From time to time I like to prepare some treat I know from Naples, the place where most of my life I lived. It’s also the cuisine I like most and what I learnt to cook. Yes, I am still one of the women who knows cooking from scratch AND loves to cook for family and friends. I still have the feeling of ‘you need to eat something good’. I like people sitting around the table, chatting together and enjoying the meal. It makes me totally crazy when my man is in a hurry to work and eats some microwave heated fast food on a run. I like to stay in the morning time in the kitchen, prepare the breakfast and after that start to cook for lunch.. and prepare something also for my sweetie’s dinner, when he is at work. This way I know he eats well and the right stuff and that is important for me. I would be a horrible mother, always trying to feed my little ones the right food… even when they are already grown up. I guess that is my Italian side.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about another typical treat from Naples. It is called ‘migliaccio’.
It’s a cake we make mainly for Carnival and Easter. It is a rich cake and can be prepared for example for the Easter pick-nick (Easter Monday). In Naples it’s made with ricotta (which I will omit obviously). In Tuscany it was made with pork blood once. The castagnaccio is very similar but made with chestnut flour. The name ‘migliaccio’ come from the grain of which it was made originally: millet, in Italian miglio. It can be made also with cheese and salami and/or prosciutto as a savory version.
The migliaccio originally is made with semolina, a coarse, purified wheat middlings of durum wheat. Not at all edible for me. To substitute the wheat semolina I decided trying a mixture of corn flour and amaranth flour. Well, yes, I am using the amaranth a little bit often lately, but I like it, it gives a nice flavor and it seems to give a nice texture to my bakery.
The rest of the original recipe – where there is no real one because every family has its own ‘secret recipe’ given from generation to generation – is the same except that I used almond milk and granulated eritherol sugar.
I love this treat, in both versions. But it’s definitely also a complete lunch or dinner. Or even for breakfast. It is filling non the less it is light in texture and taste.
- 350 ml almond milk
- 1 fresh ground lemon zest
- 75 gr polenta flour
- 50 gr amaranth flour
- 100 gr granulated sugar of your choice
- 1 egg
- 15 gr grassfed butter or ghee
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp bourbon vanilla
- 1 little glass limoncello
- Add the almond milk in a pot together with the lemon zest and the vanilla. Bring it to a boil and take the milk away from the fire. Add the amaranth and polenta flour and stir continuously in order to make a smooth and without lumps. Add the ghee or butter and stir again. Set aside and let it cool for a while.
- Preheat the oven onto 160°C/325°F.
- Meanwhile add the sugar and the egg in a bowl and with a hand mixer mix until it becomes a fluffy cream. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir well.
- In the egg-sugar-mixture add the polenta mix and mix with the hand mixer until you get a smooth, homogeneous cake batter.
- Grease a cake pan of 7'', transfer the batter into it and move it into the oven. Bake for 50 minutes, then put the temperature to 180°V/350°F for the remaining 10 minutes. The top of the cake should be lightly golden-brown.
- Take the cake out of the oven and let it cool out.
