Art, Culture & Lifestyle - The Accademia Italiana della Cucina

Traditional Christmas Sweets A mouthwatering journey through Italy’s Christmas recipes

By Morello Pecchioli, Honorary Academician for Verona

Is it sinfully gluttonous to enjoy Christmas sweets? Heaven forfend! A slice of pandoro with a snowy layer of confectioners’ sugar, a slab of panettone studded with raisins and candied fruits, or any other sweets is a blessing for the most wonderful time of the year, the delicious amen that brings the family closer. The Christ Child himself, in his manger, blessed those who offered the sweets to him. In front of the crib, the shepherd carried a doughnut, the farmer carried a basket of oven-fresh biscuits, and the housewife carried a flatbread wrapped in a warm cloth. Italy is famous for the ‘holy’ sweets, created in monastery kitchens between the ‘Personent hodie’ and the ‘Adeste Fideles’, they are cooked over the charcoal in the hearths. During Christmas, every family indulges the sugar in their doughs, shaping them into symbolic shapes, including stars, infants, huts and angels. This is how the “nadalìn of Verona”, the ‘ancestor’ of the pandoro was born.

Century after century, the Italian peninsula has been filled with biscuits on Christmas, torroni, panforte, pandolce, pandori, pan di Toni, pan degli angeli (‘angel bread’), cakes and doughnuts. Calabria is rich in Christmas sweets, mustazzuoli appeared alongside susumelle (honey biscuits), turdilli, fried gnocchi immersed in honey, and the venerable ancient pitta ccu passuli: a cake with raisins, walnuts, almonds, honey and spices. The name derives from the Greek pita, ‘flatbread’. Interestingly, pitta ccu passuli has the same shape – a concentric series of roses – as the rose cake from Valeggio sul Mincio. It also has the same richness as the zrtuséin, also known as certosino or panspeziale. It was created in a monastery oven in Bologna. Similar to the Calabrian version, pitta calabra is a bread made up of honey, almonds, pine nuts, raisins and cinnamon. It contains no eggs, but only candied fruit and chocolate. The recipe of pitta calabra has been reconstructed and registered by the Academy.

Similar in terms of compactness, calories density and ingredients is the thousand years old panforte from Siena. According to legend, a little boy had gone to the hut in Bethlehem to offer the Holy Infant all he had: bread and almonds. St Joseph blessed these gifts that later became the first panforte. In Siena, it is formerly known as panpepato (‘peppered bread’), and was reviewed by the flagging Sienese Ghibelline troops at the battle of Montaperti (1260) when they defeated a vastly superior Florentine Guelph army. The original version of panpepato was prepared with medicinal substances, pepper, various spices, almonds, oranges, citrons and lemons as their doping. The citrus fruits gave the mixture an acidic taste, which was later renamed as panis fortis (‘strong bread’). The Christmas sweet from Siena underwent numerous tweaks over the centuries. There are 17 ingredients in it, each one representing one of the city’s districts.

The Dominican nuns of Santa Caterina in Palermo are famous for their huge cannoli. Traditional sweets in Sicily include cobaita (honey, toasted almonds, sesame), mustazzoli (again!), sfinci that is frittered with honey, countless sweets with dried figs, Christmas cassata, and nucatili, a honey biscuit filled with hazelnuts and walnuts. Nucatili is particularly prized in Palermo, it has been prepared by the nuns of Santa Elisabetta since the 16th century.

The sweet couscous was first ‘baptised’ centuries ago by the nuns of the Great Abbey in Spirito Santo monastery in Agrigento. Nowadays, it is still prepared by them with the same method.

Not all Christmas sweets have religious roots, some of them are secular, for example, the parrozzo from Abruzzo. Created by Luigi D’Amico, a pastry chef in Pescara nearly a century ago, it contains flour, starch, milk, sugar, eggs, minced almonds and orange peel. The cake is covered with piping hot dark chocolate.

Another example of secular ‘designer’ sweets is the anello di monaco (‘monk’s ring’) from Mantova. Invented in the late 18th century by Adolf Putscher, a Swiss pastry chef, the doughnut-shaped cake is covered with white glaze, reminiscent of a snow-covered volcanic crater; the cake drew inspiration from the German kugelhupf.

The recipe of the classic Yule sweets from Trentino and Alto Adige, Zelten, is traceable to the 18th century. Zelten derives from selten meaning ‘rarely’: it was formerly prepared only once a year, for Christmas. Its ingredients vary from valley to valley, but the basic ones are the same: flour, yeast, eggs, sugar and butter. Variants may include almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, raisins or candied citrus fruits.

The publication La Cucina Italiana (Italian Cooking) suggested in the 30s, a recipe for “sanction” biscuits: “You can make excellent, substantial, nutritious, flavoursome and crumbly biscuits of higher quality than English biscuits in your own homes. Melt 100g of butter in a quarter-litre of hot milk and allow it to

cool. Mix 400g of flour, 60g of potato starch and a sachet of Italian ‘Delizia’ brand starch. Sift them twice and form a mound on the chopping board. Pour the cooled milk and lemon zest into the mix. Knead the ingredients together into a compact and firm dough and roll it out to approximately 2 millimetres thick. Cut the dough to different shapes and bake in a medium-hot oven until they turn golden”.

The Accademia Italiana della Cucina has been present in Hong Kong since 2012. The Delegation is headed by Mr Savio Pesavento and welcomes new members, individuals who are passionate about food and knowledgeable about Italian cuisine.

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