From my early childhood years I always had a strong bond to Italy, its culture, people and - of course - Italian food. Due to my Italian heritage, various great trips to Sardinia, Rome or Veneto and my mother's best friend who owned an Italian restaurant, I gained very quickly a high interest for this beautiful country and especially its food. It is known for comfort food or how I would say it, "real soul food". A well cooked plate of great pasta could always help me to forget any kind of problems for a minute and let me simply enjoy this moment. When I moved to London a couple of years ago and started to work at my first restaurant I got to know a totally new and different side of Italy. Not because of the restaurant itself, more because of the people. My direct pastry colleagues and other chefs, waiters, bartenders and receptionists showed me their real Italian way of living and especially their love and dedication to food and pastry. Food is not just food for Italians, it is a passion and something where family and friends meet, cook and gather together and inspire each other. I have learnt a lot of things from these new friends, who I now call my Italian family in London.
Now I will share with you a recipe which I secretly got from an Italian friend's grandmother: a wonderful chocolate tart with a slight touch of orange - crostata al cioccolato.
For 1 tart you will need:
For the base:
180g soft, unsalted butter
110g caster sugar
1 tsp dry, instant yeast
300g plain flour
1 orange, zest
3 egg yolk
pinch of salt
For the filling:
2 eggs
35g cornflour or maizena
100g dark chocolate
50g caster sugar
500g whole milk
In a big bowl mix the caster sugar, yeast, flour and salt together. Add the butter and knead everything with your hands until you have a crumbly consistency. Finally add the egg yolks and orange zest and combine everything together until you have a smooth dough. Wrap it into cling film and leave it in the fridge to rest for 1 hour.
In the meantime start with the chocolate filling. In a bowl whisk the eggs, cornflour and caster sugar together. Heat up the milk on the stove until simmering. Once it is almost boiling, take the milk off the stove and add it to the egg-sugar-cornflour-mixture and mix it together. Then pour everything back into the pan and put it on medium heat. The mixture will start to thicken up, so keep on whisking. When it has formed a pudding-texture, taste with a spoon if all the cornstarch has fully cooked out. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate to the pudding mixture. It will melt immediately, so whisk everything together until you have a dark brown coloured chocolate pudding. Cover it with cling film so it touches the pudding and let it cool down.
Once the dough has rested 1 hour in the fridge, take it out. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Take the dough and roll it out on a floured surface to a thickness of 3-5mm (it helps a lot if you roll the dough on floured baking paper and with extra baking paper on top, so nothing sticks to the rolling pin).
When the dough is evenly rolled out take off the top baking paper and transfer the dough into a greased tart tin. Press the dough firmly into the tin, the edges and the sides, trim the edges off. With a fork stab the bottom of the dough, so no air bubbles form while baking. Take the chocolate filling and fill up the tart tin with it, spread it evenly over with a palet knife. Now comes the fun part, the traditional decoration of a crostata. Take the leftovers of the dough and form which ever pattern you like on top of the chocolate pudding. The most traditional one is a square pattern, similar looking like a chess board - I used this pattern too. Simply cut even-sized small squares out of the dough and place them as a chess-pattern over the chocolate pudding. Then take the crostata and place it on the oven for around 50 minutes, until the dough is golden brown. Take it out and let it cool down for 20-30 minutes before serving.