Dining with the Diva | Pasta Frolla Italian Pie Crust with Amaretti Stuffed Apricots

here is the link to the recipe for the apricots: https://divinacucina.com/2010/08/italian-amaretti-apricots-summer-food-fest-stone-fruits/

And the simple Pasta Frolla Recipe with a different filling and the traditional woven top. https://divinacucina.com/2011/03/the-italian-way-with-recipes-crostata-con-pecorino-e-pere/

Usually you can just use a jar of jam as filling. Simple and often served as breakfast with a caffe latte.

Hi does the studious Divina Cucina and today I was inspired at the market when I was shopping I had been asking everybody what what should I make what should I make this week for my cooking demo and fava beans bruschetta a pine nut cake home of two ideas came

Up and one of the things that I always try to teach in my cooking classes is that you should be inspired at the market and then come home and look for recipes so what I always suggest is shop first and then find what’s really beautiful so if you find that there’s a

Beautiful salmon or the steak looks will to go to the Deputy lamb chops shop and then come home and then start looking at your cookbooks and then you can see what would be a great pairing I mean it’s easy to fill the vegetables or something

Like that but what I hate is when you going to plan your whole menu and then the main thing like the salmon or the lamb chops aren’t there so when I went to the market today I was originally thinking somebody asked if we should do work with fava beans and fava beans our

Spring and cut a very limited window because we buy locally working the people at the farm just down the road so the fava beans are already getting a little big and when the big we cook them instead of eat them raw so when we eat the raw we have them with pecorino

Cheese as Marcelino cheese and raw fiber beans you just eat them or make a cute little salad and I can show you the link on my website for that but then when they’re big a lot of people actually peel them and then cook them and that’s

Kind of a pain in the butt or you could cook them and we do a dish that intestine is called gar Mucha and at down in robocode vignola and it’s sauteed vegetables of the season so it’s asparagus zucchini artichokes at follow beans and peas and its really lovely so I thought okay

If the fava beans are kind of old and tough like I could make that so I went down to the market and as I was there somebody from me but with velocities that were front of me and then there were no following beats so I said well that’s out but then

I found the first day forgot and that totally inspired me in two seconds so if I get excited about something that makes me happy and one of my favorite simple recipes to make is chime Dana hi everybody Mayor James I don’t my glasses lines left up to see one of my favorite

Recipes is so easy to make is traditionally you split when you did press take out the pins you crush do have a little amaretto cookies but I see these are just kind of a little grocery store cookie that are the hard almond bitter almond cookies I’m Bonetti but

That I’m edit though the cheer flavor is kind of all about and so this is a simple recipe and a habit on my websites I can send you a link you just pop this open you crush the embroider cookies mix them with butter and bittersweet cocoa

Powder and make a little mound where the pigment in and you bake them and it’s a beautiful district they’re gorgeous they glisten the tartness of an apricot and the bitter of the chocolate and the cookies is just is perfect it’s really perfect together so I had been dreaming about the other

Thing I was dreaming about making the other day was a I want to teach you how to make an Italian pie crust the crostata is my favorite type of in the world and I’ll bet he’s playing hide the second hi hi Sarah Oh Michael Batson Jill

Fabulous so one of the things that I thought I’d do then is to make these apricots inside of the county pie crust so to me an Italian pie crust is the best pie crust in the world because it’s somewhere between a butter cookie and a sugar cookie so it’s very forgiving and

It’s really easy to make for people that are not going to make the progress ok so I’m going to drop my my pasta board back up and I put it here so hopefully you can see me when I’m making this and let me know if you can’t but it’s a

Um so I think it’s between a butter cookie and a sugar cookie so we don’t use like American recipes like three cups of this and two cups of that we weigh everything so please get a cheap scale taken scale and then I use them just a second just move my belonging

I am i usually just way and I use a ratio Johnny key I use the ratio of three to one I do 300 grams of flour and it’s the zero zero flour okay our light flour 200 grams of butter and 100 grams of sugar okay that makes me more like a butter

Cookie to melt in your mouth pie crust is really really good if and what’s important is that the weight of the butter and the sugar together are equal to the mountain flower so if I did 150 of sugar and 150 of butter I would have

More like a sugar cookie and be a little crunch here can you imagine the difference in the consistency between the butter cookie and sugar cookie so I like to make the butter cookie cutter version so I’m going to do that now so I

Have my scale and I do it you can do it in a bowl or you can do it just on a table so you know it is you can see when you have these big things you can zero them out okay and then you just call cut

Making the time so we add 300 grams of flour almost that’s be really crazy and then you hit the tar but again and that makes it zero again okay I’m going to add two hundred of butter these packages are 250 so it’s going to take off like you know about couple tablespoons here

And I leave my butter at room temperature if I was going to do this in a food processor I would I’ll leave the butter cold and cut it into cubes and I just kind of fall apart by its left now I want 200 of butter wait didn’t go to do

This is really nice and soft takes a little more off 189 hmm okay some of your butter and then I just zero it out again so so easy it is to cook when you’re weighing Rodina so what if you add a hundreds of sugars about a half a

Cup okay so 3 2 1 if you wanted to you could add lemon zest or cinnamon or anything else you like I’m gonna do this like an Italian mom I just do it on my cutting boards you can see how I see the studio okay

And when I do you know how we have those little like strudel kind of crumble crumble press select Apple Google or something Apple brown Betty the crumble so I’m just breaking up the flour the sugar and the butter with my fingertips and crumbling it until it looks like a

Crumb crust okay what this does is it really gets the butter and all the flour coding all the tiny little butter granules and that’s what makes it melt in your mouth and then when it starts to really I get smaller you can actually rub it between your hands like this and

It’s really beautiful now some every single Italian mother of course has a different recipe so some people will add baking powder to this and it rises a little more which would be what I would consider like a bar cookie okay these ratios together five two zero zero flour which absorbs less butter since

American flour would absorb more so the ratios have changed a little but I think if you take your American but it took your sugar system recipes my considered is kind of like making it sideways normally we would have cleaned the butter and sugar and then added the eggs

And then add the flour again right to make up a cake or a pie crust or something whenever you make butter cookies that’s the way we do it and our butter is usually cold or – if you can’t really do this by hand so when I do this

It actually looks like grated Parmesan cheese I’ll show you this in a second I’m almost there I find this very therapeutic and I don’t mind sitting here working with my hands the butter here – just smells so good I would say you know if you can buy the better best

Ingredients you can afford it really makes it taste better and I know an American you can get that fabulous Irish but I now carry gold so it’s really really good okay to think about that so almost all my big other clumps are gone now I just want to make sure

They’re all nice and small and then this is just going to go together in a minute this is actually the ratios if you have the cookbook it’s almost like a double crust so in the cookbook there’s the torta della Nonna which is grandmother’s cake and you first

Roll roll this out and in a disc and then you cover it with a cold pastry cream and you put another layer on top so it’s almost like you’re making a giant ravioli and then you bake it again bake the bottom first then you re bake

It with a the top on it and you press almonds in it that’s grandmother’s cake or if you make a chocolate pudding you press hazelnuts and that’s grandfathers cakes that’s really nice so I’m going to bring some this over here to you you can see you see that

Consistency of this now it’s just like grated Parmesan cheese okay so then to make it pie crust from crumble ah these eggs such a way that’s way too in the Chino mat this egg ways because you can’t just say that – its these are like 60 gram eggs so it takes

A whole egg and a yolk and then I keep the extra white just in case I might eat it sometimes when it’s hot it might be a little more livable when you make it something like this the egg yolks actually make a more tender crust okay

So that’s why I tend to just use a whole egg Eddie yolks to this let me just wash my hands a second I was a pastry chef in a five-star hotel for several years and always had my hands and flour and goes and batters and it’s just so messy I

Wash your hands all the time so this is the other thing I really love is a bench scraper it helps to keep everything all together depends I’m just going to take my hand here and break up egg yolk in the egg right in the middle thank you my

Pasta time the same idea and then I’m just going to start to mix it together I’m just lightly try not to get my hands really wet in this but I’m using that this um bench scraper and this goes together really quickly yeah it’s a already dough it’s got to make sure

Everything gets blended in evilly and I’ve got the oven going already so it’s a little warm I’m working right above the oven on a little more power to it but you don’t really want to change the proportions too much okay and this is already dough so easy to do money and cents

And yet you make desserts to cook you can I work together at the hotel not in the kitchen oh so they were talking I just saw on Facebook all them they just did a show my James Beard used to stay at the hotel where we all the times become fun

Julia Child against the women all they say is people the owner of the hotel active of one who started those great chefs culinary programs so we’re really lucky surround the way those people all the time so this to me is just a little bit soft still but it’s really a beautiful

Beautiful soft press ok now often people will in America then go and refrigerate your dough like four hours or whatever to make it cold to make it so that you can roll it out well this one is a isn’t as SS eggs it’s more laughing you don’t

Need to do that oh the world’s best creme brulee I love crème brulée oh I didn’t finish I met the girls that made it though so I was at my color night conference I can’t wait to see it okay so this is already a beautiful dogs

Bite we tested it to make it really not sticky and it’s a two crust webscoe take one part and put it off on the side here oops I need my license and the powers coming out just a minute let me go get my chords oh you know mike is my

Electricity went out and so this probably wasn’t recharging just a second and then I am a port for Tai Chi Li Bianchi does computer follow the philosophy Moodle yeah thanks for reminding me Nick that I had a power outage that’s why I wasn’t going to be here how’s this secondly

Watch my hands again turn up clothes on dental love the stripes a pony oh yeah sorry you guys will just take me a second here I wasn’t very good at explaining what I needed to hook back up again so let me just see let me plug

This in yeah that’s the right one okay just a second be right back yeah so when we came back from shopping today we were without electricity and so I can’t do this man I’m plugged in right here it’s gonna work the little thing can you still see the cutting board yeah

Okay so I’m I just divide this in half and what I like to do is make a ball I just have it be round which makes it easier to roll it into something round okay so just my cutting board lightly and then I have this was probably one of

My favorite things I brought with me from America was a French tripe pan so when you bake it and you want to serve it make it pretty you can just pop it back out and then put this on your cutting tray okay and then what I have

Is I have this little tiny rolling pan we get these it like all the little markets here that is exactly the size that I need tell myself that I need for my ass proof that the pan so I can tell when I’m going to shout

When I get to the right side and then I’ll show you the other chick so I’m just gonna roll this back and forth straight up and down and then you kind of do what this is a quarter turn like from 12 o’clock to 9 o’clock I’m going

To roll it again and this helps keep it round this is important lexis flour tortillas and everything – okay I’m going to give it another quarter turn and now I’m just going to roll it out where it’s a little thicker on the corners and if this breaks or anything

This dough is so forgiving you can just put it back together that’s perfect that was it to make the bottom you can put it back together like slices okay so to get it from here into the pan because it is kind of tender I just roll it up on my

Rolling pin okay slice the pan right there and I don’t need to grease this pan it’s like a little magic pan and this Prabhat also because have so much better in it and then I unroll it right on top of the pan and it’s a little off-center

So do this in squeeze four seven ounces and now it’s got the perfect little pie is missing in some places okay so I go on the editor they cut off its excess anywhere okay and then take some of this other pie ham and I’ve been up around

And build up the edge there like that to keep all kind of play-doh things just make a chord this is not going to be a double crust pie oh I came in like what zero zero flour it’s not Italian flour and it’s called zero zero it’s light is

A gluten and at home I think this one called help and so they’re bringing a lot of it now and I think even Bob’s mill has Italian pastry flour and it just makes something it just melts in your mouth because our bread flours kind of hiring Luton so that’s often why

People have a temper pie crust and you work too much so this is really hard to make it tough so it some kind of guarantee the delicate soft buttery processes I’m just pinching this now onto my edges to make sure I have a nice crust the edge on the crust and you it’s

Not gonna fall apart it’s just be really beautiful okay so it’s going to go around my thumb and just push this all around the edges in it and then go down on the top to make sure it’s flat so you don’t have any little thing sticking out and that this

Is also has like little crimped slides to the wall so when you push it in that makes a cute little design so I’m going all the way around and pushing it down I’ll show you just a second so the typical thing an Italian mom would do

Can you see this here now you see how its crimped around the edges there the typical thing a mom would do right now she would just throw a jar jamming him through start jamming and spread it out and then when he’s leftover pieces roll out ropes and do a little crisscross and

That turned out really nicely okay so now what I’m going to do is what I would normally do for the make the filling first but normally do for the just to bake deeper cuts by themselves is I crush the amaretto cookie just upon hand they break apart really easily I mean

You could put me in a bag and lap them and break them with the rolling tent or something and then ziploc bag it really doesn’t have to block bags we just got them now the idea is here UK I hope you say that and you always just think all

These things I can’t remember how to say I don’t know how to say in English I final tears we didn’t have computers there’s no computers there’s no internet there’s no IKEA Ortega so how do you say that so now I’m getting old by the way this bitter almond is also really nice

Pendant peaches or antara so I like it okay so we’re going to do this and I’m going to take that a little bit of a softened butter that’s left over and I’m going to take hunkel powder but just to talk about it I mix it all together and make

Just chocolate bitter almond butter tips on these apricots so like I said you shall bake these in them and serve them on their own little ice cream or something but I wanted to show you pie crust today because pie crust to me Italian pie crust is the secret of life

So I’ve started making all my American pies this big is that big so American Pie is always so huge hi there yet okay so I’ve got you just crumbled amaretto cookie I shot that little bit like two tablespoons of the softened butter left over and put that

In there and then I have two sweet cocoa powder and just a tablespoon or two okay with that and I’m going to mix those all together the butter is nice and soft fast chill here and then I’ll use my hands it just might take lending to the

Cocoa powder right away and this is all such a nice crumble topping I think it’s really good okay now so squeeze this have you seen my chocolate salami recipe that’s really good on my website you can just go on top of the website too that’s just a recipe

Index and that brings up like a whole bunch of recipes you can look at and then usually when you look at the recipe online it then shows you similar things so it kind of helps you look or you could look like subjects like soups or pastas by the name of the ingredient

Like vegetables or artichokes or something like that okay so another thing we’re thinking about doing for a recipe yesterday my clients an I think they come all the time every year and we always try to do something special so yesterday we had back to the Central Market and therefore

A lot of to register for a restaurant and wash my hands again Okay so severe restaurant is one of my favorite restaurants in Florence’s the menu really hasn’t changed very much like in 30 years but it’s a really exquisite food so you just drink a forgotten half and then where the pit would be just take some of those chocolates and make a little pit

Okay like that easy huh and I’m so lazy for the pant so if I was going to bake them if I wanted to I could really you know do them bit like this to get more contrast in flavor and give everybody like one or two and then do like ice

Cream on top but I want used to kind of be smaller and so it’s a very simple recipe that’s very very yummy so if you don’t feel like making pie crust you can just bake these by themselves and that would be fine very elegant dessert I’ve also done it

Where I’ve just cut the apricots up and toss them with this um with this mixture and then bake that in the pie crust form a French tart that’s also on my website so I’m going to link to some of the different variations when I put this on YouTube unpeeled you peel your

Apricot yeah yeah sure yeah yeah you can leave out the topo if you just wave it to them but this is bitter chocolate to me trust me and amaretto flavors really there it’s really really the bitter almond is really good so yeah you could leave it out I think it’s for color to

Make it look dark so it looks like a pit so mark that you started here hi this reminds me I’m a medieval Spanish dish teaches marzipan yeah same idea is yeah it is it’s the same again I work a lot with marzipan marks defender mission was

From the Arabs and the Spanish got it and then they brought down to Sicily yummy really good you know Huson is me right now speaking is um cam Val Bala he’s uh to the medieval historic cooking class in up in northern Italy in Valpolicella and now he’s going down to Umbria and

Giving a lecture down there and I’m going to catch up with him when he’s in Oxford in July I’m going to go to Oxford I love historical recipes so let’s do a lot of things that are foods that are tricked to the eye so I think that’s

What it is is that this looks like it still has the the pit in it so but then you can eat it so so we’re going to fill the pan with these I really like I need to put my glasses on so I can see what you’re saying

A Swedish shrimp you can going to go to the class stove Anthony I used to teach a class called culture through cooking and I taught about the food of Florence from the Etruscans through medieval the Roman times medieval times Renaissance discovery of America of the introduction

Of new world foods and then to the traditional plastic flutes of today I think it’s a fascinating way you study about food and I can’t wait to go to them this year Oxford is about landscape so I’m supposed to think about how that a land affects the food so we were and I

Said you two when you’re looking at historical recipes that’s really fun now the state different countries have kinda like the same recipes they just thought it naturally happen like pasta so you have them I keep watching Ken on the on Facebook we both got you know flour

Water pastas he tends to go more oriental with his the I’m of course in Italy centers to my Italian versions but there’s a lot of the same recipes it just showed up all over the world they’re great okay so you kind of don’t want the apricots to be too too bright bro

They’ll get they’ll turn to jam she wants it to be a little firm so these are just the first apricots that I’ve seen in the market so they’re perfect right there give me use cornmeal pushing the flower in the crust easier to read I don’t but

You could that would give it a whole different texture and flavor in Italy we never really used corn they have the polenta which is a different grind right and I’m sure up north where they have the polenta there’s different cakes we have without polenta polenta amore they

Call it but I haven’t use the point is that to be gluten free just to give it a different texture if I give it a different cooing that’s probably right more of a bite I love corn bread makes me happy but about to make corn bread and then bake these into

The corn bread that again I love fruit baked into cakes I can OS are just different texture I’m sure to put a little bit in try it you try it mean let us know Dan say I do that but I use this I mean I think it’s beautiful but

Cooking is that we each do something a little bit different and get a different result I went to my um my girlfriend Joanne weird she’s out of San Francisco and she opened she found out she was a fence silly axe wrench kidnap flower anymore so she opened up a Mexican restaurant after

Kids on a book on tequila and on New Mexico just loved it and love the fact that they used corn corn meal corn flour for so many things the masa and so she at her Mexican restaurant only has cornmeal the corn tortillas which is really nice and it also there’s a fried

Dough that they did for a dessert that’s made out of the masa and that’s in the cornmeal oh my god so good really really good so fried masa mr. sweet was really nice yeah Joanne’s really darling I didn’t get to see her she was just here

But she was only here for like a day between her courses she did the Cinque Katie and somewhere outside of Lucca and I was traveling too at the same time so we missed each other but I usually see her when she comes to I used to organise for tours when she came here

Oh guys you can get one more in look that was perfect with my little chocolates a little cocoa things now these are going to get smaller right so I’m going to crumble these on top the leftover crumbs want to waste anything and then I also bought some slice Amish cheese

Just to give it a little more texture and flavor I love almonds and I’m that I see are basically do you know this elm addicting are actually made from the pits of apricots or peaches that are actually with cyanide and that’s what gives the bitter the bitter flavor so I bought

Some of these needs a little sliced almonds that that might be nice just to give another color and those get all the golden on top right and give you a little more crunch I like honesty so I’m but iced tea okay so here we go we’re

Going to go into the oven now and you have 20 minutes or so so you want to sit and talk but you want me to show you the picture later does anybody have any question you can also with this leftover dough you could just put it the freezer and save it rolls out

Really nicely do you guys want to just see the picture when it comes back online should I just stop talking or should we talk about how I should make next anybody have anything to say here I’ll just say goodbye and see you later online I’ll post the recipes and then

I’ll post the finished pie online okay we have chocolate on my glasses okay well thanks thanks for coming then I’ll show you the recap the dough I’m going to put a link to the recipe Martha on the Facebook and the YouTube page you mentioned Jam earlier thin layer

Underneath or top I don’t with this but you could because apricots are under sweet anyway which is good amaretto cookies you could use in American you probably just use graham crackers or something right or any cookie crumbs that cocoa and butter would be nice looks like a little

Strudel streusel topping but the night what’s really nice is that is the the bitter almond contrast with the apricots but it can be chopped nuts maybe that’ll be nice some chopped walnuts with butter maybe cinnamon is sugar you can make that up or marks upon but if you don’t

Like almond then I would say maybe chopped walnuts would be really really nice it’s kind of just really fun to make that little pit okay I think that that’s really nice so then I’m going to go and I’m going to put this onto I’ll link this on the on our page on the

Dining to demon page to and then on that page I’ll put the links to the recipes okay and I’ll put I have the recipe apricot to just baked in the pan and then there’s also recipe with the almonds cut up the apricots cut up the tops with the crumble and baked inside

That same dough but flat if you don’t have a pan and you fold the edges over which is more the French style of a country a country fruit tart which can be done with apples or pears or apricots and what we used to do is when we cooked

Fruit tarts fruit tends to give off liquid when it cooks and that’s what can make a soggy dough if you have like that an American kind of crust this crust doesn’t really get soggy which is really nice but you can actually crumble what we used to crumble was like cake do cake

Or bread crumbs with cinnamon and sugar on the bottom of the pie crust before you lay your fruit in there and then that will soak up any of the juices okay so try that little trick hi guys thanks so much I’m glad we got through this battle is tripping it all okay so

I’ll see you online leave me any notes ciao