La Torta Antica Ericina
Bestriding the shoulders of the island’s western verges is the perfect borgo medievale (medieval village) of Erice, called so after he who was the mythical son of Venus, sired by the king of the ancient tribe of the Elimi. There is a fascination about the village, its apocryphal tales and its truths—gifts, one thinks, of the cults that once worshiped the gods of beauty and love there and carved into the village walls scripts still undecipherable. Limpid, sweet is its air, and from its sweeping lofts one sees Mt. Etna, her fury diffused in far-off mists. And there on a small piazza sits the pasticceria of Maria Grammatico, who fashions the most gorgeous, most delicious evidences of rustic Sicilian pastry. Many of Signora Grammatico’s formulas are borrowed from the epoch of the Ericina convent pastry-making—it, too, having once practiced a temperate rather than a Baroque style. This is a version of the celebrated Ericina ricotta pie.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 6
Ingredients
The Tart Crust
The Filling
Preparation
The Tart Crust
Step 1
Pulse the flour, salt, confectioners’ sugar, and cinnamon two or three times in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the 9 tablespoons very well chilled butter and pulse until it resembles coarse crumbs. With the machine running, pour the cold wine in through the feed tube all at once and process for 4 to 5 seconds, only until the contents just begin to form a dough.
Step 2
Turn the mixture out onto a large sheet of plastic wrap, gathering up the errant bits and gently pressing it all into a dough. Enclose the dough in the plastic, cover the plastic with a clean kitchen towel and leave it to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Step 3
Roll out the rested dough between two sheets of plastic wrap to 1/4 inch. Remove one sheet of wrap and invert the pastry into a buttered 10-inch loose-bottomed tart pan, fitting and trimming the pastry. Cover the pastry with plastic wrap and place it in the freezer for 20 minutes or the refrigerator for 1 hour.
The Filling
Step 4
Split the vanilla bean with a small, sharp knife and scrape out the seeds into a large saucepan. Add the vanilla pod and the cream and, over a medium flame, bring the components to a simmer, permitting the cream to reduce and thicken to 1 cup. Add the mascarpone and heat until the mascarpone is melted and blended with the reduced cream. Cover the pot and permit the vanilla seeds and pod to infuse the cream.
Step 5
Meanwhile, in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, process the ricotta with 1 cup confectioners’ sugar until the cheese is smooth and thick. Add the egg whites and process another 20 seconds to incorporate them well.
Step 6
Turn the ricotta mixture out into a medium bowl. When the cream/vanilla mixture has cooled, remove the vanilla pod and blend the perfumed cream very well into the ricotta.
Step 7
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Step 8
Remove the plastic wrap from the tart shell and bake the shell for 5 minutes, lowering the heat to 400 degrees and baking it for 8 minutes more or until it has begun to firm and is lightly golden. Remove the partially baked pastry from the oven to cool for 10 minutes.
Step 9
Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Step 10
Spread the ricotta mixture over the tart, smoothing it a bit, and bake the tart for 20 minutes or until the ricotta is firm and a very pale golden crust has begun to form on its surface. Do not overbake the tart. Remove it from the oven, setting it on a rack to cool for 5 minutes before removing the pan’s sides and permitting the tart to cool thoroughly. Dust the tart with confectioners’ sugar.
