The flavor and textures of Pastiera di Grano, chewy grains and creamy ricotta baked in a slightly sweet crust, are of another world. You might even say a bygone world, one where households practiced the Arab art of distillation to capture the heady scent of citrus blossoms, where fresh ricotta was a seasonal luxury, and where sweets appeared only at holidays.

Pastiera di Grano
Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

Long before Italian immigration to America, the cooking of southern Italy and her islands already reflected centuries of ethnic cross-currents. The folk culture of southern Italy, at the center of the Mediterranean, included customs stemming from pagan Greek and Roman practices as well as the later rituals of Byzantine Christianity and Roman Catholicism. Added to the mix were traditions of Jewish and Muslim communities, whose influence lingered long after the terrors of the Inquisition and Spain’s domination of southern Italy.

Every group had its beliefs and superstitions, but over time the significance of many symbols became blurred or they took on new associations. What was sacred for one group might also acquire spiritual or magical importance to another. This is especially evident in food: while one community might make a certain dish to mark the birth of Christ, another might serve it at Easter, to celebrate His soul’s triumph over death.

Even if their original symbolism has been forgotten, certain special-occasion recipes have persisted virtually unchanged as long as the main ingredients have remained available. And whether we are talking to Romans or Sicilians, Jews or Christians, when we ask cooks why something is done in a particular way, our informants usually answer: “All the old-timers did it” or “that’s the way my grandmother taught us.”

Pastiera di Grano (Grain Pie)
Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

And so it is with this pastry. Search cookbooks or the Web and you will find very little variation in the recipe, regardless of its names—pastiera di grano, pastiera napoletana, pastiera di Pasqua, or simply “Easter pie.” What we want to explore today is the history and symbolism that infuse this pastry as much as the orange-flower water and cinnamon.

A grain of wheat represents the most basic form of life, a seed, which contains the potential for replication within itself. It is no wonder that societies that grow grain have long used a seed to symbolize fertility and rebirth. The ancient religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia had their myths of deluge and survival, based on the seasonal flooding of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers whose waters were essential to the agriculture and civilizations of the Near East.

Christianity borrowed and built upon those myths. Everyone in the ancient world understood that the land could re-emerge to produce bountiful harvests after cataclysmic floods. And so, the Evangelists could use the agricultural metaphor to demonstrate that Christ could suffer a mortal death and be resurrected. A single grain of wheat could lie dormant, hard, and dry over a winter and yet sprout in the spring…

Around the Mediterranean, and throughout the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Middle East are ritual dishes that include whole grains—not ground into flour to make another food—but boiled and left whole. What is interesting is that all are foods made to be shared, and all mark actual or mythical passages of time.

Most communities of the Middle East, whether they are Muslim or Christian, know some form of the dessert Turks call aşure, or Noah’s Pudding, a complex and variable mixture that may include boiled wheat, barley, rice, beans, and dried fruit. Scented with rose-water and garnished with nuts and pomegranate seeds, it is traditionally made on the somber occasion of Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram (in the lunar Islamic calendar) to commemorate the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Small bowls of the pudding are distributed to neighbors, relatives, and friends, regardless of their creed.

In contrast, the Jews of Aleppo, Syria (who now live outside that country) serve sliha—sweetened, spiced wheat-berries garnished with walnuts and pomegranate seeds—as a festive treat, shared by family and friends on the appearance of a baby’s first tooth.

Greeks make a similar dish, kolyva (koliva), which is served during the first week of Lent, on saints’ feast-days, and also to mourners at funerals. The custom is widespread throughout countries where Eastern Orthodoxy took hold, including Russia and Ukraine, where the Slavic kutja, often containing poppyseeds and apples, is served at Christmas, Easter, and at funerals.

Cuccia (which sounds a lot like kutja), is the boiled whole wheat appearing in Sicily, which may be savory or sweet. Cuccia, salted and dressed with a little olive oil, seems like monastic or Lenten fare compared to the cuccia with honey, candied fruits, raisins, cinnamon, orange rind, chocolate, and ricotta. That extravaganza is made to enliven the shortest days of winter and is associated with feast of Santa Lucia, December 13th.

Because they give us important clues about the development of Italian regional cuisines, we should remember Italy’s links to Greece. What the Romans called Magna Graecia, Great Greece—the island of Sicily and much of the Italian ‘boot”—received Greek settlers as early as the 8th century BCE. Hellenic culture flourished in the region well into the Middle Ages for southern Italy maintained both religious and commercial connections with the great Greek-speaking city of Constantinople. A later influx of Greeks came as the Ottoman Turks pushed into Asia Minor, mainland Greece, and the Balkans. Even now in the 21st century, the provinces of Calabria and Puglia have small, assimilated Greek populations, known as Griko.

But before we come back to Italy, we must detour, turning East, to the Byzantine Empire, where in the middle of the 8th century AD a battle raged within Christianity over the use of sacred imagery.

The Commandment, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…” had not prevented the churches of Asia Minor and Constantinople, “the Second Rome,” from being lavishly decorated. Glittering mosaics, frescoes, and painted panels depicting Christ, the Virgin, Old Testament figures, angels, and myriad saints adorned domes and walls. But when an imperial decree banned the use of images for veneration, many of these magnificent mosaics and frescoes were destroyed or defaced by fanatical Christian Iconoclasts.

Largely removed from the political fray, some monastic orders that wished to continue to create and worship icons fled the Empire. They sought refuge under the protection of the Western Church, whose authority emanated from Catholic Rome, not Orthodox Constantinople. One order of nuns left Asia Minor with the relics of Saint Gregory the Armenian, also known as Gregory the Illuminator.

Upon their arrival in Italy, the nuns were granted a building site upon the ruins of a temple dedicated to the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres (whose name is the source of our word “cereal”). In gratitude for their safe arrival, the sisters dedicated their new convent, in what is today a bustling quarter of Naples, to their protector, San Gregorio Armeno.

Today the neighborhood around the convent is filled with shops making and selling presepe—-the famous carved Neapolitan Nativity figures, that now include everyone from the Holy Family and the usual Magi, shepherds, sheep, and camels to the Obamas and Michael Jackson. Did the icon-loving sisters simply land in the right 8th century neighborhood or did their presence make this a favorable place for artisans? It’s impossible to know, but clearly, the iconoclasts did not prevail and the craft of imagery, sacred and secular, is flourishing.

The convent itself is now far better known for pastiera di grano than the relics of an Armenian saint, and we can’t resist theorizing how this came to be. The founding sisters of the convent of San Gregorio Armeno were well educated, many of them from noble Greek Byzantine families. They would have been steeped in the foundational myths of Greek culture and certainly would have understood the significance of their building site. The legends of Ceres, whom they knew as the Greek goddess, Demeter, were already familiar. Ceres’ daughter, Proserpina, was exiled to the underworld for a quarter of each year (winter) when her mother mourned the girl’s absence. But each spring, Proserpina was released and Ceres, whose cult was associated with death and rebirth, celebrated by bringing the world into bloom.

Ceres, Goddess of Agriculture

Pagans and early Christians alike kept faith with the elemental rhythm of the seasons, forces far more powerful than politics or religion. No activities ignored the agricultural calendar. Christian cycles of propitiation, pleas for intercession, and celebrations grew over pagan calendars with their seasonal rites.

Naples is surrounded by the verdant pastures of Campania, and the sisters might well have been inspired to celebrate Easter with some of the region’s abundant spring dairy products. The first nuns of San Gregorio would also have remembered the whole grain puddings of their old home in Asia Minor, where all the ingredients of Noah’s Pudding were available long before the advent of Christianity or Islam.

Like many of the convents of southern Europe, San Gregorio gained renown for its confectionery, which the nuns sold to support their institutions and charitable activities. Costly delicacies like marzipan, nougats, crystallized fruits, and pastiera, are labor-intensive and thus best left to specialists like the sisters, for whom cooking was a devotional act.

It’s impossible to say which visionary first baked ricotta with whole grains into a dense pie. But all you really need to know is that pastiera is as rich in history as it is in taste.

Cooked wheat imported from Italy

If the women in your family made their own Pastiera di Grano, then you, too, may want to perpetuate the tradition. Whether you soak and boil your wheat kernels or seek out tins of imported Italian grano cotto, cooked wheat (a short-cut now as common in Italy as it is in America), you’ll need to be prepared—and patient. No matter which recipe you use, you must invest the time to do it right.

For an excellent recipe that begins with raw wheat, please see.
Michele Scicolone’s Web Site.

If your are using precooked wheat, please see the instructions given by:
The Academia Barilla Web Site.

But if your family, like many, always bought their pastiera from the local Italian bakery, right now, early in the week leading up to Easter, is the time to put in your orders.

To our local readers: All the ingredients for your homemade Italian Easter feast, including tins of grano cotto, are available this week at Piccolo Market in Sarasota, Florida.

Piccolo Market owner, Josephine, is still accepting phone orders for her magnificent pastiera di grano and savory, salume-studded pizza rustica. This year, the shop will also sell single slices of pizza rustica by weight.

Pastiera di Grano
Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

Mille grazie to our friend, Tigrane d’Ybreo—a veritable pastry wizard, who obliged us by making his pastiera in time for us to take the photographs for this post.

Buona Pasqua a tutti!

Piccolo Market
2128 Gulf Gate Drive
Sarasota, FL 34231
(941) 923-2202
http://piccolomarket.com

The pairing of pasta e ceci, pasta and chickpeas, goes back at least as far as the Romans. The Apulian-born poet Horace, writing in the first century BCE, speaks of going home to a meal of lagane (flat pasta), leeks, and chickpeas. The nutritious combination of wheat dough and pulses is widespread and enduring; one could enjoy Horace’s supper in Puglia today.

Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

In Italian-American recipes, chickpeas are almost always confined to savory dishes, but there is one notable exception: the filled pastry known as Cavazune* or St. Joseph’s Pants. See our expanded description of the March 19th Feast of St. Joseph and the foods prepared for it.

These pastries, filled with a sweet, spiced purée of cooked chickpeas, are usually fried. Most people in Italy did not have home ovens until after World War II, so in areas that were historically rich with olive oil, but short on cooking fuels, deep-frying was a cost-efficient way to cook. Frying equipment is also portable, and thus, convenient for open-air celebrations.

But in much of North America, March is a little early for an outdoor festa. Deep-frying—whether the treats be calamare, arancine, or dolci—has become a chore many Italian-Americans would rather leave to restaurants. Thus, baking the cavazune is an option.

However, if you are going to bake your pastry, please choose a recipe with enough fat, such as one for a pie-crust or the pastry recipe (page 278) for Calcioni in Gina DePalma’s superb book, Dolce Italiano.

But if you are going to fry your your pastry, you can use less fat in the dough. A recipe for a dough that includes some of the traditional flavors of Sicily is here for those who wish to fry. Baked or fried, the filling for the pastry is the same.

In truth, the chickpea stuffing, spiced with cinnamon and cloves, is reminiscent of pumpkin-pie filling. We include this recipe as an arcane curiosity. If you want to channel your grandmothers, it will give you a taste of centuries past.

St Joseph’s Pants (Cavazune)

Ingredients:

Use a neutral oil for frying. (We prefer canola.) Depending on the size of your pan, you’ll need at least 1/2 cup, and probably more.

Dough:

1 1/2 Cups flour, plus more for dusting
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp Ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp sugar
Grated rind of one orange or tangerine

1 Egg
2 Tbs. Olive oil

2-3 Tbs. Cold wine, preferably white

Place all the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food-processor and pulse 2-3 times to combine. With the motor off and lid removed, break in the egg and drizzle the olive oil and one tablespoon of the cold wine over the dry ingredients. Pulse 5-6 times to moisten the mixture; it should begin to clump together to form a ball. Run the motor and drip in a little more wine, until the dough forms a compact ball that leaves the sides of the bowl clean. This will take only a few seconds. Do not over-process!

Remove the dough from the processor and wrap or cover it. Keep it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes while you make the filling. You need not clean the bowl before making the chickpea filling.

Chickpea* Filling

1 1/2 Cups cooked chickpeas (or one 15-oz can)
2 Pinches of ground cloves (no more than 1/8 tsp.)
1 1/2 tsp. Ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
Grated rind of one orange or lemon
1/2 tsp. Vanilla extract
1 Tbs. Honey
2 Tbs. Orange juice
2 Tbs. Sweet wine or vin cotto*

In the food-processor bowl, pulse the chickpeas, spices, salt, and citrus rind. Add the liquids and process to make a thick, smooth purée that will allow a spoon to stand. If you need to add a little more liquid, add either orange juice or wine.

Assembly:

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to be 1/8^th inch thick. With a round cookie-cutter 2-3 inches in diameter (or the rim of a water glass), cut as many circles as you can from the dough. Set the cut circles aside. Gather the scraps and repeat, rolling out the dough and cutting more circles, but handle the dough as little as possible to keep it tender.

Place a mounded teaspoon of filling just off-center on each round. Fold over the dough and gently press the edges together as you form a half-moon. With a fork, press the edges shut and make a decorative border (see photo above). Repeat with all the circles. Save a couple of the scraps of dough to test the frying temperature of the oil.

Within reach of your cook-top, place a cake rack over a few layers of paper towels. You will need this to drain the fried cavazune.

Pour 1/2 inch of canola oil into a deep sauté pan or an electric frying pan with a temperature dial. (Italians would have once used olive oil because that was all they had, but even your nonna probably used corn or soybean oil; either will withstand higher heat than olive oil.)

Drop a flattened scrap of dough into the pan. If it sizzles and browns evenly, your oil is hot enough (about 350-360 F on a candy thermometer). Fry your cavazune in batches so as to maintain the temperature of the oil. With tongs or a slotted spoon, turn them over so they color evenly on both sides. It will take 2-3 minutes to fry each batch.

As the cavazune cook, remove them to the cake rack to drain and cool. Sprinkle them with a little salt while they are still hot.

If you do not plan to eat them within an hour, make sure they are completely cool and store them in an air-tight container. Enjoy them as soon as possible. Tradition dictates that all food for La Festa di San Giuseppe be shared!

This recipe makes 24-30 cavuzune.

For Italian-Americans glassy-eyed after the Feast of the Seven Fishes or whatever they have enjoyed for Christmas Eve at their cena della vigilia, Torta di Ricotta is the perfect coda. And the pie is equally welcome the following day, at Christmas dinner. Diners sated by antipasti, courses of lasagne, multiple meat preparations, and, maybe even (after the 1960′s) a turkey look forward to the cheese tarte to cap two days of over-the-top feasting.

Photo Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

My Sicilian grandmother made torta di ricotta twice each year, for Christmas and Easter. And as I’ve written elsewhere, when I was old enough to express a preference for my birthday celebration, she would happily oblige her first grand-child with a ricotta pie—in late June.

Heavier than Torta di Nonna, a custard-filled Tuscan cousin, torta di ricotta seems more widespread among Italian-Americans, perhaps because a ricotta and egg filling is easier to master than a delicate custard.

A few things to bear in mind:

1) Even though ricotta is indeed a fresh cheese, Torta di Ricotta is not a cheesecake.

2) There is no substitute for the rich yet delicate flavor and texture of good ricotta. So, this is no time to cut corners or calories; you will do neither your diners nor the recipe any favors by substituting non-fat or skim-milk ricotta. A feast-day dish is precisely that; eaten only a couple of times a year, it deserves to be made with the very best ingredients.

3) The recipe has many subtle variations. Before I came along, my grandmother had used candied fruit in the filling (probably candied citron rind). But family sources say Little Skipper found the fruit to be too bitter, so nonna switched to maraschino cherries. And when my maternal aunts started venturing over to help with the Christmas baking, they added grated chocolate to the filling. In our family, the one constant has been the toasted almonds…

As Sicilian desserts go, torta di ricotta is not be the sweetest, the richest, nor the most stylish. But for me and many others, it’s a slice of nostalgia, more celebratory than any other creation on the Christmas groaning board.

Torta di Ricotta

Enough crust for the top and bottom of one 10″ pie

Pasta frolla (made with a little sugar and an egg) is the traditional sweet pastry of southern Italy, but many American-Italians prefer an unsweetened crust. Whatever your choice, it’s worth the effort to make yours from scratch and, in a food processor, it takes only a minute.

Filling

2 Cups whole-milk ricotta
1 Large egg + 1 egg yolk
1/3 Cup granulated sugar
1-2 Tbsp fine polenta (corn meal)
1/2 Tsp ground cinnamon
Freshly grated rind from one lemon
1/4 Cup dried pitted cherries*, coarsely chopped
1/4 Cup diced dried fruit** (optional)
1/4 Cup coarsely chopped, unsalted almonds, lightly toasted

First, make your crust. Divide the dough into two balls and refrigerate (covered or wrapped in waxed paper) for at least 20 minutes, or until your filling is ready.

In a large bowl, thoroughly blend the ricotta with the whole egg, extra yolk, polenta, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon rind until you have a smooth mixture. Fold in the chopped fruit. Set filling aside and reserve the almonds.

Preheat the oven to 350. It is important that the oven not be too hot, as the crust could brown before the filling has set.

On a floured surface, roll out one ball of dough and line your pie plate, leaving at least 3/4 inch of dough overhanging the edge of the pan. (We made 6 individual tortalette from our dough, which would have been enough for a large, two-crust pie.)

Pour the filling into the pie-shell; it should come to 3/8-inch below the edge of the pan.

Sprinkle the chopped almond bits across the filling and, with a spatula, gently pat them into the filling. (They will sink a little further, but this way, they will not all fall to the bottom.)

Roll out the second ball of dough and cut it into strips to make a lattice across the top of the filling. Form an attractive edge as you pinch the ends of the lattice and the overhanging pie-shell dough together. At no stage should you OVER-HANDLE the pastry dough. Ugly is better than tough. Or, as an Italian would say: Brutta ma buona!

Bake the pie for at least 25 minutes and check to be sure the crust is not browning too quickly. If it is, tent a sheet of foil loosely over the top of the pie and continue to bake until the filling has puffed up. The filling will become golden, but it should not brown. Test the filling for doneness with a straw or the point of a sharp knife, which should come out clean. Depending on your oven, you will need 30-50 minutes to bake your pie.

Allow pie to cool completely and then keep it in a cool, dry spot at room temperature until serving. Many feel that this torta tastes best when made one a day ahead, and we would encourage you to do that—provided you have a secure, undisclosed location in which to hide it from all those (like me!) who are prone to nostalgia dei vecchi tempi.

Buon Natale!

Arance alla Siciliana, Oranges Sicilian-Style, emigrated with the first waves of southern Italians and is one of the few recipes to have remained virtually unchanged here in America.

Copyright © 2009 Skip Lombardi

Among the myriad gifts Arabs brought to the Mediterranean, citrus fruits had been cultivated for centuries throughout much of the Italian peninsula and Sicily, where they were a winter fruit. Here, too, in North America, where they had been grown commercially since the mid-19th century, citrus were seasonal.

Italians assembling this dish in America could easily procure oranges, the main ingredient. And in the early days of their settlement, the olives and olive oil had to be imported from Europe and, thus, were very similar, if not identical, to what the immigrants had known back in Italy. So with this dish, unlike most others in the Italian-American repertoire, there was no need and little possibility for New World adaptations and substitutions.

Yet, you’ll be hard-pressed to find this presentation on any menu; perhaps its very simplicity has kept Arance alla Siciliana at home. This is no Caesar Salad, offering an opportunity for exuberant restaurant showmanship… It is not a grappa-soaked cake ignited by a maitre d’… Whether served as a salad or as a dessert, Arance alla Siciliana has always exemplified la cucina casalinga, home cooking.

Distinctive precisely because it is devoid of the abundant excess that typifies the rest of the Italian-American cuisine, it is one of our favorites and evokes particularly cherished memories…

When I was growing up in Connecticut in the 1950′s, a family friend or relative would invariably vacation in Florida and return with a crate of oranges for my grandparents. For several weekends thereafter, my grandmother would make this desert to follow either Saturday supper or Sunday dinner.

One of my favorite recollections of this time was the way our home smelled. As my grandmother peeled her oranges, she’d always place a couple of the peels over the pilot lights on the stove. Before long, the whole house would be perfumed with the warm aroma of orange peel.

And going back a generation, my mother used to talk about watching the clock during her last class of the day because she couldn’t wait to run home from school to see if her mother had prepared arance.

Unlikely as this combination may sound, it makes a refreshing dessert, especially after a rich meal. Salting the orange slices actually brings out more of their natural sweetness, while the lemon adds a bright aftertaste. And that little bit of olive oil brings all the flavors together.

Copyright © 2009 Skip Lombardi

Ingredients:

16 Large oil-cured Sicilian black olives
Juice of ½ medium lemon, or more to taste.
4 Medium Navel or other sweet oranges–seeded, peeled, and sliced crosswise into thin rounds
2 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs Fresh mint,* finely snipped with scissors

Preparation:

Marinate the olives in the lemon juice for approximately 30 minutes. Arrange the orange slices on a platter.

Remove the olives from the lemon juice and scatter them atop the oranges. Drizzle the olive oil over the slices.

Sprinkle the platter with the salt and let it rest at room temperature for approximately 15 minutes.

When ready to serve, place several slices of orange on each of four plates. Add four olives to each plate, spoon the accumulated olive oil and lemon juice equally over each serving. Garnish with the snipped mint.

Serves four.

In the days leading up to La Cena della Vigilia, the Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes, Italian-American families gather to produce a dizzying array of sweets. Among them are giugiulena (joo-joo-LEH-nah), sesame-almond candies that stand as testament to Sicily’s history as a cultural junction.

Photograph © 2008, Skip Lombardi

The island’s benign climate and central Mediterranean location attracted myriad Europeans, among them Crusaders reluctant to return to the drafty mead halls of northern Europe. In the East, European adventurers had tasted more than sesame; their campaigns in the Holy Land had brought them into contact with sophisticated Arab urban cultures. Meanwhile, Arabs had settled across North Africa and in nearby Sicily, where they introduced new crops and cultivation techniques. The Muslims of the late medieval period enjoyed peaceful participation in a polyglot society that included Jews and Christian Italians, Greeks, Normans, English, Germans, and Catalans.

Giugiulena: the Sicilian name intrigued us, and we suspected an Arabic origin even though the contemporary Arabic simsim and Italian sesamo are clear cousins. We found a clue, but no obvious answer, in the modern Spanish, ajonjoli… So we emailed our friend, fellow food-historian and linguist, Charles Perry, a longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Charles replied that both ajonjoli and giugiulena are from a less common medieval Arabic name for sesame—juljulaan. He wrote, “I’ve often wondered whether juljulaan is connected somehow with juljul, which means a small bell—a jingle bell? … al-jonjoliin was the current word in Moorish Spain. Hence, the Spanish word for sesame, ajonjoli.”

(As an aside here, we should say that Charles is one of the few people we know who can truthfully say he’s often wondered about the origin of an archaic word for sesame…)

Photo courtesy of Nagraj Salian

But—Charles had given us the final clue… We are gardeners, and one of us has studied plant taxonomy. So, if you happen to know what a sesame blossom looks like and if you’ve ever heard how a dry sesame seed-capsule rattles, then it’s obvious that medieval Arabs had a popular name for Sesamum indicum that vividly described two of its most distiguishing characteristics. Juljul…small bell… This photo, of one strain of sesame in the plant’s native India, says it all.

With such a multicultural pedigree, giugiulena strikes us an appropriate sweet to mark a holiday period when everyone should celebrate the prospect of peace, now and in the year ahead.

Giugiulena

Italian confectionary has traditionally been the province of women—whether they be the nuns in Italian convents, who still fashion many of the nut-based sweets from the Arab period or the Italian-American nonnas, mamas, aunts, and children gathering to make hundreds of canali, biscotti, crescenti, amaretti, and struffoli along with these jawbreakers.*

Photograph © 2008, Skip Lombardi

Although we’ve expanded the cooking instructions, this recipe is faithful to the well-used index card in the photo. It comes from Angela Munno by way of Jo-Ann Carta, both of Middletown, Connecticut.

Ingredients:

1/2 Lb. Whole shelled almonds
1 Lb. Sesame seeds
1 1/4 Cup Honey (10 oz.)
1 Cup Sugar
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp Almond extract
Grated rind of 1 Tangerine
1 — 2 oz. Brandy—optional

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 300 F. (We use a toaster oven. If you do, stay close by to watch the almonds so they do not burn.)

Spread the almonds out on a sheet pan and place in the middle shelf of the oven. Toast for approximately 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and reserve.

Place a large sauté pan over medium heat and add the sesame seeds. In a dry pan, toast the seeds, stirring occasionally, for approximately 15 minutes, until they begin to give off a toasted aroma. Remove from the heat and reserve.

Place a 3 or 4 quart saucepan over medium-high heat and add the honey. Heat the honey until it has become liquid. Stir in the sugar to dissolve and, when the mixture begins to boil, lower the heat to medium and cook, stirring regularly, for 7 — 8 minutes—no longer. The mixture will be golden-brown in color.

Add all the sesame seeds and almonds, stirring constantly for a few minutes to incorporate them with the honey-sugar mixture. Cook for about 7 minutes, stirring regularly. The mixture will become stiff, but keep it moving in the pot. Add cinnamon and grated tangerine skin and cook for an additional 2 — 3 minutes.

Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla and almond extracts and (optional) brandy. Continue to stir for approximately five minutes as the mixture cools. It will be quite stiff.

Photograph © 2008, Skip Lombardi

Pour and spread onto a wet cutting board and roll flat to a uniform half-inch thickness with a wet rolling pin.

With a sharp, wet knife, cut the candy on the diagonal to make diamond shapes or lozenges*.

* As one more demonstration of how food brings us all together: the word lozenge comes from the Arabic lawz, almond.