The sweet tradition from Umbria is bound to the medieval period. This tradition involves above all the filled and spiced sweets, as the different kinds of Panpepato (panpepato is a sweet made with bitter cocoa, plain chocolate, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pine-seeds, raisins, honey, pepper and flour).
In particular today we would like to stop for a moment and concentrate our attention on a sweet which has its origin in the area near Foligno, Assisi and Spello: the Rocciata.

The rocciata has got ancient origins and it seems that it was even a kind of food created for the god “Hondo Cerfio”, an Umbrian divinity. Someone actually claims that the similarities between the rocciata and the strudel are the reason why there could be some relationships with the Longobards, that had got a state of their own in the Umbrian territory.

Anyway, apart from the legends, the name “rocciata” does not refer to the consistency of the cake, as we could naturally think straightaway, but it refers to the word “roccia”, that in the local dialect means “tonda” (round).

In fact, the sweet is made of a thin sheet of pastry that is rolled up with a filling inside. This filling is made with: crushed walnuts, pine-seeds, raisins, sugar, apples and olive oil to which you can possibly add some cocoa too, as a variant of the recipe.

If you want to taste a “rocciata in season”, we recommend you to reach Foligno (or Assisi) in the winter period, when the fresh walnuts are present on the market and when the cold allows you to eat this super caloric sweet in peace.

Otherwise, if you prefer to make a direct experience in the cooking field, we’ll greet you with the recipe of this rich sweet, so that you can experience its tastiness on your own!

Recipe of the rocciata from Assisi

Ingredients:

250 g of flour
50 g of sugar
lukewarm water
a pinch of salt
half a glass of oil
half a kilo of apples cut into slices
100 g of raisins
50 g of pine-seeds
some chopped nut kernels.

Preparation:

Knead 250 g of flour with 50 g of sugar, half a glass of oil, a pinch of salt and the quantity of lukewarm water that is sufficient to make a soft dough.
What you will obtain is a thin sheet of pastry on which you have to place a filling previously prepared with: half a kilo of apples cut in slices, 100 g of raisins, 50 g of pine-seeds and the chopped nut kernels.
After placing the filling on the sheet of pastry, roll it up, place it horseshoe shaped on a buttered baking-tin and bake it for 40 minutes.

Let the cake cool down and … enjoy your tasting!!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 8:46 am and is filed under italian cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.