spring onion, and finely chopped mushrooms, marinated with salt, light soy sauce, chicken dripping (I just happen to have them, normally I'd just use some vegetable oil) sugar (what is Shanghai food with no sugar and soy) Shaoxin wine, 5 spice and fish sauce.... I can't be bothered to wash the food processor and also I'd like to have a bit of bite in the meat... and a bit of Tapioca flour to bind.
And then, I whisked 5 large eggs, a pinch of salt, and made some thin crepes... no flour, or corn flour, potato starsh, tapioca starsh is allowed! Nothing else, just eggs and a pinch of salt, bit like very thin omelette, not that hard really.

And I spreaded the mince all over the crepe, and rolled them up, 5 of them and stacked neatly in the plate, into the steamer.

There usually will be some sauce after the plate being steamed, and it's time to cut them up and drizzle that sauce all around to let the mince soak it in again... well, this is not one serving, this is for all of the family... There's usually no individual plating for Chinese - it's a culture of communal eating.

Then, with the left over pork mince, I decided to do my favourite Mapo Tofu... well, I'm not SziChuang - so this is as authentic as I can get apart from one thing....

The Chillies...

I've got too many red chillies in the garden, so I replaced the dry chillies with the fresh ones from the recipe I've got.

I think there was about 75-80g of mince left.

First of all, I sliced up some ginger, garlic and the red chillies - I know all too well how hot they are so I got rid of some of the seeds of one chilly, the other one, I used the whole lot.

Heat some vegetable oil in wok and in goes the ginger garlic and red chillies, and my generous 1big tbsp (maybe 1.5?) of Szichuang Peppercorn...

the Aroma...

Then I threw in the pork mince, Szichuang Chilly Bean Paste. Stir to coat, at this stage, the wok should be dry stri fry, no excess liquid.

Until the pork was almost cooked, I add in Soy and Shaoxin, and the sliced mushrooms (something that's optional) Cubed Tofu (not silky not firm, something in between) and some tapioca flour paste (tapioca flour with water, enough water for the sauce)

3-4 minutes later....

Finely chopped spring onions were the last to be added and this is my version of Mapo Tofu....

But today's big big project was Sfogliatella Riccia....

I know, I have been watching too much Italian Food Safari and was tempted to do this amazing Italain treat...

I set the dough for half a day rather than the half an hour suggested by recipe, and rolled out in pasta maker and stretched with clarified butter.....

And I found that when making indivisual shells, put the dough into the freezer or fridge temporarily will give me better results, otherwise the layers stick, and you just can't open them up!

However I did half the filling recipe, and still got some left, I think the chef was making pastry shop quantity? However, this is what they look like before they got into the oven....

It does take longer than the recipe suggested, even though I put oven on 200C rather than 180C suggested by recipe, and this is what they look like after 30 minutes:

Of course I dusted them with icing sugar after they came out!

I think hubby will order them again and again now.... it's so crispy, and the filling is light... you can hear the crunch, when you bite into these little parcels.... oh... all the work just is worth the trouble!

This is the link to the original Italian Food Safari recipe, if anyone is interested.....

http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/italianfoodsafari/recipes/detail/recipe/9562