Buckwheat polenta cake with hazelnuts and salty hazelnut mascarpone cream
Divine winter crumbly cake from the slopes of Italy
welcome to COOKING THE MED
You are here with me Merijn Tol, food writer, cookbook author and cook from Amsterdam, but my heart is beating for the Med. If you too love food from the Mediterranean, from east to west from Palermo to Beirut, you came to the right place! Be at home in Café Mazahar’s COOKING THE MED. I serve you my Mediterranean recipes with a twist.
Cafe Mazahar is the name of one of my latest cookbooks, and my travelling popup.
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SNOW SLOPES BLUE SKIES Last week it sometimes felt the world was not such a bad place. But the contrast of it all was hitting me too: thinking of other people’s horrific misery in a ski lift felt like a terrible terrible privilege. And alienating (was I really the only one thinking about it?) Of course, we have to continue to live. And laugh in happy moments. But how can we be indifferent. I found solace in looking at white wise mountains. They know truth. As does food. Ingredients and recipes never lie. It is a mantra i repeat often. And i found out again in these Italian mountains how true this is! Brace for a surprise.
BUCKWHEAT SECRETS I was in buckwheat country. So far it sounds Dolomiti style, does it. Plus i re-fell in love with the buckwheat. That nutty flavour, so delicious. In Italian elegantly called grana saraceno. Meaning the grain from Saracen people. Saraceno who? i thought to myself. Here’s what i found: the Saracen people were the people referred to as the people from Sharq, the Arab word for east, from which the word Saraceno is derived through the Greek word Sarakenoi. The people from the east or the Levante region. That means nowadays Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt. Of course they were not the producers of this grain (originating in cold climates like Siberia and parts of China). But of course as they are famous for trade, they were the traders bringing the grain to the Mediterranean, by using the Italian coastal cities. Important enough to give it it’s name. Now i bet you did not expect this. Neither did i. And so i found out about the connection between my delicious northern Italian morning crumbly buckwheat cake and the people from Palestine just by exploring the main ingredient. Wow.
Another thing i never thought about: buckwheat is a actually not even a cereal and not even related. It’s a pseudo cereal in the family of rhubarb and sorrel, a herb with seeds, that are nutty in flavour and packed with minerals, nutrients, a high source of protein and carbs.
In the region where we were, close to Valtellina, Brescia and Trento but still in Lombardy, it’s buckwheat all over the place. You find it in cakes, as polenta, or mixed with maize in mixed polenta. The poor people’s food for the northern polentoni - the people that eat polenta. And since we were staying in this lovely Agriturismo Belotti, we ate exactly the food of the region. Agriturismi are great places to enjoy local simple food in Italy. Usually they are farmers (the agri in the word) or producers of food and they make you taste their best foods. Home style cooking and hyper local. Belotti was no exception. And don’t be fooled, bold flavours as we got used to in the modern social media world are far away. Here polenta is thick cooked maize or buckwheat served in a ice cream style big dollop on your plate. No butter no parmigiano or other condiments. Just plain simple. Sometimes this is just reassuring.
In the morning before heading to the slopes, we had our doppio’s and cappuccini with a nice piece of crumbly buckwheat cake with walnuts for breakfast. Italians love their sweets in the morning! And i love those cakes, because they are just something in between a cake, a cookie and bread, dry and crumbly without being dry, if you get what i mean. A true breakfast cake.
And one night i woke up and suddenly it hit me: i’m going to make this cake with polenta and buckwheat and hazelnuts, plus a mascarpone with a touch of salt and again roasted hazelnuts. Salivating at 4 am in my bed.
And so here it is. A genius breakfast cake, i took it to our office at delicious magazine and we all loved it.
the combination of the hazelnuts, the crumbly cookie like texture and the sweet salty cream: in one word DIVINE
BUCKWHEAT POLENTA CAKE WITH HAZELNUTS AND SALTY HAZELNUT MASCARPONE CREAM
serves 6-8 (you want nice big chunks, no elegance needed here)
for the cream
2-3 tsp of sugar
60 ml of water
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