Here in Italy the holiday season is officially closing with today’s Epiphany festivities and tomorrow people will start taking down their Christmas decorations (if it was up to me, I’d keep’em up all year long!). Today, my family and I will enjoy the pinza leftovers from last night’s Panevin and get together to play boardgames.
As I mentioned in my previous post, pinza is a rustic cake made with polenta flour (which is a bit coarser than cornmeal) and wheat flour and it’s filled with dried fruit such as raisins, figs, dates and flavored with grappa, fennel seeds and orange zest. My mom and my aunt always get together to make it and they take turns mixing the ingredients in the pot, as the dough is quite thick and dense (like polenta!). Since both of them have bad shoulders, I normally step in and help them with the mixing. This time I carefully observed how they make it and I noticed they mostly eye the ingredients, without weighing them. To make 2 big pans of pinza, they use about 1.5 litres of water and then, they go from there, adjusting quantities based on the consistency. First you need to cook the cornmeal (+ other ingredients) on the stove, and then you add more ingredients and let the dough rest for a few hours. Then it’s time to bake it.
This dessert is known as Pinza Veneta which means it’s from the Veneto region. Here in the western part of Friuli, and specifically in the province of Pordenone, we’re very much influenced by Veneto both in the dialect and the culinary traditions. Baking Pinza is definitely one thing we share with our neighbors.
So the holiday is season is over and an old Italian saying goes “L’Epifania, tutte le feste si porta via” (Epiphany carries away all the holidays). But fear not, because another Veneto saying goes “Dopo le sante feste de Nadal, le santissime de carneàl”, meaning that Carnevale isn’t too far away (:
- 750 ml (25.3 fl oz or 3 cups+3 Tbsp) water
- 2 Tbsp fennel seeds
- the zest of 2-3 oranges
- 2 apples, peeled and grated
- 100 g (3.5 oz) dried figs, chopped
- 10 dates, pitted and chopped
- ½ cup of grappa
- 125 g (4.4 oz) lard (or butter)
- 250 g (8.8 oz) polenta flour (or corn meal)
- a generous pinch of coarse salt
- 500 g (17.6 oz) all-purpose flour
- 500-600 g (18 oz) raisins, softened in water
- 14 g active-dry yeast (2 packets), dissolved in ¼ cup of lukewarm water
- 300 g (10.5 oz) sugar
- Pour water in a deep pot. Place over stove and turn on heat.
- Add fennel seeds, orange zest, grated apples, figs, dates, grappa, lard, salt. Bring to a boil and let boil for about 10 minutes. Turn heat to low.
- Add polenta flour in a steady and slow stream. Cook for about 20 minutes, mixing often.
- Remove from the heat and pour in a bigger pot. Let it cool.
- Add sugar and yeast. Squeeze water out of raisins and then add to mixture. Mix all ingredients with your hands and then add all-purpose flour. Continue mixing with your hands until all ingredients are well-combined. Cover pot with a towel and let rest for about 2-3 hours.
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Spoon mixture onto baking tray. With wet hands, level the mixture and spread it across the pan. Let it rest for another hour.
- Bake at 360°F (180°F) for 50-60 min or until golden brown.
Love that pinza!
🙂 Thank you Don!