A TALE OF TWO TUSCAN RICE CAKES

My mom is visiting from Italy. Her presence has of course been a great help with my two children, but has also turned into an opportunity for me to rediscover old recipes–both from my childhood and from the land of my grandparents. My maternal grandfather was from a tiny town in the north of Tuscany called Montignoso, an adorable little place that I remember fondly for the cute-as-a-button farm behind my grandparents' house (bunnies everywhere) and the amazing food we got to eat everyday. My favorite memories concern a fantastically oily and delicious farinata (a simple triumph of chickpea flour and olive oil), the soft and sweet donuts filled with pastry cream called bomboloni, and the torta di riso alla Carrarina, a custardy rice cake infused with rum that I would savor in slow, meditative bites in a state of generalized gratefulness. 

It is this rice cake that my mother and I decided to prepare a few weeks ago. We used the recipe from our relatives in Tuscany and we set to work right away, following the original recipe to the letter in excited and deferential expectation. Two hours later we were both kneeling in complete awe before the most beautiful and perfumed cake we had ever baked in our lives. The top of the cake was perfectly caramelized, almost brûlée, and smelled of rum and lemon and vanilla like a mythical Arcadian paradise. We then tentatively tasted it, and there it was, the wonderful physical manifestation of my childhood's torta di riso in all of its starchy, custardy, and boozy glory. The rice worked as a soft crust, and above it was the perfectly firm custard that gently yielded to the pressure of our spoons. It was a complete success, with a touch of divine apparition.

But as much as this success made me proud, there is the dark side of this story. A week later, I decided to make the rice cake again for friends, and I had the gumption to add my "personal touch" by cutting the original amount of sugar and substituting rum with bourbon. I mixed the ingredients quickly, distractedly, arrogantly–leaving some unbroken lumps of egg white in the custard ("It'll work fine"), and threw the cake into the oven. When it finally came out, an unsettling feeling grabbed the pit of my stomach, telling me that the gods of Italian food had decided to punish my insolence. The surface was not as caramelized as the first time, and the lumps of egg white had solidified independently into an unappealing reminder of scrambled eggs. When I finally tasted the cake (in the company of my guests, no less), I had to admit to myself with great shame that the bourbon was almost undetectable, and that the lack of sugar had allowed the eggs to dominate in flavor. It was a half sweet, eggy frittata with a base of lumpy rice, a grotesque imitation that filled me with shame and my guests with useless cholesterol.

I apologized to my friends and family for the botched rice cake, and then closed myself into my confessional pantry—my altar to Italian food—and promised to never again take lazy initiatives with perfect Italian classics. No rash substitutions, no presumptuous subtractions, no distractions. Just humble, grateful respect. And you, reader, should do the same.

Read about another of my baking fails in Happy Easter, Bitter Memories.

A slice of the good torta di riso.

TORTA DI RISO ALLA CARRARINA

1/2 C short-grain white rice (Arborio or Carnaroli, but I used sushi rice and it worked fine)
5 eggs
1 1/4 C sugar + a tbsp for dusting the pan
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 lemon (zest and juice)
2 C whole milk
1/3 C rum
a pinch of salt

• Cook the rice in 2 cups of lightly-salted water for no more than 10 minutes. Rice should be al dente. 
• Drain the rice and let cool.
• Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• Butter a 10'' cake mold and dust it with sugar.
• In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest and juice, milk, and rum. Use a spoon for this, and make sure all of the egg white is broken to avoid a scrambled-egg top (no big lumps, just very small patches).
• Add the rice to the mix. It will be very liquid.
• Pour the mixture into the cake mold.
• Carefully transfer the cake into the oven, and bake for one hour, or until custard has set and looks brûlée like in the picture above (do not skip the browning!). If you're using a glass mold, it will take you up to 90 minutes.

Serve cake lukewarm or at room temperature, or the next day (it really shines after resting for a bit).

STRAWBERRY RICE TORTE

I love spring because my CSA starts again, rescuing me from a winter of badly-planned grocery shopping where I fill my house with too many cabbages destined to be forgotten in the back of the fridge. I always have grandiose plans for my cabbages, plans I promptly forget when I need them, as if they were only beautiful dreams from the deepest of sleeps. But I digress... Back to my CSA. This week, I bought a pint of pulpy strawberries that looked and tasted too good to be wasted on my kids' afternoon snack. (It's not that my kids don't deserve good strawberries, but the afternoon is usually a time of angry screaming and hurled toys, so rock-hard pears would do just fine. Am I digressing again?) I thought about it for a while, and I remembered the recipe for Strawberry Risotto that I had so loved in my childhood. I probably had it only twice then, but I tried it again a few years ago and found it lovely.

I thought that recipe for Strawberry Risotto would be perfect for the blog, so I started researching its origin to give you, my dear readers, some damn culture. As I started my Web browsing, I was already beginning to imagine an adorable alpine village in the north of Italy, nestled in the middle of a perfumed grazing pasture and animated by colorful wildflowers waving in the breeze. There, a small group of stern but kind matrons would throw handfuls of fragrant wild strawberries in a rice cauldron, stirring the Risotto with their massive wooden spoons around and around... Sadly, my Italian daydreaming was stopped short. My research immediately revealed that Strawberry Risotto was not an ancient Italian tradition. In fact, it's nothing but A FANCY RECIPE FROM THE 70s, a self-satisfied gimmick of a culinary period that thought itself above history and taste, and possibly the Italian equivalent of this Chicken Fricasee. My bucolic fantasy was shattered. I saw the wildflowers wilt with a cracking sound, and adorable black-and-white cows stampede all over my imaginary matrons and their northern village. A cloud of hairspray engulfed the land, and massive vol-au-vents began hailing all around me. Then everything turned glossy, and I passed out.

Well, not really. I find 70s food amusing, actually, but this time I wasn't interested, so I decided to employ my strawberries in a different direction. I still liked the idea of rice and strawberries, and so I researched a dessert that would use them both. I found this recipe for Torta di Riso al Balsamico con Fragole, which is fancier than my adaptation here given its inclusion of balsamic vinegar, but whatever. What I did was a very simple sushi rice cooked in milk and then mixed with sugar, egg, and a little rum. I spooned the mix into a cake pan in two batches, so that I could have a layer of sliced strawberries in the middle. The result is a simple, pretty cake that is the emblem of spring. It is light and delicious, and perfect for a picnic. And, in case you need it, it's also gluten-free.

Garnish it with good fresh strawberries, if you have them, and eat it warm, or at room temperature, or cold. And let's forget that the 70s are back.

STRAWBERRY RICE TORTE

3 C milk
1 1/2 C sushi rice (or other short-grain starchy rice like Arborio)
1 C sugar
6 tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp rum
1 Pint of strawberries (half for the filling, half or less for topping or accompaniment)

• Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Cook the rice in milk on the stove until cooked through, then transfer to a large bowl and allow to cool down.
• While the rice cooks, wash and slice half of the strawberries.
• Stir in the butter (broken in little pieces), the eggs, the vanilla, and the rum.
• Line a 9'' round cake pan with parchment paper (or butter and flour the pan if you prefer), and pour half of the rice batter in.
• Arrange the sliced strawberry in a single layer over the rice batter.
• Pour the second half of the batter over the strawberries, then slide the cake pan in the oven for one hour, or until cake is firm and top is slightly golden.

Note to ramekin lovers: This recipe works great in individual ramekins as a spoon dessert. Just check the ramekins after 35 minutes for doneness. 

Microbee's unforgiving claw.