Time
90 min
Serving
6 persons
Calories
293
It is believed that this healthy pie recipe- Pastiera - comes from the word "pasta", since the cake was originally prepared on the basis of ordinary pasta dough. In some places in the South of Italy, it is still baked according to ancient tradition. A modern classic Neapolitan pie is a crunchy base of shortcrust pastry and tender, very rich filling, consisting of two types of ricotta (from cow and sheep milk), boiled wheat, candied citrus, real vanilla and orange water!
Ingredients
- wheat flour: 250 g
- sugar: 80 g
- butter: 125 g
- egg: 1 piece
- yolk: 1 piece
- salt: 1 pinch
- orange zest: 1 Tbsp
- lemon zest: 1 Tbsp
- milk: 150 ml
- butter: 20 g (for the filling)
- ricotta: 350 g
- lemon zest: 1 Tbsp (for the filling)
- egg: 2 piece (for the filling)
- yolk: 2 piece (for the filling)
- sugar: 290 g
- cinnamon: 1 tsp
- vanilla stick: 1 piece
- candied fruits: 80 g
- wheat grain: 250 g
Metric Conversion
Stages of cooking
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To make the dough, put the sifted flour, sugar and chilled butter, cut into slices, in the blender bowl. Turn on the blender and grind everything to a state of wet crumbs for a few seconds at high speed.
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Add one egg and one yolk, lemon and orange zest to the flour crumb and quickly knead the dough (you can do it manually).
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The dough should come together in a ball. If you knead the dough by hand, you should try to do it as quickly as possible so that it does not warm up too much from prolonged contact with your hands.
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Put in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
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In the meantime, you can do the preparation of the filling, the main ingredient of which is boiled wheat grains. In Italy, you can buy ready-made boiled wheat just for cooking Pastiera. Or you can boil it yourself.
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Put boiled wheat in a small saucepan, add milk, butter and lemon zest. Put the saucepan on a low fire and cook, stirring occasionally, until thick, for about 15-20 minutes. This mixture will look like porridge, with a pleasant lemon flavor. Cooling filling.
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By tradition, when cooking the Neapolitan pie, two kinds of ricotta are used in equal proportions: ordinary cow milk (175 g) and sheep ricotta (175 g). Both types of ricotta mix and put in a large bowl, add boiled wheat. Of course you can use ordinary cow's milk ricotta.
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Add eggs and yolks, sugar, cinnamon and 20 ml of orange water to ricotta. Add candied fruits. One vanilla pod cut in half lengthwise, remove the seeds with a knife and add them to the filling.
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Mix everything.
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Turn on the oven to warm up to 180 degrees. Lightly grease the form. Remove the dough from the refrigerator, separate 2/3 parts from it and roll it into a layer 5-6 mm thick.
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Carefully transfer the dough into a baking dish. Form a side with a height of 2-2.5 cm, cut off the excess dough and trim the edge of the base of the cake. Add the stuffing in the form.
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Take the remaining dough and roll out, cut strips about 2 cm wide. Lay them out on top of the cream with a grid.
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Bake the cake in a preheated oven for 1 hour. Remove the finished cake from the oven and let it cool completely before removing it from the pan.
