The flavour of memories
A long-time owner of one of the two taverns (osterie) in Belvedere Fogliense (Tavullia) – a village upon a hill between the Marche and Emilia Romagna regions – Vera Generali (1921 – 2009) learned how to cook while still a young girl, during the years spent as a waitress at the service of the Mosconi-Negri family and at the city club of Palazzo Gradari in Pesaro.
In Belvedere – still called Montelevecchie at that time – she inherited the role of her mother-in-law Terza Giorgi, who started her business feeding the carpenters who worked at the restoration of the village walls. Later on – and in more recent times – Vera was one of the protagonists of the “Family dinners” (cene in famiglia) since its first edition: we like to remember her with her jam and chestnuts crostata (she used to make her dough – pasta frolla – using yeast – the so-called dose in local dialect) and we thank Lucia Giunta who handed her grand-mother’s recipe over to us.
Ingredients:
½ kg (double O) flour; 150 grams of butter; 250 grams of sugar; 3 eggs (egg yolk); 10 grams of yeast; the grated peel from one lemon; one sachet of vanillin; jam or marmalade; some ten grinded kernels of chest-nuts.
Preparation:
For the dough (pasta frolla):
Arrange the flour volcano-like (all around an imaginary hole), add the butter cut into little pieces (it must be at ambient temperature), sugar, yeast, vanillin, lemon peel and egg yolks, then work A into dough. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for about half and hour, then roll out the dough with the rolling pin. Cut out a few little strips for the decoration and place the remaining dough in the baking pan, previously buttered and sprinkled with flour. Place jam or marmalade on top, then decorate with the strips of dough creating a personal pattern and sprinkle with the grinded kernels of chest-nuts.
Bake in the heated oven at the temperature of 180-200° C for about half an hour.
wherelemonsblossom.wordpress.com 