Preparation: Rita Amordicucina’s Neapolitan Pastiera

• Start with the shortcrust pastry. In a bowl or your stand mixer, pour the flour and sugar, then add the lard and start kneading.

• As soon as you get a sandy mixture, add the egg yolks and continue working the dough. When it’s uniform, transfer it onto a work surface.

  

• Compact it and wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for an hour.

  

• Let’s prepare the wheat. Pour the milk into a saucepan, add the pre-cooked wheat, lard, and grated lemon zest.

• Turn on the heat and, stirring often, let it cook for about 20 minutes over medium heat until you get a creamy mixture, then let it cool.

• Only when it’s completely cool, start preparing the cream. Sift the ricotta in a bowl.

  

• Add sugar and mix with a whisk or spatula.

  Then add the eggs and cold wheat, vanilla seeds, and candied fruit cubes, a pinch of cinnamon, and orange blossom or millefiori water.

  

• At this point, mix everything to combine all ingredients and move on to assembling the pastiera.

  

• 1)

  Grease with lard and flour a 10-inch aluminum pastiera mold. Then take the shortcrust pastry, place it on a parchment paper sheet, and start rolling it out with the rolling pin….

  

• 2)

  until you get a thickness of about half an inch. At this point, with the help of the parchment paper, transfer it into the mold and use your hands to make it adhere well across the entire surface.

  

• 3)

  Then remove the excess dough with a small knife and knead it again, it will be used to make the strips.

  

• 4)

  Now you can pour the cream inside the shortcrust and level it, then roll out the rest of the dough to half an inch thick and make strips about 1.5 inches wide with a pastry wheel.

  

• 5)

  Place them on the pastiera, crossed over each other, making the ends meet the edges of the mold.

  

• 6)

  Bake in a preheated static oven at 356°F for about 80 minutes, taking care to move the pastiera to the lowest shelf in the last 20 minutes of cooking.

  If the strips darken too much, cover the pastiera with a sheet of aluminum foil.

  

• 7)

  When the pastiera is baked, let it cool completely. Then you can dust it with powdered sugar according to your tastes.

  Here is the ready Rita Amordicucina’s Neapolitan Pastiera.

  

• Put the sugar, lemon peel, and vanilla seeds in the bowl, pulverize: 10 sec./speed 10. Gather at the bottom with the spatula

  Pulverize again: 10 sec./speed 10. Gather at the bottom with the spatula.

  

• Add the egg, egg yolks, lard, all-purpose flour, and salt, knead: 30 sec./speed 5.

  Transfer the dough to the work surface, compact it with your hands into a smooth ball and wrap it in plastic wrap.

  

• Refrigerate and proceed with the recipe.

• In the clean and dry bowl, put the ricotta and sugar, mix: 30 sec./speed 4. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap in contact, refrigerate for 12 hours.

  

• In the clean bowl put the cooked wheat, butter, milk, orange blossom water, orange and lemon zest, cook: 20 min./176°F/reverse/speed 1.

  

• Transfer the mixture to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap.

  

• Put in the bowl sweet ricotta, eggs, egg yolks, and candied fruit, mix: 1 min./reverse/speed 4.

• Add the flavored wheat, mix: 1 min./reverse/speed 3. Let it rest in the bowl until needed.

  

• To finish

  Preheat the oven to 302°F in static mode. Butter and flour a 10-inch round aluminum pastiera mold.

  From here on, you can follow the above instructions at points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

  

• You have thus prepared Rita Amordicucina’s Neapolitan Pastiera with the Thermomix procedure.